[HN Gopher] Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-...
___________________________________________________________________
Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating
capacity in 2024
Author : epistasis
Score : 179 points
Date : 2024-02-15 20:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eia.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eia.gov)
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| 81% of _new_ US electric-generating capacity. Not 81% of _total_
| US capacity.
| epistasis wrote:
| Thanks for the correction, "new" was accidentally dropped while
| trying to squeezed the original title into the allowed number
| of characters.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I saw that qualifier also. Does anyone know what percent of
| total capacity will be new next year (or better, what percent
| of total capacity will be solar next year)?
| mjevans wrote:
| 81% of *new* capacity planned for *this year*
|
| Trends are often easier to understand from a rolling average or
| derivative.
|
| Electricity might also seem fungible but even near optimal
| conditions a rule of thumb of 1% power lost per 100 miles
| (~160km) of distance.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Lo...
| Thus the value of any installations should be rated by their
| distance to loads and load capacity under typical operating
| conditions. Solar is probably a good pair against AC units.
| Base load plants are still desirable.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| A neat trend. But still renewables are a small fraction of
| electrical generation capacity in the US. Dominated by gas, even
| the renewable slice (< 20%) is dominated by hydroelectric. Which
| hasn't changed in 50 years, even gone down a bit. Second is wind.
| Solar is a scrap of a scrap.
|
| A long, long way to go to complete renewable energy.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
| ("US Interconnection Queues Analysis 2023")
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960
| ("Renewable generation surpassed coal and nuclear in the U.S.
| electric power sector in 2022")
|
| https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/11/02/u-s-to-deploy-550-gw-...
| ("U.S. to deploy 550 GW of new renewables by 2030")
|
| China deployed more solar last year than total US solar
| generation capacity, so while work, it can be done.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-sol...
| ("The country built in excess of 216 gigawatts (GW) of solar
| power this year, the data indicated, underscoring the scale and
| pace of China's solar build out.")
|
| Currently, the U.S. PV manufacturing industry has the capacity
| to produce PV modules to meet nearly a third of US domestic
| demand.
|
| https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-manufacturing
| nateglims wrote:
| The second link is interesting since it covers actual
| generated energy. The others are kind of convoluted and need
| to be more clear on what the capacity measurement is since
| most renewables have significantly lower capacity factors
| than nuke, gas and coal.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Which is why the battery uptake mentioned in this piece is
| of note. It firms renewables and steals grid service
| revenue from thermal generators. Pulls the uptake
| trajectory of renewables closer to vertical.
|
| Only one coal fired generator in the US is currently
| economical to run vs new renewables. You don't have to
| match capacity factor, it's about economics; if renewables
| can run often enough cheap enough, it makes other
| generators uneconomical even if they have superior capacity
| factors. It's why nuclear is on life support in the US.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/end-of-
| co... | https://archive.today/2owbd
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/30/us-coal-
| more...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://cleantechnica.com/2024/02/14/texas-shatters-own-
| sola... ("Texas Shatters Own Solar Power Record, Weird
| Political Situation Or Not")
| ThisIsMyAltAcct wrote:
| I think wind dominates hydropower now
|
| https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
| pfdietz wrote:
| Say you don't understand exponential growth without saying you
| don't understand exponential growth.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| There's no way solar can grow geometrically for long. It
| consumes real estate like there's no tomorrow. Land is
| limited; sunlight is limited. It has a hard, hard limit.
|
| Unlike many other kinds of power generation, which are land-
| frugal and work 24 hours a day.
|
| So, let's rethink who doesn't understand growth.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > It consumes real estate like there's no tomorrow.
|
| Now you're really showing you haven't bothered to do basic
| arithmetic. Land use is not any sort of real limit to PV
| solar, especially in the US.
|
| I suggest you check your assertions for validity before you
| commit them to writing.
| abart13 wrote:
| Looking it up solar/renewables take up surprisingly less
| space than expected
|
| Area required for all renewables:
| https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/77565
|
| Area required for just solar:
| https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127
| adrianN wrote:
| Luckily we'll have more than enough energy long, long
| before we run out of land or sunlight. We could satisfy a
| large part of our energy demand just by replacing energy
| crops by solar panels, with the added benefit of not
| needing fertilizer and pesticides.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| California has a lot of desert. A lot a lot.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| If you are concerned about solar's use of land then you
| must be positively apoplectic about using corn for ethanol.
| That uses more than 40% of US corn production, an amount of
| acreage so vast it's difficult to comprehend.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Using PV with BEVs instead of ethanol in ICEs would be
| something like 200x more land efficient.
| spangry wrote:
| Isn't exponential growth where the growth rate becomes more
| rapid as the stock of the thing gets larger (and, more
| precisely, the growth rate is a function of the stock)? How
| is growth in solar capacity exponential? Wouldn't it actually
| be logarithmic, all other things equal?
| schiffern wrote:
| The graph looks rather exponential (and decidedly _not_
| logarithmic) to me.[0]
|
| The story is actually "the growth rate becomes more rapid
| _as you accumulate experience manufacturing_ , which also
| grows as a function of the stock." AKA Wright's Law.[1]
|
| You may notice this is _faster_ than your definition of
| exponential growth, because Wright 's Law also counts the
| decommissioned panels too. The industry still got that
| manufacturing experience, even if the panels don't count as
| 'stock' today. So technically the growth rate scales with
| total all-time production, not current stockpile size.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects
| pfdietz wrote:
| PV has been growing with a time constant short compared
| to the lifespan of PV modules, so most of the cumulative
| production is still in operation today.
|
| This is also why PV recycling hasn't had a chance to
| really get going -- very limited potential input to the
| process yet.
| schiffern wrote:
| Yes that's true. My point is simply that solar (in this
| early phase) _does_ show exponential growth.
|
| Spangry's "the growth rate becomes more rapid as the
| stock of the thing gets larger" was confused enough to
| made exponential growth sound vaguely absurd, but in fact
| it's perfectly expected (and indeed observed).
| _ph_ wrote:
| Because the more solar gets deployed, the less the costs
| are. So each increase in growth triggers a reduction in
| costs which then enables larger growth and so on.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The key point here is that the potential market has been
| increasing exponentially with reduction in price.
| balderdash wrote:
| I think the promising thing is that as we get more batteries on
| the grid, it will enable more renewables penetration as a
| percentage of the grid as a whole
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, absolutely, this compound effect is very important. Also
| interesting is that with every EV that gets added to the grid
| this effect improves even for the ones that can't deliver the
| power back later if it is economical to do so. They effectively
| serve as capacitors.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's nice, but there is a long way to go, also it would
| probably be better to see batteries as a part of the 'storage'
| bracket, after all the batteries don't generate electricity, they
| store it. It's a bit like lumping fields of grain in with bags
| for grain. The one is useful all by itself, the other can't
| function without some other generator doing its job first.
|
| Typically the use for storage in the form of batteries is to play
| arbitrage with power prices around solar noon to farm it back out
| again when power is more expensive, for instance early evening or
| the next morning. Longer term storage also works but tends to be
| more capital expensive and isn't really an option just yet,
| though there are some edge cases where it may already work on
| (slightly) longer timescales.
| danielheath wrote:
| > The one [solar] is useful all by itself
|
| Not in a power-grid context; it'll over-volt the grid sometimes
| and under-volt it other times.
|
| In the specific context of "understanding generation supply to
| a grid", working in terms of "load supplied by a system of
| solar & batteries" makes the math drastically simpler.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Every modern inverter respects the local grid regulations
| with respect to overvolting and undervolting isn't an issue
| at all and has in principle if it happens absolutely nothing
| to do with solar power.
| audunw wrote:
| I think it's actually brilliant to include battery together
| with energy generation.
|
| We know that when renewables become more than 20% of power
| generation, every GW of renewables you add should be matched by
| a similar order of magnitude of batteries.
|
| So if we start reporting this way, you can immediately see if
| we're building enough energy storage or not.
|
| If you wanted to make the amount of power actually produced
| comparable you could reduce the amount of reported GW of bother
| renewables and batteries by 50% so they add up to a realistic
| capacity number.
|
| But capacity numbers are _never_ really comparable anyway.
| Perhaps best to report raw numbers and assume readers are smart
| enough to understand that for every source you need to know the
| significance of what a "GW" means.
|
| Like, a "GW" of a gas peaker plant does not mean much regarding
| how much energy it produces. That "GW" is actually much more
| comparable to battery energy storage "GW"
| jacquesm wrote:
| Sure, but batteries simply don't generate power: you store an
| X number of KWh in them based on the rate of your charger and
| the rate-of-charge of your battery and you can discharge them
| using an inverter (which again, has a nameplate rating)
| limited by the rate of discharge of the batteries (usually
| pretty close to the charging rate so this tends to be
| symmetrical).
|
| You could have a massive storage with a relatively small
| inverter for discharge but a large charging capacity, the
| reverse and so on all highly dependent on the intended use
| case. So battery capacity doesn't say anything about the
| eventual grid capacity of the setup, for that you need to
| take into account all of the components (charger, battery
| size + charge/discharge rate + inverter). Only then you can
| put it into perspective.
| auspiv wrote:
| Nice headline but batteries do not generate electricity
| Animats wrote:
| _" The Gemini solar facility in Nevada plans to begin operating
| in 2024. With a planned photovoltaic capacity of 690 megawatts
| (MW) and battery storage of 380 MW, it is expected to be the
| largest solar project in the United States when fully
| operational."_
|
| That's about 60% of the capacity of one unit at Vogtle nuclear
| power station, and Vogtle has four units.
|
| Also, adding the solar capacity to the battery capacity to get a
| gigawatt makes no sense. Either you're charging the battery,
| which takes power from the solar array, or you're discharging the
| battery because it's dark and the solar array is idle.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Gemini took 2 years and cost $1.3B. Vogtle cost $34B for 2
| units and took 12 years for those 2 units.
|
| Edit: Gemini took 4 years from project submission and 2 years
| from construction start. Vogtle took 19 years from project
| submission and 12 years from construction start.
| exoverito wrote:
| In large part because of constantly shifting requirements,
| obstructionism, and various forms of lawfare. The US has
| become terribly inefficient at large infrastructural
| projects, see the CA HSR project which is massively delayed
| and over budget. China does not have this problem, and has
| been rapidly expanding their nuclear capacity.
|
| A standardized reactor design and regulatory certainty would
| enable the economies of scale and accrual of institutional
| knowledge to efficiently build new power plants. In response
| to the 1973 oil crisis, France massively expanded their fleet
| of nuclear reactors which were producing more than 70% of
| their electricity in about 15 years. If the political will is
| there, it can be done.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Gemini also qualifies as a large infrastructural project;
| it was delayed by concerns about the tortoises living in
| the area and challenges from local environmental groups.
