[HN Gopher] California invests in battery energy storage, leavin...
___________________________________________________________________
California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling
blackouts behind
https://web.archive.org/web/20251025210426/https://www.latim...
Author : JumpCrisscross
Score : 330 points
Date : 2025-10-25 19:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| metabagel wrote:
| > California and Texas are constantly trading places as the top
| state for battery storage.
| zanon234 wrote:
| I think Texas will stay ahead for the foreseeable future.
| California keeps shooting itself in the foot with regulatory
| hurdles and permit issues.
| redundantly wrote:
| And Texans will keep losing power during winter storms due to
| lack of regulations.
| landl0rd wrote:
| This is ignorant culture war politics and/or anti-Texasism.
|
| I should point out that cold temperatures place a huge
| demand on the grid because consumers don't want to
| winterize for the marginal once-a-decade blizzard any more
| than utilities; around half our homes have relatively
| inefficient resistance heaters as opposed to furnaces.
|
| We have a lot more growth in the past few years than most
| other places, both in relative terms, and in absolute (big
| state + high growth introduces more absolute friction than
| small state). Demand is forecast to rise over 20% from 2024
| levels vs. an American average under 5%: https://www.eia.go
| v/todayinenergy/images/2025.07.31/main.svg
|
| So no wonder our reserve margins run thinner when we're
| already having to build at such speed just to keep pace
| with regular demand.
|
| Texas has been building a ton of wind and solar to
| supplement generation capacity and is taking some
| leadership in the next-gen nuclear stuff for a reliable
| base load, but in the mean time the shortage of CCGTs is
| going to bite in a state where demand goes up this much,
| this fast. SB6 passed this summer also should help with
| reasonable control and oversight.
|
| ERCOT actually does a pretty okay job, all things
| considered; it's hard to invest heavily in winterization
| for rare events when you're having to invest heavily in new
| generation to keep up with steadily increasing baseline
| load.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > ERCOT actually does a pretty okay job, all things
| considered; it's hard to invest heavily in winterization
| for rare events when you're having to invest heavily in
| new generation to keep up with steadily increasing
| baseline load.
|
| I'm going to have to strongly disagree here. It's
| particularly _easy_ when you have to invest heavily in
| new generation to keep up with steadily increasing
| baseline load. Retrofitting winterization is more
| expensive. If you build in support for winterization when
| you build the capacity in the first place (which is what
| happens with sane regulatory oversight), it 's all quite
| inexpensive. It'd be one thing if the cold was a once a
| century surprise, but when you know you're going to have
| cold events multiple times over the lifetime of your
| equipment, it's really easy to do this right.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't think their comment was either ignorant or anti-
| Texan. Essentially all of the conclusions in the FERC
| report on the February 2021 events were those of
| regulatory failure. Generating assets did not have
| winterization plans that state inspectors actually
| enforced, most of the failed assets failed at
| temperatures above their design minima, natural gas
| delivery system were totally deregulated at the state
| level, ERCOT winter forecast practices were poor, etc.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Considering how much the Texas state government has been
| illegally trampling its own residents' rights recently,
| mostly for the sake of private corruption, and backed by
| incredibly bad faith anti-social rhetoric, perhaps
| reflexive anti-Texas-elected-officials-ism is a
| reasonable baseline position.
| energy123 wrote:
| The large majority of normal people would take the half
| price electricity than the highly regulated, never-ever-
| have-an-outage electricity that's way more expensive.
| nullc wrote:
| As if that were the choice...
|
| In PG&E land we have extraordinarily expensive (e.g.
| hitting over 0.60$/kwh) electricity that has outages more
| often than Texas.
|
| High prices go hand in hand with low reliability because
| the same incompetence and corruption results in both.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Texas also has higher energy demands (residential AC +
| industry + bitcoin friendly). Seems intuitive that they would
| have more to gain from larger battery infrastructure.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| CA also shoots itself in the foot by having all its wealth
| and population in mild areas so those places run the show
| and nobody takes it seriously until it's a hot-summer,
| everyone cranks the AC, the grid keels over and then "how
| could this have happened". It's literally the stick in
| spokes meme. Sure there's some guy in the desert who's been
| screaming about how this stuff matters, but nobody listens
| to him because they were calling him a dumb yokel the other
| 364 days of the year.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Can you be a bit more explicit? Do you have a specific
| person in mind as a model of this "guy in the desert"
| that people keep calling a "dumb yokel" but who actually
| a power-grid savant or whatever? Aside: alongside your
| hero, there are some extremely kooky people living out in
| the CA desert.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| What's some examples of this that Texas doesn't have?
| mh- wrote:
| _> California hasn't issued an emergency plea for the public to
| conserve energy, known as a Flex Alert, since 2022._
|
| Feels like that statement deserves to be contextualized with
| weather data. There were a few summers leading up to that where
| all of the major metro areas shared concurrent record high heat
| days, and sometimes coincided with poor air quality from
| wildfires (meaning more people closed their windows and ran AC
| even if they wouldn't have otherwise.)
|
| _> It was only five years ago that a record-shattering heat wave
| pushed the grid to its limit and plunged much of the state into
| darkness._
|
| They mention it here, but then don't talk about whether similar
| circumstances have been faced since. Don't get me wrong, this is
| encouraging, but the article invited this kind of reaction by
| putting "leaving rolling blackouts behind" in the title.
|
| Funny enough, if you look at the article's original title via the
| URL slug, it was much more measured: california-
| made-it-through-another-summer-without-a-flex-alert
| vondur wrote:
| Yeah, I think you are correct, 2022 was a hot summer with a
| September heat wave which broke some records for power demand.
| Also keep in mind that there was a big increase in hydropower
| generation in 2023 and 2024 due to the really wet/snowy winter
| seasons.
| khuey wrote:
| > There were a few summers leading up to that where all of the
| major metro areas shared concurrent record high heat days, and
| sometimes coincided with poor air quality from wildfires
| (meaning more people closed their windows and ran AC even if
| they wouldn't have otherwise.)
|
| This is underselling it, if anything. The multi-day heatwave
| around Labor Day 2022 extended across most of the western US,
| not just California. The electricity demand during that event
| set what was at the time the all time record for the entire
| Western Interconnection (since surpassed in 2024) and set what
| is still today the all time record for CAISO.
| mh- wrote:
| I didn't want to overstate it given I wasn't bringing any
| data to the conversation, but your account matches my
| recollection as well.
| khuey wrote:
| https://www.publicadvocates.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cal-
| advocate... has some data.
| rconti wrote:
| Yep. The previous high was in 2006(!). Overall, statewide
| energy consumption seems to be flat or declining.
|
| In 2020, there were extremely high heat days in August, with
| wildfire smoke covering the state. Thankfully I was out of
| town, but my wife was suffering, unable to cool the house OR
| open a window. In 2021 or 2022 I finally broke down and
| bought a window-mounted AC unit for my office, as I work from
| home. In 2024 and 2025 I didn't even bother installing it,
| the summers have been so mild.
|
| https://www.caiso.com/documents/californiaisopeakloadhistory.
| ..
| themafia wrote:
| Equipment dies and needs to be replaced. When that happens
| a more energy efficient unit is usually available and is
| often the best option for replacement.
|
| That's the whole other side to this curve which isn't seen
| very clearly in grid analysis.
| yurishimo wrote:
| This definitely plays a huge factor. Even people who get
| airco for the first time are already beginning with a
| different mindset. They also tend to run the units very
| conservatively because they aren't used to living in an
| air conditioned space and often find it uncomfortable
| after a certain point.
|
| I moved to Western Europe from a US state where airco is
| mandatory. I purchased a split unit here and on the worst
| summer weeks, it still only cost me EUR10 to run the unit
| on its coldest setting for a week (almost continuously
| since I was using it with a fan to blow cooler air around
| the rest of the house). Back in the US, I had summer
| electricity bills of hundreds of dollars every year.
|
| Sure, the weather is a bit more mild here, but there have
| been heat waves, and I'm definitely an outlier when it
| comes to usage. But that just goes to show how efficient
| these new units are!
| mh- wrote:
| What's the kWh price in these two places? That's a huge
| variable.
| pfdietz wrote:
| That happens on a larger scale too. When an energy-
| intensive facility reaches some sort of lifetime limit,
| it too is replaced with something more efficient -- but
| also it will be replaced in a location where costs,
| including energy costs, are lower. So over time such
| facilities will tend to migrate to places where energy
| costs aren't too high.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Statewide _grid_ demand is somewhat declining because
| distributed small-scale solar is massive. It now has an
| aggregate capacity of 20GW. This is usually ignored by
| people who are only looking at ERCOT v. CAISO grid
| statistics. Texas basically doesn 't have any small-scale
| solar.
| rconti wrote:
| Are you saying Texas doesn't have much rooftop solar?
| That's surprising. I suppose largely due to low
| electricity costs making the investment not worth it?
| (And, I suspect, secondarily, utilities not really
| incentivizing it)
| jeffbee wrote:
| And the hail, I suppose.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I never thought about the impact of Texas hail storms on
| solar energy. Is there an industry standard practice to
| shield the panels during hail storms? Or do they use
| stronger glass? I am curious to learn more.
| minitoar wrote:
| UL has a standard, this article goes into some details
| https://www.ul.com/news/manufacturers-say-hail-yes-solar-
| pan...
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| The title of the article gave me a real laugh!
| > Manufacturers Say Hail Yes to Solar Panel Testing
| Loic wrote:
| Tracker systems with "hail stow"[0] mode. They bring the
| panels as vertical as possible.
|
| [0]: https://www.energy.gov/femp/hail-damage-mitigation-
| solar-pho...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Fascinating, the first .gov website I've seen since the
| shutdown that has no obviously partisan "them democrats
| took ur gubmint down!!!"-style message in a top banner.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I'm in a hail-prone region, and the general wisdom is
| that solar panels are more resistant to hail than typical
| shingles are.
|
| Gardens and vinyl siding get shredded by hail and
| vehicles get smashed up, but solar panels generally do
| fine.
| yurishimo wrote:
| In Dallas where I grew up, it wasn't necessarily rare but
| it wasn't a given by any stretch. Maybe 10% of homes the
| last time I lived there (2022)? The neighborhood also
| made a difference.
|
| Where I live now in the Netherlands, it feels like 30-40%
| of private homes have solar and 80%+ of business and
| government buildings that use more energy during the
| daylight hours so the payoff is much more realizable.
| LogicFailsMe wrote:
| Texas has rooftop solar, but it doesn't have the same
| incentives as California, and in fact, the Texas grid
| itself has a million little different franchises that
| repackage Centerpoint and/or Texas and New Mexico Power
| generated electricity with different usage plans you have
| to renew annually to semi-annually.
|
| Our dear leader has been busy decimating small businesses
| that rely on federal incentives to build renewable power
| generation lately. This hit particularly hard in Texas.
|
| The boss move is buying a plan with cheap to free
| electricity at night in exchange for a ludicrous day
| rate, bonus points for buying batteries to self-consume
| and/or charge at night as needed.
|
| Going strictly by the numbers, it's a judgment call as to
| whether it's "worth it" or not, but the power
| independence for doing so is fantastic IMO YMMV. My
| Maslow hierarchy may not match yours.
| chaostheory wrote:
| There's also the more forgiving fire season in some areas. This
| is relevant since a lot of the power transmission goes through
| forests and nature preserves.
| blitzar wrote:
| With current technology getting through long days of sunshine
| linked demand is not an achievement worthy of celebration.
| khuey wrote:
| > sunshine linked demand
|
| The demand _lags_ the sunshine which is why it 's a non-
| trivial problem.
| tempestn wrote:
| With a lot of overlap though. The correlation with sunshine
| is still helpful.
| thakoppno wrote:
| > the URL slug
|
| when will it replace the headline in editorial importance?
| oezi wrote:
| Usually slug, headline and teaser are all considered
| important parts to optimize. My wife works for a big online
| news company and while news journalists write headline and
| teaser, they have editors in chief who edit those again and a
| separate SEO team who will assign slugs.
| k1t wrote:
| I feel like the additional unstated context is that nothing has
| changed.
|
| Power outages are still a common threat, it's just that now
| they are caused by the power companies under the guise of
| wildfire prevention.
|
| I don't care if my power goes out because of lack of supply or
| because you didn't maintain the transmission lines properly -
| the result is the same - I'm angry.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| Shouldn't you control your emotions depending on the reason?
