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Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

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Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#131

Post by Ringz »

Maakuth wrote: post #104
hef19898 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a close look at the title again, second word after "solar", you have to pass by "and" to get there.

I guess I earned the snark for not mentioning the batteries. Weirdly the news item doesn't tell what sort of energy storage capacity these battery installation have, only the peak power output of 14.3 GW for this year's addition. While that is certainly a gigantic addition no matter what the energy capacity of these battery installations is going to be, running the whole grid on batteries over the periods of low rene…

A misconception I often read on YouTube, Reddit, HackerNews is that everyone equates batteries with lithium ion batteries. A battery is a chemical storage device for energy and there are already many different types.

1. There are also functioning batteries without lithium, for example with salt, which are now already being tested in Swiss and German households and bring some advantages compared to lithium batteries. Not least the price. One should always remember that the lower energy density is a problem for an electric vehicle, but it doesn't matter if we install a battery in a cellar. Here, the energy density plays a subordinate role because there is enough space.

2. Would it make more sense to talk about *energy storage* in general instead of just batteries (which are by definition chemical energy storage) Kinetic, chemical, thermal and so on. Lithium ion batteries should not be considered for back-up alone. We definitely need more choices and we have them, mostly with today's technology and definitely easier and faster to develop and install than any new nuclear reactor technology.

3. You need different types of batteries short term storage, medium term storage and long term storage. There are different concepts for each use. Batteries, compressed air storage, pumped storage, thermal storage as well as power-to-x systems are able to absorb the increasing summer power from solar, autumn wind, etc. and make the energy available again in the short term, medium term or seasonally shifted. Examples:

    1. https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/445597

    2. https://tu-dresden.de/tu-dresden/newsportal/news/meilenstein-in-der-energy-transition-scientists-at-the-tu-dresden-build-unique-energy-storage (German)

    3. https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-services/hybrid-and-storage/thermal-energy-storage-with-etes-switch
4.The best approach, however, is to build a decentralised grid, which is also intercontinently connected. This is the perfect way to compensate for any "dark lulls". There is research on this at some universities around the world that is already out of laboratory status.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#132

Post by sl-1 »

Evidlo wrote: post #59
samatman wrote: post #40

This is nameplate capacity: the power a generator can deliver, full on, under ideal conditions. Solar and wind always look great when measured in nameplate capacity, which is why this is done. If you want to know how much electricity they will generate, you have to multiply by the capacity factor. Nuclear, for instance has a capacity factor of 0.9 in the US: it delivers 90% of its nameplate capacity in a given year.…

Why does nuclear not deliver closer to its ideal power output? Are nuclear plants really down 10% of the time?

Nuclear plants, like any facility or service, need downtime for maintenance

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#133

Post by Maakuth »

Ringz wrote: post #131
Maakuth wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I earned the snark for not mentioning the batteries. Weirdly the news item doesn't tell what sort of energy storage capacity these battery installation have, only the peak power output of 14.3 GW for this year's addition. While that is certainly a gigantic addition no matter what the energy capacity of these battery installations is going to be, running the whole grid on batteries over the periods of low rene…

A misconception I often read on YouTube, Reddit, HackerNews is that everyone equates batteries with lithium ion batteries. A battery is a chemical storage device for energy and there are already many different types. 1. There are also functioning batteries without lithium, for example with salt, which are now already being tested in Swiss and German households and bring some advantages compared to lithium batteries.…

Very good points. I do think the grid battery capacity being added this year is going to be mostly li-ion.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#134

Post by zarify »

Ultimately how useful is the high uptake in individual states? My understanding was that the US had a lot of weirdness going on about provision of utilities over state lines.

(Mind you here in Oz I think we have our own state politics involved, but I guess at least we have fewer states )

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#135

Post by MagnumOpus »

hef19898 wrote: post #102
rudolph9 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like this thread has sparked a lot nuclear vs solar debate, but both have the potential to be net zero energy sources and most fault tolerant grids are powered by a multitude of sources. We should be aggressively building solar, wind, battery, and nuclear along with anything else that can reasonably be part of a net zero supply chain that produces electricity in the not too distant. They all have different t…

We are building solar and wind aggressively. The problem with nuclear power is, nobody manages to build it aggressively or even at enough scale to make a meaningfull impact. What we should do, is keeping existing nuclear plants running as long as economically and safely possible. Emphasis on economically and safely, because those two points meant that the German reactors did run as long as possible, they even got an…

> nobody manages to build it aggressively or even at enough scale to make a meaningfull impact

China does. They will be completing 60-70 GW worth of reactors in the next decade, planning to take nuclear power from 2% of their electricity production to over 10% eventually. (While also building crazy amounts of solar, wind etc.)