|
| China does similar projects in about 6 months. IOW, China
| does solar projects about 8X as fast as the US. OTOH it
| does nuclear projects in about 5 years, about 4X as fast as
| the US.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Even China is building vastly more wind and solar now than
| they are nuclear. And their nuclear build rate is
| declining.
| epistasis wrote:
| There was no obstructionism or changing requirements to
| blame with Vogtle. It was all self-inflicted delays and
| costs by the designers and the builders.
|
| France is experiencing exactly the same long delays and
| cost overruns today at Flamanville, despite having a
| welcoming regulatory environment, etc.
|
| China also has lots of delays, and presumably cost
| overruns, but costs are a hard thing to pin down in China.
| China is barely expanding their nuclear program, only
| something like 50 new reactors are planned, a few orders of
| magnitude smaller than their plans for solar and wind.
|
| CA HSR has experienced the obstructionism that Vogtle did
| not, but is still making good progress. The media narrative
| doesn't cover it well, but there are new sections completed
| all the time.
|
| We have problems with big construction projects in the US,
| but nuclear takes those problems to the next level. And we
| have great non-construction alternatives for nuclear.
| breather wrote:
| > see the CA HSR project which is massively delayed and
| over budget
|
| This is not a good parallel as the HSR's cost comes in
| large part from traversing many counties, municipalities,
| and private land.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| I agree that summing the two values to a GW seems disingenuous,
| but there are more scenarios than the two you described.
|
| For instance, it's possible to discharge the battery during the
| day, as well. If peak load is in the afternoon, the plant could
| be charging the battery during the morning and mid-day when
| specific demand on that plant is less than 690 MW, then
| discharge the battery to have (temporary) output of 1 GW.
| rudolph9 wrote:
| It seems like this thread has sparked a lot nuclear vs solar
| debate, but both have the potential to be net zero energy
| sources and most fault tolerant grids are powered by a
| multitude of sources. We should be aggressively building solar,
| wind, battery, and nuclear along with anything else that can
| reasonably be part of a net zero supply chain that produces
| electricity in the not too distant. They all have different
| tradeoffs and we shouldn't be debating which is better than the
| other. Rather we should focus on what percent of each fit best
| balancing safety/resiliency/cost of adoption/long term
| operating costs. And this varies widely from region and
| changing over time. What's need are formulas and frameworks for
| helping make these wildly complex decisions more
| straightforward.
| hef19898 wrote:
| We are building solar and wind aggressively. The problem with
| nuclear power is, _nobody_ manages to build it aggressively
| or even at enough scale to make a meaningfull impact.
|
| What we should do, is keeping existing nuclear plants running
| as long as economically and safely possible. Emphasis on
| economically and safely, because those two points meant that
| the German reactors _did_ run as long as possible, they even
| got an extension granted from a _Green_ minister.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| > nobody manages to build it aggressively or even at enough
| scale to make a meaningfull impact
|
| China does. They will be completing 60-70 GW worth of
| reactors in the next decade, planning to take nuclear power
| from 2% of their electricity production to over 10%
| eventually. (While also building crazy amounts of solar,
| wind etc.)
| hef19898 wrote:
| You do know that 6-7 GW per year are close to nothing
| compared to new wind and solar, not to mention other
| plants, China is installing? Nor is it in the general
| picture.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > We are building solar and wind aggressively
|
| That's absolutely not true. 68 GW nameplate capacity, or,
| say, 30 GW effective capacity, is a very small amount. The
| US consumed 4 Trillion kWH in 2022 [1], which, if assuming
| a peak consumption of twice the average, means up to, say
| 2.2 _10^12 W. 68 GW is 68_ 10^9 W, or 3% of the peak
| consumption.
|
| Even if my cocktail-napkin math is off by a factor of 2,
| that's still not much more than offsetting demand
| increases. And even if there were no demand increase -
| "aggressive" would mean 4x that amount, to be able to phase
| out fossil fuel power by 2030 or so.
|
| [1]: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-
| of-elect...
| hef19898 wrote:
| And now look at number of solar and wind installed vs. nuclear.
| Take net numbers, as most nuclear capacity replaces
| decommissioned reactors in countries _without_ a nuclear exit
| strategy.
|
| I am too lazy too look up, and link, those publicly available
| numbers _again_....
| audunw wrote:
| Looking at a single plant isn't very interesting. Solar and
| wind are fundamentally more distributed so you're comparing
| apples to oranges. That distributed nature is both a good thing
| and a bad thing. Having just a few nuclear reactor go down at
| the same time in a single region can be problematic, as France
| recently experienced. Of course there are costs/upgrades
| associated with making large share of renewables viable at all,
| but those come with a more distributed and resilient solution.
|
| If you want to compare impact on actual energy generation, look
| at the growth in total net numbers:
|
| The largest rate that nuclear ever grew was around ~200TWh for
| some years in the 80s.
|
| Solar grew by ~300TWh from 2021 to 2022. Wind grew by ~200TWh.
| And the growth rate is still increasing exponentially.
|
| For reference the world population grew from ~5 to ~8billion
| from the 80s until now, if you want to take that into account
| when comparing the growth rates.
| tigershark wrote:
| All the nuclear energy production plants in the world ever
| built have the same capacity as the amount of solar generation
| built just _last year_. So your comparison doesn't make much
| sense, nuclear is dead in current energy market, it makes sense
| only for producing fissile material for nuclear bombs.
| beAbU wrote:
| Presumably you can discharge the batteries while pv is also
| producing at full tilt.
|
| But that'll rarely happen.
|
| I absolutely hate the current state of energy reporting in
| general. The writers of these articles are not even trying to
| make sure they report accurately.
|
| E.g. the battery stats: Is it MW or MWH? Both are very
| different and the distinction is important. A battery that can
| deliver 380MW but only for 10 mins is pretty useless.
| epistasis wrote:
| This is the EIA. They are in charge of pretty much all energy
| tracking in the US. They are reporting the right units, and
| if they seem wrong, it's because the numbers are being used
| for something useful, but perhaps different than what you
| have in mind.
|
| (That said, I do dislike units like BTU or "billions of kWh,"
| but they are at least correct units for the quantity
| measured)
| barney54 wrote:
| Batteries are not generating capacity.
| dymk wrote:
| Solar is the generating, batteries are the capacity
| credit_guy wrote:
| It's not really correct to call batteries "electric-generating".
| They store electricity, but don't generate it.
|
| Still, if you take the batteries out, solar makes up 75% of the
| remaining new electric-generating capacity. If you add wind, you
| get 92%.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| In some scenarios the solar is only deployed because of
| batteries being deployed in the same network. The batteries are
| providing energy when the sun is down.
| troymc wrote:
| It seems that the thing they're measuring is the amount of
| instantaneous power that all the new "sources" could deliver at
| once, assuming they're _able_ to deliver right then, and at
| max-output-power. In other words, it 's an optimistic measure,
| but it's not meaningless.
| epistasis wrote:
| From the purposes of grid operation, batteries serve both
| generating and load functions.
|
| Having a complete catalog of generating capacity is a standard
| metric that EIA tracks. So even though batteries can also
| consume from the grid, it really does make sense to add them to
| the list of "generation," at least according to the purpose
| that this generation metric has always served.
| breather wrote:
| > batteries serve both generating and load functions.
|
| Only until they run out of power! Capacity is still the core
| of their function.
| cwal37 wrote:
| It's even a bit funnier than you put it since on net they
| _consume_ electricity due to round trip efficiency losses.
|
| This also can provide something of an interesting discussion
| with local authorities when trying to site a battery somewhere
| that has banned new "generating" technologies (typically
| targeted at wind and solar), since batteries are consuming
| electricity and can be likened to transmission infrastructure
| (or physical trade assets which I think some people are
| enjoying playing with).
| nekoashide wrote:
| The cool thing about batteries is that they are great as an
| investment. You can charge them when power is cheap and sell back
| power when you have high demand and market prices for power.
|
| Typically Peaker Plants fill this role but at much higher cost
| for electricity and emissions. Batteries just make much more
| sense for this kind of power.
| chii wrote:
| The question is whether such battery's charge/discharge cycle
| degrade faster than the return on investment.
|
| For home use, break-even is an acceptable outcome, but not for
| commercial use like above. Is the price of battery low enough
| atm to make a return for such an investment?
| epistasis wrote:
| These are all grid investments. About half of the storage is
| being installed in Texas, which is the closest thing the US
| has to an open market for investors.
|
| The storage being installed in Texas is all being done purely
| for profit. Meaning that the investors have run the numbers
| and find batteries to be the highest return they think they
| can get for their money.
|
| Storage in other places (specifically California) is being
| driven both by the profit motive, but also in some cases by
| legislation that mandates storage (not specifically
| batteries) be added as part of the grid mix. California has
| enough solar now that nearly all new installations include
| storage, in order to profit during the peak evening hours
| when electricity prices are highest.
| Retric wrote:
| It's currently possible for batteries to be a great
| investment, but diminishing returns hit hard. The most cost
| efficient setup is a solar farm where the panels produce DC
| which directly charges the batteries and the losses from
| DC>AC conversion only happens once before you send power to
| the grid. With the added benefit of only paying for a single
| set of DC>AC equipment.
|
| However, the more such systems come online the less peaking
| power is worth and batteries aren't competitive with current
| ultra low nighttime rates.
| audunw wrote:
| At this point I think you have to take into account battery
| recycling.
|
| If you build a big battery storage system now, by the time
| it's fully degraded, battery recycling will be a massive and
| streamlined operation. Given the number of energy storage
| systems built today you'll have massive quantities of similar
| and easy-to-recycle cells going to these recycling
| operations.
|
| So if you're a big grid operator you'll probably be looking
| at making a streamlined and efficient loop out of getting
| your old cells recycled and making new cells out of that
| material. The cost for the replacement storage system will be
| much lower, and given improvements in cell chemistries, the
| storage capacity will likely be higher.
|
| Then again, it's possible that grid energy operators will
| transition to low energy density but cheap and durable
| chemistries, like Ambri's molten metal batteries.. which
| essentially last forever.
| why_only_15 wrote:
| This isn't really how batteries make money in the US right now,
| as I understand it. ~80% of battery revenue in ERCOT comes from
| what are called "ancillary services" [0] which is payment from
| the grid for being able to very quickly increase or decrease
| the amount of generation to ensure stability.
|
| [0]: https://cimview.com/monthly-battery-revenue-in-ercot/
| epistasis wrote:
| This revenue will quickly disappear, however, as there is
| limited need for ancillary services. Lithium batteries served
| this purpose well in PJM starting long ago (more than a
| decade?), even with very high battery prices of yesteryear.
|
| New battery additions must be banking on limited ancillary
| services revenue. Unless Texas investors never bothered to
| learn the lessons of the storage experience in PJM, which
| seems unlikely to me.
