Infrastructure has a history of both being expensive up front and funded. Imagine if the US didn’t have highways and trying to explain all the impacts to the GDP that modern highways make. The price would almost seem trivial compared to the trillions per year of GDP that goes over asphalt.
Which state?
Currently, the production scale battery tech that's available (LiIon, LFP), isn't really cost effective for multi-day backup. It's used for very short term (second to hour) and expensive demand response services (substituting for traditional natural gas peaker plants).
The cost/kWh needs to be about an order of magnitude lower to make economic sense for multi-day backup. It's coming, however. There are several contender technologies: metal air, flow, and sodium ion. All of those have much better cost and safety characteristics than Li-ion, while trading off the energy density (which doesn't matter in grid scale stationary storage).
Resistive thermal in sand at 1200 C is projected (based on lab estimates) to have a LCOS of ~$0.05/kWh and a round trip efficiency of 53%.
I can find very little information about long term storage, not that 1-2 days is much.
Most seem to think 4 hours qualifies as storage.
[300 page pdf - warning]
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
I have always been skeptical that grid storage was the hidden cost of solar, and that multiple weeks of total grid output storage were needed, but this makes convincing arguments that only a few hours of storage is needed, even in difficult areas.
In Finland solar produces no power three months of the year. The months before and after that are marginal. To add joy, there are windstill periods of days, sometimes more than a week, in winter.
To add insult to injury, there isn't enough transmission capability to import all the renewable energy we would need to solely rely on renewables. There isn't enough hydro either so rely on that to take up the slack.
So, grid storage really is the hidden cost of both solar and wind, and multiple weeks of total grid output storage is needed for energy security if relying on renewables.
To reinterate, I really want to learn more about real long term storage. Anybody know where I can find solid info on that?
Searching for "storage" gives very few hits. This was perhaps the most pertinent hit:
"IT IS GENERALLY NOT ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE TO store electricity in bulk. The widespread deployment of new storage technologies and/ or high penetrations of electric vehicles may someday change this, but these developments are unlikely before 2030."
along with this:
"Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is the only other storage technology [other than pumped hydro] that has achieved long-term utility-scale operation. ... Only two utility-scale CAES facilities have been constructed worldwide: a 290 MW facility with two hours of storage in Huntorf, Germany, that entered commercial operations in 1978 and a 110 MW facility with 26 hours of storage in McIntosh, Alabama, that entered commercial operations in 1991."
Not very much to go on, now is there.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g...
5 hours is pretty doable with batteries and pumped storage. It's a lot and very expensive but not an impossible amount and there aren't any cheaper/quicker alternatives that I'm aware of.
I think Australia will be almost half way to 5 hours already once Snowy 2 is finished. That's just one pumped storage plant & studies show that the geography to build more is plentiful.
That last 3% can probably be eventually provided with via hydrogen, which, unlike the other two, is inefficient to roundtrip (~45%) but it lets you store large amounts of power for long durations easily.
Capital costs are high and utilization will be low.
Today, in Finland, renewables produced between 0,2 GW and 1,5 GW.
Does that mean I would need $450M (1,5 GW * $300/kW) in electrolysers to soak up all that power?
For simplicity's sake, let's say output averages 1GW over 24 hours? What do I get for the day with my $450M electrolysis plant?
For Finland, the 2030 assumptions number (for "synthetic baseload" from renewables + storage) is just under their "EPR" number (which may be a bit optimistic, given your experience with an EPR). As I said, Finland is a tough case for renewables. The solution has > 400 MW each of solar and wind, and 110 MW of electrolysers (to provide 100 MW of synthetic baseload).
I got Average system cost [EUR/MWh]: 101.9 which is more than nuclear, when solving for renewables + storage + hydrogen.
But as I also said elsewhere in these comments, this just means Finland (and other nearby countries at high latitude and without good wind resources) will become energy ghettos. They will lose their energy intensive industries. You will not be able to compete in such industries with countries where solar seasonality is low and insolation is very high. This means your energy consumption per capita will be depressed. Can a nuclear industry survive powering a handful of such disadvantaged countries? Maybe they'll just import energy from elsewhere (hydrogen can be piped like natural gas; while it has less energy per unit volume it also has considerably lower viscosity, reducing pumping costs.)
It would be cheaper still to throw pumped storage and batteries into the mix.
Yes. What do I get for $15B? How many GWh of storage and electricity generation?
> It would be cheaper still to throw pumped storage and batteries into the mix.
What pumped storate? Everybody is already about maxed out on hydro capability.
What batteries? The world is barely producing enough for EVs and other stuff, there aren't enough GWhs available for utility storage.
