Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants

#61

Post by matthewdgreen » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

empath-nirvana wrote: post #59

matthewdgreen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The appropriate counterfactual here is if we'd made investments into renewables back in the 70s/80s/90s of a scale similar to those we made in the 00s/10s/20s. It's not really clear what the result would have been. To really answer this you'd need to unpack the past two decades' worth of cost decreases in (e.g.,) PV and see how many of them would have been possible with late-20th century technology. My uneducated gue…

> The appropriate counterfactual here is if we'd made investments into renewables back in the 70s/80s/90s of a scale similar to those we made in the 00s/10s/20s. I'm not really sure it would have gone faster instead of just having been a very large waste of money. A lot of the reason that renewables are cheaper now has to do with 30 years of advancements in electronics and power storage and semiconductors and solid s…

That is one opinion, and I'm curious if there's a stronger (more expert) case to be made for it anywhere. It's true that many necessary advancements happened recently, but it's also true that some of these developments occurred due to massive research and commercial investments (many of which are still under the radar to people who didn't notice they were occurring.)

Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants

#62

Post by bumby » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

dpierce9 wrote: post #39

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #11

> "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 fi…

>Why call this political uncertainty as opposed to economic uncertainty?

I'm assuming this is because so much of the energy market is directed through political mechanisms like subsidies, research funding etc. It's the political uncertainty that undergirds the economic uncertainty.

Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants

#63

Post by Maxion » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 4:22 PM UTC

triplepoint217 wrote: post #26

bell-cot wrote: post #16

The reality is much more complex than "batteries replace gas" - > Developers can no longer use financial modelling that assumes gas power plants are used constantly throughout their 20-year-plus lifetime, analysts said. > Instead, modellers need to predict how much gas generation is needed during times of peak demand and to compensate for the intermittency of renewable sources that are hard to anticipate. > "It does…

I like that analogy. Batteries are kind of the RAM/cache in the system: - Big merchant batteries like Hornsdale are kind of like more distant ram RAM - Batteries co-located with renewables are kind of the local to core ram - UPS and similar are cache - Pumped hydro is probably Tape ;) It feels like we might still be lacking a good/widely deployed HD/SSD equivalent in this space, hopefully new/emerging technologies (m…

I think in terms of the energy grid batteries are currently more like your L1 cache or similar. I.e. very expensive to have, and has specific requirements so you have little of it.

Hydro would be more like your RAM.

Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants

#64

Post by Maxion » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

samus wrote: post #41

bell-cot wrote: post #16

The reality is much more complex than "batteries replace gas" - > Developers can no longer use financial modelling that assumes gas power plants are used constantly throughout their 20-year-plus lifetime, analysts said. > Instead, modellers need to predict how much gas generation is needed during times of peak demand and to compensate for the intermittency of renewable sources that are hard to anticipate. > "It does…

It is probably smart to keep around a certain capacity of nonrenewables to provide at least some base load. Long periods of low sunshine and slow winds could deplete batteries to a critical level. Also, the turbines of big powerplants act as grid frequency stabilizer. Do grid-scale batteries use alternators or might they run flywheels?

One of the biggest challenges with renewable energy in energy grids is something called inertia.

Her's a nice article:

https://www.fingridlehti.fi/en/what-is-inertia/

Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants

#65

Post by VaxWithSex » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 4:25 PM UTC

samus wrote: post #41

bell-cot wrote: post #16

The reality is much more complex than "batteries replace gas" - > Developers can no longer use financial modelling that assumes gas power plants are used constantly throughout their 20-year-plus lifetime, analysts said. > Instead, modellers need to predict how much gas generation is needed during times of peak demand and to compensate for the intermittency of renewable sources that are hard to anticipate. > "It does…

It is probably smart to keep around a certain capacity of nonrenewables to provide at least some base load. Long periods of low sunshine and slow winds could deplete batteries to a critical level. Also, the turbines of big powerplants act as grid frequency stabilizer. Do grid-scale batteries use alternators or might they run flywheels?

Batteries can and are used for frequency stabilization, yes.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/07/27/tesla-big-battery-beg...

Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants

#66

Post by bumby » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 4:25 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #48

bumby wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Replace 2T of engine + fuel with 5T of battery. Regulations allow an 82T limit for electric trucks compared with 80T for diesel trucks. So there's only a ~1T difference in cargo capacity, which is at most 2%.

Now do it with volume. Plus, aren't you forgetting that electric vehicles need an motor too? Also, I think you mean 80k lbs, not 80 tons? And it's the range + time that's a killer. Recharging time would likely be a deal breaker even if you could get the same cargo capacity.

FWIW, I agree that electric trucking is the future, just disagree how close we are to that as a reality. My main gripe is how the problem tends to get oversimplified in people's assessment. "All you gotta do is.." is usually a red flag when talking about complicated problems. I'd argue that if it were simple, it would have been done already.

Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants

#67

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 4:25 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #56

triplepoint217 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing is as long as these markets stay reasonably competitive, economics can figure out what to do with excess renewables. When renewables are in excess, the spot (instantaneous) energy price will drop to near zero (or sometimes negative in weird situations). That is good for existing (short term) batteries (they can recharge cheaply), but it will also provide price signals to people considering investing in…

> the spot (instantaneous) energy price will drop to near zero Yes, and that means generation will become unprofitable. We seem to be a decade or so away from the point where the investment on generation can't be decided by direct ROI. And nobody is preparing for this. Governments need a long time to regulate that kind of thing... so we can expect some problems on the near future.

> that means generation will become unprofitable

For that time period. At the same time, using energy becomes supremely profitable. This isn’t a weird quirk of the power markets; compute time is also instantaneous. It’s just less noticeable because we haven’t unified a market for it. These are amply solvable problems.

Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants

#68

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 4:27 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #49

snewman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you run the numbers on this, or are you just imagining? In the 70s, solar and (to a lesser but still substantial extent) wind were still extremely expensive, impractical for large scale use. As were the batteries that are needed to smooth out periods of low renewable generation. I'm an absolute supporter of renewables, and I'd love to see support for fossil fuels phased out, but it's been a long climb to reach t…

The appropriate counterfactual here is if we'd made investments into renewables back in the 70s/80s/90s of a scale similar to those we made in the 00s/10s/20s. It's not really clear what the result would have been. To really answer this you'd need to unpack the past two decades' worth of cost decreases in (e.g.,) PV and see how many of them would have been possible with late-20th century technology. My uneducated gue…

This seems like a fallacious argument. If investing earlier leads to earlier results, why aren't you complaining that we didn't start investing in renewables research in Roman antiquity?

Premature investment doesn't lead to early results, just wasted money. There is an optimum time for such, and it's almost certainly true that this time wasn't in the 1970s, the technology simply wasn't possible.

The 1970s do not represent a point in time in which investment/research became feasible, they represent a point in time at which it became obvious to everyone that the-then current energy technology was disappointing for a variety of reasons.

Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants

#69

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #33

marcosdumay wrote: post #22

Earlier 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.

Are we that convinced that only tractor-trailers work well for overland freight?

Even if you insist that big-box retailers represent the peak of retail capitalism, is it so difficult to imagine that these might be placed along a central corridor with rail running along the back, each store able to pluck the intermodals off the flatbed car, and load empties back onto it? Spaced out so that every business could unload at the same time?

Everyone's always bitching about cars and how they've made things awful. But how much traffic/carbon/misery would we eliminate if freight were taken off the highways?

Re: Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants

#70

Post by bumby » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #69

bumby wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are we that convinced that only tractor-trailers work well for overland freight? Even if you insist that big-box retailers represent the peak of retail capitalism, is it so difficult to imagine that these might be placed along a central corridor with rail running along the back, each store able to pluck the intermodals off the flatbed car, and load empties back onto it? Spaced out so that every business could unload…

Some places do that type of design, but we're not starting from a blank slate. Urban sprawl has meant most people are not near a rail corridor, meaning your design would mean most people now have to live far from retail distribution. Freight patterns are symptoms of housing in many cases.