| why_only_15 wrote:
| Why did Texas not start building out batteries for
| ancillary services until recently? Did/do they not need as
| much ancillary services as PJM? Also -- do you know what
| happened to ancillary service pricing as batteries became
| cheaper? Did grids become much more stable in practice?
| epistasis wrote:
| Edit: cwal37 seems to be better clued into ERcOT's market
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39393321
|
| That is beyond my knowledge; I know that PJM specifically
| set up a market for ancillary services that allowed
| battery operators to get paid. I assume ERCOT must have
| set up some sort of similar market, but I don't know the
| particulars...
| cwal37 wrote:
| Those early reg-d PJM batteries also got absolutely
| physically wrecked, so it wasn't the best outcome.
|
| ERCOT is quite different from PJM when it comes to AS - the
| market is very deep and the operational needs are
| increasing in a way they aren't in PJM (yet). Couple that
| with a vastly easier permitting regime and hugely faster
| interconnection process for a facility (batteries) that
| require relatively little land compared to conventional
| generators, and Texas has enabled ERCOT's queue to become
| absolutely stuffed full of battery applications.
|
| PJM was ahead of the ball on market design, but that was a
| (relatively) long time ago. Now they're in the midst of
| their massive backlog queue transition and also revamping
| (for the nth time) facets of their capacity market.
| Zanfa wrote:
| Last time I ran the numbers for this, price arbitrage alone
| using lithium batteries is not gonna be profitable.
|
| Current lithium batteries are just too expensive, store too
| little energy and degrade too quickly for true grid-scale
| storage.
|
| That's why they typically offer services, other than price
| arbitrage, that actually makes building them make sense.
| There's still no equivalent of a peaker plant using non-hydro
| storage.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Lots of energy companies across the globe seem to be
| disagreeing with you and are installing massive amounts of
| battery storage. Gas peaker plants are getting used a lot
| less on grids where this happens.
|
| Reason: your numbers and assumptions are probably wrong.
| paganel wrote:
| One could have said the same thing 2 or 3 years ago about
| companies active in the renewable energy space like Orsted.
| I mean, they were one of the biggest producers of wind-
| turbines, what was there not to like in this ESG-focused
| investment environment? Until the numbers suddenly stopped
| making sense for them a few weeks ago [1].
|
| Which is to say that the investment numbers may look
| "right" for a good few years until they suddenly don't and
| the reality catches up with all those involved.
|
| [1] https://archive.is/w8VCk
| epistasis wrote:
| It wasn't a "reality" check from having inaccurate
| estimates, it was rising interest rates that put a huge
| damper on the cost of projects where all the expense is
| front-loaded.
| paganel wrote:
| Higher interest rates are part of the game, or of
| reality, if you want to put it that way. So, yes, it was
| a reality check and it has proved that that company could
| only be viable under very particular economic
| circumstances (i.e. interest rates being close to zero)
| epistasis wrote:
| Whoa, their viability as a company is not under question.
|
| The only thing under question is whether future long-term
| agreements will include inflation protection.
|
| When interest rates rise tremendously, long term
| investment gets pulled way back. That's the entire point
| of hiking interest rates, to make companies like Orsted
| slash their growth rates. It does not put Orsted at risk
| for collapse.
| Zanfa wrote:
| Or, like I mentioned in my comment, price arbitrage is not
| the primary source of profit.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Your numbers are likely outdated. The Tesla grid battery
| installation in Australia was so profitable that Neoen is
| building more as fast as it can:
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/neoen-aims-for-big-batteries-
| in-...
| bequanna wrote:
| One thing I have wondered: does it make sense to just put most of
| our eggs in the solar basket in sunny states and then invest
| heavily in batteries and transmission lines to less sunny areas?
|
| Wind seems so much more expensive and maintenance intensive.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Wind is strange, because there is more maintenance and more
| upfront cost, but the amount of energy you get from a windmill
| is enormous.
| elif wrote:
| Panel and battery prices have come down such that transmission
| losses, natural disasters to farms, last mile power lines in
| storms, etc become bigger concerns comparatively.
|
| I think the end-use solar and battery model makes more and more
| sense every year from a consumer perspective.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Note that you don't necessarily have to put the panels and
| the batteries at the same place. You can, and there are
| benefits like DC <-> AC conversion, but you could in theory
| de-centralize solar more than you de-centralize battery
| storage. And there may be some scale advantages there,
| especially since some storage technologies involve putting
| things underground, or high temperatures which are a safety
| concern like with molten salt, etc. Caveat: I'm just a layman
| about this stuff.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| No. Transmission lines are too expensive, it's cheaper to put
| solar panels in non optimal locations.
|
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-...
| applied_heat wrote:
| Look at the stock prices of the companies installing owning and
| operating solar and wind farms. They are dogshit.
|
| I think the boom is to capture the transmission system capacity
| near the best wind/solar sites, try and stay in business for the
| duration of the 20 year energy purchase agreement signed with
| local utility, and then mergers and aquisitions so that the
| larger entity can exert leverage upon renewal.
|
| Power outages have a massive cost on society so the value of the
| marginal unit of electricity is very high.
| roenxi wrote:
| Not necessarily a problem; recall that the way economics works
| is the market will have marginal businesses that are on the
| verge of being unprofitable to run - so seeing some borderline
| cases is not troubling.
|
| It looks like solar is finally becoming economic; so it is
| reasonable that the marginal producers right now will be solar
| farms. But assuming the price trends continue businesses will
| start to appear that make good money.
|
| Although there does seem to be a serious risk to grid
| stability. Most of the energy emergencies in the last few years
| have been linked to areas that invested heavily in renewables.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Indeed. Arguably it shows just how good for the economy wind
| and solar are - they are so easy to install and build that
| companies that run businesses doing that just don't have any
| real edge.
| hackermatic wrote:
| Some important businesses are just terrible investments.
| Airlines come to mind; they always seem to be one minor
| downturn away from insolvency.
| pinkgolem wrote:
| There is just no barrier to entry in the market.
|
| You can get a small PV going for a few hundred bucks, and it
| scales more or less linear from that point on.
|
| And cost to entry is reducing over time
| samatman wrote:
| This is nameplate capacity: the power a generator can deliver,
| full on, under ideal conditions. Solar and wind always look great
| when measured in nameplate capacity, which is why this is done.
|
| If you want to know how much electricity they _will_ generate,
| you have to multiply by the capacity factor. Nuclear, for
| instance has a capacity factor of 0.9 in the US: it delivers 90%
| of its nameplate capacity in a given year.
|
| Solar ranges between 0.08 and 0.15.
| why_only_15 wrote:
| In the US, PV solar capacity factor is about 0.24 (partly
| because lots of people live near very sunny regions like
| California and Texas). The National Renewable Energy Laboratory
| claims that in some parts of the US utility-scale solar
| capacity factors are 0.33 [0]. Wind is about 0.36, Hydro also
| 0.36, Nuclear about 0.93 [1]. If you apply these capacity
| factors to the nameplate capacities (ignoring batteries), you
| get 58.5% solar, 19.7% wind, 15.1% natural gas, and 6.6%
| nuclear.
|
| [0]: https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2021/utility-scale_pv
|
| [1]:
| https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
| Retric wrote:
| US nuclear averages below 0.9, individual plants can break
| 0.93 for a single year, but long term maintenance and
| refueling cycles lower the average. Ex: 95.73% (2017) 80.25%
| (lifetime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Valley_Nuclea
| r_Power_St...
|
| 94.43% (2017) 75.20% (lifetime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Brunswick_Nuclear_Generating_S...
|
| 96.04% (2017) 78.07% (lifetime)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant
|
| So you can cherry pick a few numbers from the best years, but
| the lifetime averages tell a different story.
| foota wrote:
| Is a 15% difference that much of a different story?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Look at your paycheck, and imagine the number is 15%
| lower. Should answer the question.
| blackoil wrote:
| If alternate pay is 90% lower, not big of a difference.
| i.e. If I lose job, I would prefer new one to pay 85%
| than 10%.
| foota wrote:
| It does. And no, it's not that significant.
|
| I'm not a nuclear fanboy (well, I wish I made sense since
| I like the idea of free energy, but renewables are just
| as good), but I think it's important to make accurate
| arguments.
| hef19898 wrote:
| An accurate argument would include the financial aspects
| of +/- 15% in generated output and the impact that has on
| grid capacity....
| foota wrote:
| With such a small difference, the burden of proof in this
| case is probably on the person arguing that it is a big
| difference, since you'd generally expect a roughly linear
| relationship between these.
|
| In fact, I think I'd suspect that downtime is less
| relevant for nuclear, since I believe most of it will be
| schedulable, as opposed to renewables where downtime is
| random and based on conditions. Since it's schedulable,
| it could be done in the off season, or different plants
| could be planned to be out at difference periods.
| hef19898 wrote:
| You actually have no idea about electricity transmission.
| For _long term_ problems, look no further than France.
| Short term, look up how electricity generation,
| transmission, markets and grid stability are linked.
| Wikipedia is a good start. Followed by studies about 100%
| renewable grids, those explain why baseload is much less
| of an issue than people think. And too much inflexible
| capacity, aka baseload, can actually be a problem itself.
| foota wrote:
| While I'm not a practicing economist, I have a bachelor's
| degree in economics and took multiple classes on the
| economics of electricity markets.
|
| While all of those are certainly relevant if you're
| comparing nuclear and other sources of power, I fail to
| see how that's relevant to the question of whether
| there's a significant difference between 80 and 95%
| capacity factor over a year.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Now imagine you are working in controlling at a power
| plant operator, and your yearly generated output is 5%
| lower that whatever plan has before. What do you think
| would happen?
|
| - investors, management and board saying "no biggy, 5% is
| not relevant"
|
| - something else
|
| Companies are doing restructuring and mass lay-offs to
| save less than 5% on bottom line costs, they are
| incredibly happy when the top line grows by 5% and
| worried, if not in crisis mode, if the top line declines
| by 5%. And for the financing part of a new power plant,
| those 5% are the difference between the investment being
| a good or a bad one...
| throwaway87651 wrote:
| Nuclear had much lower capacity factors in the past, which
| brings the lifetime capacity factor down. But the relevant
| point is that the capacity factor of nuclear plants running
| today is >90%
| Retric wrote:
| US Nuclear had a capacity factor of 86.1% as recently as
| 2012, it just varies through time and over a 40+ year
| lifetime you don't have outstanding results every single
| year. So sure you can argue 71.1% in 1997 no longer
| applies, but it was almost exactly the same fleet of
| reactors in use back then.
|
| Yet the person I was replying to said "about 93%" when
| averaging over 93% has been achieved exactly once in
| 2019. That kind of nonsense is actively harmful when
| people hear something and then later realize it's simply
| incorrect.
|
| Effective advocacy requires accuracy including technology
| specific issues and how to mitigate them.
