111–120 of 147 posts
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A big AI data center uses about 1 GWh of power each night. A large battery storage site is about 500MWh. So this is totally doable and it’s also going to be economical as soon as the US has built enough LNG export capacity.
That's a big data enter from last decade. Today big data enters use 4GWh power in winter. So only 8 of them.
Either way, in winter you’ll need the gas turbines, I didn’t claim otherwise.
And the sad part is that ai would be a perfect fit for intermittent energy sources: run inference 24/7 (on whatever you can muster, even if it's fossil it simply does not consume all that much compared to training) and over-build training to achieve whatever total throughout you need in time of energy abundance. How heavy would CO2 pricing have to be to make the market do this instead of the exact opposite?
Hardware sitting idle waiting for sunshine/wind is leaving money on the table. Especially if you can burn gas during that time and still be hugely profitable.
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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422... Figure 3 When used as the sole source of electricity solar clocks at 565 EUR/MWh. Nuclear, for comparison, is at 141 EUR/MWh.
Nobody is suggesting to use solar as the sole source of electricity. That would obviously be insane and then leads to silly numbers like the ones you gave. A MWh of solar is about 30 Euro/MWh if you levelize the capital costs.
> Nobody is suggesting to use solar as the sole source of electricity.
You weren't clear on what you propose.
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There's a bit of a difference between 'some batteries' and at least five times the size of the largest battery ever build.
There is, and "some batteries" is an under count, however: - The ratio between "some water" and "the pacific ocean" is a lot higher than 5 - On an exponential growth curve, a factor of 5 isn't all that much. This probably isn't feasible for a data center being built today (although they could build solar to at least reduce their fossil fuel power generation needs during the day). But it probably will be for data cent…
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Because it’s a dangerous technology where profit over security can have severe consequences. Not to mention the new risks now that drone wars are a thing. All those Chemical plants are already valuable target, no need to additional nuclear ones.
>Because it’s a dangerous technology where profit over security can have severe consequences. Yeah it's far better to have power plants kill a steady stream of people, but in a banal way that's hard to attribute, like coal power plants causing lung cancer.
Wind and solar with storage is far better than nuclear.
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Nobody is suggesting to use solar as the sole source of electricity. That would obviously be insane and then leads to silly numbers like the ones you gave. A MWh of solar is about 30 Euro/MWh if you levelize the capital costs.
The article discusses why LCOE is not a good estimate of the costs. Yes, combining different sources lowers the total cost (by damping intermittency). For Denmark it's offshore wind and solar in a 7 to 1 ratio (plus natural gas or biomethane power plants). > Nobody is suggesting to use solar as the sole source of electricity. You weren't clear on what you propose.
Germany has a lot of solar. It's suppressing prices below the electricity price you would get with pure gas power generation.
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Nobody is suggesting to use solar as the sole source of electricity. That would obviously be insane and then leads to silly numbers like the ones you gave. A MWh of solar is about 30 Euro/MWh if you levelize the capital costs.
The article discusses why LCOE is not a good estimate of the costs. Yes, combining different sources lowers the total cost (by damping intermittency). For Denmark it's offshore wind and solar in a 7 to 1 ratio (plus natural gas or biomethane power plants). > Nobody is suggesting to use solar as the sole source of electricity. You weren't clear on what you propose.
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Don’t forget environmentalists have been fighting against nuclear energy for decades. Update: Since I’m being downvoted I’m going to add a little sting: Good luck with your solar power web servers and skipping flights. Poor judgement really does have a price. It’s now inevitable that it’s going to get a bit warmer… everywhere. We’ll be lucky to hit Net Zero by 2100.
Last year, China installed 1.5GW of nuclear and 300GW of renewables. China's total coal use decreased as they decommissioned and under-utilized more coal than they installed. This same pattern is occurring everywhere, regardless of local politics or local economic system. See Texas as another example. It's because new renewables is superior at contemporary market prices. Markets have decided. Governments have decided…
China is still building large amount of new coal power plants. In 2025, construction began on 83GW of new coal capacity – down from 98GW in 2024.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/rush-for-new-coal-in-china-hits-...
For comparision the total EU’s existing coal fleet is 109 GW.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/coal-is-not-making-...
The growth Chinas coal consumption is slowing down, but still growth no reduction in 2026.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
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Nobody is suggesting to use solar as the sole source of electricity. That would obviously be insane and then leads to silly numbers like the ones you gave. A MWh of solar is about 30 Euro/MWh if you levelize the capital costs.
The article discusses why LCOE is not a good estimate of the costs. Yes, combining different sources lowers the total cost (by damping intermittency). For Denmark it's offshore wind and solar in a 7 to 1 ratio (plus natural gas or biomethane power plants). > Nobody is suggesting to use solar as the sole source of electricity. You weren't clear on what you propose.
Exempli gratia: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-household-powe...
And the proposal to fix this is more accounting games to transfer costs to different constituents.
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Of the operating set of reactors today, what percentage are those vs., say, Thorium?
yes, but that is not the point. The point is that countries pursued uranium reactors as a priority to produce plutonium for weapons. It did not / does not have to be this way, and the conflation of all nuclear reactors as either being at risk of meltdown or linked to nuclear weapons has resulted in the current situation. The green movement did us all a disservice by choosing not to clarify the difference, and here we…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-233#Weapon_material
"A declassified 1966 memo from the US nuclear program stated that uranium-233 has been shown to be highly satisfactory as a weapons material, though it was only superior to plutonium in rare circumstances."
Many nuclear energy opponents require absolute nuclear proliferation safety.