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California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

latimes.com

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Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#341

Post by dakial1 »

cbmuser wrote: post #63

The 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…

If we are comparing the progress made over time, my vote goes to Brazil, which holds a 50-year advantage in its green energy focus.

https://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/energy-issues/braz...

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#342

Post by bryanlarsen »

tooltalk wrote: post #339
bryanlarsen wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A normal value for a highly competitive commodity part like a battery is about 3% above cost. CATL charges over 20% above cost. So you might have an argument that CATL has monopoly pricing power and is gouging its customers. IOW that they're illegally charging too much, not that they are illegally charging too little.

Sure, that's not what a normal value is. As explained, the price level or the cost of manufacture in China, the exporting country, is completely irrelevant as their local price/cost of manufacturer is artificially propped up by illegal state subsidies or other anti-market tactics to cripple foreign competition past 15 years. Again, China is a non-market-economy. In those cases, trade regulators can use "undistorted"…

If that's your definition of a non-market economy, then no Western economy is either.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#343

Post by IAmBroom »

gradientsrneat wrote: post #193

> cannot be extinguished with water Why? I thought lithium ion batteries actually contained negligible amounts of lithium? Or is this for some other reason?

Around 7%, it seems, so not negligible. There's also a similar amount of manganese, which can also burn.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#344

Post by IAmBroom »

mattmaroon wrote: post #287
clarionbell wrote: post #281

All this talk about energy independence and not a word on where are the solar cells, batteries and wind turbines made. If your grid is standing on components with short life time and which you can't manufacture at scale, you are not independent. You have just traded one dependence for another.

Wind turbines and solar panels have similar lifespans to natural gas power plants which are also made somewhere else.

Steam turbines are made in the US, and they are the principal mechanical component in natural gas power generation.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#345

Post by IAmBroom »

Yeul wrote: post #271

If there is one resource that America has in spades it's empty land. My own country every m² is valuable.

You're right on the national level, but we can't put all our energy creation in the US midwest and just "transport" it somehow 1,000 miles to urban centers.

The US NE Corridor has almost zero empty land, but consumes a major portion of the energy.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#346

Post by mpweiher »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #337
mpweiher wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FV3 was a shambles. For a number of fairly well-understood reasons: 1. It's a FOAK design. 2. France stopped building reactors, so expertise was sparse 3. The EPR is too complex, partly because it was designed for German safety standards, which in turn were specifically designed to make nuclear reactors economically unviable (they did not succeed with this). Those regulations are also prescriptive instead of requirem…

Which is of course why all recent western proejcts have equal outcomes to FV3. And the ones recently started, like the Darlington SMR also have near equal costs before they have even started building. I love the blind belief. Just another aboslutely bonkers handout of tax money and it will be solved! Which is why the EPR2 project is getting more delayed and more costly by every update released. Existing nuclear power…

> Which is of course why all recent western proejcts have equal outcomes to FV3.

Yes, because we stopped building. Once we start building again, those problems go away by themselves.

And no, the handout of tax money you complain about is to intermittent renewables, not to nuclear. Exactly the reverse of your claims. Just look at the EDF financial reports. Nuclear produces profits that are returned to their owner, despite having to finance ARENH.

Oh, of course EDF does receive state subsidies. For their intermittent renewables projects. Ba-da-dumm-tss.

Same in Germany: renewables are subsidized in production with around €20 billion per year just for the EEG, never mind the feed-in priority they get that lets them shunt the massive problems of their intermittency onto the other suppliers. That's probably worth more. Oh, and the preferential loan conditions and reduced regulatory burden etc.

Nuclear power in Germany never got a single cent for production. And had to account for all the sorts of costs others get to externalize, such as waste.

So once again: exactly the opposite of your claims.

The problem is not building new. The problem is building the first new.

For evidence of this, just look to China: they also built FOAK AP-1000 (Vogtle) and EPR (FV3, HPC).

And lo-and-behold: their FOAK versions of these also took around 10 years to build, whereas China typically builds in 5, so twice as long. In absolute terms they were a little faster, because they actually have industrial experience with nuclear (currently building 20+ reactors, lots more planned), the thing that needs to be rebuilt in Europe and the US.

Nowadays, they are building their NOAK AP-1000s in 5 years, for $3.5 bn. They didn't go for more EPR, as the AP-1000 is a better design. The EPR also hasn't won any of the recent tenders for nuclear reactors, for example in Poland (AP-1000) and the Czech Republic (South Korean APR-1400)

So to repeat: the problems with FOAK builds are well-known, as are the ones with building up nuclear expertise in a country. These go away by themselves once you build a number plants, preferable of the same design. The problems with the EPR design go away once you stop building EPRs.

Now these are actual facts.

Whereas all you've come up with is empty slogans and emotional fantasies.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#347

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

mpweiher wrote: post #346
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is of course why all recent western proejcts have equal outcomes to FV3. And the ones recently started, like the Darlington SMR also have near equal costs before they have even started building. I love the blind belief. Just another aboslutely bonkers handout of tax money and it will be solved! Which is why the EPR2 project is getting more delayed and more costly by every update released. Existing nuclear power…

> Which is of course why all recent western proejcts have equal outcomes to FV3. Yes, because we stopped building . Once we start building again, those problems go away by themselves. And no, the handout of tax money you complain about is to intermittent renewables, not to nuclear. Exactly the reverse of your claims. Just look at the EDF financial reports. Nuclear produces profits that are returned to their owner, de…

How many trillions in handouts to the nuclear industry to maybe get only extremely expensive electricity?