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#136

Post by pjc50 »

zarify wrote: post #134

Ultimately how useful is the high uptake in individual states? My understanding was that the US had a lot of weirdness going on about provision of utilities over state lines. (Mind you here in Oz I think we have our own state politics involved, but I guess at least we have fewer states )

The US has three separate grids: east, west, and Texas. Who are oddly separatist about their badly managed energy system.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#137

Post by audunw »

samatman wrote: post #40

This is nameplate capacity: the power a generator can deliver, full on, under ideal conditions. Solar and wind always look great when measured in nameplate capacity, which is why this is done. If you want to know how much electricity they will generate, you have to multiply by the capacity factor. Nuclear, for instance has a capacity factor of 0.9 in the US: it delivers 90% of its nameplate capacity in a given year.…

Keep in mind that looking at the capacity factor for nuclear vs solar/wind can be misleading as well if you don't take into account even more factors.

Renewables are composed of a wide mix of thousands of power plants. And these days the construction of renewables goes along with construction of energy storage and grid upgrades (even taking into account those costs, renewables are now competitive). So any failures/downtimes is smoothed out over both time and space.

That ~10% of the time that nuclear is down, you get 100s of MWs going down in a single region. France recently had several nuclear power plants go down at the same time, making them dependent on imports for a long stretch of time.

In terms of energy I think it's worth looking at the total net energy added.

The largest rate that nuclear ever grew was around ~200TWh for some years in the 80s.

Solar grew by ~300TWh from 2021 to 2022. Wind grew by ~200TWh. And the growth rate is still increasing exponentially.

For reference the world population grew from ~5 to ~8billion from the 80s until now, if you want to take that into account when comparing the growth rates.

I don't think there can be any doubt anymore that renewables will completely dominate the energy production in the future.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#138

Post by audunw »

chii wrote: post #34
nekoashide wrote: post #29

The cool thing about batteries is that they are great as an investment. You can charge them when power is cheap and sell back power when you have high demand and market prices for power. Typically Peaker Plants fill this role but at much higher cost for electricity and emissions. Batteries just make much more sense for this kind of power.

The question is whether such battery's charge/discharge cycle degrade faster than the return on investment. For home use, break-even is an acceptable outcome, but not for commercial use like above. Is the price of battery low enough atm to make a return for such an investment?

At this point I think you have to take into account battery recycling.

If you build a big battery storage system now, by the time it's fully degraded, battery recycling will be a massive and streamlined operation. Given the number of energy storage systems built today you'll have massive quantities of similar and easy-to-recycle cells going to these recycling operations.

So if you're a big grid operator you'll probably be looking at making a streamlined and efficient loop out of getting your old cells recycled and making new cells out of that material. The cost for the replacement storage system will be much lower, and given improvements in cell chemistries, the storage capacity will likely be higher.

Then again, it's possible that grid energy operators will transition to low energy density but cheap and durable chemistries, like Ambri's molten metal batteries.. which essentially last forever.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#139

Post by schiffern »

spangry wrote: post #57
pfdietz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you don't understand exponential growth without saying you don't understand exponential growth.

Isn't exponential growth where the growth rate becomes more rapid as the stock of the thing gets larger (and, more precisely, the growth rate is a function of the stock)? How is growth in solar capacity exponential? Wouldn't it actually be logarithmic, all other things equal?

The graph looks rather exponential (and decidedly _not_ logarithmic) to me.[0]

The story is actually "the growth rate becomes more rapid as you accumulate experience manufacturing, which also grows as a function of the stock." AKA Wright's Law.[1]

You may notice this is faster than your definition of exponential growth, because Wright's Law also counts the decommissioned panels too. The industry still got that manufacturing experience, even if the panels don't count as 'stock' today. So technically the growth rate scales with total all-time production, not current stockpile size.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#140

Post by zer00eyz »

Maakuth wrote: post #104
hef19898 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a close look at the title again, second word after "solar", you have to pass by "and" to get there.

I guess I earned the snark for not mentioning the batteries. Weirdly the news item doesn't tell what sort of energy storage capacity these battery installation have, only the peak power output of 14.3 GW for this year's addition. While that is certainly a gigantic addition no matter what the energy capacity of these battery installations is going to be, running the whole grid on batteries over the periods of low rene…

> no matter what the energy capacity of these battery installations is going to be, running the whole grid on batteries over the periods of low renewable generation is going to require still orders of magnitude more batteries.

I live in CA (Bay Area) the solar people just wandered up to my front door to "sell me" the other day. I do want to go solar in light of my PGE bill.

The sales guy was super sharp and addressed one of the concerns I had (I have an unusual roof) and we got very nerdy.

Because PGE has time dependent pricing, their model is to use battery to not only power the house in these windows but dump back to the grid during them too (and charge off solar when power is cheap).

SO an independent installer is pitching a system to me (the end consumer) in response to the market price conditions that are going to push "more battery" for "peak demand" into the market.

Now do the economics of that system and their sales pitch make sense? I dont know, Im still crunching those numbers (and they are some hard numbers to figure out), but at first blush im inclined to say "yes" cause fuck giving money to PGE.

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