| looofooo0 wrote:
| Planned or unplanned is the question.
| Retric wrote:
| The larger question is what capacity factors would look
| like if you tried to double the amount of nuclear as many
| advocates wish. And what that would do to profitability /
| the need for subsidies.
|
| Or as the industry has been concerned with for a decade,
| what happens when renewable energy is regularly sending
| wholesale prices near zero for hours a day.
| Maakuth wrote:
| Of course those capacity factors hide one important bit, the
| dispatchability. While the capacity factor is the same in
| this list for wind and hydro, the wind and solar generation
| are naturally capped by nature. When demand exceeds the
| natural availability of these, you need to dispatch some
| extra generation. Hydro and natural gas are well suited for
| this, coal can do it even if dirtily. Nuclear generation
| could be made dispatchable, but due to the essentially zero
| marginal cost of running it all the time instead of limiting
| generation, it seldom is used in this fashion.
|
| Electricity demand could be elastic too, but there's a limit
| to that. It's not always feasible to limit or shut down
| industrial processes for the few hours of expensive power.
| And home consumers are loath to not use their stoves when
| they want. There's potential in elastic demand though.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Take a close look at the title again, second word after
| "solar", you have to pass by "and" to get there.
| Maakuth wrote:
| I guess I earned the snark for not mentioning the
| batteries.
|
| Weirdly the news item doesn't tell what sort of energy
| storage capacity these battery installation have, only
| the peak power output of 14.3 GW for this year's
| addition. While that is certainly a gigantic addition no
| matter what the energy capacity of these battery
| installations is going to be, running the whole grid on
| batteries over the periods of low renewable generation is
| going to require still orders of magnitude more
| batteries. I suppose there's enough lithium in the ground
| for this, but elastic demand and dispatchable generation
| are probably going to be part of the equation for
| economical reasons.
| randunel wrote:
| Plenty of batteries in the US are built out of water.
| They pump the water up during the day and it generates
| electricity at night. No lithium involved.
|
| > Pumped storage is by far the largest-capacity form of
| grid energy storage available, and, as of 2020, the
| United States Department of Energy Global Energy Storage
| Database reports that PSH accounts for around 95% of all
| active tracked storage installations worldwide, with a
| total installed throughput capacity of over 181 GW, of
| which about 29 GW are in the United States, and a total
| installed storage capacity of over 1.6 TWh, of which
| about 250 GWh are in the United States.
|
| I recently visited this one
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianelli_Power_Plant
| Maakuth wrote:
| Pumped storage is a type of grid storage, but I don't
| think TFA includes it in battery storage. Pumped storage
| is a fine technology, but is there a lot of build
| potential left for it?
| Alpha3031 wrote:
| > Pumped storage is a fine technology, but is there a lot
| of build potential left for it?
|
| "A lot" is probably subjective, but the two best known
| global estimates are Hunt et al. (2020) [1] from IIASA
| and Stocks et al. from ANU re100 (who incidentally also
| have some interactive maps [3]) which with different cost
| targets put potential at 17.3 and 23 PWh respectively,
| which works out to about 2 MWh per person. For
| comparison, for the past decade, the US ahs consumed
| about 13 MWh of electricity per person per year, down
| from a peak of slightly under 14 in 2000 and 2005. With
| very high levels of electrification, that could
| potentially rise to 24 to 28 MWh per person per year, or
| 8 or 9 PWh/yr for the whole country. Total primary energy
| use is a lot higher, around 90 MWh per person-year or 30
| PWh total, this is because both not _everything_ could be
| practically electrified and the things that could easily
| be electrified tend to be much more efficient when done
| electrically. Energy efficiency is also usually assumed
| to increase slightly in general.
|
| The US specifically is actually above the world average
| at about 4.5 MWh per capita according to the ANU team's
| estimates. That's 1.5 PWh per year roughly. In any case,
| I would expect that there is likely to very likely
| sufficient potential in most (if not all) grids for
| pumped hydro to be a significant part of medium duration
| energy storage (if not all of it), though whether it
| actually would depends on the costs of other technologies
| as well.
|
| [1]: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14555-y
|
| [2]: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2020.11.015
|
| [3]: https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/
| Ringz wrote:
| A misconception I often read on YouTube, Reddit,
| HackerNews is that everyone equates batteries with
| lithium ion batteries. A battery is a chemical storage
| device for energy and there are already many different
| types.
|
| 1. There are also functioning batteries without lithium,
| for example with salt, which are now already being tested
| in Swiss and German households and bring some advantages
| compared to lithium batteries. Not least the price. One
| should always remember that the lower energy density is a
| problem for an electric vehicle, but it doesn't matter if
| we install a battery in a cellar. Here, the energy
| density plays a subordinate role because there is enough
| space.
|
| 2. Would it make more sense to talk about *energy
| storage* in general instead of just batteries (which are
| by definition chemical energy storage) Kinetic, chemical,
| thermal and so on. Lithium ion batteries should not be
| considered for back-up alone. We definitely need more
| choices and we have them, mostly with today's technology
| and definitely easier and faster to develop and install
| than any new nuclear reactor technology.
|
| 3. You need different types of batteries short term
| storage, medium term storage and long term storage. There
| are different concepts for each use. Batteries,
| compressed air storage, pumped storage, thermal storage
| as well as power-to-x systems are able to absorb the
| increasing summer power from solar, autumn wind, etc. and
| make the energy available again in the short term, medium
| term or seasonally shifted. Examples:
| 1. https://www.research-
| collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/445597
| 2. https://tu-dresden.de/tu-
| dresden/newsportal/news/meilenstein-in-der-energy-
| transition-scientists-at-the-tu-dresden-build-unique-
| energy-storage (German) 3.
| https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-
| services/hybrid-and-storage/thermal-energy-storage-with-
| etes-switch
|
| 4.The best approach, however, is to build a decentralised
| grid, which is also intercontinently connected. This is
| the perfect way to compensate for any "dark lulls". There
| is research on this at some universities around the world
| that is already out of laboratory status.
| Maakuth wrote:
| Very good points. I do think the grid battery capacity
| being added this year is going to be mostly li-ion.
| Ringz wrote:
| Thats (sadly) true! I think the transition to a diverse
| heat and electricity storage landscape will take time.
| Citing from "Handbook Energy Storage SCCER"
| https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000445597:
|
| "The SCCER has proven in numerous demonstra- tions that
| storage technologies are essentially available and
| usable. Now it is necessary, above all, for political
| decisions to be taken in the inter- ests of a coherent
| energy policy in order to re- duce the regulatory
| obstacles that currently im- pede or make impossible the
| economical use of energy storage. This can guide business
| models and investment decisions necessary to advance the
| technologies developed in the SCCER and bring them from
| the laboratory into the ultimate energy system of the
| Energy Strategy 2050."
| Sweepi wrote:
| is [2] offline?
|
| maybe you meant this one?: https://tu-dresden.de/tu-
| dresden/newsportal/news/meilenstein...
|
| ... did you use a tool to translate your text from German
| -> English and the tool did also translate the url...?
|
| However, sb. tried to access this url in Nov 2021, but it
| did not exist back then aswell:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240216101723/https://tu-
| dresde...
| RugnirViking wrote:
| in industry here in europe I usually see it written as
| ESS/BESS (energy storage system or battery energy storage
| system). For new plants we usually simulate each of five
| or six technologies, however in a lot of cases yes
| lithium ion has many advantages.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > no matter what the energy capacity of these battery
| installations is going to be, running the whole grid on
| batteries over the periods of low renewable generation is
| going to require still orders of magnitude more
| batteries.
|
| I live in CA (Bay Area) the solar people just wandered up
| to my front door to "sell me" the other day. I do want to
| go solar in light of my PGE bill.
|
| The sales guy was super sharp and addressed one of the
| concerns I had (I have an unusual roof) and we got very
| nerdy.
|
| Because PGE has time dependent pricing, their model is to
| use battery to not only power the house in these windows
| but dump back to the grid during them too (and charge off
| solar when power is cheap).
|
| SO an independent installer is pitching a system to me
| (the end consumer) in response to the market price
| conditions that are going to push "more battery" for
| "peak demand" into the market.
|
| Now do the economics of that system and their sales pitch
| make sense? I dont know, Im still crunching those numbers
| (and they are some hard numbers to figure out), but at
| first blush im inclined to say "yes" cause fuck giving
| money to PGE.
| Maakuth wrote:
| At least a rooftop PV installation breaks even* here in
| Finland with scarce sun and cheap power. Batteries are
| not there yet. If you don't need the battery as a UPS, I
| would wait still a few years before going for a home
| battery.
|
| *: Easily half of the cost is the installation labor. If
| you can DIY at least parts of it, you can get decent ROI.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| Here (bay area), the power prices are so obscene that I
| almost makes sense to install batteries first.
|
| Those with homes with solar are going to end up
| saturating the grid (duck curve) to the point where
| renters can buy batteries and "coast", through the peaks
| of power cost.
| Maakuth wrote:
| Are spot electricity contracts available, so that you can
| do it like that? Makes sense then. And of course the
| installation cost of battery is way smaller than for a PV
| plant as no roof work is required.
| saltcured wrote:
| AFAIK, there is no residential spot market with PG&E.
| Just different seasonal and hour-by-hour rate schedules
| with published rates.
|
| There is an "electric home" rate plan that has three
| periods per day: off-peak, partial-peak, and peak with
| three rates. This can apply to a home with batteries,
| where you can shift your load to different periods. The
| spread can be up to $0.22 per kWh in summer and up to
| $0.04 per kWh in winter.
|
| There is another rate plan with two periods per day: off-
| peak and peak. The spread here can be up to $0.09 per kWh
| in summer and up to $0.03 per kWh in winter. This is a
| typical plan for homes without solar nor batteries and
| with moderate consumption. This plan has two pricing
| tiers. A lower rate for consumption up to a "baseline
| allowance" and then a higher price after that. This
| allowance is summed over a whole billing period, in
| contrast to the time of use variations each day.
|
| The above discussion do not include any net-metering, so
| you never sell power back to the grid. You just optimize
| your load during different hours of the day. With a
| currently available net-metering plan, PG&E will pay for
| excess power only around $0.02 to $0.04 per kWh.
|
| Also, it seems PG&E distinguishes a "paired storage" net
| metering system, and requires special metering to track
| the solar generation that goes into the battery versus
| recharging from the grid. They will only credit solar
| production delivered back to the grid, and not off-peak
| grid energy reflected back during peak hours. So, I'm not
| sure why some posters seem to be talking about this
| arbitrage scenario.
|
| For context, the actual per kWh rates are around $0.36 to
| $0.65 in the different seasons and rate plans. So these
| peak price differences may range around 5% to 25%. There
| isn't any of the wild fluctuation or negative numbers
| we've heard from other energy markets.