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| While usage of aircon during heatwaves stressing the grid is a
| valid concern, I think massive increase in solar could offset
| it. Solar will also generate maximum energy during sunny days
| with minimal cloud cover, meaning there shouldn't be a shortage
| of energy if there's enough solar.
|
| Since 2022 California has energy from solar by roughly 50%,
| while the population has decreased. Solar is now the biggest
| source of energy in California, and continues to grow. That
| means that future heatwaves should be handled well enough.
| boringg wrote:
| It doesn't solve the problem- its the end of the day when
| solar has ramped down that the crises happens. Its the duck
| curve. Where its still hot and air conditioning is still
| running hard.
|
| Solar depresses the energy demand during the middle of the
| day. Energy storage smooths out the load profile.
| coredog64 wrote:
| Knowing about the duck curve and taking advantage of the
| essentially zero marginal cost of solar, can't most folks
| just crank down their AC temps at 11 or noon such that
| there's no end-of-day demand ramp?
|
| I know folks in Phoenix who are on a time-of-day plan and
| they max out the AC overnight and then barely use it during
| the day (same goal, just they don't have solar)
| mh- wrote:
| This is indeed what I do when it's going to be very hot
| (105+) out.
|
| I run the AC down to 64 overnight, and it's usually
| comfortable until well into the afternoon before it
| starts running at 73-74.
| motorest wrote:
| > It doesn't solve the problem- its the end of the day when
| solar has ramped down that the crises happens. Its the duck
| curve. Where its still hot and air conditioning is still
| running hard.
|
| Isn't that scenario a problem only when the output from
| solar is insufficient to meet the aggregate demand?
|
| From a naive point of view, it looks like this issue would
| be easily mitigated if supply from solar was increased
| enough to allow energy to be stored during peak hours so
| that it could be introduced back in the grid during sunset.
| Why is this scenario being ignored in a thread on how
| California is investing in battery energy storage?
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| You're in a thread about California adding record amounts
| of battery storage. These batteries charge at noon a
| discharge in the evening while demand is peaking. This
| smooths out the supply across the day so it can meet the
| demand.
|
| California did struggle with the duck curve but it's less
| of a problem now. When the next heatwave comes, evening
| aircon demand won't be a problem.
| mh- wrote:
| _> California did struggle with the duck curve but it's
| less of a problem now. When the next heatwave comes,
| evening aircon demand won't be a problem._
|
| The point of my top-level comment was that we don't
| actually _know_ that. Not yet.
|
| I'll be thrilled if that's the case. I'll also be very
| surprised.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I doesn't have to solve the problem.
|
| It just has to help the problem.
|
| Rooftop home solar+storage also doesn't have to SOLVE THE
| PROBLEM IN TOTALITY. It just has to help.
|
| Energy is a cornucopia of solutions, which is a good thing.
| We aren't going to get everything from nuclear, it is far
| too expensive and can't function as a peaker (unless we had
| LFTR but oh well). Geothermal has a lot of potential, but
| it isn't perfect and probably investment heavy. Gas peaking
| is regrettable, but necessary currently. Solar and wind are
| by far the cheapest, but intermittent.
|
| The goal should be stable, available, cheap energy. The
| path to that is solar + wind + battery + peaking + home
| solar/storage, but the grid monopolists aren't interested
| in cheap energy or the loss of control that home
| solar/storage comes with.
|
| The fact that wind and solar are so cheap but grid prices
| are so expensive is an absolute SCANDAL.
| kangs wrote:
| hey you aren't supposed to notice :)
| Xorakios wrote:
| Or 3 days ago in Palm Springs, California, and my power was
| shut off for 2 hours even though it was only 92 degrees
| outside.
| standardUser wrote:
| This is the way. It's become standard practice in China, which
| now leads to the world with half of all battery installations.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| China is a mixed bad, they also lead the world in new coal
| power plants.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Less mixed than the states, more manufacturing and install
| momentum for renewables and far lower kwh install costs.
|
| So many people told me 10 years ago we shouldn't even bother
| trying to reduce global emissions because China would burn us
| all to the ground. So many brain dead takes.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Now I just think about where those takes started and all
| roads always lead back to the same culprits. Your parents
| and the hillbillies don't come up with these takes on their
| own, they always starts somewhere and benefit the person
| whispering it in their ear.
|
| https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2025/10/the-
| piv...
|
| > The EU also hit a landmark in 2025, with more than 50% of
| its electricity coming from renewables by late summer.
|
| > This has not gone unnoticed by the fossil fuel industry,
| which is collectively shitting itself. After a couple of
| centuries of prospecting we know pretty much where all the
| oil, coal, and gas reserves are buried in the ground.
| (Another hint about Ukraine: Ukraine is sitting on top of
| over 670 billion cubic metres of natural gas: to the
| dictator of a neighbouring resource-extraction economy this
| must have been quite a draw.) The constant propaganda and
| astroturfed campaigns advocating against belief in climate
| change must be viewed in this light: by 2040 at the latest,
| those coal, gas, and oil land rights must be regarded as
| stranded assets that can't be monetized, and the land
| rights probably have a book value measured in trillions of
| dollars.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Just because they built it doesn't mean it gets used:
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-china-is-still-
| bu...
| tootie wrote:
| That's 2023. As of today they are expected to hit peak fossil
| fuel usage and start declining within the year.
|
| https://www.climatechangenews.com/2025/09/09/china-on-
| course...
| standardUser wrote:
| The expectation being that they should instead endure energy
| shortages for the common good until their renewable
| installations catch up with demand? A high bar, especially
| for a nation with a greater share of its electricity from
| renewables than most US states.
| rhubarbtree wrote:
| And smashing everything in Nuclear, whilst America turns to
| fossil fuels.
|
| Much as I am against autocracy and oppression, china is doing
| very well at improving their energy sector.
| landl0rd wrote:
| Much as I have problems with current administration, Chris
| Wright is doing an outstanding job working with industry to
| push forward next-gen nuclear. I have a lot of well-founded
| hope for huge progress assuming the next Secretary of
| Energy continues with this and the NRC backs off just a
| little.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The US system of decades of environmental review before any
| energy project can maybe proceed can also be considered a
| form of oppression.
| tooltalk wrote:
| China is adding new coal capacity roughly equal to America's
| entire coal capacity by the end of next year, or 180GW. These
| new installations don't replace old coal plants -- in H1
| 2025, China decomissioned only about 1GW.
|
| China is also increasing their coal footprint outside China
| despite their pledge not to[1].
|
| 1. China Helped Indonesia Build One of the World's Biggest,
| Youngest Coal Fleets. It's Still Growing, Nicholas Kusnetz,
| data analysis by Peter Aldhous, Inside Climate News, Oct 19,
| 2025
| nextworddev wrote:
| Not sure why you are downvoted. Theres bot rings everywhere
| on the internet that downvote anything that mentions
| Chinese emissions
| Peanuts99 wrote:
| China is also the world leader in closing coal power plants
| too.
| Herring wrote:
| They installed so much wind and solar their CO2 emissions
| actually peaked in ~2024 (way ahead of the official 2030
| target) and have been declining ever since.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Much as i dislike China i feel they are pragmatic. I don't know
| if it's justified but i always give them the benefit of the
| doubt that they don't do stupid things for no good reason.
| Unlike Western nations who have to please voters and look good,
| China has no such constraints and are far more transactional.
| They don't care about climate emissions. At all. If they think
| something will be good for them and their economy, they will do
| it. Another thing is that they take big risks, again they are
| beholden to nobody so they can. I think the way forward is to
| be realistic and honest. If renewables are cheaper we should go
| for them, why not? It's free. If not, not. Frankly having
| rolling blackouts in california is not a great argument for
| having more renewables, unless i'm missing something. It might
| be something for politicians to boast about next time they jet
| acrosss the world to attend self serving climate summits, but
| it doesn't help ordinary people. More fossil power plants would
| be more reliable then renewables. OT but Trump has a special
| dislike for green energy and i don't understand why, but it's
| obvious that if it can't compete, or come at least close to
| fossil fuels and nuclear then that should be fully
| acknowledged.
|
| If i'm wrong about China and competely misreading the situation
| in california please let me know.
| Axsuul wrote:
| A lot depends on long term planning but the planning better
| be right. In my opinion, the markets are much better than
| planning.
| standardUser wrote:
| Historically yes, but tell that to our newest superpower
| China.
| slashdave wrote:
| What does rolling blackouts in California have to do with
| renewables? Opposite, really.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Renewables are intermittent and therefore unreliable. Also
| unless california has gone for lots of redundancy the would
| also be displacing fossil fuel power plants. Again i'm not
| trashing renewables, because what's wrong with free energy.
| What i am doing automatically is wondering why batteries
| are a better option then traditional power stations.
|
| California does have much more expensive electricity then
| anywhere else, so it is reasonable for me to scrutinise
| their energy plans more closely and question whether their
| current strategy is really the best one.
| slashdave wrote:
| You are being contradictory.
|
| Solar is not intermittent (the sun shines every day).
| Making your grid reliable is expensive, thus drives
| costs.
| sciencejerk wrote:
| The sun does not shine 24 hours a day. Therefore, if you
| want to run a power grid 24 hours a day, you need
| expensive batteries to hold energy collected during peak
| production. Fossil fuels can be burned continuously,
| lessening the need for energy storage
| LogicFailsMe wrote:
| ~$12,000 is expensive? I await your reasons why this is
| so with baited breath.
|
| https://www.earthtechproducts.com/ecoflow-delta-pro-
| ultra-30...
| labrador wrote:
| I remember the bad old days of rolling black outs when Enron was
| doing energy arbitrage with Calfifornia's electricity. A more
| recent negative event was the battery fire at Moss Landing on the
| Monterrey Bay near where I live. If we use Sodium-ion batteries
| in the future we won't have that risk.
|
| "On January 16, 2025, the Moss Landing 300 battery energy storage
| system at the Moss Landing Vistra power plant (Monterey County,
| Calif.) caught fire."
|
| - The 300-megawatt system held about 100,000 lithium-ion
| batteries. - About 55 percent of the batteries were damaged by
| the fire.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/ca/moss-landing-vistra-battery-fire
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Any time you have hundreds of megawatts of energy stored in a
| small area there is risk. This includes steam boilers, nuclear
| reactors, batteries, dams, etc. No getting away from that. Not
| saying that some battery chemistry might not be easier to
| manage than others.
| jaggederest wrote:
| Well we're probably going to see flow batteries take over in
| fixed position arrays which will mitigate the risk of fire
| pretty substantially, being low density and liquid. It's
| challenging though not impossible to light salt water on
| fire.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I thought the prospects for flow batteries were becoming
| fairly dire due to the decline in cost of Li-ion cells.
|
| LFP promises better fire behavior than older Li-ion
| technologies, I think.
| jaggederest wrote:
| I suspect for extremely large batteries or seasonal
| shifting (summer->winter) flow batteries will still have
| a place, but I could be wrong.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Flow batteries aren't any good for seasonal shifting; the
| capex per kWh-capacity is much too high. Granted,
| ordinary batteries aren't good for that either.
| skybrian wrote:
| Thermal batteries make more sense for that, but they need
| to be super-cheap. One possibility:
|
| https://austinvernon.site/blog/standardthermal.html
| tooltalk wrote:
| >> LFP promises better fire behavior than older Li-ion
| technologies, I think.
|
| LFP's thermal runaway threshold is higher than other
| lithium ion battery types, but once TR starts, LFP
| generates more hydrogen gas that can explode if not air-
| vented out fast enough.
| amitav1 wrote:
| "Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today"
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Well we're probably going to see flow batteries take over
|
| Its unlikley, they are a massive pain to manage compared to
| lithium, expensive and have poor round trip efficiency. Oh
| and terrible energy density.
|
| I'm not saying its impossible, but I'd be surprised.
|
| I think the biggest two factors that play against them is
| that they round trip efficiency is something like 70-80%
| compared to 90%+. but the real pain in the arse is the
| charge managment. From what I understand, you need to
| charge them to full, and then discharge them fully. I don't
| believe that you can charge from halfway.
|
| Most power markets work in 30miunute chunks, so managing
| charging/discharging would be really hard.
| jonlucc wrote:
| This is an inherent problem with storing power. There's a
| massive battery in Missouri known as the Taum Sauk
| hydroelectric dam. During the night, they pump water up the
| hill into the upper reservoir, and in the day, they let the
| water run downhill through turbines to generate electricity.
| In 2005, the wall of the upper reservoir failed.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| The reports I read said this was an older installation - was
| that one setup in the same way as a modern plant would be done?
| That is to say - was there anything unique about this failure
| scenario?
|
| The pictures I saw was that the Moss batteries were located
| inside a building. My mental image of battery storage is
| freight-sized containers offset from each other - presumably to
| minimize fire risk. Or was this plant a common dense
| configuration that is done in areas where they are heavily
| space constrained?
