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Re:Wind and solar are cheaper than thought, admits UK govern... by eloff on Thursday August 27, 2020 @03:37PM (#24297721)
You quoted a part of my comment and then ignored it in yours. Fossil fuels don't even enter into my comment, I'm merely pointing out the the multiple billions of dollars and multiple years required to create a new nuclear power plant make it non-viable when compared to the current cost of renewable power and grid scale energy storage. These are publicly available numbers, you are free to look it up and do your own calculations if you doubt me.

Also, you're simply unaware of commercially successful energy storage. The most high profile example being perhaps the battery pack Tesla installed in Australia for $90.6M AUD, and generated $13.1M AUD in revenue in just six months[1]. Clearly a very good ROI. Pumped Hydro is used all over the world and is even more cost effective.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/25/18715585/tesla-australia-...

Re:Wind and solar are cheaper than thought, admits UK govern... by belorn on Thursday August 27, 2020 @04:58PM (#24298591)
Im trying to find a source that the battery pack Tesla installed is used to buy cheap renewable when the price is low and sell when it is high, but the linked article does not state this and the article it link as source for the 13.1M AUD is behind a paywall.

Pumped Hydro like Bath County Pumped Storage Station does exist but do not seem to buy cheap renewable when the price is low and resell it when it is high, but rather operate as a balancer for PJM Interconnection which get almost all its power from fossil fuels.

So do you have a link for a profitable battery that buys energy from renewables when there is an overproduction from renewable sources and then later sold when the prices has risen? That would be a solar / wind and storage combination. Using energy from fossil fuels to pump water is just not the same, even if doing so creates a profit for the company.

Every time I have read about a new storage facility they usually start with first describing capacity, then go on to say that this can enable a future use with renewables, but that right now it operate to balance the grid of existing (mostly fossil fuel based) power plants. I would very much like to be proven wrong and that there exist a viable commercial operation where we can see X amount of green energy produced by wind and solar going into the storage, and X (minus a conversion cost) of that energy going out, with one table showing how much the green energy costed when going in and an other table showing how much they got in profit when it went out.