585
Solar + Battery (covering 97% of demand) is now cheaper than coal and nuclear (ember-energy.org)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
101 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Some key insights from the article:

Basically, what they did was to look at how much batteries would be needed in a given area to provide constant power supply at least 97% of the time, and the calculate the costs of that solar+battery setup compared to coal and nuclear.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 29 points 1 year ago (5 children)

97% sounds impressive, but thats equivalent to almost an hour of blackout every day. Developed societies demand +99.99% availability from their grids.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 10 child comments
    •
  • [–] 47 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Then get it from the sources that already exist. 97% coverage is a great milestone.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Funny enough lots of people hate that. Lots of people have binary thinking, it's either 100% coal or 100% solar.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yeah, they do, and they pretend to be wise adults while doing it. Like they're the only ones who thought of this.

    EVs, too. No, we don't have to wait until they can all do 1000 miles and charge in 5 minutes. 350 miles and 20 minute 10-80% charge is fine for the vast majority of the market.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Urgh, the ones that say "well my ice car can do 700 miles on a tank so until EV can do that I'm not doing it" annoy the hell out of me.

    I know damn well they're never driven that far without stopping at least once

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    No, but I don't think you're appreciating how difficult it would be to fill that 3%. It's not just about having 3% more power from something. It's having it at the right time. It needs to be on demand. Having something on demand that has to cover all it's costs selling just 3% isn't easy.

    It's more resilient to have mixed supply where multiple types of generation take a proportion. Then when one falls short another can scale up a little.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I understand, but other people lose their shit at not having that 3% and basically equate it to being 100% coal. I basically hear:"We're still burning coal, so it was a complete and total failure! B b both sides same."

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    97% is great (though that is just for vegas) but it is still a long way from enough. Its a truism of availability that each 9 of uptime is more difficult to get to than the last, i.e. 99.9% is significantly more difficult/expensive than 99%

    Then get it from the sources that already exist.

    The problem here is that you cant simultaneously say "Solar is so much better than everything else we should just build it" and "we'll just use other sources to cover the gaps". Either you calculate the costs needed to get solar up to very high availability or you advocate for mixed generation.

    None of which is to say that solar shouldnt be deployed at scale, it should. We should be aware of its limitations howver and not fall prey to hype.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    What you do is get weather data for sunlight and wind. The two combine to cover some of the lull in the other. From historical data, you can calculate the maximum lull where neither are providing enough. Double that as a safety factor, and that's how much battery you need.

    Doing this is by far the cheapest way to get to 95% clean energy everywhere. That would be a total game changer.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    From historical data, you can calculate the maximum lull where neither are providing enough.

    The difficulty there is that there are a lot of places where you frequently get multiple weeks of both solar and wind at <10% capacity (google for dunkelflaute) that would need an implausible amount of storage to cover.

    The OP article is already talking about 5x overbuilding solar with 17h of storage to get to 97% in the most favourable conditions possible. I dont see how you can get to an acceptably stable grif in most places without dispatchable power.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    It's not that bad. This is an actual technique in use, and it drastically decreases how much storage you need.

    The biggest problem has been convincing capitalism to do it. They've been building solar like nuts because that's the cheapest per MW of anything on simple Excel spreadsheets. More mathematical nuance would show that if everyone does this, it's just going to cause overproduction and wasted potential on very sunny days. You need all three, and toss in some hydro and geothermal, as well.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    It sound impressive, until you read it's Las Vegas. In places like Germany you have several weeks per year with neither enough sun nor wind. With backup power like gas turbines which run few weeks per year you have to subsidize the operators. And if you want run them on green hydrogen, massively overbuild the renewable capacity so that you can fill up gas storage during summertime.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The diagram shows that they fall short on winter mornings

    My own modelling to decide what size battery I want for my house says it's easy almost every day, but when you have three rainy and overcast days in a row you need a battery far larger or an alternative. For me the alternative is the grid; at grid scale it's gas generators

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    If somebody has to keep that gas generator serviced only to run it on winter mornings, that electricity is going to be very pricey.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    Indeed, but cheaper than enough batteries to cover those times

    In the off grid home scale one I'd size and set the generator to run for several hours in a row to fully charge the battery on days when the battery was at a sufficiently low charge entering the night, at least that's what my current modelling suggests. Diesel gensets work best when running fully loaded for at least long enough to warm up

    I guess at grid scale you find the sweet spot where most years the gas power station and batteries are balanced to provide cheapest power averaged over the year

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    The point is if 97% of the energy is cheaper... Then you would have to pay more than coal for 3%. Which you could use any other form to supplement that, or just pay more for that 3% as the prices keep dropping and it will be below it soon. Countries use more than one source of energy. Whether you use a nuclear plant, hydro, geothermal, wind, or even gas/coal to supplement that 3% until it becomes cheaper (likely in the next 3 years).. and then we'll just burn off the extra energy in useful tasks hopefully. You could do anything with it. Shit hook it up the pumps and lift water up into towers and tell people if we have to much energy we need to burn off you'll get extra water pressure for your showers or something. Use it for desalinization of saltwater to send to areas in a drought. Can power the shipping to get it there as well. Idk, there's always something useful we need energy for.

    (Note those numbers were just for Vegas though, so it could be 20% your trying to supplement for now)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent