There isn't remotely enough storage available to make wind and solar feasible. To put this in perspective, the world consumes 60 TWh of electricity daily, about 2.5 TWh per hour. We have only a couple GWh of battery storage. Hydroelectric provides more, but that's harder to scale because you need the right geography.

Once solar saturates daytime demand, provisioning further solar power doesn't contribute to decarbonization. This is why nuclear is really the only known path to decarbonization. Maybe we'll figure out scalable ways to provision hundreds of terawatt hours of storage, but we might be waiting a long time.

https://gspp.berkeley.edu/faculty-and-impact/news/recent-new... ("The US can reach 90 percent clean electricity by 2035, dependably and without increasing consumer bills")

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/europe-win... ("Europe has space for enough wind turbines to power the entire world, study finds")

https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/uploads/ee2523dc632c9b01df... ("Australia is the sunniest country in the world and one of the windiest. Australia’s potential for renewable energy generation is 500 times greater than current power generation capacity.")

https://www.afdb.org/en/news-and-events/why-africa-is-the-ne... ("Africa has an almost unlimited potential of solar capacity (10 TW), abundant hydro (350 GW), wind (110 GW), and geothermal energy sources (15 GW). The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates that renewable energy capacity in Africa could reach 310 GW by 2030; which would put the continent at the forefront of renewable energy generation globally.")

Neither of these articles offers a detailed plan on how this storage will be provisioned. The second doesn't even mention storage at all, only that Europe has enough wind power to power the whole world. Sure, but that's not very useful if that power isn't delivered when you need it.

Easy. Create a market that makes it profitable to build storage and encourages price reduction.

I like framing the problem in this term. Our ultimate goal is decarbonization: $1 million per gram of C02 emitted unless equivalent mass is sequestered.

Do we have a realistic plan to built a wind and solar grid under that market? I don't think so, wind and solar are useful for taking a bite out of natural gas but not actually serving as the backbone of an electrical grid. The amount of storage necessary to decarbonize with wind and solar is not feasible, and essentially amounts to betting on some future invention of a cheap mass energy storage device that works everywhere.

By comparison we have demonstrable examples of countries going 80+% nuclear, and the US is already at 20% nuclear power generation. Building four nuclear plants for each existing plant is a lot more achievable of a goal than first building a massive amount of solar and wind, and building extensive HVDC transmission, and building tens of Terawatt hours worth of storage. The first step in the latter is cheaper than building nuclear, it's the other two steps that are wildly expensive if they're even possible. If we actually enacted a binding rule of zero emissions by 2050 people would start building nuclear power plants.

yeah and we'll have fusion in 10 years

We have methane seeping through thawing permafrost today. We can't delay decarbonizing our energy mix for technologies we haven't even invented yet, let alone mass produced.

Yes that is the point, it's basic risk management. Betting the farm on future breakthroughs if you consider climate change to be an existential threat is being on fire and waiting for the fire department because you don't wan't to get your soiled jumping to a pond nearby.

Nuclear is by far the best technology we have today so we should go with it until we have better options in our hand.

Cost effective fission and fusion are always 10 years away.

just like cost effective and environmentally advantageous grid scale batteries at the scales required to smooth day and week scale intermittency

EDIT: My comment was made before you edited your comment from "just like cost effective grid scale batteries" to what it is now.

http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-grid-energy-storage-facts...

* In 2020, the U.S. had over 23.2 GW of capacity in energy storage compared to 1,100 GW of total installed generation capacity.

* Globally, installed energy storage capacity totaled 173.6 GW.

* 1,355 energy storage projects were operational globally in 2020, with 11 projects under construction. 40% of operational projects are located in the U.S.

* California leads the U.S. in energy storage with 215 operational projects (4.2 GW), followed by Hawaii, New York, and Texas.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/broad-reach-pow...

"Two of the planned 10 MW batteries are up and running already, with a total of 10 expected online by year's end, Vavrik said. That means that BRP and Key Capture are running neck and neck for operational capacity in Texas. The title of biggest battery operator in the state could change hands repeatedly based on the order in which those companies' projects wrap up.

