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For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas

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Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas

#161

Post by energy123 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #138
energy123 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world's biggest industrial economy, China, installed about 300x more renewable energy than nuclear last year. New nuclear sucks, and baseload is a false concept that can (and is) being synthetically replicated with over-building + storage + transmission + peaking.

> The world's biggest industrial economy, China, installed about 300x more renewable energy than nuclear last year. Comparing nameplate capacity for generation methods with much different capacity factors is misleading. China generates the majority of its electricity from coal , and is still adding more. They're adding more in renewables than coal by nameplate capacity, but coal likewise has a higher capacity factor…

Coal in China is decreasing, peaked last year

Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas

#162

Post by UltraSane »

epistasis wrote: post #159
UltraSane wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that no one is building 1 week batteries because they would be incredibly expensive. To make sure we are on the same page are you envisioning a grid powered 100% by wind + solar + batteries?

People are building 100 hour (5 day) batteries because they are incredibly cheap, but they're not doing many of them because they're not needed. Don't forget existing hydro, new advanced geothermal, existing nuclear (until they all reach end of life), etc. etc. etc.

"People are building 100 hour (5 day) batteries" Please provide links.

Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas

#163

Post by AnthonyMouse »

energy123 wrote: post #161
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world's biggest industrial economy, China, installed about 300x more renewable energy than nuclear last year. Comparing nameplate capacity for generation methods with much different capacity factors is misleading. China generates the majority of its electricity from coal , and is still adding more. They're adding more in renewables than coal by nameplate capacity, but coal likewise has a higher capacity factor…

Coal in China is decreasing, peaked last year

It declined slightly (-1.6%) last year in significant part because the winter was warmer than average resulting in lower heating demand. They've had year over year declines like that in the past (there was a larger one in 2015) so it's too early to tell if it'll stick, and they're starting from such a massive proportion of coal "basically standing still" numbers like that aren't going to move the needle for a long time.

Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas

#164

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #107
mekdoonggi wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy. US puts panels, turbines and batteries everywhere connected in big grid. Grid is big enough that something is always generating, and batteries smooth out the curve. Power is priced dynamically. Cheap solar at noon? Do big work. High demand in evening? Discharge battery. Power is always available, but cost goes up and down. Daily, god willing.

In theory that works as long as you're willing to let the price reflect actual supply and demand even when the difference is very large, e.g. it has been cloudy and still for a couple weeks so the batteries are low and then you get a hot summer day or cold winter night with a lot of demand. No problem, we'll just set the price to "high enough to get people to stop cooling/heating their buildings" and the market will…

Which is why we have ancillary markets. For all parts of the grid that the energy only market does not solve well enough, but we as a society deem necessary to solve.

When these edge cases are found, if they even exist, design a technology neutral market solving it and let companies bid.

Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas

#165

Post by leonidasrup »

knappe wrote: post #75
mekdoonggi wrote: post #59

Extending the life of existing power infra is low-hanging fruit for more power short term, but the economics of renewables are just unstoppable. Article states 93% of new generation capacity was renewable which is good, but I can sense that nimbyism is growing towards wind and solar. Not to mention the animus towards China who has wisely cornered manufacturing of these. The US has shot itself in the foot because of i…

Some panel manufacturing has been moved to the US and is actually thriving. Qcells keeps growing, year over year and as of 2023 had expanded their US facilities to manufacture more than 5.1 GW[0] of annual production. I'm aware this is a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated 339 GW[1] of annual production in China, but we're also talking about a single manufacturer operating in an actively hostile administrati…

It will interesting to see the effects of solar tariffs on four Southeast Asian countries.

https://think.ing.com/articles/what-does-it-mean-to-have-up-...

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/solar-dominates-import-s...

Maybe this will help to revitalize the US solar manufacturing. In Europe there is almost no solar manufacturing, just importing solar manufactured in China.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/us-mak...

Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas

#166

Post by leonidasrup »

nitwit005 wrote: post #131
contubernio wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wars in Ukraine and irán have also highlighted what a horrendous insecurity nuclear power plants are. A direct missile attack on one could be catastrophic. The idea that such will never happen is as silly as the idea that there will never be an accident or a tsunami. But passive safety won't stop a missile.

They were designed with that in mind though. They were built to withstand an plane crash or attack. You may have seen the famous test of ramming a F4 Phantom into a reinforced concrete walls without much effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4CX-9lkRMQ It's certainly possible to blow them up, but they very unlikely to melt down like Chernobyl did anymore due to all the effort put into preventing that. Easier to ju…

The containment building of new nuclear power plant has to withstand impact of large, commercial aircraft used for long distance flights, with aviation fuel loading typically used in such flights.

