41–50 of 65 posts
Now, if only it was reliable in the winter…
Why are we wasting so much time on this website needing to debunk every reheated conservative talking points? What is the moderation doing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Texas grid is deliberately cut off from other states to avoid federal regulation. If we would just interconnect, then you diversify your locations and are much less susceptible to the wild swings in price driven by weather, which in the case of 2021 also impacted natural gas plants.
> just interconnect Or instead, the federal regulations should obviously be fixed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And batteries: China launches world’s first grid-forming sodium-ion battery storage plant - https://www.ess-news.com/2025/06/03/china-launches-worlds-fi... - June 3rd, 2025 ("With a total investment of over CNY 460 million [$63.8 million] and occupying 34k square metres, the Baochi plant is designed for an installed capacity of 200MW/400MWh. Based on a dual daily charge-discharge cycle, it can regulate up to 580 GWh…
Also, that article about China making as many batteries as the world needs is deceiving if we’re talking about grid scale capacity as opposed to house scale or vehicle batteries. If the world went 100% into renewable energy with grid-scale battery deployment to provide extra capacity to make up for renewable generation variation, there’s no way China could keep up. That’s a LOT of batteries and ongoing replacement as…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Texas grid is deliberately cut off from other states to avoid federal regulation. If we would just interconnect, then you diversify your locations and are much less susceptible to the wild swings in price driven by weather, which in the case of 2021 also impacted natural gas plants.
> just interconnect Or instead, the federal regulations should obviously be fixed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if you ignore grid failures, the fact is that power output from renewables drops during the winter. That’s just a fact. That drop must be made up by other things (natural gas, nuclear, or coal, in Texas, very little hydro). I’m all for more renewables, but we need a lot more nuclear that can be dialed up to compensate for renewables going offline during certain weather conditions.
Texas is building more grid scale battery storage than any other state: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/chart-us... This year EIA again expects Texas to outpace California, only now by an even wider margin than last year. The Lone Star State could build nearly 7 GW of utility-scale storage in 2025 compared to California’s 4.2 GW.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are we wasting so much time on this website needing to debunk every reheated conservative talking points? What is the moderation doing?
I’m not sure why discussing the very real issues with renewable power is a “conservative talking point.” Why is everything assumed to be politically motivated. Everyone assume I’m throwing renewables under the bus for the 2021 grid failure. I’m not. Everything failed in 2021. Gas failed. And renewables couldn’t pick up the slack because renewable generation always slumps in the winter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if you ignore grid failures, the fact is that power output from renewables drops during the winter. That’s just a fact. That drop must be made up by other things (natural gas, nuclear, or coal, in Texas, very little hydro). I’m all for more renewables, but we need a lot more nuclear that can be dialed up to compensate for renewables going offline during certain weather conditions.
i get what you're saying but renewable capacity does not drop during the winter. On the contrary, winter months outside the tropics have higher wind speeds. Solar output drops during the winter, not wind. that said, economics pose a major problem to building more renewable energy capacity. No one will build a wind farm if it is not profitable. Profitability is a major question if average electricity prices drop.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if you ignore grid failures, the fact is that power output from renewables drops during the winter. That’s just a fact. That drop must be made up by other things (natural gas, nuclear, or coal, in Texas, very little hydro). I’m all for more renewables, but we need a lot more nuclear that can be dialed up to compensate for renewables going offline during certain weather conditions.
> we need a lot more nuclear that can be dialed up to compensate for renewables going offline during certain weather conditions If you want something to compensate for intermittency, nuclear seems like the worst option. It implies you have nuclear plants sitting offline until needed, or being ramped up and down. My understanding is that you really want to run nuclear plants 24/7 at full output.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, that article about China making as many batteries as the world needs is deceiving if we’re talking about grid scale capacity as opposed to house scale or vehicle batteries. If the world went 100% into renewable energy with grid-scale battery deployment to provide extra capacity to make up for renewable generation variation, there’s no way China could keep up. That’s a LOT of batteries and ongoing replacement as…
Actually, we're pretty close. Estimates put the number of batteries required for decarbonizing the grid at about 30TWh. China has about 1TWh of annual capacity, with capacity increasing close to 50% per annum. Grid storage battery life is about 20 years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we need a lot more nuclear that can be dialed up to compensate for renewables going offline during certain weather conditions If you want something to compensate for intermittency, nuclear seems like the worst option. It implies you have nuclear plants sitting offline until needed, or being ramped up and down. My understanding is that you really want to run nuclear plants 24/7 at full output.
You don’t have nuclear totally offline except when refueling (and MSRs might solve even that). Nuclear can dial up down relatively easily. , however. Simplistically, you just pull/push the rods out/in (yea, there’s more to it than that, and it doesn’t react instantly, but roughly speaking, that’s it).