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| The moss landing project has been expanded through several
| iterations. It started construction back in 2019 which is
| near ancient in terms of how fast the BESS industry has
| evolved.
|
| Utilizing NMC cells which were popular at the time instead of
| the more stable LFP variety making up the vast majority of
| storage projects today.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moss_Landing_Power_Plant#Batte.
| ..
| delabay wrote:
| LG Energy Solution supplied the lithium-ion battery
| racks/modules (TR1300 using LG JH4 NMC cells) for Vistra's
| initial 300 MW/1,200 MWh Moss Landing system; Fluence was the
| system integrator/GC.
| hammock wrote:
| People don't talk enough about the risk of fire. The crazy
| thing is when a battery installation catches fire they don't
| actually fight the fire. They just have to let it burn out. The
| resulting environmental damage is terrible.
|
| This happened recently in the Central Valley. I can't remember
| the name of the battery site but it was a huge one, and
| literally right next door to one of the largest Driscolls
| strawberry farms, on which black lithium smoke settled all over
| , over the course of several days/weeks in the middle of the
| summer.
|
| Edit: maybe we are talking about the same fire?
| https://x.com/TheKevinDalton/status/1880277672393412848
| epistasis wrote:
| Correct, it wasn't the Central Valley, it was Moss Landing.
|
| Though there were lots of fears about the fire, the biggest
| risk was that the battery was destroyed. There has been
| ongoing soil testing and not much found, in this worst case
| situation of a battery fire.
|
| It is definitely fueling fears, however! A few highly
| motivated individuals put up big hand painted signs in their
| neighborhoods decrying the evils of batteries, and the
| terrible fires they cause. It's enough fear mongering that
| visitors to popular beaches 20 miles upwind, were imagining
| metallic tastes in the air months afterwards.
| hammock wrote:
| Did they test the air or just the soil? You mentioned they
| imagined the taste of the air but didn't mention if they
| actually tested the air. And who tests it?
| epistasis wrote:
| The county put up testing results and methods here:
|
| https://www.readymontereycounty.org/emergency/2025-moss-
| land...
|
| As with all testing of this sort that I've ever seen,
| third parties do the testing and analysis.
|
| I mention the air as an example of fear getting out
| waaaaaay in front of any risks. Testing the air would be
| pointless, 20 miles upwind. The metallic taste was either
| from other sources or psychosomatic.
|
| The health risks of battery fires have been mostly
| evaluated in the context of fire fighting, where, air
| metals _are_ a concern, but only in confined spaces.
| Nickel is the primary concern there. After reading about
| these, my only fears were for the workers for nickel
| production.
|
| I am very very concerned about air quality, but the real
| risk there is from car traffic, specifically the tire
| microplastics and brake dust. There are big and
| measurable health effects from that, where even reducing
| traffic near schools by 10% could actually impact lives.
| However because people drive cars and are used to the bad
| health effects, nobody is scared of the negative health
| from cars. Instead the human mind focuses on new things
| because they are new, not because of the relative risk.
| For decades there were natural gas smokestacks pouring
| exhaust over the strawberry fields, the batteries that
| replaced them (to make use of the big power lines) are a
| huge improvement to human health, even with the fire.
| random3 wrote:
| There's this post about sodium-ion batteries from two days ago -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45677243
|
| My understanding is that they are particularly good for large
| scale storage. It looks like it's relevant part of China's
| strategy.
|
| Yet, there seems to be close to 0 in the US in general (except
| from some pilots). I find it weird at least to boast about
| battery energy storage as a strategy while ignoring the most
| relevant aspect wrt to the future of battery-based storage.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It looks like it 's relevant part of China's strategy_
|
| For grid storage? Source?
| random3 wrote:
| https://www.energy-storage.news/world-first-grid-scale-
| sodiu...
|
| Also in US https://www.peakenergy.com/news
| dwood_dev wrote:
| While Sodium Ion may be the future of grid batteries, it's not
| the present. As long as LFP is cheaper, there is no reason to
| go with Sodium.
|
| This calculus will probably change in 3-5 years, but today
| Sodium is more expensive and therefore has little demand
| without some form of discount or subsidy.
|
| The switch will be rapid once the economics make sense, but
| they don't yet.
| nharada wrote:
| CATL is claiming mass production of their sodium-ion
| batteries starts in December, with a target price of $10/kWh.
| If that ends up even partway true it'll completely change the
| economics of power storage.
| nextworddev wrote:
| CATL is just dumping
| nharada wrote:
| What makes you say that? I don't know this space very
| well
| nextworddev wrote:
| Dumping batteries is yet another strategy to take control
| of global energy infrastructure and destabilize
| petrodollar
| nharada wrote:
| Oh yeah I get what you're saying but is that a thing?
| Like CATL has had lines before that aren't making a
| profit?
| Qwertious wrote:
| It's not a thing; people are just stuck in the 2000s and
| think that China can't beat the West technologically and
| therefore must be cheating.
| nextworddev wrote:
| They have decent technology (which they stole a decent
| chunk) and cheat at the same time.. nothing to do with
| the west feeling insecurity. In fact, the west could
| benefit from some mobilizing around insecurity
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| CATL had a profit of $2.6B last quarter on sales of $15B.
| That indicates they're pricing well above cost rather
| than below it.
| tooltalk wrote:
| dumping doesn't depend on profit or loss. Also the legal
| definition of dumping is less-than-the-"normal value."
| (see Article VI ANTI-DUMPING AND COUNTERVAILING DUTIES of
| GATT 1994).
|
| But then China is a non-market-economy, so none of these
| rules apply in a hypothetical anti-dumping case -- ie,
| China's local price, or "normal value" doesn't matter.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| A normal value for a highly competitive commodity part
| like a battery is about 3% above cost. CATL charges over
| 20% above cost. So you might have an argument that CATL
| has monopoly pricing power and is gouging its customers.
|
| IOW that they're illegally charging too much, not that
| they are illegally charging too little.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Western folks still don't get how China works more than
| two decades after WTO lol
| bmicraft wrote:
| That's plain wrong, they have not announced that price
| target anywhere. There is speculation that it could be
| there target internally for the long term, but there is
| basically zero chance they'll start at that price and no
| guarantees they'll ever reach it.
| nharada wrote:
| You're right, I can't find any primary sources for this
| number. Yahoo[1] reports this number and attributes it to
| Bloomberg NEF but I can't find an actual article from
| Bloomberg with this number, or any actual target number
| in it.
|
| [1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-10-sodium-ion-
| battery-16505...
| grayrest wrote:
| > CATL is claiming mass production of their sodium-ion
| batteries starts in December, with a target price of
| $10/kWh.
|
| This got widely reported but there doesn't seem to be any
| source. I'll reference this video [1] to cover the claim
| along with a comparison to industry projections. Apologies
| for the video link but I don't have an article handy that
| addresses the topic as directly.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/KjiqqafD_0w?t=861
| nharada wrote:
| You're right, I can't find any primary sources for this
| number. Yahoo[1] reports this number and attributes it to
| Bloomberg NEF but I can't find an actual article from
| Bloomberg with this number, or any actual target number
| in it.
|
| [1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-10-sodium-ion-
| battery-16505...
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Sodium ion production is only recently starting to ramp up. It
| will take a few years for that to put a dent into LFP
| marketshare (both for grid storage and EVs). China is a bit
| ahead of course. CATL just announced they are starting mass
| production of their second generation battery in December. It
| will take a while for that factory to get to full speed
| production. And if they are building more factories, that will
| also take a while. Think 10s of ghw production short term.
|
| The US only recently got volume production of LFP working. A
| lot of the battery production there is still older chemistries
| based on NMC. Companies like Peak Energy are indeed
| experimenting with sodium ion and are looking pretty good right
| now. But they don't have any mass production facilities yet.
| That's years away at best.
|
| I expect there may be some licensing deals with Chinese
| manufacturers down the line to address this. Sodium ion might
| become a lot more dominant from 2030 onward. Until then, LFP
| should remain dominant.
|
| And with LFP being quite decent already, there's no need to
| wait until the 2030s with large scale grid storage deployments.
| This stuff works right now. That's why adoption is so high and
| rapid around the world.
| Lammy wrote:
| I don't really care if the power stays on for five-nines as long
| as I'm still paying 61C//kW-h for it :/
|
| https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/resid...
| blindriver wrote:
| This. Electricity costs are almost 5x the cost in Nevada.
| bradlys wrote:
| Criminally overpriced. We're not getting shit for it either.
|
| God forbid you live in any of the more woody parts of
| California either. You'll have to have your own battery or
| generator anyway. As someone who plans to live in the Santa
| Cruz Mountains long term, I will be going completely off grid
| as PG&E will just cut power forever rather than fix anything.
| dmix wrote:
| Why is PG&E so poorly run? I don't live there, just follow
| the news and their name comes up constantly in negative
| press.
| bradlys wrote:
| It's a public company, not run directly by the government.
| It has a monopoly dictated by the CA government.
|
| They have no interest in doing good service but instead in
| making money. They don't have to really answer to anyone.
| Supposedly the CA government could implement things to
| improve the lives of Californians that would influence how
| PG&E operates but CA politicians are bought off by this
| corporation. So, there we have it
| hunterpayne wrote:
| PG&E is a utility. The amount of profit they make is
| decided by the state regulators. And the idea that PG&E
| buys CA politicians is laughable. The state worker's
| unions pension funds control CA state politics. They are
| the ones that donate the most money, PG&E doesn't even
| get a seat at the metaphorical table.
|
| PS The largest and 3rd largest holders of US equity are
| those CA public sector union pension funds. They have far
| deeper pockets than PG&E by at least 10x.
| nullc wrote:
| > The amount of profit they make is decided by the state
| regulators
|
| Which set things up so the money PG&E makes is a linear
| function in the money PG&E wastes. -- the regulations set
| a fixed profit margin, so to make more money PG&E need
| simply waste more money and pass the cost onto the public
| which is exactly what they are doing.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| Greed and no competition.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| They have worst of both worlds with California-tier
| corporate culture and Californian politics.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >I will be going completely off grid as PG&E will just cut
| power forever rather than fix anything.
|
| Depending on where you live you, your neighbors and/or your
| predecessors likely a) voted for people who wrote laws to
| make that illegal b) sneered at anyone who wouldn't want to
| be on the grid.
| bradlys wrote:
| It's a capitalist run power grid in CA. It's a publicly
| traded company. Nothing more capitalist than making my own
| power when the competition sucks ass.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| If you think power infrastructure and supplying the
| electrons that jiggle on it are any sort of example of
| free market capitalism I have a bridge to sell you.