| dmurray wrote:
| > Weirdly the news item doesn't tell what sort of energy
| storage capacity these battery installation have, only
| the peak power output of 14.3 GW for this year's
| addition.
|
| As a rule of thumb, the capacity will be a few hours
| worth. So if the power rating is 14 GW, maybe that will
| be 60 GWh of capacity.
|
| That's almost enough to smooth over the most regular
| fluctuations in solar power: the day-night cycle
| (especially when you remember that demand drops at
| night). Not close to being economical for storing power
| from summer through to winter.
|
| A source [0]: > The most common grid-scale battery
| solutions today are rated to provide either 2, 4, or 6
| hours of electricity at their rated capacity
|
| [0] https://www.energysage.com/business-
| solutions/utility-scale-...
| callalex wrote:
| Please say what you mean.
| olau wrote:
| The problem with running nuclear in a dispatchable fashion
| (apart from technical problems) is not the marginal cost,
| but the upfront capital cost. Dispatchable capacity needs
| to have relatively low upfront cost, because it's seldomly
| used. The marginal cost is less important.
|
| Nuclear has a high capital cost, it's a really complex
| tech.
| patall wrote:
| Technically, solar and wind are dispatchable as well, and
| much better than even natural gas at that. Grids were both
| are regulated on the sub-second scale are much more even
| than is otherwise possible. The thing is just that we
| consider that as lost energy, even though it is simply the
| same as running any other power plant at full power. If
| wind were three times cheaper than natural gas and we hence
| build three times as much of it, the achievable capacity
| factor would not look that bad.
| mbgerring wrote:
| More on-site batteries can fix the need for dispatchable
| power on the grid side, and the cheaper batteries get, the
| more attractive such solutions start to look.
| graemep wrote:
| It is also resilient to grid failures. Even better if you
| add on-site generation.
| ianai wrote:
| This discussion makes me realize we could have a 100%
| renewable energy grid and discussion will still be pushed
| with the same old "arguments" against renewable being
| feasible. Ridiculous.
| dfc wrote:
| I do not understand your math. How did you go from .36 for
| wind, apply it to nameplate capacity and get 15.1%? And
| percent of what? I thought applying the capacity factor to
| nameplate would result in some measure of energy produced,
| not a percentage.
| epistasis wrote:
| Yes, correcting for capacity factor is essential if you want to
| compare potential energy generated over a year (which is
| perhaps not the most common use of these numbers). Gas
| generators are typically less than 50% capacity factor, and
| batteries should have course have a 0% capacity factor for
| comparison of energy created over a year
|
| However, your capacity factors for solar are far too low,
| average CF is above 20%. There are roughly as many installs
| with CF>30% as there are with CF<15%.:
|
| https://emp.lbl.gov/pv-capacity-factors
|
| Also omitted from this view is the cost per MWh delivered to
| the grid. A great overview of the current state of the
| technology, including costs ($40/MWh), is here:
|
| https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/utility_scale_solar_...
|
| There's also a great overview of the state of batters here,
| where conservative estimates of lifetime cost of stored energy
| results in about $88/MWh:
|
| https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf
|
| For the new nuclear cost, it's actually really hard to dig up,
| because it's a bit too embarrassing to the industry. But by
| taking the factors from this slide deck:
|
| https://liftoff.energy.gov/advanced-nuclear/
|
| And scaling the slide 14 numbers for $9k/kW overnight cost to
| the real cost of $15/kW at Vogtle, and we get nuclear costs
| north of $180/MWh for nuclear when including the new subsidies
| from Biden's IRA legislation (north of $200/MWh unsubsidized).
| cwal37 wrote:
| That's not _why_ it is done, it's because this is reporting in
| capacity and that is the physical capacity being installed.
| That phrasing makes it sound nefarious, then you end with a
| fairly low solar range (which varies substantially and exceeds
| that in sunnier parts of the US).
|
| Bit of an odd take. You could say the same, or lower, of
| capacity factors on peaking oil or gas plants in some areas
| that run for only a couple percent of the year. Nameplate and
| utilization are just different things.
|
| Maybe worth noting that despite lower capacity factors and
| despite it being mid-winter, Texas (ERCOT) keeps setting solar
| output records because they're installing so much nameplate[1].
| It's not like it does nothing.
|
| [1]
| https://www.gridstatus.io/records/ercot?record=Maximum%20Sol...
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| Why report on capacity instead of energy? Why would capacity
| matter at all?
| icehawk wrote:
| Because energy generated is an after the fact number in any
| sort of power generation, and doesn't help with any sort of
| prediction.
| blackoil wrote:
| Considering nameplate capacity without capacity factor
| would be bad a prediction?? If I need 1GW of extra energy
| getting 1GW of solar would be a bad bet. Same if I am
| calculating the pollution generated next year.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yes, because load factor are long time averages while
| electricity generation and consumption are almost real
| time.
|
| Kind of like 4D checkers or something.
| hef19898 wrote:
| You are really asking after the explanation above?
| Retric wrote:
| Your range is wildly off for PV systems, concentrating solar
| thermal can be that low but it's been abandoned for good
| reason. Utility scale PV solar in the US averages 0.246 with
| several solar farms in the US having over 0.32 capacity
| factors.
|
| Ex: 0.328 from 2017 - 2019
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Star While a nearby PV farm
| is only 0.275 (average 2015-2018)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Sunlight_Solar_Farm and
| another in the middle: 29.7%(average 2015-2017, MS1)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar Curtailment
| depends on the specific power purchase agreements so there's
| some variability independent of the underlying technology.
|
| The discrepancy around PV solar is largely the degree of
| tracking and location. Fixed panels have the same maximum, but
| even 1 axis tracking significantly extends how long a panel is
| producing the maximum power. 2 axis tracking allows even better
| capacity factor assuming nothing breaks, but at higher cost per
| kWh.
|
| PS: Of note low capacity factor Solar installs are generally
| far smaller. It's viable to install a little solar in Maine,
| but not at the same scale.
| https://spectrumlocalnews.com/me/maine/news/2022/11/17/const...
| Evidlo wrote:
| Why does nuclear not deliver closer to its ideal power output?
| Are nuclear plants really down 10% of the time?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Over their lifecycle they are down more like 20-25%.
| doikor wrote:
| Only if the operator is criminally incompetent.
|
| 90%+ capacity factor/uptime is pretty much standard and the
| better ones reach ~95%
|
| For example TVO in Finland has 93% to 97% depending on the
| reactor since the early 1990s. Fortum has very similar
| numbers for their reactors.
| jeffbee wrote:
| This is the definition of cherry-picking data points.
| doikor wrote:
| I would say cherry-picking data points is better then
| providing 0 data points.
|
| edit:
|
| Basically competent operators hit ~90%.
|
| US is around 93%.
|
| Sweden 84%
|
| Switzerland 90%
|
| France would hit that if they could run their plants at
| 100% when they are on but they run theirs in load
| following mode due to having so many of them. So they run
| at around 80%.
|
| World average is 83%.
|
| https://world-nuclear.org/getmedia/891c0cd8-2beb-4acf-
| bb4b-5...
|
| And yes I know best the numbers about the market I live
| in because I live here and this stuff effects the price I
| have to pay for electricity.
| olau wrote:
| Not an expert, but it's my impression that it's common to
| have reactors shut down about one month per year for
| refueling and maintenance. Of course, this can be planned so
| it's not a big deal.
|
| The plants do have a worse correlated failure mode which is
| when something bad is discovered in one plant, it can shut
| down multiple plants because the safety is based on making
| sure to an extremely high degree that nothing can go wrong -
| like grounded air planes. Something like Fukushima can shut
| down plants all over the world temporarily until plans have
| been revisited and extra precautions possibly put in place.
| sl-1 wrote:
| Nuclear plants, like any facility or service, need downtime
| for maintenance
| doikor wrote:
| Refueling and maintenance are the "normal" things and both
| are planned to the time of year with least consumption/lowest
| electricity prices.
|
| Then you have the rare non planned outages but once a new
| reactor has been running for a year or two and all the kinks
| have been worked out they should be very rare.
| samatman wrote:
| Scheduled maintenance. Refueling, replacing worn-out
| components, that sort of thing. One nine of uptime is pretty
| good in the "continuously running power plants" business.
|
| Emphasis on scheduled. Wind operators get no choice at all in
| when they're generating power, and this is true of solar as
| well, although the fluctuation is easier to predict,
| especially in very sunny climates.
|
| A fleet of nuclear reactors can be taken offline on a
| schedule, with advance notice, so they alternate being out of
| commission. This makes it easier to supply reliable baseline
| power.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Somehow, that is the latest pro-niclear / anti-renewables
| talking point. Not tgat people in field learn the principle of
| load factor in one of the first days of 101 lectures on the
| subject...
|
| It least it is an evolution up from "solar isn't working at
| night" and similar deep and hot takes on the subject.
| samatman wrote:
| Pro-nuclear doesn't make one anti-renewables. They're
| complementary technologies, the rivalry is entirely one-
| sided. Not to mention incredibly aggravating to those of us
| who would like power to be reliable, with no emissions.
| audunw wrote:
| Keep in mind that looking at the capacity factor for nuclear vs
| solar/wind can be misleading as well if you don't take into
| account even more factors.
|
| Renewables are composed of a wide mix of thousands of power
| plants. And these days the construction of renewables goes
| along with construction of energy storage and grid upgrades
| (even taking into account those costs, renewables are now
| competitive). So any failures/downtimes is smoothed out over
| both time and space.
|
| That ~10% of the time that nuclear is down, you get 100s of MWs
| going down in a single region. France recently had several
| nuclear power plants go down at the same time, making them
| dependent on imports for a long stretch of time.
|
| In terms of energy I think it's worth looking at the total net
| energy added.
|
| The largest rate that nuclear ever grew was around ~200TWh for
| some years in the 80s.
|
| Solar grew by ~300TWh from 2021 to 2022. Wind grew by ~200TWh.
| And the growth rate is still increasing exponentially.
|
| For reference the world population grew from ~5 to ~8billion
| from the 80s until now, if you want to take that into account
| when comparing the growth rates.
|
| I don't think there can be any doubt anymore that renewables
| will completely dominate the energy production in the future.
| weberer wrote:
| Here in Finland, the national power grid operator provides a
| live graph of how much that each source is outputting. Its kind
| of funny how solar produces almost no energy during the winter
| this far north. I'm very happy that we have that new 1,600 MW
| nuclear plant, so we no longer have to get that energy from
| coal.
|
| https://www.fingrid.fi/en/electricity-market/power-system/
| megaman821 wrote:
| People want a one-size-fits-all solution, nuclear makes the
| most sense for the high northern latitudes. Depending on the
| geography; wind, geothermal and hydro are viable too. Now if
| you are talking about Egypt, building nuclear over
| solar/batteries makes absolutely no sense.