Then trying to justify it with paid off nuclear plants.

So it will be profitable sometime in 2060? Until then we should just persist with horrifyingly expensive electricity as they get paid off?

That sounds like a lunatic talking.

There’s no feed in priority. Renewables just bid zero which is their marginal cost. Nuclear power bids negative until prices are so low for so long that they withdraw from the grid.

You can try to force nuclear costs on the consumers but that will only lead to an explosion of rooftop solar and home storage.

I also love how everything becomes ”FOAK” when you need to justify the boondoggles.

Apparently reactor 5 and 6 of the EPR line is now ”First of a Kind”. That does not seem very logical to me.

You know that nuclear power as a share of the Chinese grid is backsliding? They also keep pushing their targets further into the future and lowering them.

And South Korea then withdrew from all other bids in Europe after the settlement with Westinghouse.

The Polish AP-1000 lands somewhere around €180/MWh when considering all costs and subsidies.

Then you blather on about FOAK while making it blindingly obvious that you are in over your head. You do know that we have research on it rather than you making up ”facts”?

> If you look at the data specifically you're going to find learning but for that there's a several requirements:

> - It has to be the same site

> - It has to be the same constructor

> - It has to be at least two years of of gap between one construction to the next

> - It has to be constant labor laws

> - It has to be a constant regulatory regime

> When you add these five you only get like four or five examples in the world.

From a nuclear energy professor at MIT in the Decouple nuclear power industry podcast, giving an overly positive but still sober image regarding the nuclear industry as it exists today.

But that is something a trillion dollars in a handout will fix! Any day now! They'll start paying it back.... never!

Insanity.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#348

Post by tooltalk »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #342
tooltalk wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that's not what a normal value is. As explained, the price level or the cost of manufacture in China, the exporting country, is completely irrelevant as their local price/cost of manufacturer is artificially propped up by illegal state subsidies or other anti-market tactics to cripple foreign competition past 15 years. Again, China is a non-market-economy. In those cases, trade regulators can use "undistorted"…

If that's your definition of a non-market economy, then no Western economy is either.

It's really just China and these countries:

  Republic of Armenia,
  Republic of Azerbaijan
  Republic of Belarus
  Georgia
  Kyrgyz Republic
  Republic of Moldova
  Russian Federation
  Republic of Tajikistan
  Turkmenistan
  Republic of Uzbekistan
  Socialist Republic of Vietnam
The term NME is a specific legal designation for anti-dumping cases. The list isn't static -- unlike China, Vietnam has made a lot of reforms and many speculate they will be removed before 2030.

No need to pretend that Chinese EV/battery companies can compete on their own without the gov't protection or "illegal" subsidies.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#349

Post by jeffbee »

danans wrote: post #296
jeffbee wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think SVP buys energy from its contracted generators? They don't own transmission from those places (unlike SMUD which, to an incomplete extent, actually does own its generating assets and transmission lines). SVP pays regulated wholesale distribution rates to PG&E to get access to their contracted generators. But the process determining such rates ignores the way that wildfire liability is assigned to PG&…

> PG&E must serve every yokel in California no matter how far out, while SVP and other MUDs contribute nothing to rural electrification mandates You can both be right about this. PGE is subject to rural electrification mandates. However, the way those mandates get satisfied can vary tremendously in cost, and because by regulation investor owned utilities are compensated as a % of their capex spend, there is an incent…

Whether rural communities "deserve" electrification is a topic we need to reopen. When we created the notion of rural electrification, there were many little communities all over the place engaged in farming and mining and logging, and it was easy to see that power and telephone to such places was not just fair but necessary. But in this century what we have is separatists who simply spread out because they hate everyone, not for a valid economic purpose. These dispersions of houses such as you see in Amador County were built quite recently. Those people should face the full economic consequence of their preferences, not be subsidized by the state.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#350

Post by danans »

jeffbee wrote: post #349
danans wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PG&E must serve every yokel in California no matter how far out, while SVP and other MUDs contribute nothing to rural electrification mandates You can both be right about this. PGE is subject to rural electrification mandates. However, the way those mandates get satisfied can vary tremendously in cost, and because by regulation investor owned utilities are compensated as a % of their capex spend, there is an incent…

Whether rural communities "deserve" electrification is a topic we need to reopen. When we created the notion of rural electrification, there were many little communities all over the place engaged in farming and mining and logging, and it was easy to see that power and telephone to such places was not just fair but necessary. But in this century what we have is separatists who simply spread out because they hate ever…

> But in this century what we have is separatists who simply spread out because they hate everyone, not for a valid economic purpose.

I don't doubt that such people exist, but rural areas are also populated by people who are priced out of expensive urban centers. Furthermore, those two groups also probably have some overlap. I also agree that those people need to have skin in the game, but I don't see a way forward without compromise.

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