| bradlys wrote:
| It's a publicly traded company. Feel free to do your
| research.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| PG&E is a public utility. Everything they do down to
| department budgets are decided by state regulators. I
| imagine almost everyone on this board already knew that
| PG&E was a publicly traded company. But just because they
| are a publicly traded company, that doesn't mean that
| they get to do anything they want. It just means their
| stock can be bought and sold by others, in the case of
| PG&E its mostly owned by public sector union pension
| funds. So it is a quasi-public utility owned by
| government workers in a highly regulated market. The idea
| its some sort of paragon of capitalism is absurd. Just
| about anything they do can be traced back to a decision
| made by an appointed state government body.
| sgustard wrote:
| Well the faster you get off the grid, the cheaper it'll be
| for the rest of us. All PGE's problems are caused by running
| powerlines for you through fire-prone kindling wilderness.
| Lammy wrote:
| We could have had atomic energy generated right here in the
| Bay Area (Sonoma). You can actually go visit the "hole in
| Bodega Head" where PG&E started digging the reactor pit
| before being made to stop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo
| dega_Bay_Nuclear_Power_Plant
| bradlys wrote:
| PG&E's problems are caused by malcompliance and the rules
| being written by a public traded company instead of by an
| accountable government. There are plenty of people living
| in the woods in other states that aren't causing massive
| wildfires that cover the US in smoke every season.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| PG&E's corruption is laid bare by Silicon Valley Power, which
| serves the town of Santa Clara, charging less than half what
| PG&E does for the house a few blocks over [1].
|
| [1] https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees
| jeffbee wrote:
| I will only put this down once because I repeat it in many
| threads and I'm sure people are tired of hearing it, but the
| reason that isolated municipal utilities are offering great
| prices locally is that they are free-riding on things that
| PG&E ratepayers bought.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they are free-riding on things that PG &E ratepayers
| bought_
|
| Genuinely curious, how is that the case for Silicon Valley
| Power?
| jeffbee wrote:
| How do you think SVP buys energy from its contracted
| generators? They don't own transmission from those places
| (unlike SMUD which, to an incomplete extent, actually
| does own its generating assets and transmission lines).
| SVP pays regulated wholesale distribution rates to PG&E
| to get access to their contracted generators. But the
| process determining such rates ignores the way that
| wildfire liability is assigned to PG&E, which is a
| significant part of current PG&E retail rates. It also
| ignores mandates such as rural electrification. PG&E must
| serve every yokel in California no matter how far out,
| while SVP and other MUDs contribute nothing to rural
| electrification mandates.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _PG &E must serve every yokel in California no matter
| how far out_
|
| Has anyone estimated the cost savings of relieving this
| mandate?
| danans wrote:
| > PG&E must serve every yokel in California no matter how
| far out, while SVP and other MUDs contribute nothing to
| rural electrification mandates
|
| You can both be right about this. PGE is subject to rural
| electrification mandates.
|
| However, the way those mandates get satisfied can vary
| tremendously in cost, and because by regulation investor
| owned utilities are compensated as a % of their capex
| spend, there is an incentive to use more expensive
| solutions, especially when those solutions induce greater
| dependency on their transmission infrastructure.
|
| Furthermore, apart from expensive bespoke off-grid
| setups, there is inherently no competition in
| transmission in distribution. It's a natural monopoly.
|
| AFAIK, municipal utilities do not have any say over how
| IOU monopolies deploy capital, so why should they be
| subject to those costs?
|
| If we feel that rural communities deserve electrical
| service (don't we all deserve it?), then perhaps those
| should be publicly owned/financed through taxes and a
| competitive bidding process by private entities, not
| shunted into uneven electricity rates.
| zbrozek wrote:
| Ultimately the California Legislature and the CPUC (and
| therefore the governor who appoints them) are at-fault for
| rates. PG&E is a regulated monopoly, and in-theory the
| regulators are supposed to drive value for ratepayers. But our
| regulators simply do not care and do not perform. The
| legislature has larded a bunch of redistribution onto rates,
| and burdened the regulator with a bunch of conflicting goals.
|
| The regulator has no accountability to anyone and just rubber-
| stamps everything the utilities put in front of them, allowing
| them to skimp on opex (maintenance) in order to turn everything
| into capex with cost-plus guaranteed profit. This incentivizes
| making everything as expensive and as brittle as possible.
|
| Either we need to restructure the market to be more
| competitive, or we need to restructure the regulations and the
| regulator to be more performant and responsive to ratepayers.
| We're suffering a ruinous misalignment of incentives and the
| best the legislature can think of to fix it is to make it
| cheaper for the IOUs to borrow money.
| lokar wrote:
| The regulators also fail to force proper long term
| maintenance.
|
| IMO the issue is the board is appointed, and it's just full
| of political allies.
|
| We should fill boards like this with experts. For example,
| make a majority of the board be tenured professors of
| engineering and finance from the university of California
| with no financial connections to the industry.
| qaq wrote:
| CA has strange pockets of pretty well setup infra. Like Carlsbad
| has a desalination plant, and a modern standby ng power plant
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I wish we'd put some desal plants in the north of the state and
| start feeding into the CA aqueduct and unlocking more Central
| Valley farmland
| andbberger wrote:
| farming with desal water is insane. even with abundant power.
| qaq wrote:
| why ? at scale desal water via solar looks to be very
| reasonable thing ?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Current legal setups generally actively encourage people
| to waste water that they have property rights to. It
| would be infinitely better return on investment to reform
| that and put proper incentives in place, rather than work
| around it with technology.
| delabay wrote:
| Interesting how they never mention that these are Tesla Megapack
| 2 XL units (LFP chemistry) manufactured at Tesla's Lathrop, CA
| "Megafactory."
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Interesting how they never mention that these are Tesla
| Megapack 2 XL units_
|
| It's a story about California's battery storage. Tesla hasn't
| built all of that capacity.
|
| For a Tesla (or other battery producer) press release? Sure.
| For an article about the general phenomenon? Irrelevant to the
| point that if it were included I'd be suspicious of the article
| being a plant.
| delabay wrote:
| By my estimate (GPT5) Tesla has up to 17% of all front and
| behind the meter battery storage in CA, and is also the
| vendor growing the fastest in CA. The California battery
| storage story is also a Tesla story, but based on the
| positive tone of the article, it clearly made more sense to
| leave Tesla out of it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _By my estimate (GPT5)_
|
| Please don't do this.
| delabay wrote:
| What's your source?
| jrflowers wrote:
| Are you asking Criscross if they have a source for _your_
| statement?
| jrflowers wrote:
| > By my estimate (GPT5)
|
| You know treating a thing that makes stuff up as a source
| of truth is the same thing as making stuff up right? You
| might as well have written By my estimate (as revealed to
| me in a dream)
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| But is he wrong?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _is he wrong?_
|
| Yes.
|
| "Nearly 75 players are active in the CAISO battery
| storage ecosystem. Top players include EIG Management
| Company, NextEra Energy, Arevon Energy, Hectate Energy,
| and Cultivate Power, all of which have eight or more
| projects underway" [1].
|
| Tesla isn't yet a player in utility storage. (They're at
| the table, but only starting to bid, and they're more or
| less politically fucked in America for the time being on
| that front.$
|
| [1] https://blog.yesenergy.com/yeblog/the-caiso-energy-
| storage-r...
| jrflowers wrote:
| I would be more inclined to check and see if someone's
| dream revelation was correct than be a human search
| engine for people that don't want to use one.
| thegreatpeter wrote:
| If you google any article about eland it literally says they
| use tesla batteries that were built here in the US
|
| i think tesla has built MOST of the capacity
| hagbard_c wrote:
| That information does not fit the narrative so it is left
| unsaid.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _That information does not fit the narrative so it is left
| unsaid_
|
| This is a good opportunity to calibrate your sense of truth.
|
| The _LA Times_ is owned by _this_ South African-born
| immigrant [1]. (Himself the the son of "Chinese immigrant
| parents who fled China during the Japanese occupation.") He
| is, like Elon, pro-Trump (after, like Musk, supporting
| Democrats when _they_ were in power) [2]. And he, like Elon,
| has censored his publication to reflect his views, including
| by opposing anti-Musk content [3].
|
| If you're reading an article in the _LA Times_ and, being
| upset it isn 't mentioning Tesla, concluding it's part of an
| anti-Musk conspiracy, you're dead wrong. But you're probably
| also wrong about other adjacent hypotheses.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Soon-Shiong
|
| [2] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/13/la-times-owner-
| mane...
|
| [3] https://www.status.news/p/los-angeles-times-patrick-soon-
| shi...
| nandomrumber wrote:
| It does mention another battery manufacturer, Spark. Where
| do they fit in to the narrative?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Where do they fit in to the narrative?_
|
| What narrative? If you're saying even a pro-Trump pro-
| Elon newspaper whose owner has a history of weighing in
| for Musk has a bias against him, you're saying Elon's
| massively lost not only standing but also sympathy across
| the aisle.
|
| If that's true, his companies are toast. That doesn't
| seem to be the case. So maybe revisit the hypothesis when
| the data reject it.
| roman_soldier wrote:
| The LA Times famously a left leaning publication and its
| stories are written and edited by the employees who are
| likely to be anti Musk, Trump hating woke types. The owner
| is a business man and will let the editors write for the
| audience's biases.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| How do you know that's the reason?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How do you know that 's the reason?_
|
| Just noticed that their profile basically taunts that
| they're a troll [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hagbard_c
| hagbard_c wrote:
| If openness equals trolling you're absolutely right but
| if that is the case it does raise the question whether
| the site name covers the site content.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| Making a claim without evidence is akin to trolling
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Interesting how the only dollar figure mentioned in the article
| is about money the Trump administration has put up to refurbish
| coal plants.
| danans wrote:
| Relatedly, CA utilities have begun offering hourly variable
| priced rate plans, which will allow consumers with batteries to
| theoretically achieve lower average rates if your batteries can
| rate-follow. It's still not available for net metering plans,
| though.
|
| https://www.pge.com/en/account/rate-plans/hourly-flex-pricin...
|
| https://www.pge.com/en/account/rate-plans/hourly-flex-pricin...
| cbmuser wrote:
| The electricity mix in France is still way cleaner than in
| California:
|
| - France: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/5y/yearly
|
| - California: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-
| CISO/5y/year...
|
| And their kWh costs less than 20 Cents in the standard plan:
|
| - https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Of...
|
| They even offer flex prices going down as low as 12,32 Cents/kWh.
|
| Nuclear power rules.
| alecco wrote:
| Nothing to be proud of. Dangerous ancient reactors owned by an
| almost bankrupt company about to be nationalized.
|
| https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/02/03/the-long...
| olejorgenb wrote:
| https://archive.ph/RQxKM
| pas wrote:
| if they can run them safely they should. is ASN not
| trustworthy?
|
| they are doing reviews every 10 year, and as they get older
| they can increase the frequency of reviews.
|
| also the article mentions no dangers with regards to the
| reactors.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >almost bankrupt company
|
| "Published on February 3, 2023"
|
| Since then, in 2023 and 2024 EDF posted over 10 billion a
| year profits.
| alecco wrote:
| In 2022 they lost 18bn because they had to repair
| widespread "stress corrosion cracking". And it was
| nationalized.
| mpweiher wrote:
| Incorrect.
|
| It was always a public/nationalized company. It started
| 100% owned by the government. In the 2000s, around 15%
| were sold to pension funds, so way over 80% in the hands
| of the state, which by EU rules (and common sense) makes
| it a state company.
|
| The floating shares were bought back in order to
| facilitate the nuclear expansion plans.
|
| The losses in 2022 were largely due to the energy crisis
| because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which interacted
| rather nastily with the French ARENH program that
| requires EDF to sell 25% of its power output for 4
| cents/kWh, no matter what the market rates. And no matter
| if it needs that power itself.
