I don't understand why every time wind/solar are mentioned on HN, someone feels the need to say "tHe WiND doEsn'T alWAys BloW" while utilities are actively deploying storage, and not just for "when the sun isn't shining", but to help smooth peak usage to avoid transmission upgrades, provide resiliency from infrastructure failure during weather events, and increase flexibility for service/maintenance that doesn't require outages.
Also, it's being deployed commercially for resiliency and off-peak rate utilization. It's integrated into an increasing number of EV charge stations because one of the biggest barriers to DCFC system deployment is getting a beefy enough feed from the utility to handle peak usage.
Also, it's being deployed at the residential level, for many of the same reasons.
And Japan has a lot of such cascades - even just in Kurobe there are at least 4 major dams one after another.
And yet, the presumably intelligent people in charge of Japan's energy policy still think nuclear is the way to go. Do you know something they don't?
In these dimensions, resource availability becomes a limiting factor. Pumped hydro requires a lot of space and geography that many countries can't provide. It may be an option for Norway or Austria, but not for Germany. And even if Germany would buy the planned world production of lithium batteries for the next 10 years, we still wouldn't have enough. The math just doesn't work out for both. Hydrogen looks more realistic, but is not a mature technology at the required scale.
Maybe this is self-obvious, but "get rid of" seems to be carrying a lot of weight in that statement. I personally am not offended or concerned by keeping natural gas generators around for decades, even, as insurance for catastrophic disasters, if in practice they're unused 99% of the time because storage infrastructure has reached 24 hour capacity. We reach diminishing returns on increased storage.
Pumped hydro storage does not, in fact, require "lot of space". Hydro power generation needs a watershed. Pumped hydro can reuse existing hydro infrastructure, but does not depend on it, and does not suffer its failings. Pumped hydro needs only a hill.
There will be no need to repeat the cited falsehoods.
Finally, a multitude of practical storage methods are being deployed. Batteries are the most expensive, so are only ever used for very short-term storage. NG backup for renewables works and will continue working; storage forestalls need to use it, decreasing opex.
Germany will spend like 40 years building this massively complex production system with massive overcapacity of solar and wind, quite a bit of storage, natural gas backup and lots and lots of distribution networks to move around power everywhere requiring a massively complex to operate country wide grid.
Man o man, France in 70/80s solve the same problem with 60 technology and it took them less then 20 years. The mostly build the nuclear plants on sits of existing oil plants and didn't even need to make their grid complex. And they didn't even want to produce green electricity, they did it by accident.
Really hard to see what the better plan is. Germany could have literally had 100% green energy by now if the 'Energiewende' had gone with nuclear, but instead they will spend the next 20 years shutting down their remaining nuclear, then shutting down all their remaining coal, and also building more gas plants.
Brilliant plan really.
Germany's only problems just now are that Russia turned out to be an unreliable supplier, and their renewables build-out is incomplete. Both are being dealt with.
They were used last time in Europe when there were an energy shortage. Almost all was decommissioned quite quickly afterward when they became economical unsustainable.
They are generally expensive. They are generally located in places where there already exist a lot of hydro power. They generally need a lot of land and connecting power infrastructure. They generally tend to compete with hydro power. They generally need a lot of subsidies.
With energy prices skyrocketing in eu there is some lukewarm interest to restart those old pumped hydro (those that still exist and with existing power infrastructure in place). They are however not a drop in replacement for existing nuclear power plants nor existing natural gas power plants. There is however a energy shortage and so any source might be economical viable if used correctly.
For the foreseeable future, electricity storage will stay expensive when you compare it with fast to cycle natural gas generators. This will only change with a carbon tax or after we consume most of the natural gas available on Earth (looks like it would take 2 or 3 decades on the shortest predictions).
That applies to any kind of electricity storage.
Compared to the alternatives, pumped hydro is currently a cheap highly efficient storage. It gets the best qualities of synthetic fuels (low cost) and batteries (efficiency). But it's not available everywhere. Things are changing fast, and I do expect pumped hydro to not be competitive when we fully deploy storage, but it's currently the best option you will see.
Lol no, it really isn’t.
> Pumped hydro has been in use for decades around the world,
Pumped hydro works if you have mountains, valleys you can flood, and dams. It works great in the Alps; good luck doing that in the UK or in the Netherlands.
> battery systems are becoming commonplace as lithium ion battery prices have plunged
They are nowhere near the right scale. Bear in mind, in Europe they’d need to store energy over several weeks or months. The continent is prone to winter anti cyclonic conditions that go on for weeks, with no wind and no sun light. It’s quite different from, say, most of Australia.