The broader story is that multiple experienced energy investors are converging on Texas simultaneously. The interconnection queue contains more than two dozen batteries that are each larger than 100 megawatts; some go up to 300, 400, even 500 megawatts."

To put these in perspective, the US consumes 500 GWh of electricity every hour. Of the 23 GWh of existing storage, 20 GWh come in the form of hydroelectricity. 100 MWh of storage only amounts to 1.4 seconds of electricity storage. We don't need megawatt hours worth of storage. We don't need gigawatt hours worth of storage. We need terawatt hours worth of storage. We're 6+ orders of magnitude off between the amount of storage necessary, and the storage we can feasibly build.

Why would an continent-scale entity need days or weeks of power storage?

For long-tail adverse events? It's easy to engineer power distribution systems for the average case, but unless we accept occasional brownouts as a cost of doing business, we need to build robustness into our generation fleet. Let's say we get another Krakatoa-scale eruption that reduces insolation (and thus drops solar & wind output while increasing heating demand). Some amount of firm generation (hydro, gas peaker, nuclear) is insurance against correlated failure in the global climate system.

"Accept brownouts" really just means "keep using fossil fuels" people don't accept brownouts, they buy generators. At this point, it's better to just keep burning natural gas since combined cycle plants are 1.5-2x more efficient than diesel generators.

Hydroelectric is geographically limited, you can just build dams where people need additional power.

That leaves nuclear. And since nuclear costs just as much to run 100% of the time as it does to run part of the time it makes no sense to use it as a peaker. Just run it 24/7, and install less intermittent sources.

We already have days or weeks of power storage: natural gas in storage caverns. We could easily have hydrogen stored in such caverns.

The single salt formation near Delta Utah could store enough hydrogen to supply the entire US electricity demand for 30 hours.

Even hours runs hundreds of gigawatts.

Spanning a continent only helps wind power and not solar power.

One day of power storage would be 12 TWh (using the 500 GW number in the post I responded to). That’s ~2.7 orders of magnitude time larger than the cited current installed storage, which isn’t even remotely 6+ orders of magnitude.

Even if you entirely ignore that hydro component and only look at the 3 GWh number, that’s still only ~3.6 orders of magnitude less than what we’d need for a whole day with no power generation whatsoever.

Their numbers are talking about enough storage to maintain current usage for half a year.

To your second comment: spanning a continent does actually help with solar, since the sun is up at different times on the two coasts - that buys you several extra hours of power each day. Also obstructive weather patterns tend to not reach that far.

> That’s ~2.7 orders of magnitude time larger than the cited current installed storage, which isn’t even remotely 6+ orders of magnitude.

But almost all (~95%) of the installed grid storage capacity is in hydroelectric storage. The above commenter is posting in terms of battery storage in the 100MWh range. We would indeed need 6 orders of magnitude larger than this even to just have 1 day's worth of storage. Hundred megawatt hours vs a dozen Terawatt hours.

Also, the amount of storage could be substantially more than a day in a predominantly wind + solar grid. Part of variability is mostly daily, with the sun going up and down. But both solar and wind are also affected by weather. That requires much more substantial amounts of storage to get the grid through consistent days of reduced production. Estimates to provide a 100% carbon-free grid with renewables go as high as 3 weeks [1]

I'm assuming that your citation is meant to refer to this paper: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2018/EE/C7EE0...

It says that 3 weeks of power storage would be required in total absence of a serious overhaul in transmission capabilities. I had assumed that was a clear, if unspoken, assumption when I was discussion continent scale entities.

Also, the poster you originally responded to was discussing the literal dozens of installations that singlehandedly meet the 100 MWh mark. HN guidelines require that I assume this was a simple failure of reading comprehension.

Even a much more modest goal of provisioning a single day of storage would entail 11.5TWh of storage. Dozens of 100 MWh facilities is still in the single digit GWh range. That's six orders of magnitude. And this isn't even taking into account handling heating, industrial use, and all the other forms of tapping into fossil fuel energy besides electricity.

10TWh / 1 GWh = 10^4

Where on earth is six orders of magnitude coming from? You’re off by a factor of a hundred.

