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A comment on Berkshire Hathaway buys Dominion Energy natural gas assets in $10B deal. Parent comment

Re:Berkshire Hathaway buys Dominion Energy natural gas asset... by barney54 on Monday July 06, 2020 @04:10PM (#23752182)
How do you think all of coming wind and solar will be balanced on the grid? Today and for the foreseeable future, that's what natural gas is going to do. Batteries have come down in cost, but natural gas is far, far cheaper than grid scale batteries.

Also, to put one of the quotes in perspective, the vast majority of Ontario Power Generation's assets are hydro. The two ways you balance the grid currently are natural gas and hydro. Hydro is fantastic, but it's really, really hard to build new hydro.

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Re:Berkshire Hathaway buys Dominion Energy natural gas asset... by cure on Monday July 06, 2020 @04:35PM (#23752461)
> Batteries have come down in cost, but natural gas is far, far cheaper than grid scale batteries.

Source please? Natural gas peaker plants are not cheap to build and have a terrible utilization rate by nature, so they are not cheap to operate, either.

This article (https://www.energy-storage.news/news/bloombergnef-lcoe-of-ba...) says that for short durations (< 2 hours) and new builds, grid scale batteries are already cheaper than natural gas peaker plants.

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Re:Berkshire Hathaway buys Dominion Energy natural gas asset... by imtringued on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @05:27AM (#23757274)
Natural gas plants don't have a limited duration. They can run as long as you want. Generating methane from carbon capture and burning it in natural gas plants is a much better way to get from 80% renewables to 100% than with giant batteries.
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Re:Berkshire Hathaway buys Dominion Energy natural gas asset... by coliveira on Monday July 06, 2020 @05:21PM (#23752892)
Natural gas is cheaper only because of massive tax benefits and lack of accountability for environmental damage caused by gas extraction. The moment one of these two parts of the equation get adjusted, the true cost of natural gas will far outstrip the cost for renewables and batteries.
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