§ 50.150 Aircraft impact assessment.

https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part050/p...

Containment buildings for nuclear reactors are the strongest non-military buildings ever build. You need something much stronger than a small airplane, or simple drone, missile to breach it. Even a 155mm artillery granite or a anti-tank missile is not enough. You would probably need specialize bunker buster munition, or nuclear explosion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment_building

The Russian army will not directly attack nuclear power plants in Ukraine. They could not gain much from release of radioactive material as the radioactive material would also migrate to Russia. The Russian army is attacking the infrastructure connecting power plants to the grid, to deny the electricity production. (And is attacking must power infrastructure in Ukraine).

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hits-several-key...

Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas

#167

Post by leonidasrup »

senko wrote: post #35
contubernio wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wars in Ukraine and irán have also highlighted what a horrendous insecurity nuclear power plants are. A direct missile attack on one could be catastrophic. The idea that such will never happen is as silly as the idea that there will never be an accident or a tsunami. But passive safety won't stop a missile.

> what a horrendous insecurity nuclear power plants are. A direct missile attack on one could be catastrophic The same holds for hydro. Even worse, there would be no time for evacuation. Yet nobody is considering banning dams.

Hydro dams have been attacked and destroyed during II. world war in Germany. The result was 1600 civilians killed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise

Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas

#168

Post by mekdoonggi »

jujube3 wrote: post #157
philipallstar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand the economics when it comes to power all the time, not some of the time, and I rarely see that being mentioned in this sort of gung-ho post. I want to feel how you feel - can you help with the specifics there?

It's economical to build a small amount of battery storage, enough for a few hours. For longer term issues, when things are dark and not windy for a long time, I'm not aware of any long-term plan. States like California are handling it by keeping old fossil fuel plants going for longer, and importing power from neighboring states.

Form energy is deploying BESS optimized for ~4 discharge.

Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas

#169

Post by bluGill »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #145
gpm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base load is marketing term for electricity supply which cannot economically follow the demand curve and is only affordable if you can use a constant supply of it. It's not a feature, it's a bug. What you want is dispatchable power. The term vaguely makes sense if there are sources of electricity that output a constant supply that are cheaper than the dispatchable sources of power. Like nuclear was supposed to be (bu…

> What you want is dispatchable power. That's the most expensive one, especially if you both need it to be reliable (can't be a battery that can run out) and need it to not emit CO2 (can't be natural gas peaker plants). So what you want is to minimize the amount of dispatchable power that you need . Which is what baseload does up to the point that it's generating the "base" (i.e. typical daily minimum) amount of load…

> That's the most expensive one,

This is historically true. However these days natural gas is often cheaper. Of course prices fluctuate, but in general coal has been losing favor because it is expensive. Note that cheap is not just the direct fuel costs, it also includes overhead, that you can throttle natural gas often makes it cheaper overall even when the direct costs are slightly more.

Also unreliable wind+solar is - when working - vastly cheaper than anything else. As such running natural gas at twice the price vs a coal plant can still be a lot cheaper just because you don't have to buy fuel when the wind blows/sun shines.

Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas

#170

Post by mekdoonggi »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #149
jjk166 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that it's occasionally neither and that doesn't have to happen very often to cause a lot of trouble. The odds of it being neither everywhere (grid) for an extended period of time (storage) is astronomically low. You don't build solar plants and windfarms where prolonged periods of non-production are to be expected. The once in a century black swan event where distributed power production across a con…

> The odds of it being neither everywhere (grid) for an extended period of time (storage) is astronomically low. The problem isn't that production is literally zero, it's that production is non-trivially below average for an extended period of time. Continent-spanning grids mitigate that to a certain extent, but they're also a) expensive (purposely-idle high capacity very long distance transmission lines), and b) are…

Compare the likelihood of a prolonged period of low production versus our current system, with a prolonged period of low oil/gas availability.

We already experience exactly the same shortages. Look at how countries are responding to the oil shock right now.

You indicate the problem with localized generation, but the extraction and refinement of our current energy system is far more concentrated than renewables already. Look at https://openinframap.org/#5.62/28.611/114.086/A,B,L,P,S

Solar is being generated all over the world, and your concern is that it's production will be concentrated and subject to supply shocks?

Yes, intermittency will always be a problem, but that is true of all energy systems. Wind/solar/batteries has BETTER intermittency than oil/gas, and the added benefit of not cooking our entire biosphere.

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