You are making the common mistake of assuming pumped hydro must, like primary hydro, be built on rivers. But pumped hydro just requires two reservoirs near each other with a vertical offset (although one can imagine repurposing an existing on-river reservoir by adding a separate off-river reservoir nearby at a different altitude; any reservoir with a sizeable hill nearby would do.) They could be built anywhere that isn't flat, even in deserts.
This web site uses geographical data to find PHES opportunities around the world. The possibilities are enormous.
https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/
As an example, here's a facility being built near Ely, Nevada. Look how arid the area is. This facility is sized to provide 1000 MW of output for 8 hours.
https://www.powermag.com/major-pumped-hydro-storage-project-...
> What batteries? The world is barely producing enough for EVs and other stuff, there aren't enough GWhs available for utility storage.
You are again making a foolish argument that production of things cannot be increased. Please stop. One would almost begin to think you're arguing in bad faith here.
How much will each kWh generated from synthetic fuels cost?
Can you please answer the question with dollars and cents? Or if you don't know, say so.
Green electricity isn't free. Neither will synthetic fuels be.
This is a repeat of the anti-wind and solar attacks because it is the same general principle. Basically an appeal to the unknown that the new green technology couldn't possibly be cheap, despite plenty of evidence that cost is dropping or that there is no expensive supply chain.
https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e...
How are you going to use hydrogen to generate electricity without generating CO2 and other emissions?
How are you going to make e-fuel or other synthetic fuels cost effectively? Even if electricity is free, the plants aren't.
"Combustion turbines for 100% hydrogen are not commercially available today."
And that insinuation is there, or else why did you bring that up?
There is no insinuation, it's just a statement of fact. Combustion turbines for 100% hydrogen are not commercially available today. We literally cannot burn 100% hydrogen at scale to provide utility power today.
We may be able to do so in the future, which would be great. Even better if we can do so without emissions and cheaper than other alternatives. But we cannot do so today.
Siemens thinks we can do 100% combustion turbines in about a decade or so. Time will tell. There may be obstacles or maybe everything goes swimmingly.
> And that insinuation is there, or else why did you bring that up?
I brought it up because it is a pertinent detail.
Hydrogen is touted as being the solution to storage for renewables. We are still far from that.
According to https://model.energy/ it might not be such an affordable solution. And even with 100% hydrogen combustion turbines there is the question of storage. Salt caves are cheap, steel storage tanks aren't.
The amount of deployed solar and wind around the world isnt even enough to turn off the gas turbines during the sunniest windiest days yet. Theres little point to electrolyzing gas into existence until it routinely overproduces and beyond existing storage capacity and by a lot. Needing to close that 3% gap? That'd be a good problem to have.
https://www.ge.com/gas-power/future-of-energy/hydrogen-fuele...
I would humbly suggest that in future you try to avoid using rhetorical questions to make a point when the rhetorical question can be answered by google.
The fact that these rhetorical questions carry what appears to be a distinctly anti environmental agenda doesnt exactly make this incuriosity better.
It was not a rhetorical question.
Furthermore the first hit on Google is:
"GE, DOE Accelerating the Path towards 100% Hydrogen"
The rest of the results are various reports of testing, research and trials.
None of these refute the original quote from the 2023 Lazard report:
"Combustion turbines for 100% hydrogen are not commercially available today."
Neither does the link you provided, which is full of weasel words.
As such 100% hydrogen combustion turbines very much do not seem to be a solved problem. I will concede that there appear to be some prototype/experimental 100% hydrogen combustion turbines, which is great. Still no commercial availability, tho.
Siemens (from the first page of Google results) probably has a more realistic take on the matter:
" H₂ capabilities of our medium-sized gas turbines
As of today, the gas turbines we're testing in our new Zero Emission Hydrogen Turbine Center are ready to burn up to 75% of hydrogen in the fuel mix. And step by step we aim to reach 100% by 2030."
So, perhaps we can agree that 100% hydrogen combustion turbines are an aspirational technology. Something that might come about in the next decade or so.
> The fact that these rhetorical questions carry what appears to be a distinctly anti environmental agenda doesnt exactly make this incuriosity better.
LOL.
I will begin by reminding you of the Hacker News guidelines:
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
I will continue with noting the we, in Finland, produce about 90% (IIRC) of our electricity without fossile fuel emissions. How are you guys doing?
So you can take your "anti environmental agenda" and do something interesting with it in dark, enclosed spaces.
Sidestepping the incorrect use of "rhetorical", I do wonder what it is about facts and relevant questions that get under the skin of some people?
