Fuzzers t1_jd8zw6o wrote
You still need a base load. Storage technology for wind and solar just isn't there yet in terms of cost feasibility, so that leaves natural gas or nuclear as base loads.
LouSanous t1_jd9szaq wrote
Baseload is a term used by laypeople that don't understand the grid.
All it means is that you want to have your power system producing enough power to meet the minimum load over a unit of time.
You people act like it's a magical thing that has to come from a particular source.
What you want is dispatchable power. Then it doesn't fucking matter.
Wind and solar aren't dispatchable, but then, neither is nuke.
Instead, have geographically distributed renewables and the transmission assets to move that power to where the demand is. Make enough power that you are always overshooting demand. Take the excess power and do something useful with it, like desalinization, producing fertilizer, whatever useful shit you can. You only need a small amount of dispatchable power to make up any anomalous dips in production met by pumped water, hydropower, batteries, flywheels, geothermal, or other non-emitting dispatchable power sources. You can also do load shedding and many other operations that stabilize the grid.
Baseload is just a nonsense word that laypeople use because they heard it on a documentary somewhere and they think it makes them sound smart.
>solar just isn't there yet in terms of cost feasibility,
Literally every electric utility in the country disagrees with you, so there's that.
Fuzzers t1_jda1hdu wrote
>Baseload is a term used by laypeople that don't understand the grid.
>
>All it means is that you want to have your power system producing enough power to meet the minimum load over a unit of time.
​
>You people act like it's a magical thing that has to come from a particular source.
No, it doesn't HAVE to come from a particular source, but if the minimum isn't met, we have a fucking problem. That's literally why I mentioned solar/wind + storage AS A BASE LOAD, because yes, its possible to use them as a base load, but its absolutely not economically feasible right now compared to a natural gas plant. Hopefully in the future that will change.
​
>What you want is dispatchable power. Then it doesn't fucking matter.
>
>Wind and solar aren't dispatchable, but then, neither is nuke.
Capacity factor of nuclear plants is literally the highest out of EVERY energy source. What are you smoking.
​
>Instead, have geographically distributed renewables and the transmission assets to move that power to where the demand is. Make enough power that you are always overshooting demand. Take the excess power and do something useful with it, like desalinization, producing fertilizer, whatever useful shit you can. You only need a small amount of dispatchable power to make up any anomalous dips in production met by pumped water, hydropower, batteries, flywheels, geothermal, or other non-emitting dispatchable power sources. You can also do load shedding and many other operations that stabilize the grid.
You're not wrong, and the US is absolutely improving its interconnects to move around energy to where demand is needed, but to build out ALL of your grid with renewables would require an absolutely stupid amount of storage and renewables overbuild, which is astronomically more expensive than a natural gas plant at the current time.
I'm a big proponent of hydrogen storage along with vanadium flow batteries, but at the current time they are too expensive as a base load option versus throwing up a natural gas plant. That most likely will change in the future, but for the next decade, its most likely not economically feasible. Hopefully that changes but I'm pessimistic.
​
>Baseload is just a nonsense word that laypeople use because they heard it on a documentary somewhere and they think it makes them sound smart.
>
>solar just isn't there yet in terms of cost feasibility,
>
>Literally every electric utility in the country disagrees with you, so there's that.
Solar + storage. Way to take something out of context.
LouSanous t1_jdaebk9 wrote
What I said:
>All it means is that you want to have your power system producing enough power to meet the minimum load over a unit of time.
What the first sentence of your link says:
>The base load[1] (also baseload) is the minimum level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time, for example, one week
If that isn't a near perfect paraphrase, then I don't understand English.
>You clearly didn't read the literal definition of base load being the minimum level of demand. Its not a layman term, its a literal grid term. But nice try.
I literally design power systems for a living. I've been doing it for more than a decade. Nobody in the industry refers to "base load". What we concern ourselves with is meeting the loads at any given point in time. We have countless tools at our disposal to do this. Base load is antiquated. It was a much bigger concern before SCADA systems gave us control over power flow and instantaneous feedback about grid conditions on a station by station, line by line basis.