| weberer wrote:
| Yeah, I just don't like how people here are providing a
| false dichotomy of "renewables vs nuclear" instead of
| "renewables+nuclear vs fossil fuels". We should put solar
| panels on every rooftop so we're not throwing away that
| free* energy, while having nuclear plants as baseload power
| to smooth out the duck curve. Polar regions need to slide
| the scale more toward nuclear, while the equatorial regions
| can go mostly solar.
|
| *free as in beer
| fortran77 wrote:
| How do batteries generate electricity?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| By discharging energy when the grid operator calls for it,
| having charged when there was excess energy on the grid
| (typically what would've been wasted as curtailed renewables).
| dymk wrote:
| They form a voltage potential between their anode and cathode.
| hackermatic wrote:
| I'm surprised that wind is such a small part of the US's
| projected future energy mix. Does anyone know why? Wind power
| works overnight, it leaves a lot more usable land than solar
| does, and there's a lot more capacity to be exploited. It's
| strange even considering the political backlash against wind
| power in some areas.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Looking through LCOE+[^1] and references to old reports[^2], it
| looks like solar used to be significantly cheaper, and wind a
| surprising dip in cost last 12-18 months. It's now on par if
| not less for onshore wind across the board. [^1]
|
| [^1] https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-
| cost....
|
| [^2] https://www.quora.com/Which-is-more-expensive-to-build-
| wind-...
| fbdab103 wrote:
| My knee jerk thought is that you have to work significantly
| harder to secure land for windmills. They have to be
| distributed such that you require huge tracts of land and/or to
| secure rights to install a tower on someone else's property.
| Each of those towers then need additional transmission lines.
|
| While solar might generate less energy per unit area, it is at
| least condensed so that you could get away with buying a plot
| and fully exploit the area. You can add additional
| (unconnected) plots as cheap land becomes available.
|
| I could also see the advantage that solar has quite limited
| opex after installation. A fleet of windmills may require
| significantly more resources to keep operating after years of
| service.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Drive through Indiana and it's pretty clear farmers are happy
| to site lots of windmills in their fields.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The US is a bit behind in catching up with the rest of the
| world on this front. There are some positive exceptions like
| Texas where they figured out quite early that it's cheaper to
| power refineries with renewables than with fossil fuel. So,
| Texas has a lot of solar and wind at this point. And why not,
| it's a sparsely populated state that is very suitable for
| tapping into both.
|
| The complacency in the rest of the US of course has a lot to do
| with the fact that there's a very loud and active pro fossil
| fuel lobby that kept insisting coal was the future even while a
| lot of coal plants were going out of business. A lot of states
| invested in gas plants instead of wind generation because of
| that too. And now that renewables are clearly cheaper, a lot of
| those investments are starting to look pretty bad.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Nuclear. Start-up of the fourth reactor (1.1 GW) at Georgia's
| Vogtle nuclear power plant
|
| I checked the Wiki page:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...
|
| > Two additional units utilizing Westinghouse AP1000 reactors
| were under construction since 2009, with Unit 3 being completed
| in July 2023.[9][10][11] This last report blames the latest
| increase in costs on the contractor not completing work as
| scheduled. Another complicating factor in the construction
| process is the bankruptcy of Westinghouse in 2017.[12] In 2018
| costs were estimated to be about $25 billion.[13] By 2021 they
| were estimated to be over $28.5 billion.[14] In 2023 costs had
| increased to $34 billion, with work still to be completed on
| Vogtle 4.[15]
|
| Those numbers are simply mind blowing. Why are these still built?
| How much solar/wind/battery capacity can 34B USD buy!?
|
| I feel the same about the two big nuke projects in the UK
| (Hinkley Point C & Sizewell C). It makes no sense compared to
| solar/wind/battery.
| breather wrote:
| > How much solar/wind/battery capacity can 34B USD buy!?
|
| I'm guessing you'd run into space constraints pretty quickly.
| For one large project a nuclear reactor is incredibly compact
| compared to most alternatives except maybe hydro.
| gamepsys wrote:
| I don't think space is a concern in North America.
| sowbug wrote:
| If space isn't a concern, then transmission is.
| dymk wrote:
| Also not really a problem in North America, nor is
| running more transmission lines as capacity and demand
| grow
| richardw wrote:
| There are some very long transmission lines:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1305820/longest-
| power-tr...
| einpoklum wrote:
| You don't have to generate all of the power in one place,
| you know...
| hinkley wrote:
| > How much solar/wind/battery capacity can 34B USD buy!?
|
| According to How Big Things Get Done, at least 30B worth.
| Nuclear plants have some of the worst cost and time overruns
| for large projects, wind and solar some of the lowest (beaten
| only by roads).
|
| And his theory as to why this happens, is that wind, solar, and
| roads are self-similar. Building the first 10% directly informs
| you on how to build the next 10%. Everything you learn along
| the way can be rolled back into the project in a feedback loop.
|
| What you learn shingling a roof or building a nuclear reactor
| doesn't help _this_ project all that much. It helps the next.
| And how many nuclear reactors does one worker build in their
| lifetime? 2? 4? That 's not a lot of opportunity for process
| improvement.
| pstuart wrote:
| This is why if nuclear is to have a future it would be via
| Small Modular Reactors. But even that appears to be too
| expensive.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Indeed. I mean, I'm not sure the smallness is a key factor,
| but the modularity for sure and maybe the size limitation
| comes with that.
|
| I'm not much of a fan of nuclear (pun not intended?) and
| would like to see solar + wind (+ other renewables) cover
| most of the load. But if enough resources were pooled to
| design an SMR, with extensive safety studies, lifetime
| planning, involvement of multiple parties (e.g. scientific
| and engineering teams from different world states) - I
| don't think I could really oppose, especially given the
| global warming situation.
|
| Of course - there's "ideal nuclear" and there's real
| existing nuclear, which is quite different and often very
| problematic.
| hinkley wrote:
| Matt Ferrell posted a video about vertical bifacial solar
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqizLQDi9BM) last week
| that has me hopeful for more demand-aligned solar output.
|
| They absorb more indirect light, but the main advantage
| is that hot panels drop in efficiency, and standing them
| up improves heat dissipation substantially.
|
| One of the bits that stood out to me is that it has an
| output curve that partially lines up with The Duck,
| because you get a period of low-angle exposure near
| sunset. I suspect you get quite a drop at high noon, but
| that's fine as long as not all solar panels in the grid
| are vertical.
| hinkley wrote:
| I've been anti-nuclear for a long time, and SMR is the
| least unpalatable choice.
|
| Not without caveats though. Humans are shit at statistics.
| Their sense of the aggregate danger of putting 100 'safe'
| items in close proximity often underestimates the odds by
| half, and in some cases by an order of magnitude.
|
| You might get lucky and lose two personal hard drives in
| your entire life, but the IT guy managing 100 drives is
| dealing with failed drives 'all the time'. Backblaze
| reports on something like 10,000 drives and they are
| claiming something on the order of 200-300 failures. And I
| think that's per quarter, not per year.
|
| What do you do with an array of reactors where one right in
| the middle did not fail cleanly?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > And how many nuclear reactors does one worker build in
| their lifetime? 2? 4? That's not a lot of opportunity for
| process improvement.
|
| France built 58 over 20 years, that's how you make it
| economical. India says they want to do one a year IIRC, which
| is probably good enough too.
| adrianN wrote:
| French nuclear power is still not particularly economical
| and they didn't build as many plants as originally planned
| because of it, nor do they plan to build a sufficient
| number of new plants to sustain current capacity over the
| next decades. France justifies the expense with their
| nuclear bomb program that benefits from a strong civilian
| nuclear industry.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| French nuclear power has a levelized cost of about
| $70/MWh - which is about the same cost as the levelized
| cost of solar or wind in France, without most the
| headaches of intermittency. (Remember the average French
| person lives further north than the average Canadian...)
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Exactly, and don't forget that nuclear costs in France
| are being driven high by wind (and solar, but less so),
| because it cannot run at its optimal power because it has
| to reduce produced power when there's wind.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Downvote all you want, when you artificially decrease
| capacity factor from the average 90% to 65% because you
| have to accommodate for wind, in an industry when fixed
| costs are the vast majority of costs, you mathematically
| raise the cost per MWh...
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"Remember the average French person lives further
| north than the average Canadian..."_
|
| That doesn't mean much. Regardless of latitude, the
| French climate is _much_ milder than most of Canada.
|
| In fact there's plenty of places in North America that
| get much, much colder than equivalent latitudes in
| Europe.
|
| Heck, Chicago is the same latitude as Barcelona(!!), but
| there can be 20degC or more difference in temperature
| during winter.
| hef19898 wrote:
| What are you saying? That Earth's rotation axis is, what,
| tilted? Outragious! Herasy!
| Reason077 wrote:
| Wait, Chicago is colder than Barcelona because of the
| Earth's tilt?!
| hef19898 wrote:
| I don't know!!!?!!!? You think I just had a streak of
| genius?
| guappa wrote:
| No. Since the earth spins they both get the same solar
| energy.
| bluGill wrote:
| The way ocean currents work help Barcelona more than
| Chicago. Chicago is warmer than its western suburbs
| because the suburbs are farther from the lake. (there are
| many other confounding factors so we cannot measure this)
| pjc50 wrote:
| That's true, because of the gulf stream, but the only
| thing that matters from a solar panel point of view is
| the angle to the sun. In fact you might get slightly more
| out of a Canadian solar panel than a French one at the
| same latitude _because_ the Canadian one will be colder!
| Reason077 wrote:
| Indeed. But in either case, solar doesn't help too much
| on cold winter days at higher latitudes. Especially if we
| want to decarbonise heating, leading to increased grid
| demand on the coldest days.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" French nuclear power has a levelized cost of about
| $70/MWh"_
|
| That may be true for the existing nuclear fleet, but the
| cost of new-build nuclear is significantly higher.
| Flamanville 3, which is expected to finally come online
| in mid-2024 after 17 years of construction, was estimated
| at EUR125/MWh in 2022.
| doikor wrote:
| This is in large part because they are not building a bit
| over 2 reactors per year anymore.
| epistasis wrote:
| France did not experience a significant fall in
| construction costs when they were building lots of
| reactors in the 1970s. There's not much hope of getting
| that EUR125/MWh below EUR100/MWh, and honestly that
| EUR125/MWh is likely a sever underestimate to start with.
| doikor wrote:
| Don't know about France but TVO in Finland is way under
| that. Their earlier reactors were built in the 70s.
|
| They have been hitting 15 to 20EUR/MWh for decades now.
| Or at least this is the price they have been selling to
| their owners without going bankrupt for decades now.