Is it just the embarrassment of realizing that one's arguments are without merit or the facing one's inability to coherently explain metters?
Right, coz the technology, which exists and is deployed, is being refined before being commercialized at scale ready for the future mass market opportunities that are, as I mentioned, yet to materialize.
>Sidestepping the incorrect use of "rhetorical", I do wonder what it is about facts and relevant questions that get under the skin of some people?
I found it kind of funny actually. The number and nature of questions suggested a high level of ignorance (e.g. this easily googled one) that was coupled with a overtly arrogant attitude. Hoisted on your own petard so to speak ;)
I can't be bothered to answer questions from somebody who uses a deluge of rhetorical questions to argue a covert or overt anti-environmental position in bad faith though. One google to prove you 100% wrong about is sufficient.
Pro tip: try to avoid histrionics about "what to do when the sun doesnt shine and the wind doesnt blow" in future if you want to sound less like a coal lobby pamphlet from 2012 ;)
> I can't be bothered to answer questions
Well, I can't blame you if you don't know or can't articulate answers.
> One google to prove you 100% wrong is sufficient.
Sure, I'll take the bait. What is your one true google then?
> Pro tip: try to avoid histrionics about "what to do when the sun doesnt shine and the wind doesnt blow". its so 2012 ;)
Here's another pro tip: go outside. Observer. You will see and feel that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. You can even find occasions when both meteorological phenomenons occur.
Then look at electrical generation charts. Note that both sun and wind production varies. Note that low or zero generation of both occurs.
I mean, this is basic kindergarten stuff. I can't believe I have to spell out the obvious to somebody that can both read and right. Don't know about the comprehension part, tho.
Existing thermal burner reactors cannot power the world -- the cheap uranium they depend on would run out too quickly. So, one either needs breeder reactors or cheap seawater uranium extraction. And neither of those are available commercially.
It does in some places. In Finland (where I presume you are), it clearly isn't enough, but in warmer places like Texas and California and the huge swathes of the world that have sufficiently reliable renewable electricity resources that 4 hour storage could handle the intermittency.
Nuclear (smallest geographic footprint and smallest overall environmental impact) + solar & wind is the way forward.
Why are there any negatives here? A field of solar panels is far more valuable than a field growing corn to feed to cows.
Nuclear (smallest geographic footprint
This doesn't matter, there is no shortage of land. People living in high rises in the center of big cities think there is, but once someone looks at a map they see how much land is actually out there.
smallest overall environmental impact
According to what metric? You can't put a nuclear plant anywhere, you have to be able to cool it.
Now, compare the value returned by an acre growing feed grain, to an acre collecting solar energy via PV. The latter has enormously higher return.
The argument you are making is not an argument against freestanding PV, it's an argument against agriculture. And yet, it is selectively applied to PV.
The same 40 million acres as solar fields, would cover 100% of electricity needs as well as work for some crops.
Agricultural subsidies for ethanol and biodiesel are worldwide, and could be 100 million acres wasted! Everyone's complaining about food prices these days, these 100 million acres could be growing food instead.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/03/10/solarfood-in-ethanol-...
If we wait the same number of years, we might have some form of viable long term storage. Or not.
Or you could spend $1 billion/year and end up with probably 15GW of utility solar in the same time frame? Even at a 20% capacity factor instead of a 95% one, you'd be making far more money from Day 1 with solar and since we're not remotely at the saturation point of renewables, every watt generated would still be useful. The right answer to whatever qualms people have about time-of-use / duck curves would be to invest more like $800M/year in generation and $200M/year in storage -- but still -- literal multiples of energy produced with almost zero ongoing costs.
What opportunity cost? What else are you going to spend the money on that gives you non-polluting 24/7 power output rain or shine?
> If you have $15 billion today -- you could tie it up for a decade and you might get a working 1GW reactor in 10 years (though probably more like 15).
The best time to build a nuclear power plant was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
What we need is to build nuclear power at scale. Doing the same thing repeatedly for years in bound to bring both the construction time and cost down.
> Or you could spend $1 billion/year and end up with probably 15GW of utility solar in the same time frame?
What use is 15GW of solar in northern climes when you cannot use it when you need it and you cannot store it? In Finland solar has no output three months of the year and an additional two months of marginal output. Additional we need power 24/7, especially in winter.
> Even at a 20% capacity factor instead of a 95% one, you'd be making far more money from Day 1 with solar and since we're not remotely at the saturation point of renewables, every watt generated would still be useful.
I must confess I am unsure how the long term economics of renewables will work out. Around here renewables are pushing prices into the negative and increasing volatility.
As a funny aside, 15 GW is the peak power usage in Finland. Adding that much generation capacity would totally saturate the market.
> The right answer to whatever qualms people have about time-of-use / duck curves would be to invest more like $800M/year in generation and $200M/year in storage -- but still -- literal multiples of energy produced with almost zero ongoing costs.
How many GWh of storage can you get for $200M? My guess is far from enough.
We need days at a minimum, weeks for preference. 4 hours is nowhere enough.
The opportunity cost of dollars - nobody is going to spend $15 billion on nuclear when much better investments exist.
> We need days at a minimum, weeks for preference. 4 hours is nowhere enough.
Why in the world would you need that much storage? Obviously Finland + solar aren't 100% compatible given the latitude, but fairly extensive modeling shows a route to 99% renewable Australia with only 5 hours storage:
https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1666297529418530816
Change the mix to favor wind resources and you could likely achieve the same in Finland with some modest investments in transmission infrastructure.
We would be in a better and cheaper world if we had built a nuclear-first grid 30 years ago -- but we didn't -- and it just doesn't make sense to try to do so now when much cheaper options exist.
What better investment opportunity? Again, what else are you going to spend the money on that gives you non-polluting 24/7 power output rain or shine?
> Why in the world would you need that much storage?
You ask and answer yourself in the very next sentence:
> Obviously Finland + solar aren't 100% compatible given the latitude
> fairly extensive modeling shows a route to 99% renewable Australia with only 5 hours storage:
There are always geographies that have advantageous positions for electrical generation. Iceland has geothermal, Norway hydro, etc. This does not mean you can generalize.
> Change the mix to favor wind resources and you could likely achieve the same in Finland with some modest investments in transmission infrastructure.
Nah. Just like solar wind is highly variable. Just this week wind production varied between 55 MW and 3,8 GW.
Peak deman is about 15 GW. Subtracing 4 GW of nuclear and 2 GW of hydro, what are you going to do, overbuild current wind capacity 160x?
> We would be in a better and cheaper world if we had built a nuclear-first grid 30 years ago -- but we didn't -- and it just doesn't make sense to try to do so now when much cheaper options exist.
I'm still at a loss off what those better options are.
What better thing can I buy for $15B that gives me access to 1,6GW of generation capability 24/7?
Its LCOE is 5x that of solar and between 1.5x-3x more expensive than solar/wind paired with just about all viable forms of green large scale storage. Pairing it with non-green gas is cheaper still, even at today's prices.
A real question is whether we can do with REN alone or not. If we can, good, let’s do it. If we can’t, then we must find something else, regardless of costs.
And by “do it” I mean electrify as much as possible (transports, heating, industries where possible) and compensate where we can’t (airplane, agriculture, cement).
Are we positive that we can make it? And what happens if we can’t? Should plan for the unhappy scenario too?
I'm skeptical that these can actually scale to the required level to provide baseload when renewables are unavailable. Don't forget to include EVs and electric heating, which we don't have in massive quantities today but will need to have in short order.
(To be ultra-clear: I would never argue against more renewable deployments. Yes, more renewables, always more. But I think not building nuclear, right now, is a big mistake.)
The generic problem with "it can't be done" arguments is you are claiming all possible ways of solving a problem don't work. This is a very strong claim, and is not backed up by such vague arguments.
Nuclear has the disadvantage that they've been trying for longer than either of us have been alive to make it cheap, and it hasn't worked. This real world evidence can't be easily dismissed, especially when competing technologies have crashed in cost by orders of magnitude over that time.
That's a reasonable position, and I think reasonable people can disagree here. I disagree for two reasons:
1) I think (could be wrong) the cost is largely regulatory. I suspect (could be wrong) that we could streamline that without sacrificing real safety and dramatically lower the cost.
2) Even still, the cost is absolute peanuts compared to the cost of climate change. Even the famous $30B Georgia plant cost less than the world's richest individual spent so he could smash a social media network against the wall like a toddler with a Tonka truck. The US Military gets about 100 of those plants in funding every single year. It's really not that much money in the grand scheme of things, when you're talking hundreds of trillions of dollars in damage about to smash us in the face. IMO we need to stop counting pennies here and really actually tackle this problem.
But yes, absolutely agreed it is relatively expensive compared to other solutions, and it should be a priority to get that cost down. I just don't think it's so expensive that it's disqualifying. And, again, I think reasonable people can disagree here.
(2)'s first sentence would be a valid argument if the choice were between nuclear and climate change. But that's not the choice being made. That nuclear is better than climate change is damning with faint praise, the "it's better than a poke in the eye" of energy arguments.
