Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your first point is excellent, that this sends capital market signals to investors to not invest in fossil generation. But to your other point, seasonal storage is not required. All available evidence indicates overbuilding renewables and simply making peace with excess curtailment can solve for that, along with transmission and perhaps pumped hydro where geography allows for that.
Source? My understanding is that this can be true in some regions but requires fairly aggressive use of, not only overbuilt renewables (which may pose challenges in land use and siting), but also long haul transmission (also difficult to site), demand response, etc. And then there's the scary possibility of an extended weather anomaly (several weeks with no wind and minimal solar). Having some long term storage in th…
Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants
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Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants
#32This is a great example of economics at work. Large-scale electricity storage solutions reduce the need for generating capacity from peak load to average load - reducing the demand by the crest factor of the grid. The majority of this extra generation capacity is currently filled by gas (that is incredibly easy to spool up and down in a matter of seconds). Reducing the demand for natural gas will also increase the co…
I know someone who worked in a gas plant and although it might take seconds once the plant is running (I don’t know), it takes multiple minutes to start it after being off. In comparison, scaling from 0% to 100% load on battery storage takes 0,1 seconds, according to Tesla.
Gas plants can't really change how much they are generating in seconds. What they actually do is use the inertia of the spinning machinery, when the grid frequency drops (which is usually one of the first symptoms of load exceeding demand) the big spinning generators don't change speed instantaneously, they instead come under higher load and and convert more of their kinetic energy into electrical energy and help prop up the grid frequency. This starts the generators slowing down which then causes the control software to do whatever it is they do to feed in more gas and generate more power to try to keep them running at the same speed (I don't know exactly, I worked in grid batteries not gas plants).
But yes, the batteries can respond much faster and are way better at this kind of support. It does lead to some situations that felt slightly weird to me where a battery will be selling a "spinning" reserve product. Luckily the weird linguistic artifact did not require us to actually rotate multi-ton batteries ;).
Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Renewables can't power things like trains, planes or semi trucks. What we need is world where we recognize that everyone owning their own personal automobile is probably a bad idea. We need walkable neighborhoods and public transportation but we also need to recognize how powerful fossil fuels are preserve them for heavy duty tasks that would be near impossible w/ human muscle and or renewables.
> Renewables can't power things like trains, planes or semi trucks. Eh... The only one on your list that is currently a problem is planes. It's expensive powering semi trucks with them, that's why people mostly don't, and it's almost trivial for trains. There is also no fundamental reason why planes should be impossible. There are several well understood possibilities for them, but very few people have focused on sol…
Semis/tractor-trailers are still a problem. Sure, they can make them run off batteries, but you have to forgo a lot of cargo capacity to do so, which makes the economics tough.
Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants
#34The Lazard LCOE cost of unsubsidized solar/wind + storage has recently achieved parity with gas turbine combined cycle. So the writing is on the wall for fossil fuels. What's also important is that gas combined cycle kind of represented the end state of maximum power for minimum cost from fossil fuels. Wind and especially solar (perovskites, etc) and storage (sodium chemistries, etc) have lots of runway for further c…
> Wind and especially solar (perovskites, etc) and storage (sodium chemistries, etc) have lots of runway for further cost drops Could you tell on what you base this assumption?
perovskites have the potential if used in tandem with normal cells to get you more efficency per panel since they are sensitive toa different part of the spectrum. You might get relatively cheap 40% panels out of that.
That means you need less panels, less mounting, cableing ect.
sodium batteries have the potential to be dirt cheap and thus might be able to be rolled out for less of what lipos cost at scale especially in non-mobile applications where size and weight aren't that important.
Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants
#35This is actually great because it reduces the vastly outsized impact of gas prices on short-term electricity prices through peaker plants via the merit order system.
Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Renewables can't power things like trains, planes or semi trucks. What we need is world where we recognize that everyone owning their own personal automobile is probably a bad idea. We need walkable neighborhoods and public transportation but we also need to recognize how powerful fossil fuels are preserve them for heavy duty tasks that would be near impossible w/ human muscle and or renewables.
There are examples of all three that are electric, although planes are the hardest to make happen. Train electrification is so common that in English it is used in an expression: "touching the third rail". As with the debate between cars vs. trains, semis lose out to trains by a lot, even when trains use fossil fuels. Trains rule.
Trains rule until demographics change enough where rails no longer support geographic population centers. This is part of the reason politicians tend to favor buses over trains; besides the smaller upfront costs, buses are easier to change routes that support populations when needs change.
Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wind and especially solar (perovskites, etc) and storage (sodium chemistries, etc) have lots of runway for further cost drops Could you tell on what you base this assumption?
perovskites have the potential if used in tandem with normal cells to get you more efficency per panel since they are sensitive toa different part of the spectrum. You might get relatively cheap 40% panels out of that. That means you need less panels, less mounting, cableing ect. sodium batteries have the potential to be dirt cheap and thus might be able to be rolled out for less of what lipos cost at scale especiall…
mind you sodium is probably not that much worse than lipo once developed so it might end up in some mobile applications.
Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants
#38It would be neat to see an alternate universe where there was zero corporate welfare for petroleum and for solar/wind/tidal/hydro. I imagine that in such a world, renewables would have become the default sometime in the 70s and millions of lives would have been saved due to fewer oil wars and cleaner air.
You could see some of it in the 20s, before the New Deal sunk a lot of renewables with the rural electrification act. Of course, the shape of the problem being 'solved' was very different then, but the neglect of emerging/improving technologies in favor of the government favorite is the same.
Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants
#39> "Without providing price detail, which companies say is commercially sensitive, Clarke said Carlton had struggled to finance the planned gas plant in part because of uncertainty over the revenues it would generate and the number of hours it would run." This is the crucial point. Political uncertainty about the future energy system is jacking up the rate of return investors are demanding of gas plant projects withou…
Why call this political uncertainty as opposed to economic uncertainty? The future is intrinsically uncertain. The only thing that has changed is new entrants to the market. If gas plants can be replaced by something cheaper then they will be. If gas plants make economic sense, they will be built. The fact that gas developers have to model additional players in their markets to prove their economic viability seems fine to me. The fact that they are riskier investments means higher capital costs also seems fine (they are riskier!). Would you rather the politicians say no batteries because that would make financing gas plants harder?
Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Renewables can't power things like trains, planes or semi trucks. Eh... The only one on your list that is currently a problem is planes. It's expensive powering semi trucks with them, that's why people mostly don't, and it's almost trivial for trains. There is also no fundamental reason why planes should be impossible. There are several well understood possibilities for them, but very few people have focused on sol…
Semis/tractor-trailers are still a problem. Sure, they can make them run off batteries, but you have to forgo a lot of cargo capacity to do so, which makes the economics tough.
No discussion of battery trucks can go very far without reaching the conclusion that more freight must travel by rail. That's a correct conclusion, but for the same reasons it has never carried the day in the US for 75 years, that transition will continue to not happen.