Solar + Battery (covering 97% of demand) is now cheaper than coal and nuclear
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Coal has long been unprofitable, and nuclear has always needed huge state funding (you get weapons as the byproduct of nuclear power, hence the subsidies). Until it beats gas it still isn't cheap enough imo. Gas of course is still massively subsidised too though, and that's where we need to continue to work: our policy makers need to end fossil fuel subsidies
Look at the other line on the graph. Solar alone, covering up to 60% of energy use, is already cheaper than gas in Las Vegas. Sure, other places will have their own lower numbers, but until we achieve this threshold, we’re just a bunch of reactionaries captured by current business owners. If anyone actually believed in the free market, we’d expect it to trend to that line
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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.
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.
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I you live where sun is abundant all year round… In which case (Las Vegas?) I would question the choice of having humans living in a fucking desert in the first place. But man I wish I could cover my needs between October and March here in Europe but no battery will help me store so much for so long
Does the wind blow year round? I’m imagining a similar case for wind, then you can say that for the union of these two sets, renewables are cheaper than legacy energy
Maybe bump that number slightly for places with hydro that can serve as a battery
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He is probably referring to the small amount of nuclear waste that is actually produced per watt of power, it is a lot more dangerous if you are in direct contact, but it is surprisingly easy to store safely, and remove all environmental impact. The biggest environmental issue with nuclear is the mining and enriching, both of which are realistically too small to factor in.
I found this article going into more depth nuclear waste .
No, none of that has much to do with CO2 output besides transportation.
Nuclear power needs a lot of concrete. Concrete releases a lot of CO2 during production. It does eventually reabsorb it as it cures over a decade or two. IIRC, it might even be CO2 net negative eventually.
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Yeah I saw that… Though I’m 3 years into solar and my measurements aren’t so positive. I am definitely not covering 62% of our needs yearly. The 4 less sunny months are killers when you need heating.
I saw a video where a guy was claiming vertical solar panels can effectively generate more power more often. They can catch a little something when the sun is low in winter , or on the shoulder hours of sun-up/down, where traditional solar can’t, and they don’t get snow buildup
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To tack onto that: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source
When you account for land use in the entire life cycle from mining resources to disposal at end of life cycle, nuclear uses a quarter of the land of rooftop cadmium panels and a tenth of silicon panels.
Offshore wind is the only thing that gets close and even that has ecological and commercial concerns.
If you're pro-stable and sustainable ecological systems, nuclear based power grid is a no brainer.
Yet breeder plants would be even more sustainable in theory, yet if anyone tries to research them right now and doesn't already have nuclear bombs they may fall into the same situation Iran just did.
Less fuel use, Less waste. Requires more technological testing/improvements long term, but everyone is worried about people weaponizing higher enrichment uranium from an outside perspective.. I could be wrong
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Look at the other line on the graph. Solar alone, covering up to 60% of energy use, is already cheaper than gas in Las Vegas. Sure, other places will have their own lower numbers, but until we achieve this threshold, we’re just a bunch of reactionaries captured by current business owners. If anyone actually believed in the free market, we’d expect it to trend to that line
I work in this field. I'm trying to change these numbers! We are heading the right direction is the good news. China may well save us all with cheaper panels and battery manufacturing. And if 97% reduces our emissions even 50% on todays emissions then we can start talking about actually meeting some climate targets.
So this is all good news, but as I also said: I work in this field and know we have a long way to go yet. There also isn't a single answer. Batteries, smart grids, grid-interconnects, efficiencies, supply mixes, demand offsetting; power is the best thing in the world to work in right now, it touches sooo many aspects of humanity and is changing so fast!
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Does the wind blow year round? I’m imagining a similar case for wind, then you can say that for the union of these two sets, renewables are cheaper than legacy energy
Maybe bump that number slightly for places with hydro that can serve as a battery
I would have loved that but having a wind turbine is… not easy. Permits, psychotic attitude from neighbours… but that have been my go-to given we don’t have a stream to go hydro.
