471–480 of 512 posts
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> They certainly were not good enough at Fukushima Then why would remaking the part be any better than redesigning the system?
Either course would produce uncompetitive power. The best would be stop pouring money into the rathole.
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Your comment conveys cynicism, but I'm not sure what you're saying. So you're proposing 100s to 1000s of TWh of utility storage in what form, exactly? Or are you saying that there will be almost not utility storage? Are you counting EV batteries as part of utility storage? How about if the batteries take part in vehicle to grid transmission? People have been skeptical of batteries for decades, claiming that they are…
Batteries just cost more than alternatives. They are excellent for load smoothing, because they can vary power intake and output very quickly, at any wattage out, but they are an expensive place to keep energy. For home use, batteries are the only practical storage we have, which is why off-grid power is much costlier than utility scale need be. Battery cost is per Wh of total capacity, with typically a very high lim…
Chemical storage of energy is highly inefficient, which is fine when we have super super cheap energy, but the capital costs of conversion and storage will probably require nearly continuous usage of the, say, electrolyzers in order to make the storage project feasible.
Perhaps you are right, and I really appreciate you laying out your reasoning, but I would bet otherwise about grid storage! None of the players for doing alternatives are anywhere near market ready, and batteries are being deployed today. As they get cheaper they will be deployed even more.
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Batteries just cost more than alternatives. They are excellent for load smoothing, because they can vary power intake and output very quickly, at any wattage out, but they are an expensive place to keep energy. For home use, batteries are the only practical storage we have, which is why off-grid power is much costlier than utility scale need be. Battery cost is per Wh of total capacity, with typically a very high lim…
Batteries are getting cheaper all the time as we get better at manufacturing them, and we haven't hit the inflection point on cost decreases yet, and we haven't scaled lithium production yet. And we haven't fully developed other chemistries such as iron-air that promise to be even cheaper than lithium ion and have far higher capacity/power ratios. Chemical storage of energy is highly inefficient, which is fine when w…
Buoyancy storage, where deep water is ready to hand, and mineshaft storage, where you have one, will be very, very cheap and efficient. Transmission lines mean such conveniences need not be especially nearby. But Europe is absolutely perforated with mineshafts.
Besides smoothing, there is very little use for storage yet, because we haven't got enough to charge it from. Charging storage from NG turbines would be worse than silly. So, we build out generating capacity first, then storage.
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What is needed changes over time. It is better to spend more on capital than operational costs if one actually wants the world to change not just ideal along. The best cost control is in large part doing lots of cookie-cutter work, hence the focus on small modular reactors. It is better to do those, and then ramp up the "small" part over time. Likewise, we should construct lots of rail simultaneously with ramp up to…
I agree that we are going to need more power generation as electricity replaces other forms of energy. But for any given level of electricity generation, doing it in a cheaper way is still better than doing it in a more expensive way. For one thing, it allows capacity to be increased for the same cost.
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I like the possibilities of solar energy. I like the possibilities of decentralized energy. I am a conspiracy theory type of guy. Here's what I really think about all the state and corporate SDG campaign sloganing I see on the streets every damn day: The reasonably accessible domestic solar panels that do come out will most likely be IoT devices. It will be energy as a service. They will gather information in a way y…
This was the most deranged and illogical conspiracy theory that I heard in a while.
I got angry at your mean dismissal, but I'm trying to move past it. I can live with being reviled, or seen as crazy. Even if you think my ideas are absolutely ridiculous, just promise me you'll do what you can to keep exploitative energy tech like what I described from being created, deployed, adopted if you ever do see it happening. It's enough for me if you do not go on one day to make or believe arguments that try to justify having such a TOS on services that provide ordinary people with their basic needs.
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Hydrogen can be added to dilute NG, during the transition.
This would still cause hydrogen embrittlement which results in cracked steel pipes.
Anyway aluminum is quite resistant to hydrogen embrittlement.
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Either course would produce uncompetitive power. The best would be stop pouring money into the rathole.
Ok, so the safety argument doesn't even matter, so why debate it as a proxy for what you really mean?
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Solar is great at small scale, but at utility/grid scale, that means needing to ramp up storage too. The grid doesn't currently have much storage capacity (batteries, pumped hydro, phase shifting materials, etc.) to support current needs, much less future needs if we want to phase out fossil fuels. Getting the lithium and cobalt infrastructure up to scale takes time and has a lot of geopolitical considerations. It's…
Isn't this the crux of the argument for investing more money into solar/wind/storage vs nuclear. The solar and wind stuff is already cheap enough, so its storage vs nuclear. Will nuclear get cheaper faster than grid-scale batteries? There is only so much capital that can be invested, and potential advancements in batteries are looking a lot more promising than advancements in nuclear. I think the lion's share of mone…
Small to medium investors and companies are trying to tackle it at the locality level (Tesla, small utility experiments, etc.), but there are no national or international movements to solve this issue wholesale. And until it is solved, adding more renewable production without storage to an already-capped grid doesn't really help the issue; in fact it worsens it by creating huge peaks and valleys in power production that are then compensated for by fossil fuel peaker plants (because nuclear can't ramp up and down that quickly). California is the example of this.
At the end of the day renewables vs nuclear is a false dilemma. The actual issue is future livability vs present-day profit, and the latter always wins in our political economy. We need vision and political will to get us there, way more investment in both renewables and nuclear, on the timescale of years, not decades, with nuclear providing a band-aid while R&D on storage increases several orders of magnitude.
It's the sort of problem that the private sector cannot easily solve; it would take mass national and international collaboration, or perhaps an arms race.
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An excellent (English language) podcast about Berlin's fiasco of an airport, BER: https://www.radiospaetkauf.com/ber/ (29 years from planning to completion, 14 years from construction start to opening, 9 years late, budget from 1 billion Euro to almost 6). One of the points they made in the podcast was similar to TFA's: changes in construction are really expensive and blow things out in costs. A new mayor came in and…
I don't think being the best at planning means much when you change those plans mid project.
German satire website Der Postillion (roughly equivalent to The Onion) ran a headline once that Berlin would get a new airport by moving the entire city to some place with an existing airport.
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The less they produce, the higher is the cost of each kWh. But they are already not competitive at 100%.
Ah yes, the “heads I win, tails you lose” gambit, thank you for your very useful contributions. Do carefully avoid looking at french electricity prices and compare them to germany’s too.