|
| When the energy crunch hit in 2022, wholesale electricity
| rates rose up to EUR1 / kWh. So EDF had to sell its
| electricity for 4 cents, then buy it back at 25x markup
| for EUR1.
|
| Oh, and the government actually increased the ARENH
| quotas to more than 25%, because it used EDF to subsidize
| consumer/industry energy prices, something that was done
| by the states directly in other countries.
|
| The problems with a part of the fleet, largely due to
| deferred maintenance during COVID, also didn't help.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Good luck building nuclear in non-generational timescales and
| at reasonable prices.
|
| The future is solar simply because these electricity catchers
| from the sky fusion are mass producible goods that you can just
| keep pumping and pointing it to the sky in matter of days at
| dirt cheap prices.
| xondono wrote:
| > Good luck building nuclear in non-generational timescales
| and at reasonable prices.
|
| Or we could treat nuclear rationally and stop increasing the
| price three orders of magnitude past diminishing returns..
| cheema33 wrote:
| > Or we could treat nuclear rationally and stop increasing
| the price three orders of magnitude past diminishing
| returns
|
| Who is we here? Do you have examples of any countries
| having successfully done what you are proposing?
| streptomycin wrote:
| China
| https://x.com/bataille_chris/status/1981476968202752109
| adrianN wrote:
| And still even China is adding as much solar as their
| total nuclear capacity on a yearly basis.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| 'We' could refer to democratic societies that regulate
| nuclear energy with absurdly stringent standards beyond
| how we regulate other forms of energy. Just the
| regulatory cost of approving a new small reactor design
| exceeds 500 Million Dollars! That's the lifetime earnings
| of thousands of engineers and bureaucrats.
| epistasis wrote:
| $0.5B is a tiny rounding error in the cost of standing up
| the first GW of a new tech. If SMRs could be built for
| $10/W, which is overly optimistic, that would be $10B.
| Much more likely is $30B-$50B for that first GW. And SMRs
| are not even going to start getting to a halfway
| competitive cost until at least several GW in. If they
| can eventually get to $5/W they might have a chance at
| competing for a fraction of the grid.
|
| All this is to say that if there are high costs imposed
| by regulation, it's not the regulatory process it's in
| the cost of building the final design.
|
| However, the "regulations make nuclear expensive" folks
| never seem to be able to propose the changes that might
| make nuclear cheaper, or by how much. The only concrete
| proposals I have heard are from people skeptical that
| nuclear can ever be cost competitive!
| diordiderot wrote:
| > Do you have examples of any countries having
| successfully done what you are proposing?
|
| France pre 21st century, China, Korea, Poland.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Does anyone have actual numbers on what France's nuclear
| fleet cost? I thought it was somewhat shrouded in mystery
| due to government and national security subsidies.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > national security subsidies.
|
| The bit they always say quietly is that you need nuclear
| reactors to provide the material for nuclear weapons.
| oezi wrote:
| Since when does Poland have a significant nuclear power
| generation program?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Poland
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| South Korea had a massive corruption scandal. I guess it
| takes cheating to deliver?
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-
| greed...
|
| China is barely building nuclear power. In terms of their
| grid mix it is backsliding.
|
| Poland haven't built any so noconfirmed numbers yet?
| xondono wrote:
| > Who is we here? Do you have examples of any countries
| having successfully done what you are proposing?
|
| Does it really matter? There's always a first country to
| do anything.
|
| It makes no sense actual exposure to radiation is
| increasing because of the lack of nuclear plants...
| newyankee wrote:
| also because it is modular which really works for the Global
| south, it can be taken to demand centers and demand adjusted
| to the supply to a small extent (e.g. irrigation pumps)
| sgustard wrote:
| Quebec has them both beat. Hydro rules!
|
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/CA-QC/5y/yearly
|
| (To be transparent, there's controversy around calling
| hydroelectric renewable.)
| foobarian wrote:
| Hydro does rule. Top 8 power stations are hydro right now.
| And the top power station has been a hydro for over a hundred
| years now. Very cool! Three Gorges has capacity of 22.5 GW.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I really hope nothing bad happens at the three gorges dam.
| There's nearly half a billion people that would have to be
| evacuated, and tens of millions who likely wouldn't be able
| to evacuate in time due to proximity.
|
| I'd rather live near a modern nuclear plant myself.
| Yeul wrote:
| Dutch people live under sea level but everyone trusts in
| the engineering.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I am a bit biased, as an engineer who works exclusively in
| hydro powerplants, but i think they're awesome too. With that
| said, it's becoming more apparent that in addition to the
| biosphere issues they cause, they also cause a pretty
| significant amount of methane to be released.
| https://www.hydropower.org/blog/new-study-sheds-light-on-
| res...
|
| It would put me out of a job but I'd still rather see a surge
| in nuke generation and solar with storage, at least until we
| get fusion figured out.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > I'd still rather see a surge in nuke generation and solar
| with storage
|
| How about wind?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Wind is good too!
| oezi wrote:
| The linked article doesn't put these emissions in relation
| to anything. It is hard to imagine it to be a relevant
| amount of emissions, right?
| ziotom78 wrote:
| What strikes me is the fact that nuclear power has received
| an incredible amount of backslash after the Chernobyl
| incident (a few thousands deaths) and the Fukushima incident
| (one disputed death), but hydroelectric power is considered a
| "good" source of energy despite a few incredibly deadly
| incidents:
|
| - Banquiao (China, 1975): between 26.000 and 240.000 [1]
|
| - Derna (Lybia, 2023): between 6000 and 20.000 deaths [2]
|
| - Machchu (India, 1979): 5000 deaths [3]
|
| - Vajont (Italy, 1963): 2000 deaths [4]
|
| - Mohne dam (Germany, 1943): 1500 deaths [5]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Derna_dam_collapse
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morvi_dam_failure
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam
|
| [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6hne_Reservoir
| rkomorn wrote:
| And the environmental impact up and downstream (both for
| failure cases and regular operation).
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| I think this line of thinking comes from a westernized
| world where all water is controlled.
|
| Many dams have been built around the world not for power
| generation, but to control flooding. The power generation
| is a secondary concern.
|
| In aggregate dams have saved far more lives, by managing
| flood waters.
|
| The great thing in 2025 is that we don't need either the
| dam or nuclear risk for our electricity needs.
|
| Just build renewables and storage and the risk for the
| general public is as close to zero as we can get. The only
| people involved in accidents are those that chose to work
| in the industry installing and maintaining the gear.
|
| We should of course continue to focus on work place safety
| but for the general public the risk of a life changing
| evacuation, radiation exposure or flood from dam failure
| does not exist.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| As you say, dams are a net positive, and while failures
| do happen, these days we tend to be wiser about where we
| put PHES in particular.
|
| I guess I'm surprised it isn't more of an option for
| California - the U.K. uses Snowdonia as a giant battery,
| and afaik there's been one failure of a dam that wiped
| half of trefriw off the map a century ago - which wasn't
| hard as it's a speck of a place. Since then the lakes
| have pretty reliably and safely provided somewhere to
| stick excess energy, and now are largely pumped by the
| offshore wind arrays nearby.
|
| California has big mountains, but I'm not sure if the
| geology or terrain is right for PHES.
| disentanglement wrote:
| Did you really just attribute the deaths from a bombing
| raid on a dam during WW2 to a hydropower incident?
| kakacik wrote:
| If a nuclear reactor was bombed during the war, would the
| resulting deaths be counted as a nuclear disaster and
| used as argument against it, or just another war crime?
| Depends who you ask I'd say.
| ziotom78 wrote:
| I was going to reply, but kakacik already said what I
| wanted.
| mpweiher wrote:
| Is Fukushima generally attributed to the Tsunami or to
| nuclear power?
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Does that really matter? The cleanup costs are still
| socialized.
|
| It is time we move on from the fossil tradition of
| socialized losses on private profits [1] and instead let
| the nuclear industry bear their true insurance cost.
|
| No externalizing of costs like today.
|
| [1]: https://www.imo.org/en/about/conventions/pages/inter
| national...
| mpweiher wrote:
| It does if you complain that a hydropower disaster had a
| different proximate cause, which the person I replied to
| did.
|
| The whole intermittent renewables scam is private profits
| and socialized losses.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Not sure why you got so worked up?
|
| Then I suppose nuclear power is also a scam given thant
| 45% of the capacity in Sweden was out last week and we
| all know how it went for the French during the energy
| crisis. [1]
|
| The electricity grid is fundamentally running on marginal
| cost. How will you force everyone with rooftop solar and
| home batteries to buy horrendously expensive new built
| nuclear power when they can supply their own electricity?
|
| [1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-
| power-fra...
| mpweiher wrote:
| Who is worked up? You seem to be. Why?
|
| I am just correcting misinformation and disinformation.
|
| And no, you suppose incorrectly.
|
| Intermittent renewables are a scam, because they get to
| privately reap benefits and socialize their costs,
| particularly their intermittency.
|
| They can be useful, as long as they have to bear the
| costs of being intermittent. That means at minimum no
| feed-in priority and no fixed and/or guaranteed feed-in
| prices. Ideally, they would be required either (a)
| provide guaranteed power or (b) only be allowed to feed
| in _after_ all the reliable plants.
|
| Well, (b) would imply (a), so let's go with that.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| This tells me you don't know how a grid works. You do
| know that the demand is variable right?
|
| With the same reasoning nuclear power is a scam because
| it can't adapt to the grid demand and forces gas peakers
| to sit in standby. Socializing the losses, to use your
| words.
|
| In California the grid shifts between ~15 GW at the
| minimum and 52 GW at the peak.
|
| When studies have looked at the difference in
| dispatchable power required comparing majorly renewables
| or nuclear powered grids when _meeting_ true a grid
| demand the difference is quite small.
|
| It does favor nuclear power but the differences are not
| significant in the grand scheme of things when factoring
| in the absolutely stupid cost for new built western
| nuclear power.
|
| These studies of course did not take into account 45% of
| the nuclear fleet being offline, they modeled it based on
| their average ~85% capacity factor.
|
| Or are you suggesting that we should have peaking nuclear
| plants to match grid demand? So it isn't a scam for the
| ratepayers?
| mpweiher wrote:
| The one who doesn't know how the grid works is you.
|
| _Some_ demand is variable. But a lot (usually most) is
| not. So having reliable base generation is highly
| valuable and not having that base-load generation ramp up
| and down is a feature, not a bug.
|
| Intermittent generation is not variable, it is
| intermittent. Whereas to meet variable demand it would
| need to be dispatchable. Look it up.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatchable_generation
|
| Intermittent renewables are not dispatchable. Not even a
| bit.
|
| The US nuclear fleet's CF has hovered over 90%. France's
| is only in the high 70s or low 80s because they do
| extensive load following (the stuff you say nuclear can't
| do...they've only been doing it for four decades or so).
|
| France took its fleet offline in the summer of 2022,
| because that is where demand is lowest and generation
| from intermittent renewables is highest, for example
| Germany typically has to give away lots of electricity
| (or even pay consumers to get rid of it) because of their
| guaranteed feed-in.
|
| In the end, France had to import only 4% of its
| electricity even in 2022, and most of that was in the
| summer, again where electricity prices are lowest because
| of high generation and low demand. And during all the
| other years it tends to be largest exporter of
| electricity in Europe if not the world.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Love it. Just pretend that you can separate the grid into
| a "baseload" portion and "everything" else.
|
| Like I said, on a yearly basis the Californian grid goes
| from 15GW to 50 GW.
|
| That your nuclear grid will collapse when a cold spell
| hits leading to people freezing to death is fine.
|
| Thats a socialized loss! Someone else will need to solve
| it!
|
| I love that you completely ignored the Swedish example
| from last week.
|
| And then with a sleight of hand ignored that the French
| nuclear issues persisted throughout the entire energy
| crisis winter.
| mpweiher wrote:
| LOL.
|
| Like France's grid has collapsed every year for the last
| 40 years.