| Target with OL3 in the mix is 40EUR/MWh so OL3 alone is
| probably in the 50EUR/MWh to 60EUR/MWh range. (and they
| got a really good deal with OL3)
|
| https://www.tvo.fi/material/sites/tvo/pdft/rm89bf734/TVO_
| -_C...
| epistasis wrote:
| Paid off reactors can get by on O&M only costs. The
| trouble is getting through that initial period of paying
| off the loan and interest. Also, older reactors were far
| simpler and reliable to construct. (Though "simpler" does
| not mean simple, they are still extremely complex beasts
| of machines.)
|
| Finland was smart enough, and France dumb enough, to sign
| a fixed-cost contract for OL3. This ended up in complete
| disaster for the French companies doing the building,
| with the French government buying up the failed builder.
|
| So you can thank French taxpayers for a EUR70-EUR100/MWh
| subsidy for the new clean energy in Finland.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| What you're saying is just true of EPR, but not revelant
| at all in comparison to what happened when the nuclear
| plants where mass produced. As the parent said, nuclear
| has been very cheap for 3 decades.
| Reason077 wrote:
| One big difference in the costs is that now days, new
| reactors are required to fund their own eventual
| decommissioning and long-term waste handling costs from
| operating income.
|
| That wasn't always the case! In the UK, taxpayers have
| been left with enormous liabilities for managing and
| cleaning up old nuclear sites:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/23/uk-
| nucle...
|
| Finland deserves credit for actually building a long-term
| waste storage repository, which helps solve one of the
| biggest ongoing issues/costs with nuclear
| decommissioning.
| doikor wrote:
| The operators have been paying into a fund since the 80s
| which is meant for decommissioning and spent fuel
| storage.
|
| Basically it is a legal requirement (some small fraction
| of a cent for every kWh produiced)
|
| This is really the only sane way to do it.
|
| Also we got lucky with the ground under Olkiluoto being
| good spot for nuclear waste storage so not much NIMBY
| stuff for that as it is already the site for the biggest
| nuclear power plant in the country. It is also small town
| so a huge % of the population there work at the plant or
| its sub contractors.
| oezi wrote:
| > which is about the same cost as the levelized cost of
| solar or wind in France
|
| As of 2024. Remember that solar and wind are still on a
| downward price trajectory and the reduced investment in
| Nuclear has meant that the prices to up.
|
| So if you have a figure for example of $70/MWh for PV and
| wind in mind from a couple of years ago, then this figure
| might be slightly outdated now and more slightly outdated
| tomorrow. PV might go under $20/MWh at the end of the
| decade for instance. Nobody will be able to compete with
| that.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Nobody will be able to compete with that
|
| It depends on what it will cost to level out times of no
| sun.
| passwordoops wrote:
| >Nobody will be able to compete with that.
|
| Coal does. According to this IEA table, India and China
| achieved under $10/MWH
|
| https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-
| tools/levelised...
| epistasis wrote:
| The coal numbers food those countries are $70-100/MWh.
| Its only the capital cost that get to $10/MWh.
| seiferteric wrote:
| > PV might go under $20/MWh at the end of the decade
|
| It's never clear to me when these numbers are cited,
| clearly you must be talking about PV + battery right?
| Otherwise it would not be a fair comparison.
| doikor wrote:
| > PV might go under $20/MWh at the end of the decade for
| instance. Nobody will be able to compete with that.
|
| Except places where the sun doesn't shine much long
| periods of time (far north/south).
| okeuro49 wrote:
| > Remember the average French person lives further north
| than the average Canadian
|
| The opposite is true, I think.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Did you try to find data? Or just reporting on your
| intuition about this thing that someone else thought
| might be surprising and turned out to be surprising?
|
| It seems like half of Canada's populations lives south of
| 45.5degN. [1]
|
| Someone else calculated the mean population latitude of
| France to be just over 47degN [2]
|
| Mean and median aren't the same, but in this case, the
| measures are far enough apart that it does seem like the
| average (however reasonably defined) French resident
| lives north of the average (same defined) Canadian
| resident.
|
| [1] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/50122/do
| -50-of-...
|
| [2] https://freakonometrics.hypotheses.org/1125
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder how economical it is if you factor
| externalities.
|
| https://phys.org/news/2021-03-trillions-hidden-energy-
| extern...
|
| What's interesting is that they mentioned the
| externalities for geothermal are very very low.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Wikipedia writes: "As of early September 2022, 32 of
| France's 56 nuclear reactors were shut down due to
| maintenance or technical problems" and "In 2022, Europe's
| driest summer in 500 years had serious consequences for
| power plant cooling systems, as the drought reduced the
| amount of river water available for cooling."
| looofooo0 wrote:
| What has this to do with building? Summer gets you cheap
| PV battery electric energy anyhow. Lack of cooling towers
| etc. gives you trouble....
| hef19898 wrote:
| French reactors suffered a lack of suffciently cool
| water, what little water they had was too hot. Cooling
| towers numbers actually are sufficient.
| lucioperca wrote:
| There is still plenty of water, the problem is that you
| have to limit heating the river. With a cooling tower can
| cool with or without evaporating water depending on the
| design but always without heating the river. But it is
| cheaper to directly dump the heat into the water.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And you cannot empty the river neither, _especially_
| during a drought, can you?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| My hunch is evaporative cooling uses not very much water.
| You could also fill a small dam when the water flow is
| higher. All means higher cost, of course.
| hef19898 wrote:
| It generally helps to no use hunches when it comes to
| hard technical questions.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Ok, the hard technical answer is that a phase change from
| liquid to gas eats a lot more energy than just heating
| the liquid however many degrees. :-)
|
| My back of the envelope calculations say it's about 10
| times less water to evaporate.
| hef19898 wrote:
| There are detailed diagrams and formulas to calculate
| that. Engineering, not back of the envelope highschool
| physics.
|
| But guess what, people designing an building power plants
| know this. And whatever is built is the best compromise
| possible at the time. Backnof envelope calculus in 2023
| or not.
| lucioperca wrote:
| Dry cooling tower exists but they are more expensive.
| Natural cooling with the evaporation eventually runs into
| the problem due to built-up of salts which forces you to
| replace non-evaporated cooling water with fresh river
| water and lets you dump the heated water into the river
| (which is limiting factor due to environmental concerns).
| The less water is flowing and the higher the temperature
| of the river are the sooner this point is reached
| roenxi wrote:
| Related and interesting thing - China appears to be
| building a trial reactor in the Gobi desert [0] because
| they think they have air cooling sorted out.
|
| Or at least close enough. I haven't checked if it is
| technically in the desert.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1
| DennisL123 wrote:
| Even after the summer heat the reactor availability in
| France had trouble inching above 2/3 for a number of
| reasons. One of them being age of the installations and
| related unplanned outages.
| Nodraak wrote:
| > "As of early September 2022, 32 of France's 56 nuclear
| reactors were shut down"
|
| This is cherry picking. Look at the 10 years, or even
| lifetime, average availability. It's 90 or 95%. The
| reason for this bad number is because of delayed
| maintenance due to COVID.
|
| > "serious consequences for power plant cooling systems,
| as the drought reduced the amount of river water
| available for cooling."
|
| The reduction of power output of French nuclear was
| something like 0.30%. You read that right. So I would
| call "serious consequences" a blatant lie.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" Look at the 10 years, or even lifetime, average
| availability. It's 90 or 95%."_
|
| Average load factor for nuclear reactors globally hovers
| around 80% according to IAEA data [1]. In France the
| average is actually lower than this due to load
| following: by design, many French reactors don't always
| operate at full capacity because there isn't enough
| demand at off-peak times.
|
| Few, if any, reactors reach 95%: planned outages for
| refuelling and maintenance takes up more than 5% of their
| time.
|
| [1] https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/WorldTrend
| inAvera...
| Angostura wrote:
| What proportion of wind turbines were off-line for
| maintenance over a similar period?
| epistasis wrote:
| According to this article, the staff for the regulator in
| Georgia (the only entity in the decision making process
| looking out for the customers, ratepayers) were banned from
| even considering the cost of renewables:
|
| > Plant Vogtle proceeded with no cost-cap, no consumer
| protections, and Public Service Commission (PSC) staff were
| prohibited from conducting analysis comparing the costs of
| nuclear to clean energy alternatives.
|
| https://www.powermag.com/blog/plant-vogtle-not-a-star-
| but-a-...
|
| At the other pair of reactors started at the same time and
| with the same design in Soith Carolina, executives are in
| jail for lying about the project. The SC reactors were also
| abandoned.
|
| Nuclear in the US is so expensive that even starting a new
| reactor requires considerable corruption.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > And how many nuclear reactors does one worker build in
| their lifetime? 2? 4? That's not a lot of opportunity for
| process improvement.
|
| And reactors are inherently too big and complicated. A wind
| farm, solar farm, or a road is intrinsically much simpler.
|
| And reactors will suffer from decision makers sitting around
| a table and changing designs for the next one because
| engineers have thought up new failure modes of the last
| design and nobody wants to be the person who says "no" and
| then has a failure. Along with the natural tendency of US
| management to increase the spending of their departments in
| order to increase the size of their own personal kingdom.
| You'll never manage to stamp out reactor after reactor all of
| the same design.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Those numbers are simply mind blowing. Why are these still
| built?
|
| I'm guessing because there was no step in the process where it
| seemed like a better idea to stop construction and have spent
| whatever costs so far to get nothing of value, rather than
| accept the cost increase and end up with high availability,
| somewhat dispatchable generation.
|
| There's not a lot of new projects in nuclear, because
| construction costs are high and subject to cost overruns as
| projects get delayed, and delays seem inevitable. That's why
| there's all the talk of modular nuclear and what not. If it was
| feasible to build these plants on time and on budget, the
| generation parameters are good --- doesn't use much fuel, tends
| to be available outside of scheduled maintenance, can modulate
| generation to follow demand, if the economics make sense (as-
| is, most of the plant expenses are fixed cost, so you may as
| well generate as much as you can to amortize the cost over more
| kWh)
| fbdab103 wrote:
| What specifically is so expensive about the reactors? Having
| played the simulator[0] and now being an expert in running a
| nuclear power plant, the idea is "simple". Seemingly not much
| more complex than any other steam/heat power plant, so how do
| the costs run so high? Are the tolerances on everything turned
| to 11 to minimize chance of errors? Triple-checking all work?
|
| As a point of comparison, the Large Hadron collider had a $9
| billion budget, and that required a 27 kilometer circle to be
| dug.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38515435
| mynameisnoone wrote:
| I worked for a Campbell, CA nuclear engineering partial
| employee-owned co-op formed by mostly ex-General Electric
| engineers (Stanford and Berkeley alums) ultimately acquired
| by Curtiss-Wright Corp. (And yes, computers were named after
| Simpsons' characters.)
