Solar + Battery (covering 97% of demand) is now cheaper than coal and nuclear
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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.
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
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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
theres also nothing much going on LV too, limited schools and and private physicians.
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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.
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
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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
If somebody has to keep that gas generator serviced only to run it on winter mornings, that electricity is going to be very pricey.
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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.
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.
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Yeah but that would not account for the electricity need: in winter we need between 1000/1300 kWh mainly for heating / domestic hot water. Other months under 250 even if we use air conditioning. So if you cover the 7 nice months you still get absolutely wrecked by the dreaded 4 in the winter cost wise…
They just assumed a constant draw I think.
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If somebody has to keep that gas generator serviced only to run it on winter mornings, that electricity is going to be very pricey.
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
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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.
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."
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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
I think the current politicians do too much thinking about minors
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Next two? After you mentioned it I tried googling and can’t find anything about current projections for new AP1000s at vogtle.
This paper lays out the cost projections that one could expect with the lessons learned from Vogtle Units 3 & 4, with the tax credits and government guarantees available as of 2024:
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But the other misleading part is they looked at 20 years which is close to the life cycle for solar/batteries and not even half the life of nuclear
I think Lazard's LCOE methodology looks at the entire life cycle of the power plant, specific to that power plant. So they amortize solar startup/decommissioning costs across the 20 year life cycle of solar, but when calculating LCOE for nuclear, they spread the costs across the 80 year life cycle of a nuclear plant.
Nuclear is just really, really expensive. Even if plants required no operating costs, the up front costs are so high that it represents a significant portion of the overall operating costs for any given year.
The Vogtle debacle in Georgia cost $35 billion to add
2 MW2GW (edit to fix error) of capacity. They're now projecting that over the entire 75 year lifespan the cost of the electricity will come out to be about $0.17 to $0.18 per kilowatt hour.Nuclear is just really, really expensive.
Subsidize it like you do oil, there, solved.
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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
you get weapons as the byproduct of nuclear power
Not necessarily depends on the reactor type.
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As others have said this is for Las Vegas which receives wayyy more sun than the average place. But the other misleading part is they looked at 20 years which is close to the life cycle for solar/batteries and not even half the life of nuclear
they looked at 20 years which is close to the life cycle for solar/batteries and not even half the life of nuclear
Brother, with some luck a nuclear plant is in construction stage after those 20 years
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absurd. Uranium mines need huge exclusion zones. In fact the biggest ones have large enough exclusion zones that more solar energy could be harvested than the energy content of the uranium underneath.
Not all reactors use uranium.
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This paper lays out the cost projections that one could expect with the lessons learned from Vogtle Units 3 & 4, with the tax credits and government guarantees available as of 2024:
According to the link you listed an AP1000 costs $66/MWh where as from the ember report that’s linked in this article solar plus storage for 97% uptime cost $104/MWh in a sunny city. In Washington DC it would cost $124 and only be able to maintain 81%. I still stand by even with the higher cost that solar + storage is a better option in places like Arizona, Nevada, Southern California ,etc. but nuclear is not as much of the high cost boogeyman as you are making it out to be
Solar electricity every hour of every day is here and it changes everything | Ember
Batteries are now cheap enough to unleash solar energy’s full potential, getting as close as 97% of the way to delivering constant electricity supply 24 hours across 365 days cost-effectively in the sunniest places.
Ember (ember-energy.org)
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they looked at 20 years which is close to the life cycle for solar/batteries and not even half the life of nuclear
Brother, with some luck a nuclear plant is in construction stage after those 20 years
China has been doing them in around 7 years from groundbreaking to grid connection and is trying to get that down to 5 years with their bailong power plant as they are developing an experienced work force and actually have experience making the parts
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Yeah but that would not account for the electricity need: in winter we need between 1000/1300 kWh mainly for heating / domestic hot water. Other months under 250 even if we use air conditioning. So if you cover the 7 nice months you still get absolutely wrecked by the dreaded 4 in the winter cost wise…
Yeah I was just explaining why I think the disconnect shows up between percentage and the number. Its why as you get to the end each percentage become significant as it means just a bit more insulation, batter size, panel efficiency, appliance efficiency might bridge the gap. You get in the nineties and its that one most brutal month that it can't handle.
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