|
| And of course California's grid is well known for its
| stability. Or was that brownouts, rolling blackouts and
| high prices? Well, one of the two.
|
| Nice chatting with you. Well, amusing at least.
|
| Sweden just approved new nuclear construction, after
| rescinding a nuclear exit.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| So it is apparently fine to balance a nuclear grid with
| fossil fuels????
|
| Just pretend that the fossil fuels doesn't exist by
| exporting the nuclear electricity and have someone else
| build them and balance both grids!
|
| What do you think would happen if you tried sticking two
| French grids with an over supply of nuclear powered
| electricity when no one wants the electricity next to
| each other?
|
| You mean the brownouts storage and renewables have now
| completely fixed?
|
| Yeah, way faster than handouts to new built nuclear power
| and waiting until the 2040s for the solution!
|
| > Sweden just approved new nuclear construction, after
| rescinding a nuclear exit.
|
| Yes. The current government has spent soon four years
| pushing paperwork around. They want nuclear power without
| having to accept the costs.
|
| They seem to not want to have the costs associated with
| new built nuclear power subsidies on their political
| records for their entire careers.
|
| I bet they will push through a monstrous handout package
| the final weeks before the election next September and
| then spend years crying about it being cut.
| hylaride wrote:
| In Quebec, most of the dams are in the middle of nowhere,
| but your point still stands.
|
| There are costs/risks for most forms of power. If you're in
| an environment where wind and solar can make economical
| sense, go for it. For reliable base loads, I still think
| order of preference should be:
|
| - geothermal (very rare and hard to do at scale, though) -
| hydro
|
| - nuclear
|
| - natural gas
|
| - oil/diesel (at very small, localized levels eg remote
| villages)
|
| - burning live babies and cute animals
|
| - coal
| derriz wrote:
| Electricity prices are set by the French government not the
| wholesale cost or cost of production. Which is why EDF - the
| operator of the French nuclear fleet - regularly posts massive
| losses. Like the EUR18 billion loss in 2023.
|
| https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/02/17/france-s...
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| 2022, not 2023. That was due to one time effect of corrosion
| repairs.
|
| For 2023 and 2024 EDF was profitable, with net income of
| those two years exceeding that 2022 loss.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| And I'm generally a nuclear proponent but one of the worst
| investments the French utility made was investing in the
| UKs reactor debacle at Hinkley C.
| caminante wrote:
| Per wiki, cost midrange is now 45 BEUR. That's ~14
| MEUR/MW capacity (v. solar @ ~1MEUR/MW).
|
| Ouch!
| Tade0 wrote:
| To make matters worse gas peaker plants cost
| approximately EUR1mln/MW as well, so at the cost of that
| plant you could have massively overprovisioned solar,
| backup gas plants and plenty of money for fuel to spare
| which you wouldn't be spending immediately, so it could
| be invested instead.
| caminante wrote:
| Yes, though gas plant install prices are 2-3MEUR/MW these
| days due to demand/supply.
| MaxL93 wrote:
| It should be noted that most of EDF's massive losses are due
| to the ARENH.
|
| The European Union insists that EDF must sell energy at very
| discounted prices, so that third-party "providers" can make
| an entry on the energy market. The idea was that they would
| eventually sell their own energy supply, but most just
| pocketed the difference between the dirt-cheap energy & what
| they charged customers, then ran away the moment there was
| any hint of change on the horizon.
|
| Or, to put it in simpler, blunter terms: in the name of
| "competition", EDF was forced to heavily subsidize companies
| that turned out to be nothing more than rent-seekers that
| only sought to, effectively, grab free subsidy money.
|
| Here are some articles about it:
|
| 2022: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/10/edf-
| sues-fr... 2023: https://www.ft.com/content/e2fc3abf-4803-456
| 1-8ef2-0c77fd2d0... 2024: https://www.bruegel.org/policy-
| brief/europes-under-radar-ind...
| radu_floricica wrote:
| So that's an European thing? huh. We have this in Romania -
| a couple years back when the war in Ukraine started just as
| the green deal took effect, the gov started spending like
| crazy on subsidizing energy. But they did it in a
| convoluted way with a layer of intermediaries that
| basically were allowed to invoice the state for price
| differences from arbitrary price levels. Almost "I'd like
| to sell at twice the price but you're not letting me, so
| gimme the difference" - if not exactly that.
|
| I'm not sure if I'm feeling better or worse that it's a EU
| invention. Either way, it's hellof a corrupt practice.
| L-four wrote:
| No it's a neoliberal thing. Rather than the government
| doing the thing. They hand out massive subsides and hope
| it gets done.
| oezi wrote:
| I skimmed your posts but they don't blame EU rules. Can you
| point to EU regulation which caused this?
|
| ARENH looks like a mechanism by which France wanted to
| entice competition in end customer sales (and
| distribution?) of electricity.
| mpweiher wrote:
| The ARENH program originated with EU liberalization
| efforts.
|
| https://fsr.eui.eu/regulated-access-to-incumbent-nuclear-
| ele...
| oezi wrote:
| I read your link and I don't see why you say originated.
| This is a French law. My understanding is that EDF wanted
| to take a stake in a German energy producer and to
| approve such a takeover the EU as the market authority
| required some type of market liberalization of the French
| energy market.
|
| France chose to use the mechanism of ARENH. This isn't an
| EU thing.
| mpweiher wrote:
| It's a French law to comply with EU requirements.
|
| That's usually how that works. The EU makes rules and
| national parliaments create local laws to comply.
|
| Of course they could have chosen another way to comply,
| for example breaking up EDF. But they didn't want to do
| that, probably for good reasons.
| mpweiher wrote:
| Pure disinformation.
|
| EDF is generally highly profitable while at the same time
| delivering cheap, reliable power. 2023 was the one exception,
| due to the energy crisis and its interaction with the ARENH
| program that forces EDF to sell power from nuclear at a fixed
| low price (usually way below market).
|
| Even if it needs that power itself.
|
| So in 2022, it still had to sell this power at 4 cent/kWh,
| and then had to buy that same power back from the market at
| up to EUR1/kWh.
| kangs wrote:
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/france-agrees-
| issue-...
| mpweiher wrote:
| That has no bearing on the truth of what I wrote.
| idreyn wrote:
| These maps are such a cool resource, thanks for sharing!
|
| "The future is already here - it's just not evenly
| distributed." - William Gibson
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| The French are wholly unable to build new nuclear power.
|
| 3 is 7x over budget and 12 years late on a 5 year construction
| program.
|
| The EPR2 program is in absolute shambles.
|
| Currently they can't even agree on how to fund the absolutely
| insanely bonkers subsidies.
|
| Now targeting investment decision in H2 2026. And the French
| government just fell because they are underwater in debt and
| have a spending problem which they can't agree on how to fix.
|
| A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds like
| the perfect solution!
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Even the poster boy for nuclear is reducing nuclear output as
| its fleet ages and filling that gap with renewables (reducing
| its electricity emissions from 2005 when their nuclear peaked
| too).
|
| So it apparently doesn't matter what your existing grid is,
| coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, of whatever mix, the thing you
| should be building now is mostly solar, wind and (not quite
| caught on globally but just about to make a very big splash)
| batteries.
| cm2187 wrote:
| The batteries mentioned in the article have only a few hours
| of capacity, and are designed to smooth the peak usage
| intraday. I think many people are confused and seem to think
| batteries are a viable way to address the volatility of wind,
| where you may deal with weeks with no/low wind, or solar,
| which in countries with cold winters is of little help.
|
| I have yet to see a cheap scalable alternative to carbon to
| deal with that volatility. Hydro perhaps in a handful of
| smaller, mountainous countries (and if you are not too
| regarding of the environmental damages). Right now the UK is
| using LNG to compensate wind.
| Veliladon wrote:
| Normally this would be handled by a wider synchronized
| network. The EU has a continent wide synchronized network
| and the UK isn't part of it.
|
| There are also other ways to store energy. For polar
| regions sand batteries are capable of storing heat for
| months. High grade heat to the point they can siphon off
| that heat for power generation.
| dfawcus wrote:
| The interconnectors between UK and the continent are
| HVDC.
|
| As such they are essentially massive switching-mode PSUs,
| and there is no possibility of having a synchronised
| connection, as the AC has to be synthesised, following
| the local spinning iron.
| cm2187 wrote:
| But also europe isn't that large. When there is no wind
| in the UK, there is no wind in France or Italy. Which
| means not only do they not provide diversification, they
| will import at the same time.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Long-form storage is inherently unprofitable - a battery
| that's used daily will make 365x the sales of a battery
| that's used only once a year.
|
| So inevitably, the first batteries will always prioritize
| daily arbitrage, and only once that market is capped out
| will some battery projects target weekly/monthly/yearly
| arbitrage.
|
| In countries with cold winters, the obvious solution is
| heat-energy storage systems, which don't output electricity
| but instead store and output heat directly; they're
| basically just a big pile of sand/stones/bricks wrapped in
| a ton of insulation. Thanks to the cube-square law, they
| scale up unbelievably well and can easily store months
| worth of heat.
|
| Due to that scale they don't make much sense without
| district heating, but energy storage is a numbers-game and
| lots of cold places already have district heating that
| could be quite easily retrofitted.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The UK uses far more gas to heat homes than to generate
| electricity, and uses some for industrial purposes so it
| seems weird to attribute LNG use to wind, the technology
| that more than any other has reduced gas usage in the UK.
| dfawcus wrote:
| The increase in use of wind, being intermittent and non-
| dispatchable means there has to be 1-for-1 back up wind
| generation. That is gas.
|
| We also have periods in the winter (so solar of little to
| no use), where we can have a week or two of no wind.
|
| As the gas generators are not run constantly, they're
| more expensive than if they were. There are various (at
| least 3) UK "gridwatch" sites available, offering real
| time and historical generation mix. Maybe have a look.
|
| From memory, so probably flawed, we still tend to depend
| upon nuclear and gas for around 40 - 50 % of our
| generation (nuke being low - say between 5 and 10).
| cm2187 wrote:
| you can actually see it live here:
| https://gridwatch.co.uk/
|
| It illustrates both the volatility of wind (which
| regularly goes to zero for at least a week), and how it
| is currently pretty much 100% offset with gas.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Since year 2000 wind has gone from 0 to 30% of UK
| electricity generation
|
| Coal has gone from 32% to 0.
|
| Gas has gone from 40% to 30%
|
| How do you square these numbers with wind being
| responsible for the amount of gas burned?
| cm2187 wrote:
| You are not going to observe that in annual averages. As
| mentioned in my other comment, you can observe that very
| clearly in the energy production charts:
| https://gridwatch.co.uk/
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Let's boil this right down:
|
| A new wind turbine is built and plugged into the grid.
| Does this cause more gas to be burned or less?
| cm2187 wrote:
| That's not what dfawcus is saying, he is talking about
| installed capacity, not consumption. If you build 1GW of
| wind, you need to also build 1GW of gas to make up for
| when there is no wind (and as you can tell from
| gridwatch, it's a common occurence). Otherwise blackouts.
|
| [edit] and we might be talking at cross purpose here. I
| think most of the new capacity built now is to expand the
| production, rather than to reduce other forms of
| productions (in which case you might just keep around
| existing gas capacity if it was there, to your point).
| epistasis wrote:
| You don't need batteries with longer capacity in terms of
| power:energy ratio, you simply need more batteries.
|
| Getting to France's level of nuclear decarbonization with
| batteries is cheap and easy with current prices. Using
| existing thermal plants for a few weeks a year and
| renewables for the rest is quite similar overall to
| France's mix.
|
| What's challenging is the final 10%, 5%, and 1%. But it
| will take 15-20 years of deployment of our current cheap
| renewables+storage technology before we need to solve those
| final percents. In that time, technology will have advanced
| tremendously and we don't know what the cheapest solution
| will be, just that it will be cheaper than current tech.