Global daily electricity consumption is 60TWh per day. And that's only Electricity consumption. Total energy consumption is more than 100TWh per day. The duration of storage to fulfill 100% of this demand with renewables varies depending on energy mix, long distance transmission, and more but is usually in the range of at least one day's worth of storage.

The point is that dozens of 100MWh stations is basically nothing. You'd need millions of these sites to make renewables a feasible primary source of energy. Our current technology is not sufficient to make energy storage available to make grid storage viable.

Yes a dozen 100GWh facilities is 1.2 GWh, and that's an order of magnitude less in difference, I don't doubt your ability to multiple by factors of ten.

1. Weeklong disruptions are a thing and would occur in the event of month long plumes from forest fires, major volcanic activity or other long tail natural disasters.

2. Relying on such a tightly coupled national grid as required to deploy that storage is a recipe for disaster in the event of any war or unconventional conflict. A few shut down transmission lines or stations could cripple entire national economy.

3. Overbuilding completely ignores the very real human and environmental costs of doing so. Rare earths are not very green, forced labor as used by much of the solar industry not very humane. You are condemning millions today to hypothetical harm to thousands tomorrow. It's insanity.

The Tesla giga factory is making 20 gWh per year. 10 factories for 5 years and we have 1tWh. And we would need to massively scale up battery production anyway for electric cars in a nuclear scenario. And remember that those batteries are one of the easiest technologies to deploy. You don't need much more than a grid connection, a substation and a concerete pad.

Yes you're missing the point. Most of that storage is hydro and there's a huge gulf between what's required to cover prolonged lulls in such as weeks as was observed recently in Texas and regularly elsewhere - and to peak shave, regulate frequency, and cover until CCGTs can spin up as we have now. Until we start getting to the multi-GWh scale it's a nonstarter.

Again, you either think climate change is an existential problem in which case relying on magic pixiedust in the future is an absurd, or you don't. There's no two ways about it.

I think we disagree about what a future energy grid looks like, and that's okay. I enjoy the conversation regardless!

That's the joke.

Actual experts have studied this. Full decarbonization by 2050 with <2% GPD spending per year. No new, and phasing out existing nuclear. Overprovision renewables and produce carbon neutral synthetic fuels with excess power production. Nuclear will never power chainsaws which many across the world depend on.

https://www.evolved.energy/post/2016/02/16/deep-decarbonizat...

This is a terrible article. It's basically a single chart showing (what I can only assume) projected energy demand in the USA for a 5-day period in March, and some dispatch figures between various energy sources, and a couple of random generic infographics. Zero explanation of:

- where those demand projections came from

- the feasibility of building capacity for the projected dispatch

- the cost of doing so

I'm not saying that the premise/conclusion is wrong, just that this article in particular adds nothing to the discussion. I can only hope that the linked reports actually address those questions.

The associated report does have more details whether or not you agree with them. The article is more of a summary.

re: demand projections "the carbon neutral and carbon negative scenarios were required to meet the same demand for energy services, for daily life and industrial production as the business as usual reference case from the EIA's Annual Energy Outlook and used its assumptions for population, for GDP and industrial production. So that's very much nothing changes in the world except for the energy system... kind of a view. And the modeling only allows technologies that are commercial today or that have been demonstrated at large pilot scale today. So in effect, I think that really sets a pretty high bar because in reality, I would expect a number of those things to change over the next 30 years. For example, I would expect probably lower population growth than EIA projects and considerably lower demand for energy services and industrial production as a result of a slowing economy. And I would have said that before we have the added effects of the pandemic. " re:feasibility "I think at it's core backcasting is about trying to understand what's entailed in the physical transformation. So the legacy of this work is in that discussion about feeling like that's the analysis that's needed. Not necessarily understanding what does a carbon tax do on the margin or what to other approaches do sort of in the short term and in the macroeconomic system. But really understanding how many more widgets do we need and how quickly do they need to be deployed if you don't want to do early retirement. So that context of the questions we're trying to answer really sets up the insights that come from backcasting. So one of the things we think a lot about is stock turnover. So sort of one of our modeling principles is that we don't do early retirement of any resources except for potentially an electricity supply. So for things like light-duty vehicles or industrial boilers, we really need to understand how long do those resources typically stay online? And that means if it's a 15-year turnover rate for something like a furnace or maybe it's a 30-year turnover rate for something like an industrial boiler."