>Capacity factor of nuclear plants is literally the highest out of EVERY energy source
Wow. You are the literal definition of a layperson. Capacity factor is the ratio between nameplate capacity and actual power delivered.
Dispatchability is the ability of a generation asset to ramp up or down quickly to meet the real time variability of loads.
You ought to be embarrassed by how confidently wrong you are.
Capacity factor isn't a meaningful concern. At fucking all. You design your system for the power that will be delivered by any asset. Since this is a known quantity and renewables, even with their CF between .25-.35, still outperform every other generation type in cost.
>ALL of your grid with renewables would require an absolutely stupid amount of storage
No, storage is not a major requirement. It is only necessary if you don't want to overbuild. But having too much energy at any point in time allows for all sorts of technological solutions that can be turned on or off by grid operators. On when we are over producing. Off when demand is approaching production. Things like making fertilizer, desalinating water, using carbon capture technologies, pumping water, recycling and many many other things. It would have huge consequences for reducing production costs of nearly everything and lead to a post scarcity in energy. Overbuild should be the GOAL, not something to be feared. It also ensures that you are ready for future demand increases.
>I'm a big proponent of hydrogen storage
Of course you are. Sigh. You are demonstrating that you haven't really thought about and lack the engineering background to separate the wheat from the chaff. You are literally a walking popular mechanics magazine. Hydrogen will never be a solution to anything but coking steel.
>too expensive as a base load option versus throwing up a natural gas plant.
This is the second time you have brought up the cost of gas plants. The only energy in the world more expensive than nuclear is gas peaker plants.
>most likely not economically feasible
You clearly haven't done the math on any of this stuff. The cost to completely decarbonize the entire US energy and transportation system is in the neighborhood of 7 trillion. That's electricity, gas heating, and meeting the grid needs of a national fleet of only EVs (something that absolutely shouldn't be done, but that's the math). $7 trillion is less than a decade of military spending, less than 3 years of what Americans spend on their personal cars, less than a decade of projected annual climate change costs, and about 2 years of federal spending.
We aren't talking about an insurmountable task here. The only part of it that's insurmountable is the political will to do it, which is no doubt stunted by laypeople throwing their erroneous opinions into the political ring and shouting over the people who actually do this shit for a living.
>Solar + storage. Way to take something out of context.
K. When you show your own math on this, we'll talk. For now, 82% of the new generation coming down the pike is renewables.
butts_kapinsky t1_jdbuy3x wrote
Sadly, this was an informative response to a recalcitrant who is not interested in learning or listening.
Fuzzers t1_jdai7gw wrote
I'd give you a response but based on your asshole of an attitude it's not worth it.
Next time you want to have a civil discussion, try not being a dick - a fellow engineer.
butts_kapinsky t1_jdbusjk wrote
So, if we're keeping track, you came out swinging with a pretty aggressive response to an industry professional who was explaining things in very calm and simple terms, and then when they rightly took you to task for the very basic errors you made, all of a sudden they're being a dick and the discussion isn't civil? Maybe you should try a civil response to begin with and maybe the conversation might head to sunnier pastures, friend?
You certainly aren't a power systems engineer, so why mention your qualifications at all? They aren't meaningful here.
SandAndAlum t1_jdbxvpl wrote
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
altmorty t1_jd92ob3 wrote
>nuclear as base loads
You complain about cost and then promote the most expensive energy source of all!
Fuzzers t1_jd9c0w7 wrote
Look I'm all in favor of getting rid of coal, but if you're going to replace it with anything due to cost increases, its going to be natural gas not solar/wind + storage.
The EIA LCOE 2022 report pins the LCOE of a combined cycle natural gas plant at $39.94, Wind at $40.23, Solar at $33.83, and battery storage at a whopping $128.55.
There is not a chance in hell a coal operator is going to look at those economics and convert to a solar/wind + battery storage setup vs. natural gas, especially with the ability to reuse the supercritical boiler for the steam turbine.