|
| Costs are related to the assurance of safety through careful
| documentation and processes beginning with regulation and
| insurance underwriting of design engineering, construction,
| operations, and maintenance. This sort of thing only makes
| sense to do so at large scale to make it economical. Scale
| also has its costs. Safety isn't something that can be
| Boeing'ed because the NRC can and will shut the whole thing
| down if it were to be found unsafe.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| Network stability, night and bad weather hedging is a problem
| though with full solar/wind, isn't it? We still need a mix
| until tech is better to solve these problems.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" I feel the same about the two big nuke projects in the UK
| (Hinkley Point C & Sizewell C). It makes no sense compared to
| solar/wind/battery."_
|
| Renewables are far cheaper, and can be built much more quickly.
| But there is an argument for (some) nuclear around energy
| security and diversification of supply. Batteries are great but
| can't really provide long-term storage (ie: multiple
| days/weeks). Do we want to rely solely on natural gas as a
| backup during the cold, calm, winter weather patterns which in
| some years can persist for weeks? Last year's energy crisis
| suggests maybe not. Or can we build enough interconnections and
| rely on imports from our neighbours?
|
| Also worth considering that Hinkley Point C & Sizewell C are
| really only replacing existing nuclear plants that are shutting
| down. Even if both are built, the UK will still have only
| around _half_ the nuclear capacity in the 2030s that we had in
| the 1990s.
| luizfwolf wrote:
| Nuclear is the most clean energy that can be generated on-
| demand, solar and wind can only generate energy depending on
| the external conditions.
|
| Batteries until today are not a viable solution.
|
| When talking about the electrical grid you have to be able to
| generate energy in any amount whenever you want.
| JohnCClarke wrote:
| Providing "base load" is often touted as an advantage of
| nuclear power plants (NPP) here on HN. The reality is
| actually the opposite. As the International Atomic Energy
| Agency says[1]:
|
| "Any unexpected sudden disconnect of the NPP from an
| otherwise stable electric grid could trigger a severe
| imbalance between power generation and consumption causing a
| sudden reduction in grid frequency and voltage. This could
| even cascade into the collapse of the grid if additional
| power sources are not connected to the grid in time."
|
| Basically NPPs are designed to SCRAM for all sorts of
| reasons, then the sudden loss of multiple GW really ruins the
| grid managers' day. The first paragraphs of [1] make it clear
| that a large, stable, grid is a pre-requisite for NPPs _not_
| a result of NPPs.
|
| [1] https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/gc/gc53inf-3-att
| 5_e...
| wcoenen wrote:
| > _When talking about the electrical grid you have to be able
| to generate energy in any amount whenever you want._
|
| Not exactly. It is possible to manage the demand side to some
| degree.
|
| For example, Octopus Energy in the UK has a "Intelligent
| Octopus Go" contract which offers much cheaper night rates,
| in exchange for giving up control over when and at what rate
| your EV charges. You just tell them what battery percentage
| you need by what time in the morning. They plan the charging
| within this constraint and get paid by the grid operator to
| balance the grid.
|
| Another example are dynamically priced contracts where the
| prices vary hour by hour based on the day-ahead market
| prices. I have such a contract and I charge my EV only during
| the cheapest hours when other demand is low. Sometimes I
| postpone charging for a day or more because I have sufficient
| charge for my needs and I expect lower prices later, e.g.
| based on weather or upcoming weekend.
| m463 wrote:
| > When talking about the electrical grid you have to be able
| to generate energy in any amount whenever you want.
|
| I think there is an error thinking this way.
|
| It is like saying "everyone must own a pickup truck, because
| they must be able to move any household appliance or
| furniture item at any time."
|
| "nobody can drive an electric vehicle because they must be
| able to drive to the next state at any time."
|
| Honestly, you can have a very reliable electrical grid that
| is runs on solar/wind/batteries for most of the time.
|
| Batteries enhance the grid, and if there was a period of no
| wind or no sun, it is quite easy to spin up gas turbines for
| a day or a month.
| vitiral wrote:
| It's not quite the same when failing to meet peak demand
| means pipes freeze or people die of heat exhaustion. There
| are areas in the country that are over a hundred degrees at
| night. It's going to take a lot of solar to cool all those
| homes.
|
| Could we all live a different way, communally instead of in
| our own big boxes? It's physically possible but socially
| impossible. The truth is we'd rather burn the planet to the
| ground and we will. That's our nature, little use fighting
| it.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > to be able to generate energy in any amount whenever you
| want.
|
| This isn't true. Demand is predictable to some degree on
| multiple timescales.
|
| But if it was true, why would that help nuclear? It is most
| suited to the role of producing a set amount of power
| continuously.
|
| Why are so many people fans of this mythical nuclear power
| they've invented inside their own head? (or had fed to them)?
|
| It all just seems like lazy, second-hand, anti-renewable
| propaganda.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Regulation plays a significant role in cost overruns. Also we
| (should) expect the nuclear plants to work for at least a
| century while the panels and wind turbines last what, 5-15
| years assuming no major storms damage them?
| pinkgolem wrote:
| Check your data, newish solar is expected to have less then
| 20% degradation for 30+ years, afterwards its still usable..
| but an exchange might be financially beneficial.
|
| Windturbines are rated for 20+ and can be extended.. current
| generation are usally changed as there are bigger models
| available, with higher profit margins
| passwordoops wrote:
| So still 1/3 and 1/5 expected lifetime for nuclear
| pinkgolem wrote:
| Wich nuclear reactor has a planned lifetime of 100+ years
| without expensive rebuild?
|
| That seems very far fetched
| hazmazlaz wrote:
| According to the NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) in
| 2022 it cost approximately $1.06 per watt to install utility
| scale solar. So for the cost of the 1.1 GW Vogtle 4 reactor,
| utilities could have installed approximately 32 GW of utility
| scale solar. Obviously this is an extremely simplified and
| naive calculation that doesn't account for cost or availability
| of land, transmission infrastructure, battery or other energy
| storage, etc.
| epistasis wrote:
| That number does include the cost of land for the solar,
| which is fairly insignificant.
|
| For the cost of batteries, NREL published this review of
| reviews, and lands at ~480/kWh of capacity:
|
| https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf
|
| So split the $35B (there's a recent $3B that hasn't made it
| wikipedia, as I understand it) half and half, and you get
| 17GW of solar, and 36GWh of storage.
|
| As far as translating this into per-kWh costs, most estimates
| I have seen put Vogtle at $0.17-$0.18/kWh. The equivalent for
| solar is $0.04/kWh. To charge a battery with that same solar,
| and then deliver it later, it's $0.13/kWh, when doing the
| napkin math with those NREL numbers up there.
| cma wrote:
| Lifetime of panels and batteries vs modern nuclear plant? I
| guess also do the nuclear numbers use the real liability
| and disposal costs, or subsidized ones?
| epistasis wrote:
| The cost per kWh numbers take into account lifetimes and
| nuclear waste disposal
| cma wrote:
| What about Proce Anderson liability cap? Potential
| trillion dollar incidents reduced to $10 billion cap.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| PV panels will produce for at least 25-30 years with
| limited degradation in output. At that time, consider
| what state of the art will be, and that you can repower
| an existing PV plant trivially; you de-energize segments,
| manual labor replaces panels, and you re-energize. Old
| panels will get shipped for recycling (shredded and
| materials sorted for reuse).
| mgoetzke wrote:
| It gets really wild when trying to calculate the break-even
| point :)
| jeffbee wrote:
| The closest analogy I can recall to all these tireless fission
| stans are the OS/2 fans who refused to shut up even after Windows
| was dancing on its grave. It is truly embarrassing for the tech
| commentariat to be so blinded to reality.
| pbazarnik wrote:
| Calculation of battery capacity one can build for 34B
|
| 0.3k$ per 1kWh of battery storage [1] (0.3$/Wh)
|
| Battery capacity = 34B$ /(0.3$/Wh) =113.3GWh (1G$=1B$)
|
| The 34B battery capacity will be equivalent to 113hours of
| operation of 1GW power plant. (4.7 days)
|
| [1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| That's not the main use of grid batteries. The main use of
| batteries is 1) to soak up power that is otherwise not needed
| when there's too much of it. 2) to deliver that power back when
| there's too little of it. This is something that happens very
| often for typically short amount of times (hours). Batteries
| help smooth this out.
|
| The mistake you are making is only thinking about when there's
| not enough power. The real challenge is dealing with the very
| regular situation that there's too much of it. That's energy
| that is wasted and lost.
|
| Batteries improve the capacity factor of renewables (the
| percentage of time they are useful).
|
| So, do electricity cables. Shortages and surpluses are highly
| localized. Germany for example has the problem that the demand
| is in the south and a lot of wind generation is in the north.
| So, they are curtailing wind power when there's too much wind
| and are firing up coal plants in the south because they lack
| the cables to get the power from where there is too much of it
| to where it is needed. When Texas had it's blackouts, other
| states had plenty of power. But Texas is not connected to those
| states by cables. So they had no way to get the power
| delivered. So, blackouts happened.
|
| Long term storage is much less relevant currently and a market
| in it's infancy. The overwhelming majority of grid batteries is
| for dealing with short term dips and peaks in power generation.
| Most setups don't provide more than a few hours of power at
| best. But they can switch between charging and discharging in
| milliseconds and do both at high capacities.
|
| This is why lithium ion is popular in this space. It can
| deliver or soak up a lot of power very quickly. You can put
| cells in series or in parallel depending on the use case. You
| add more cells to deliver more power more quickly. Not
| necessarily for longer. You can configure the same 1gwh of
| cells to deliver 100mw of power for 10 hours or 2gw for half an
| hour. Most of these batteries are configured for high capacity
| charging/discharging and relatively short storage.
|
| There are some long term storage solutions emerging as well of
| course. Redux flow batteries are a good example where there's a
| fixed size cathode and anode and reservoirs of electrolyte that
| are pumped around. You can scale these by simply using larger
| reservoirs. They are cheap and can hold many days/weeks of
| power. Just add larger tanks. The caveat, is that the power
| delivery is a constant and typically low.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Just a technical note, series/parallel has no effect on the
| power capability of a battery. This is largely linked to the
| specific cells chosen (whether it's a high energy or high
| power chemistry).
|
| I think the confusion comes from associating more current
| capability (parallel) as meaning more power, but the same
| applies to voltage anyway, so it's not relevant.
| zarify wrote:
| Ultimately how useful is the high uptake in individual states? My
| understanding was that the US had a lot of weirdness going on
| about provision of utilities over state lines.
|
| (Mind you here in Oz I think we have our own state politics
| involved, but I guess at least we have fewer states )
| pjc50 wrote:
| The US has three separate grids: east, west, and Texas. Who are
| oddly separatist about their badly managed energy system.
| zarify wrote:
| Ah, it was probably me hearing about Texas and then
| extrapolating that to the rest of the US. Probably not a
| great idea on my part. Thanks for setting me straight :)
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