re:cost "And we find that that case at a net cost of 0.4 percent of GDP in 2050 is able to achieve carbon neutrality. So that 0.4 percent of GDP in 2050 over the reference case, it really represents some major shifts in terms of monetary flows. So we're spending $950 billion on efficiency, new supply for low carbon solutions, and we're saving $800 billion on fossil fuels that are no longer being burned. So our analysis really only looks at the energy costs for the total system for that transition. We're not accounting for things like co-benefits or economic benefits from the avoided damage of climate change or other potential impacts, as well as potential health or environmental benefits. That total energy spending declines from about five percent of GDP for the energy system today to around four percent in 2050. " -quotes from podcast linked in first article

https://www.unsdsn.org/Zero-Carbon-Action-Plan

https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/6f2c9f57/files/uploaded/...

What isn't surprising, because up to now, grid storage was only profitable in very few niche cases, and for a very short time. Besides, there has been no government program to invest on those.

So you are saying that there is some business that has always been certain to lose money, and had never had government help, and nobody ever invested on it. And you are using this fact to suggest that in the near future, when that business will become needed and profitable, nobody will invest on it either... what isn't a conclusion one can make.

Hornsdale power reserve derives most of it's revenue from selling ancillary services, it does not provide energy. Hornsdale's success is not foreshadowing a battery revolution unfortunately.

The reason nuclear costs so much is because we've stopped building plants. There's no industry anymore, let alone economies of scale. It's a fallacious argument to say it costs too much. If we went all in on nuclear to tackle climate change the costs would quickly collapse. After all, they were built in the 70s and dramatically decarbonized the industry at the time.

I do not agree.

For example, EnergyAustralia just announced that they're pulling forward the retirement of Yallourn coal powered station by four years [1], and building a 350MW utility scale energy system to absorb and discharge renewable power to offset the coal plant being retired:

"Under the agreement, EnergyAustralia will retire Yallourn in mid-2028 and build new storage capacity through a 350 MW, four-hour, utility-scale battery project that will be completed by 2026. This ensures energy storage is built to firm increased renewable energy in Victoria, before Yallourn exits the system.

EnergyAustralia’s goal is to be carbon neutral by 2050. Yallourn’s retirement will reduce the company’s emissions profile by 60 per cent, accelerating the pathway towards achieving this ambition."

As we speak (mid day local Victoria time), renewables are providing 48% of total electrical demand in Victoria [2].

[1] https://www.energyaustralia.com.au/about-us/energy-generatio...

[2] https://opennem.org.au/energy/vic1/?range=1d&interval=30m

Also: https://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-big-fossil-fuel-gener... ("Australia’s big fossil fuel generators are being replaced by big batteries")

"But what is clear is that there is a massive shift happening here. Coal is on the way out, as is “baseload” gas, and wind and solar and storage facilities, particularly battery storage, are on the way in. And many of the biggest batteries are being planned at the sites of coal and gas generators already closed or expected to close in coming years or decades."

"The sizes it is mooting are up to 500MW (and maybe two hours storage) for Liddell, 250MW and four hours storage at Torrens (1,000MWh), and 200MW and four hours storage (800MWh) at Loy Yang A. The final call on storage duration will be determined by the sort of market opportunities it sees for the batteries in the different states – longer for storing excess wind and solar, shorter for grid security services."

1. Renewables are only pennies per KWh because their intermittency, and the carbon costs backups required due to it, isn't being priced in.

2. Look at Texas's recent "hiccup" around Feb 15 and compare it to year before. Wind dropped to <10% reliable capacity and it was almost all picked up by gas/coal. The drop wind/solar production starts a week before the cold snap that disrupted everything else.

https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/e...

https://www.wsj.com./articles/texas-spins-into-the-wind-1161...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-political-making-of-a-texas...