If there is one resource that America has in spades it's empty land.
My own country every m² is valuable.
California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
271–280 of 363 posts
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will counter this. I think theres going to be a significant work to push down the costs of re-powering the aging nuclear fleet. Renewables will continue to be a force and work around the edges. Too much on the line to shut down nuclear for France. It will get subsidized and it provides energy independence. Potentially but not certain future where other people are also purchasing nuclear assets which pushes down mai…
> Too much on the line to shut down nuclear for France. It will get subsidized and it provides energy independence. If the goal is energy independence, renewables will provide that more cheaply. If the goals are the other side effects of nuclear power: isotopes, national pride (Curie!), workforce augmentation for nuclear submarines and nuclear weapons, then these goals also require far fewer reactors than enough to p…
> But I would take a long bet that in 2050, France is closer to 0% nuclear power than it is to the current level.
Maybe, but I think the corollary goal is to have nuclear power be a bigger part of the remaining non-renewables. So if (exaggerating grossly) it's 90% renewable, 9% nuclear, and 1% other, that's arguably still better than the current state.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#273The electricity mix in France is still way cleaner than in California: - France: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/5y/yearly - California: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/5y/year... And their kWh costs less than 20 Cents in the standard plan: - https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Of... They even offer flex prices going down as low as 12,32 Cents/kWh. Nuclear power…
California has been an oil state from the beginning. To this day there is urban oil extraction over various parts of LA: https://www.pbssocal.org/news-community/l-a-s-long-troubled-... It is only very recently that California started trying to decarbonize. When France did their amazing nuclear build, it was for energy independence, not for decarbonization purposes. It was a very forward thinking move, even if it wasn…
I'm sure they also did it for the nuclear weapons program.
My own country never wanted nukes and they discovered large deposits of natural gas so that was it. After all nuclear energy was never as cheap as they envisioned in the 1950s.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UK uses far more gas to heat homes than to generate electricity, and uses some for industrial purposes so it seems weird to attribute LNG use to wind, the technology that more than any other has reduced gas usage in the UK.
The increase in use of wind, being intermittent and non-dispatchable means there has to be 1-for-1 back up wind generation. That is gas. We also have periods in the winter (so solar of little to no use), where we can have a week or two of no wind. As the gas generators are not run constantly, they're more expensive than if they were. There are various (at least 3) UK "gridwatch" sites available, offering real time an…
you can actually see it live here: https://gridwatch.co.uk/
It illustrates both the volatility of wind (which regularly goes to zero for at least a week), and how it is currently pretty much 100% offset with gas.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Normally this would be handled by a wider synchronized network. The EU has a continent wide synchronized network and the UK isn’t part of it. There are also other ways to store energy. For polar regions sand batteries are capable of storing heat for months. High grade heat to the point they can siphon off that heat for power generation.
The interconnectors between UK and the continent are HVDC. As such they are essentially massive switching-mode PSUs, and there is no possibility of having a synchronised connection, as the AC has to be synthesised, following the local spinning iron.
But also europe isn't that large. When there is no wind in the UK, there is no wind in France or Italy. Which means not only do they not provide diversification, they will import at the same time.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
While usage of aircon during heatwaves stressing the grid is a valid concern, I think massive increase in solar could offset it. Solar will also generate maximum energy during sunny days with minimal cloud cover, meaning there shouldn’t be a shortage of energy if there’s enough solar. Since 2022 California has energy from solar by roughly 50%, while the population has decreased. Solar is now the biggest source of ene…
It doesn't solve the problem- its the end of the day when solar has ramped down that the crises happens. Its the duck curve. Where its still hot and air conditioning is still running hard. Solar depresses the energy demand during the middle of the day. Energy storage smooths out the load profile.
Knowing about the duck curve and taking advantage of the essentially zero marginal cost of solar, can't most folks just crank down their AC temps at 11 or noon such that there's no end-of-day demand ramp?
I know folks in Phoenix who are on a time-of-day plan and they max out the AC overnight and then barely use it during the day (same goal, just they don't have solar)
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Electricity prices are set by the French government not the wholesale cost or cost of production. Which is why EDF - the operator of the French nuclear fleet - regularly posts massive losses. Like the €18 billion loss in 2023. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/02/17/france-s...
Pure disinformation. EDF is generally highly profitable while at the same time delivering cheap, reliable power. 2023 was the one exception, due to the energy crisis and its interaction with the ARENH program that forces EDF to sell power from nuclear at a fixed low price (usually way below market). Even if it needs that power itself. So in 2022, it still had to sell this power at 4 cent/kWh, and then had to buy that…
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hydro does rule. Top 8 power stations are hydro right now. And the top power station has been a hydro for over a hundred years now. Very cool! Three Gorges has capacity of 22.5 GW.
I really hope nothing bad happens at the three gorges dam. There's nearly half a billion people that would have to be evacuated, and tens of millions who likely wouldn't be able to evacuate in time due to proximity. I'd rather live near a modern nuclear plant myself.
Dutch people live under sea level but everyone trusts in the engineering.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct, it wasn't the Central Valley, it was Moss Landing. Though there were lots of fears about the fire, the biggest risk was that the battery was destroyed. There has been ongoing soil testing and not much found, in this worst case situation of a battery fire. It is definitely fueling fears, however! A few highly motivated individuals put up big hand painted signs in their neighborhoods decrying the evils of batt…
Did they test the air or just the soil? You mentioned they imagined the taste of the air but didn’t mention if they actually tested the air. And who tests it?
The county put up testing results and methods here:
https://www.readymontereycounty.org/emergency/2025-moss-land...
As with all testing of this sort that I've ever seen, third parties do the testing and analysis.
I mention the air as an example of fear getting out waaaaaay in front of any risks. Testing the air would be pointless, 20 miles upwind. The metallic taste was either from other sources or psychosomatic.
The health risks of battery fires have been mostly evaluated in the context of fire fighting, where, air metals are a concern, but only in confined spaces. Nickel is the primary concern there. After reading about these, my only fears were for the workers for nickel production.
I am very very concerned about air quality, but the real risk there is from car traffic, specifically the tire microplastics and brake dust. There are big and measurable health effects from that, where even reducing traffic near schools by 10% could actually impact lives. However because people drive cars and are used to the bad health effects, nobody is scared of the negative health from cars. Instead the human mind focuses on new things because they are new, not because of the relative risk. For decades there were natural gas smokestacks pouring exhaust over the strawberry fields, the batteries that replaced them (to make use of the big power lines) are a huge improvement to human health, even with the fire.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even the poster boy for nuclear is reducing nuclear output as its fleet ages and filling that gap with renewables (reducing its electricity emissions from 2005 when their nuclear peaked too). So it apparently doesn't matter what your existing grid is, coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, of whatever mix, the thing you should be building now is mostly solar, wind and (not quite caught on globally but just about to make a very b…
France? France is increasing its nuclear output. And planning to build new plants. (Expanding nuclear generation was prohibited by law up until March of 2023). The added renewables help to make the nuclear plants more efficient and profitable, by taking up a good amount of the variable demand.
Renewables are non dispatchable and thus have a hard time picking up variable demand. They’re very good at providing free energy on sunny or windy days and are increasingly forcing nuclear plants to reduce output during those times, directly cutting into nuclear profits.