> alternative battery technologies have matured
I’d like to know which one, because as far as I know none of the alternative are anywhere near maturity. Progress is being made, but you’re overselling it.
> Several Iron-flow chemistries are now commercially deployed.
These are no silver bullets and have several drawbacks, including the “flow” bit, which requires pumps and valves. Efficiency is also not that great. There are sulphides, lithium-air, and Na-ion designs that are more promising. But again, none of that is mature, or even really produced at scale.
> I don't understand why every time wind/solar are mentioned on HN, someone feels the need to say "tHe WiND doEsn'T alWAys BloW" while utilities are actively deploying storage, and not just for "when the sun isn't shining", but to help smooth peak usage to avoid transmission upgrades, provide resiliency from infrastructure failure during weather events, and increase flexibility for service/maintenance that doesn't require outages.
It’s the counterpoint of all these “lol renewables all the way” posts that crop up any time we discuss energy policy.
Most people would say that there are very good use cases for renewables. But they won’t be enough. If you read analyses at the grid level (some of that is in the IPCC reports), constant base production is very much required, otherwise you need to vastly overbuild and your grid has one huge point of failure (yes, freak meteorological events do happen).
> Pumped hydro works if you have mountains, valleys you can flood, and dams. It works great in the Alps; good luck doing that in the UK or in the Netherlands.
It works in Wales and Scotland -- but not in England where it is needed the most.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity_in_the_United...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroel...
This falsehood has been corrected numerous times on HN. It need not be repeated.
Pumped hydro is in no wise dependent on any of those. All it needs is a hill. Even England has hills. Even Australia has hills. The Netherlands are in Europe, which has hills.
Another falsehood is that "you need to vastly overbuild". This has also been frequently corrected. We use, today, NG for backup. We will have no need to demolish any of that infrastructure, even after storage is built. Overbuilding renewables to charge storage makes compelling economic sense, just because it is so cheap, but the NG backup remains. Eventually, synthetic fuels will be cheaper, for such occasions.
So, renewables have no such "single point of failure". This falsehood need not be repeated.
Finally, pumped hydro and batteries are just two of numerous practical storage technologies being deployed. Their round-trip efficiency is of minimal importance when they are charged from free surplus. Storage with NG backup provides fully ample 100% service with exactly zero "constant base production" needed or wanted.
Like of course any water you push up a hill is gonna gain potential energy, but I think a reasonable reading of "works" in that post was "works efficiently enough that it's actually worth doing", not "is technically possible".
An earthen berm is a very cheap construction project. Classically those were achieved with hand labor worldwide, for millennia, eventually augmented with wheelbarrows starting in China, and oxcarts. They cost less today.
Nature providing one, two, three, or four walls (steepness optional) reduces construction cost, but the turbines and pumps are a substantial part of the total.
Opex is of course extremely low. Bonus points for solar farms floating on the reservoirs. Round-trip efficiency of pumped hydro is near the top of all alternatives, although efficiency is relatively unimportant when the power being stored was free.
Costs for many storage alternatives are falling fast, and it is unclear which choices will win. Adding pumps to existing dams has lately been cheapest, by far. Future people will choose according to local conditions without asking us.
The point is that whether a storage medium is practical in an area depends more on the landscape of choices than on the physical topography. Even Nebraska might have deep cavities that would serve in place of hills. But the extrema are extreme.
Other considerations drive choices, then, e.g. capex, transportability, usefulness for other processes.
No it actually isn't really.
> Build more, get more, sell the overproduction.
You will have to pay to get ride of it in many places. Chemical plants want reliable electricity to have reliable production.
When you produce chemicals yourself, you may operate on a schedule of your own choosing.
Why do people just assert things rather than spending five minutes actually looking up some numbers doing arithmetic?
Storage systems and theirs costs, discharge rates, cycle endurance, etc: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/07/f65/Stora...
What the wind power production rate over time looks like for a country: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Then you can look up country power consumption and wind cost per KWh and half life.
Then it's just some arithmetic.
You're not helpless consumers of data, you CAN look this up and figure it out.
To save you some trouble, the bottom line is that for countries like the UK pure renewables would triple electricity costs. Is that an acceptable price? Maybe.
https://www.offshorewind.biz/2020/09/21/rystad-energy-less-i...
It shouldn't be a deal breaker, but doing the same on oceanic water will have it's own challenges with significantly higher wind variance and more flotsam dangers
A region of:
- no freezing water, no icebergs
- few, low intensity storms
- shallow seas (often less than 100 m)
- surrounded by wealthy nations with large population centres
The argument does not hold and does not transfer well.