I’m still happy with covering 8 ou of 12 months with our setup but it’s still unnerving to swallow the costs of the setup + utilities for winter months… -
Then get it from the sources that already exist. 97% coverage is a great milestone.
Funny enough lots of people hate that. Lots of people have binary thinking, it's either 100% coal or 100% solar.
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Funny enough lots of people hate that. Lots of people have binary thinking, it's either 100% coal or 100% solar.
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.
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I would have loved that but having a wind turbine is… not easy. Permits, psychotic attitude from neighbours… but that have been my go-to given we don’t have a stream to go hydro.
I’m still happy with covering 8 ou of 12 months with our setup but it’s still unnerving to swallow the costs of the setup + utilities for winter months…Wind kinda has to go big for efficiency. It's hard to beat the laws of physics on this. Not really feasible for individuals to do in a meaningful way unless you have a whole farm.
Solar panels are workable-ish. Residential rooftop is OK, but the real cost benefit is from filling big, flat fields with racks. Homes have to be a boutique setup every time, and labor cost adds up.
If you want to be (semi-) independent of traditional power utilities, the way to go is co-ops. You and all your neighbors go in on buying a field and putting solar/wind/storage on it
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I work in this field. I'm trying to change these numbers! We are heading the right direction is the good news. China may well save us all with cheaper panels and battery manufacturing. And if 97% reduces our emissions even 50% on todays emissions then we can start talking about actually meeting some climate targets.
So this is all good news, but as I also said: I work in this field and know we have a long way to go yet. There also isn't a single answer. Batteries, smart grids, grid-interconnects, efficiencies, supply mixes, demand offsetting; power is the best thing in the world to work in right now, it touches sooo many aspects of humanity and is changing so fast!
power is the best thing in the world to work in right now, it touches sooo many aspects of humanity and is changing so fast!
100%
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I saw a video where a guy was claiming vertical solar panels can effectively generate more power more often. They can catch a little something when the sun is low in winter , or on the shoulder hours of sun-up/down, where traditional solar can’t, and they don’t get snow buildup
it's a trade-off. the average generation curve depends on the inclination; each has its pros and cons
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To tack onto that: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source
When you account for land use in the entire life cycle from mining resources to disposal at end of life cycle, nuclear uses a quarter of the land of rooftop cadmium panels and a tenth of silicon panels.
Offshore wind is the only thing that gets close and even that has ecological and commercial concerns.
If you're pro-stable and sustainable ecological systems, nuclear based power grid is a no brainer.
yeah at a certain point it becomes a trade-off between "no geopolitical dependence on uranium" and "no geopolitical dependence on something that is currently produced in china, but could be produced anywhere if we tried hard enough"
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it's a trade-off. the average generation curve depends on the inclination; each has its pros and cons
Also if one chose to have some tree for natural shading it kind of forbids to have verticals. Shade was more appropriate in our case so there’s a very limited direct sun exposure.
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I you live where sun is abundant all year round… In which case (Las Vegas?) I would question the choice of having humans living in a fucking desert in the first place. But man I wish I could cover my needs between October and March here in Europe but no battery will help me store so much for so long
Exactly that. My worst case winter month (not even by day and I like to be warm every day) is generating less than 25% of consumption. Not that other winter months are much better.
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Yeah I saw that… Though I’m 3 years into solar and my measurements aren’t so positive. I am definitely not covering 62% of our needs yearly. The 4 less sunny months are killers when you need heating.
62 percent could be 7 months all the time and 5 never right? So if those 4 months only get you 20% but the others give you ninety something. When I see that 62 I see it as over half the year it will work out good.
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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.
See and this is why we need to subsidize poor old coal. It can't compete without it. Won't someone think of the miners! /s
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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.
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.
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97% sounds impressive, but thats equivalent to almost an hour of blackout every day. Developed societies demand +99.99% availability from their grids.
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.