| Plus it would take much longer than 15 years to even build
| nuclear in any significant quantity! France said a few
| years ago that they would be building handful of new
| reactors but I still have not seen progress!
| mpweiher wrote:
| France?
|
| France is increasing its nuclear output. And planning to
| build new plants. (Expanding nuclear generation was
| prohibited by law up until March of 2023).
|
| The added renewables help to make the nuclear plants more
| efficient and profitable, by taking up a good amount of the
| variable demand.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| The French are wholly unable to build new nuclear power.
|
| Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 12 years late on a 5
| year construction program.
|
| The EPR2 program is in absolute shambles.
|
| Currently they can't even agree on how to fund the
| absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies.
|
| Now targeting investment decision in H2 2026. And the
| French government just fell and was reformed because they
| are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which
| they can't agree on how to fix.
|
| A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds
| like the perfect solution!
| philipkglass wrote:
| France doesn't have any new reactors under construction.
| Its annual nuclear generation peaked in 2005:
| ~/git/iaea-pris % sqlite3 pris_data.db sqlite>
| select year, sum(electricity_supplied_gwh) from
| reactor_statistics, reactor_operating_history where reactor
| _statistics.reactor_id=reactor_operating_history.reactor_id
| and country_code='FR' and year > '1999' group by year;
| year sum(electricity_supplied_gwh) ----
| ----------------------------- 2000 395392.3
| 2001 401256.49 2002 415110.33
| 2003 421028.62 2004 428040.69
| 2005 431179.56 2006 429819.63
| 2007 420129.49 2008 419800.32
| 2009 391752.97 2010 410086.42
| 2011 423509.48 2012 407437.88
| 2013 405898.51 2014 418001.4
| 2015 419035.02 2016 386452.88
| 2017 381846.02 2018 395908.34
| 2019 382402.75 2020 338735.78
| 2021 363394.15 2022 282093.23
| 2023 323773.23 2024 364390.78
|
| France is _planning_ new EPR2 reactors, but no construction
| is expected to start before 2027 and none would run before
| the 2030s. I put little trust in announcements of future
| plans without actual construction work, whether the plans
| are for nuclear reactors, wind farms, data centers, or any
| other major investment.
| adrianN wrote:
| They don't even plan enough replacements to keep
| generation constant as aging plants are decommissioned
| mpweiher wrote:
| Evidence?
| mpweiher wrote:
| France does not have any new reactors currently under
| construction because until March 2023, expansion of
| nuclear generating capacity was forbidden by law.
|
| So even to build the one Flamanville 3 reactor, they had
| to shut down two older reactors in Fessenheim in order to
| not have an illegal increase in capacity.
|
| Now that the law has been rescinded, they are planning 6
| simplified EPR2 reactors, taking lessons from the fairly
| catastrophic EPR project FV3.
|
| (Of course, even that catastrophic reactor will be more
| profitable than any intermittent renewable projects in,
| for example, Germany, but hey, the standards for what
| counts as "success" and what as "failure" are different
| for nuclear and for renewables).
|
| France also currently does not need to urgently expand
| their nuclear fleet, so the schedule for the EPR2s
| matches those needs and the need to fully account for the
| problems with FV3. Instead, they are increasing the
| production of their existing fleet, both by operational
| upgrades and also by increasing use of intermittent
| renewables to cover variations in demand, allowing the
| nuclear fleet to run closer to fully rated capacity
| instead of having to load-follow.
| adrianN wrote:
| Renewables are non dispatchable and thus have a hard time
| picking up variable demand. They're very good at providing
| free energy on sunny or windy days and are increasingly
| forcing nuclear plants to reduce output during those times,
| directly cutting into nuclear profits.
| energy123 wrote:
| This shouldn't be confused for an argument to build new nuclear
| power in the year 2025 when far cheaper alternatives exist. It
| is an observation that nuclear works really well if it already
| exists and the fixed costs have been paid for, and that nuclear
| was the best choice a few decades ago.
| DeepSeaTortoise wrote:
| The only reason nuclear is more expensive than any
| alternative are absurd regulations, reporting duties, the
| practice of financing these projects on borrowed money with
| high interests and that many of the companies running these
| projects are career parking spots and accelerators for the
| social circles around politicians and the bureaucratic
| aristocracy.
|
| Complexity-wise they're about halfway between gas and coal.
| derriz wrote:
| I'm not sure how you are measuring complexity.
|
| The plant and equipment required to maintain a stable
| nuclear reaction and extract its heat is far more complex
| than that required to control a coal or natural gas
| firebox.
|
| This is reflected in the fact that to run 1GW of nuclear
| generation, on average (in the US) requires about 700 FTE
| to operate. The average for coal generation is about a
| third of that number. And the average for a combined cycle
| gas plant is about 60 FTE.
|
| And nuclear fission produces low-grade heat - around
| 320degC - compared to coal (around 550degC) or natural gas
| (over 1300degC). Thus are less thermally efficient and
| require huge cooling towers and much larger turbines to
| extract the thermal energy. Which, of course, are more
| expensive and complex to build and maintain.
| DeepSeaTortoise wrote:
| Kind of my fault, I specifically thought only about the
| powerplant + fuel part.
|
| Of course nuclear is much more complex as a whole,
| because it comes with at least two, sometimes three
| different business sections attached by default:
| Production and sale of rare isotopes, on-site
| laboratories and research and recycling of spent fuel.
|
| It's hard to beat gas. The small double digit MW plant in
| my town literally has only one on-site full-time
| employee. My guess the only reason the FTE hits even 60
| (didn't check) is because there are so many small
| installations.
|
| Coal has a lot of fuel processing on-site just for its
| own demand, the mostly very sensible environmental
| regulations add a lot of complexity to processing the
| flue gasses and this adds A LOT of moving parts.
|
| Nuclear can be built simple enough that people are
| literally thinking about dropping it down a mile deep
| hole, barely the width of a US-standard human. On the
| "hands off" scale it can't beat gas, barely anything but
| solar, geothermal and nuclear thermal electric can, but
| it could beat coal and hydro and possibly even wind via
| scale. Just how often should one have to send a report to
| some oversight body on the number of functional overhead
| lights and whether the change in microclimate didn't
| displace any rare insect species before one can say: "You
| didn't read the last 20, you're not getting another one."
| epistasis wrote:
| California has been an oil state from the beginning. To this
| day there is urban oil extraction over various parts of LA:
|
| https://www.pbssocal.org/news-community/l-a-s-long-troubled-...
|
| It is only very recently that California started trying to
| decarbonize.
|
| When France did their amazing nuclear build, it was for energy
| independence, not for decarbonization purposes. It was a very
| forward thinking move, even if it wasn't as cheap initially
| imagined and ended up being stopped before fully completed. It
| was a national security project.
|
| However nuclear is cheap when the high upfront capital costs
| have been paid off, and it's down to just the operating
| expenses. Building it is oppressively expensive, however,
| especially as labor costs have risen in the many decades since
| the 1970s while.
|
| As France's nuclear fleet ages out and needs to be replaced, it
| seems unlikely that they will be able to pull off a build of a
| second fleet. Their efforts at prototyping the next design, the
| EPR, have been fairly disastrous, with builds at Flamanville
| and in Finland going very poorly.
|
| I suspect that Germany & California's current route to
| decarbonization through renewables will be followed by France
| in the coming decades.
| boringg wrote:
| I will counter this. I think theres going to be a significant
| work to push down the costs of re-powering the aging nuclear
| fleet.
|
| Renewables will continue to be a force and work around the
| edges. Too much on the line to shut down nuclear for France.
| It will get subsidized and it provides energy independence.
| Potentially but not certain future where other people are
| also purchasing nuclear assets which pushes down maintenance
| / manufacturing costs. Risk is that China deploys globally
| and is the operator. France isn't known for high quality -
| reasonably costed items - fast time line products.
|
| As well - unspoken part of renewable is in case of a security
| incident in Europe (see Russia) - nuclear is much more stable
| work load then solar (could easily scatter bomb solar
| assets). I know that sounds unintuitive given peoples concern
| about Nuclear - but there is a such a common good to protect
| nuclear assets due to fallout where solar assets are
| localized.
|
| Germany de-carbonization path (shutting down their nuclear
| plants) was a massive mistake and have seriously hindered
| their economic long run competitiveness. Its been a black eye
| for them.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| > I think theres going to be a significant work to push
| down the costs of re-powering the aging nuclear fleet.
|
| The EPR2 costs just keeps spiraling. They haven't even
| started building yet or been able to agree on how to
| finance the subsidies.
|
| This is the same France that less than a month ago had
| another government collapse due to being underwater in debt
| with a spending problem and being unable to agree on how to
| fix it.
|
| A massive handout to the nuclear industry sounds like just
| the right plan!
|
| It is also funny that you mention Russia. You do know that
| the EU despite 19 sanction packages haven't been able to
| agree on sanctions for the Russian nuclear industry. We
| still are too reliant on it.
|
| Germany was able to quickly phase out Russian fossil gas,
| while france keeps being EUs no. 1 importer of Russian LNG.
|
| But I do love blaming everything on Germany. So much
| easier.
| epistasis wrote:
| > Too much on the line to shut down nuclear for France. It
| will get subsidized and it provides energy independence.
|
| If the goal is energy independence, renewables will provide
| that more cheaply. If the goals are the other side effects
| of nuclear power: isotopes, national pride (Curie!),
| workforce augmentation for nuclear submarines and nuclear
| weapons, then these goals also require far fewer reactors
| than enough to power the entire country.
|
| I do not doubt that there may be some level of nuclear
| power in the future. But I would take a long bet that in
| 2050, France is closer to 0% nuclear power than it is to
| the current level. (That phrasing is confusing, but I think
| the fraction of nuclear power will be less than half its
| current amount)
| rkomorn wrote:
| > But I would take a long bet that in 2050, France is
| closer to 0% nuclear power than it is to the current
| level.
|
| Maybe, but I think the corollary goal is to have nuclear
| power be a bigger part of the remaining non-renewables.
| So if (exaggerating grossly) it's 90% renewable, 9%
| nuclear, and 1% other, that's arguably still better than
| the current state.
| Yeul wrote:
| I'm sure they also did it for the nuclear weapons program.
|
| My own country never wanted nukes and they discovered large
| deposits of natural gas so that was it. After all nuclear
| energy was never as cheap as they envisioned in the 1950s.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| > they burn extremely hot and cannot be extinguished with water,
| which can trigger a violent chemical reaction. The blaze emitted
| dangerous levels of nickel, cobalt and manganese
|
| > In the first six months of this year, CAISO's grid was powered
| by 100% clean energy for an average of almost seven hours each
| day.
|
| emitted dangerous levels of nickel, cobalt and manganese
|
| 100% clean energy
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| >100% clean energy
|
| Who said that?
| harimau777 wrote:
| While virtually no technology is clean if you count "what
| happens if it catches on fire"; I think it's still likely that
| this is much better than the status quo.
| nodesocket wrote:
| "leaving rolling blackouts behind..." I'll take this bet CA
| blackouts aren't over.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Adelaide, Australia used to have constant rolling blackouts,
| including a state wide blackout once. After that, Tesla (pre
| insanity era) built a grid battery storage system which
| essentially fixed the problem. I'm sure there were other
| improvements to the grid at the same time. But these days the
| grid is incredibly stable while also being majority solar and
| wind powered. The battery is able to buy and sell power daily
| and profit on the difference between high and low demand times.
| And if there's an equipment fault somewhere, it can respond
| fast enough to cover the time between a generator going
| offline, and the backup ones starting up.
| steve_taylor wrote:
| By the time that blackout occurred, the grid was already
| quite stable and rolling blackouts were a thing of the past.
| The state-wide blackout was the result of a severe storm,
| which included lightning, gale-force winds and three
| tornadoes, taking out critical transmission lines, combined
| with inadequate protection circuits not set up to account for
| lightning strikes. When the state failed over to the Victoria
| interconnect, the interconnect shut down because the load was
| too high. So although the grid was stable, it had some
| failure points that were exposed during this severe and
| unusual storm.
|
| The battery array was just one measure taken to increase grid
| resilience in such a scenario. The general idea was to have
| an instantly dispatchable electricity supply ready to go at
| any time while bringing gas-powered electricity online. A
| nice side effect of the battery is that it flattens out
| wholesale price spikes and makes a bit of money for itself in
| the process.
| slashdave wrote:
| You'll lose. Combined with solar, batteries are perfect. They
| cover the time of day when solar wanes, but air conditioning is
| still needed.
| theultdev wrote:
| Yeah I mean, aren't most of the blackouts controlled?
|
| Not the lack of supply but shutdown on purpose due to the risk
| of power lines causing fires?
|
| Seems burying them would be a more effective use of money if
| you're trying to solve blackouts.
| alecco wrote:
| The Financial Times has a much better article:
| https://ig.ft.com/mega-batteries/
| msarrel wrote:
| We're still going to have rolling blackouts because PGE turns the
| power off.
| ezfe wrote:
| Okay but literally there haven't been in years
| whiterook6 wrote:
| When they say their battery storage capacity is 15,000 MW, do
| they mean MWh? Because watts are time-independent, or rather,
| they're like speed to Joule's (watt-hour's) distance.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| I struggle to understand why journalists consistently failed to
| use Wh as a unit of power. People generally can understand it
| because it is how they are billed and how appliances are rated.
|
| Even on HN people will defend not using Wh because there is
| some grid or city in the USA that bills differently.
| ericd wrote:
| Later, they say "lithium ion batteries only have 4 to 6 hours
| of capacity", which again, what? But maybe that implies that
| the actual capacity rating is their "capacity" x 4-6.
| ajross wrote:
| Uh... "Wh" is not a unit of power. Watts are units of power.
| Watt-hours measure energy. Probably journalists are getting
| this wrong for the same reason you are.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I do not know why this particular one gets engineers so
| annoyed. Energy and power are synonymous in conversation
| with normal people. There is very little real world
| scenarios where people would be exposed to the precise
| meanings -of course everyone gets it wrong.
| ajross wrote:
| But the premise of the comment I was replying to was
| exasperation that journalists got it wrong!
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| No, you were right on the money. Just idly thinking out
| loud why this is even an issue. Muggles get technical
| details wrong all the time. Yet any article about energy
| is going to get a few people riled up when the units are
| wrong.
| bolangi wrote:
| The commenter was right that the correct unit is Wh, then
| slipped up. Does gasoline contain power? Do "high-power"
| Li-ion batteries? In common parlance, power and energy are
| used interchangeably. I believe people writing about
| science should hold themselves to a higher standard, but
| there is always something more important.
| bolangi wrote:
| Because American literacy in math and hard sciences has only
| declined over the decades since the post-Sputnik spurt that
| benefited my generation. Journalism as practiced today
| doesn't require scientific literacy or rigor, or at least,
| they are secondary to the purposes of the writers' employers.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Battery storage is always measured in the amount of power
| that can be delivered (Watts). Secondarily it's measured in
| the number of hours that power can be delivered (hours, which
| is almost always about 4.) To get MWh you multiply watts
| times hours. This is standard in the industry and has nothing
| to do with reporters.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Utilities are used using MW when discussing supply and demand.
| Because balancing that is critical. So power is what they care
| about when discussing grid connections.
|
| The billing side and customers are concerned with total energy.
| So kwh.
|
| Journalists typically don't know the difference. Which is why
| they list storage capacity in watts. They don't know any better
| and they don't care.
|
| Far as I can tell multiply the watts by 4 hours to get watt
| hours.
| sgustard wrote:
| CAISO's own documents quote battery capacity in MW. So I don't
| think you can just blame journalists.
|
| "Battery storage capacity grew from about 500 MW in 2020 to
| 13,000 MW in December 2024"
|
| https://www.caiso.com/documents/2024-special-report-on-batte...
|
| As another commenter notes, utilities are interested in
| "capacity on call" i.e. instant power generation.
| dxxvi wrote:
| Does it make the electricity price go down or up? It seems to me
| that the electricity price never goes down.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| One of my biggest pet peeves is when outlets talk about energy
| storage exclusively in terms of output and neglect to mention
| capacity. Does 15.7 gigawatts of storage mean 15.7 GWh? Capacity
| is as important, if not more important, than output.
| chihuahua wrote:
| Based on the following sentences from the article, it's
| probably 4 to 6 times more than 15.7 GWh (60 to 90 GWh,
| apparently):
|
| "Battery energy storage is not without challenges, however.
| Lithium-ion batteries -- the most common type used for energy
| storage -- typically have about four to six hours of capacity.
| It's enough to support the grid during peak hours as the sun
| sets, but can still leave some gaps to be filled by natural
| gas."
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| From a grid perspective, the output (delivery) is typically
| more important than total capacity - because it's acting sort
| of like a power plant.
|
| Power plants don't have capacity, really.
|
| So you hear about the output GW, not the capacity GWh.
|
| For battery plants, they might mention duration (4 - 6
| hours), which makes converting to capacity in terms of GWh
| trivial.
| UltraSane wrote:
| This also greatly annoyed me. 4 hours is the standard for grid
| storage batteries in California.
| pahkah wrote:
| As someone who's interested in all this, I agree it would be
| nice to have more precision around capacity. Especially as it
| relates to longer term storage. But! In this context, output is
| more salient than capacity. You'll see a lot of stories about
| grid-scale storage that use output.
| (https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/854999 offers a fuller
| explanation than what I'll give here.)
|
| This is because grid operators are most concerned with
| immediate power output. They need to keep the grid balanced,
| and if they need a gigawatt to do it, it doesn't matter if the
| batteries have 100 GWh if they can only discharge at 1 MW.
|
| Since the batteries described here are used primarily to handle
| the peak of the duck curve
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve) it seems like 4
| hours of capacity (the article mentions that the lithium-ion
| batteries have 4-6 hours of capacity) is sufficient to get over
| that difficult hump.
|
| Anyway, to get back to your question of how many GWh, if we
| assume that the batteries have 4 hours of storage, then we're
| looking at around 4h * 15.7 GW = 63 GWh of battery capacity. (4
| hours is what I've seen as standard for lithium-ion,
| conservative if the article's claim of "four to six hours" is
| true.)
|
| Hope this helps ease the peeve!
| XorNot wrote:
| The ratio for LiFePO4 is between 1:3 and 1:4.
|
| So rated power will give you that for about 3 to 4 hours.
| amoshebb wrote:
| The original sin was using watts not joules. Humans hear watts
| as "gallons" and "watt hours" as "gallons per hour" and all the
| rest of this confusion in every article about EVs/fast
| chargers/distribution/solar/everything all trace back to
| "X-Hours" and "X" incorrectly sounding like a rate and a count,
| not a count and a rate.
| andbberger wrote:
| and there was a huge fire at the moss landing plant which left
| heavy metals and god knows what else raining down onto sensitive
| marine mammal habitat. kayak up elkhorn slough and you'll
| encounter dozens of otters, seals... less than a kilometer from
| the battery plant.
|
| I don't think we're going to be appreciating the environmental
| consequences of that accident for years. heavy metals don't
| decay, they'll be there forever.
|
| a pox on david brouwer and his faux environmentalism, and the
| politics and economic machinations that ever proposed solar and
| batteries as an alternate to baseload fission plants. (in fact
| brouwer did his damage long before solar was ever practical, so
| he has even less ground to stand on)
| benzible wrote:
| I'm hungry for good news about technical solutions working -
| especially right now when Trump just killed the US's largest
| solar project (6.2 GW in Nevada), ended USDA solar support for
| farms, and posted "We will not approve...Solar". So I wanted to
| check if California's battery story holds up.
|
| The data is actually encouraging. Peak demand hit 48,323 MW in
| 2024 - higher than the 2020 blackout year's 47,121 MW [1].
| Weather was severe: 2023 broke 358 California temperature
| records, 2024 saw valleys top 110degF during multiple heat waves
| [2][3]. Battery discharge reached 5-7 GW during Sept 2024 peaks,
| offsetting ~16% of demand [4]. That's real.
|
| Fair caveat: 2020 had compounding failures (imports fell 3,000 MW
| short, gas plants failed, planning issues [5]), and recent years
| benefited from better coordination and wet winters. But batteries
| were clearly the biggest new factor - going from 500 MW in 2020
| to 15,700 MW today is massive buildout, and it performed when
| tested.
|
| Nice to see an existence proof that we can make progress on
| adapting to climate change's second-order effects, maybe even
| progress on root causes - through technology, at scale, in the
| United States of 2025.
|
| [1]
| https://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory...
|
| [2] https://news.caloes.ca.gov/extreme-heat-breaking-records-
| at-...
|
| [3] https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-
| forecasts/california-...
|
| [4] https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-beats-the-heat/
|
| [5]
| https://calmatters.org/environment/2020/08/california-2020-r...
| nickzelei wrote:
| What does it mean saying California hasn't done a Flex Alert
| since 2022? PG&E issued 3-4 in September/October this year. Is
| that different?
| klempner wrote:
| Are you sure you're not thinking of "SmartDay" days that are
| part of the SmartRate program?
|
| Flex Alerts are CAISO and ultimately about grid stability.
| SmartRate/SmartDay are ultimately about marginal cost of
| production on PG&E. The two are certainly correlated -- at the
| very least, a Flex Alert day is almost guaranteed to be a
| SmartDay.
|
| Notably, the SmartRate program is capped at 15 days per year,
| and in practice PG&E will keep a few in reserve for surprise
| late season events, but even if there are no Flex Alert days
| they're still going to be called on electricity-is-expensive-
| even-if-the-grid-is-stable days.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| No, more coal and gas is the only way. /S
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| > ...leaving rolling blackouts behind
|
| This is a pretty good candidate for "famous last words"
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Funny to read this today. I live in San Francisco, and we had a
| blackout today.
| radium3d wrote:
| I haven't had a rolling blackout in our particular grid in
| several years. The battery energy storage has been a great
| benefit. Our home battery energy storage system has been
| fantastic as well for localized unplanned outages.
| gradientsrneat wrote:
| > cannot be extinguished with water
|
| Why? I thought lithium ion batteries actually contained
| negligible amounts of lithium? Or is this for some other reason?
| WanderZil wrote:
| Nice! About time they figured out large-scale storage. Hopefully
| this means no more "flex alerts" every other week.
| Yeul wrote:
| If there is one resource that America has in spades it's empty
| land.
|
| My own country every m2 is valuable.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| But unfortunately, everyone wants to live in a small subset.
| rexpop wrote:
| Why is this unfortunate? Urban living shrinks each person's
| land and energy footprint by packing people efficiently,
| cutting carbon emissions through public transit and
| walkability, preserving open natural spaces, and enabling
| more efficient infrastructure.
|
| It's true that concentrating populations in cities increases
| housing demand, but that doesn't automatically mean costs
| must rise--housing prices are driven by supply constraints
| and policy choices, not just demand. If cities allow enough
| new construction and implement policies like inclusionary
| zoning or affordable housing mandates, supply can keep pace
| with demand, preventing price spikes and even lowering costs
| per unit over time. So, while demand goes up, smart urban
| planning can ensure affordability without conceding that
| costs inevitably follow.
| clarionbell wrote:
| All this talk about energy independence and not a word on where
| are the solar cells, batteries and wind turbines made. If your
| grid is standing on components with short life time and which you
| can't manufacture at scale, you are not independent. You have
| just traded one dependence for another.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Wind turbines and solar panels have similar lifespans to
| natural gas power plants which are also made somewhere else.
| zizee wrote:
| Sorry, what is the previous dependency?
|
| If you're talking about longevity of solar or wind turbines,
| given that their lifespan is measured in tens of years, it does
| give you some ability to respond to some external group cutting
| your supply off. It's not remotely the same as oil/gas
| dependency.
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