I mentioned nuclear as a base loads because moving forward, if the development of SMR's go well there is a possibility they could become economical for base load applications in the future. At the current time, best base solution is hydro if its available and if not natural gas.
DisasterousGiraffe OP t1_jd9elij wrote
Not sure what reason is for the apparent contradiction, but the planned additions to US electricity generation seem to be mostly solar.
Fuzzers t1_jd9jfab wrote
and that's a good thing! But as I said originally, base load electricity generation for renewables requires storage, of which in the EIA data is 17%. So 17% of all new possible base load generation is battery storage, and 14% is natural gas.
Right now, 39% of all electricity generation in the states is through natural gas, and I can guarantee they won't be replacing those plants with solar/wind+battery storage anytime soon, because its not economically feasible to do so.
Since 2011, 121 coal fired plants have converted to natural gas, because that's the most economical and logical thing to do. A replacement to solar/wind + battery storage would be more capitally intensive and have a longer payback period.
grundar t1_jdl5z0t wrote
> The EIA LCOE 2022
EIA's projections have changed substantially since 2022.
Compare their projections to 2050 from 2022 (p.15) and 2023 (p.10) (reference case):
- Solar: up 50% (1,200-1,800TWh)
- Wind: up 50% (700-1,100TWh)
- Gas: down 40% (1,800-1,200TWh)
- Coal: down 40% (500-300TWh)
EIA projections for renewable energy have been consistently revised way up, year after year:
- 2018 AEO: 1,600TWh renewables, 3,100TWh gas+coal
- 2020 AEO: 2,100TWh renewables, 2,700TWh gas+coal
- 2022 AEO: 2,300TWh renewables, 2,300TWh gas+coal
- 2023 AEO: ~3,300TWh renewables, 1,500TWh gas+coal
5 years ago, the EIA was projecting fossil fuels would out-generate renewables 2:1 in 2050; now, that ratio is reversed in their projections. How likely is it they've finally caught up with changes in power generation and won't revise that again?
For reference, wind+solar+battery are 140% of net new capacity over the last 5 years, and are a similar fraction of net new kWh generated. New gas is indeed being added, but coal is being retired even faster, so net fossil capacity in the US has been declining for a decade.
altmorty t1_jd9gg67 wrote
Are you kidding me? During a time of record high gas prices, you complain about the only alternative not becoming cheaper faster?
Storage will get cheaper and cheaper. LCOE are the unsubsidised costs. Governments can subsidise them for now, which will help them get cheaper still. The more we invest now, the faster this will happen. This is standard practise for all energy sources. No one complains when fossil fuels are heavily subsidised in so many different ways.
$1 billion invested in a storage system will lead to less gas for decades. $1 billion dumped into gas is temporary. Just look how none of those fracking investments saved us from record high gas prices!
You really do sound like a fossil fuel shill.
Fuzzers t1_jd9k2yf wrote
>You really do sound like a fossil fuel shill.
And you sound like you don't understand basic economics. What a shame. Let me know when they start replacing coal plants with solar/wind + battery storage instead of natural gas, and then we can relook at this discussion.
Also, FYI, those LCOE numbers were with tax credits applied.
SandAndAlum t1_jd9mgcn wrote
Hey, just letting you know they're replacing coal plants with solar and wind like you asked.
goodsam2 t1_jdcfqr1 wrote
What the facts are:
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Wind and solar can not be 100% of the grid.
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wind and solar are heading for even more dirt cheap prices.
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Most places haven't hit hard problems with increasing wind and solar to take a larger chunk of the energy market
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batteries are a booming sector
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we have some level of 0 carbon baseload power, some estimates say we could reach 80% wind/solar with hydro, nuclear etc which we are not far off 20%.
More speculation but these debates usually don't think enough about geothermal but advanced mining leading to increased viability of geothermal locations is likely.
[deleted] t1_jdbl72w wrote
[deleted]
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