It's coming down. Though massive supply shortages and failure of a bunch of companies to hedge against commodity prices needed to fulfil budgets are going to be pretty rough for anyone who isn't China for a few years. Note how much more Japan's renewables cost than world median. The reasons aren't just policy -- Japan has ben dealt a uniquely terrible hand for renewables matched maybe by Slovak Republic (which at least has close allies to trade with).
Plus offshore wind isn't that cheap. It's still on the order of $5000/kW of net generation for shallow water, and Japan hasn't had a lot of success breaking $8000/kW as yet. Plus their utility solar market is also a bit borked.
There are countless reasons not to build a new nuclear plant, but the costs and risks of using old ones are less than not using them in this case. Especially given that they're also pulling the renewable encouraging levers pretty hard without much success.
How much does some renewable energy cost me at night when there is no wind, +infinity?
Just look at the average capacity factor of renewables, on average it is as if 60-70% of the time they produce nothing during the course of a year.
In contrast, a nuclear plant can easily reach 90+% capacity factor, which makes it very reliable as a power source.
I am not saying that renewables suck, but to say that they cost little and are the solution to all problems is simply false. Some countries may go 100% renewable, but to claim that everyone must adopt renewables is ideological propaganda.
P.S. It is useless to talk about batteries and storage systems, which do not exist on a large scale, except through dams, whose existence is highly dependent on the geology of the country. (By the way, these would be projects that would greatly increase the price of renewable energy, but they are always omitted for idology)
I can predict you, that the wind on the sea is way stronger and stable, than on land, so your base assumption might be wrong.
(Offshore windparks are still not the solution of course.)
You are maybe not aware, that for stationary batteries, there are way more options than lithium based. Natrium for example, is quite common, so you can make literal saltwater batteries.
We can wait for some scientific advances, but it is whishful thinking to hope that in a few decades they will invent the ultimate solution.
Hydroelectric plants are the only large-scale storage, but they are highly dependent on the geology of the country.
They are not a solution to seasonal storage.
For me it is useless to go on all these big trips, the solution is very simple: mix of nuclear for base load, and renewable for peak.
Pumped hydro is not, in fact, "highly dependent on the geology of the country". It needs a hill. Hills are very common.
A "solution to seasonal storage" is not, in fact, needed or useful. NG backup works and will continue working into the indefinite future.
Good day.
No one will deploy seasonal storage, so the point is moot. NG backup works today, and will continue working into the indefinite future.
Chemical batteries are the most expensive of many storage alternatives, with advantages for very short-term use. Lithium is a poor choice for utility requirements, so its supply is irrelevant.
There is no place for nukes, which cost radically more than all other alternatives, most especially for only intermittent use.
90% EAF for nuclear is a complete fiction, even in the US it only looks that way because the nameplate value isn't increased when expensive upgrades are made so you're averaging 120% output for 75% of the year with 30% or 0% in the rest. Before Fukushima, Japan's program was around 65%.
Cost for cost, a mixed renewable system will produce at least as much as a nuclear plant for at least as large a portion of the year.
Nuclear can be a good choice and probably is in this instance, but the only ideology here is the same set of slimy lies that the fake pro-nuclear crowd always uses to attack renewables.
Really, the North Sea is the ideal case for offshore wind. It is very windy but easily accessible and with a nice topology. Almost any other location is worse or much worse.
> Way, way cheaper than nuclear and can get online much faster.
It is not way, way cheaper. It is cheaper than nuclear if you consider only nameplate capacity. Once you account for the load factor it becomes worse. The capital cost for the wind turbines EDF is building in the UK is broadly comparable with the nuclear equivalent. And if you include the storage that will become more and more necessary as the share of renewables increases, it is much more expensive.
It can get online faster, true, and it does not have the same issues regarding waste. They are also more modular, because you can build only 5 of them, whereas you cannot build a half reactor.
That being said, it still has issues with waste because we cannot really do anything with the turbines once we decommission them. Also, whilst they are operating, each single turbine consumes several tonnes of aluminium each year.
They've long been regarded as a "technically non-nuclear... but only if on short notice" state, ready to join the Big Boy Club quickly if confidence in their position under America's nuclear umbrella wavers. I doubt they want to lose that, so they're going to want some amount of nuclear power as a plausibly-deniable way to keep up some of the equipment, material, and know-how they'll need to maintain that latent threat, even if it's not the most economical option.