As for naval reactors... putting a nuclear reactor in a ship increases the overall cost of building and operating that ship, compared to burning oil. And this is true even though burning oil is very uncompetitive for grid power generation. There's a reason the majority of the ships in the US Navy are not nuclear powered.
Having power and not freezing to death when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow is a pretty solid point.
We just put a new nuclear power plant into service in Finland.
> Its LCOE is 5x that of solar and between 1.5x-3x more expensive than solar/wind paired with just about all viable forms of green large scale storage (hydrogen, batteries, pumped storage).
Do you have any sources to back up these figures? I’m genuinely interested.
How is hydrogen a viable storage form when you cannot burn 100% hydrogen and fuel cell aren’t available or cost effective at utility scale?
How are batteries a viable storage form when there isn’t enough global manufacturing capacity to store energy at scale?
How is pumped hydro a viable storage form when you are limited by geography and can’t really build any more?
What this means is you're going to lose your heavy energy intensive industry. Going with nuclear won't save you from that, if you're then competing with industry in places where solar is available all year at costs likely to be below $0.01/kWh.
Not really. Electricity usage is not actually constant and nuclear power doesn't do load following unless you double the cost again (10x LCOE).
Theres a reason only France tried that - and a reason why Areva went spectacularly bankrupt.
Theres no reality in which it makes any economic sense except #1 providing military support or #2 FUDDing the ever living jesus out of all available storage options.
Oh, really? What's your solution to producing non-polluting power when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow?
> Electricity usage is not actually constant and nuclear power doesn't do load following unless you double the cost again
Can you explain how you've come to this conclusion?
We recently turned up a new nuclear power plant in Finland and they did nothing but turn up and down the generation levels when doing tests. Looking at the graphs, I can see output has varied between 3,3 and 4,3 GW this week.
The local wikipedia article on nuclear power states that power output can be regulated 5%/min, which is faster than almost all other generation methods.
> Theres a reason only France tried that - strongly related to the reason why Areva went spectacularly bankrupt.
Are you saying that Areva went over budget because they build us a load following nuclear plant?
> Theres no reality in which it makes any economic sense except #1 providing military support or #2 a pretend reality where all available storage options dont work.
Pray do tell what those available storage options are. Give us the real skinny then, none of that FUDD.
Gosh you really didnt read anything I wrote did you?
You didn't read anything I wrote, nor did you raise any of the points I raised.
Solar has none of these issues, and is resilient/decentralized as well.
Does it mean that we shouldn’t build cities? No, obviously not, that’s silly: it just means that you have to make sure water is flowing, and that military invasions are hugely destructive.
Cities have multiple water sources, and it is a very complex system. Not to mention we have special trucks and responses when that happens (at least in the USA).
Nuclear has some problems.
But cities are worth the risk, can you say the same about nuclear plants? Most established designs can't operate as peaker plants, or even seasonal plants (eg: covering for solar in the winter when there is less sun and more load for heating). They are expensive because they are mired in political issues and red tape. I don't think it has to be like that, and I wish it weren't. But is fixing nuclear an easier problem to solve than to invest in grid storage and more dynamic pricing?
These risks seem vastly overstated for a large fraction of the world. That such events happen occasionally does not mean the entire world needs to be on a war footing all the time. That would be incredibly wasteful.
> it's vulnerable to water/cooling issues
Yeah that seems more like an issue but may be solvable by using sea water for cooling?
That’s part of the problem. It’s an asymmetric risk/cost issue. The attackers only need to get it right once, you need to defend your installation constantly.
Security for nuclear power stations already increase the upkeep cost considerably.
What I mean is that wind + PV are on a roll at the moment. This has turned into a huge and hungry global industry which has a lot of momentum (people wanting to work there, technical readiness, investors ready to supply capital, public acceptance, pretty decent public opinion on the industry). From personal experience, I used the live in Munich where one of the main industry fairs (Intersolar) takes place, and it‘s a huge and ever growing event.
So even though I like nuclear and agree that the currently running reactors should stay online as long as possible, I appreciate that getting the nuclear power industry to the same fitness level as the solar industry would take a long time (which we don‘t have) hence me preferring solar.
This is a zero-sum mindset, which I believe applies here.
There are arguments to be made that decision-makers at utilities aren't taking into account certain factors, for example in deregulated markets like Texas where reliability has perhaps been under-rewarded by the market design. But I think one should be especially skeptical about arguments posted by laymen versus the experts who are actually putting their money where their mouth is.