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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>>the fact that the plants cannot easily be shut down and restarted means that they sometimes operate at a loss when there is ample supply on the market

>This is an interesting economic quirk I hadn’t thought about.

this "quirk" should be a non-issue with a functioning energy market. if renewables are flooding the market with cheap electricity, but only during the day, and there's a massive deficit during the night, then the deficit would cause prices to go up and make the remaining generating capacity (natural gas, nuclear) more profitable.

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The problem isn't even shifting daytime generation to night; that is somewhat doable with energy storage. In Europe at least (and I assume much of the rest of the world) the problem is shifting summer production to winter.

UK demand in winter is nearly 2x higher than summer (and will grow even more with switching gas heating to heat pumps), at the same time solar output is ~10% of that at summer. Wind energy is higher but is unpredictable and in very cold snaps (when demand is greatest) tends to result in very low wind output.

This problem is the biggest one to solve (and not sure how solvable it is). In essence it's possible to smooth out daily output with renewables, but annual output is very difficult. You are talking TWhs of storage requirement.

Hydrogen solves that problem. The round trip efficiency is poor, but for seasonal storage efficiency doesn't matter very much.

We have lots of "solutions" (e.g., conventional batteries, flywheels, pumped hydro, etc), the critical question is cost. Where are the proven economical, grid-scale deployments of hydrogen storage? Last I checked, they were in their infancy, so while I'm rooting for it, characterizing hydrogen as a solution is facile.

There exist underground hydrogen storage caverns already. One was referenced elsewhere in the comments (supplying hydrogen to industrial users in the gulf states.) So, the technology exists. The major block for green hydrogen storage was the cost of electrolysers, but that is crashing now as well: China is selling alkaline electrolysers for under $300/kW. The hydrogen would be used in combined cycle plants. Hydrogen-burning combustion turbines have been available for 30 years.

You might be misled by the apparent absence of installations for hydrogen grid storage, but understand that as long as natural gas is being used, it makes little sense to use hydrogen instead. That doesn't mean hydrogen can't work, it just means that natural gas (without CO2 charges) is for the moment cheaper.

I'm aware of some storage caverns and have no doubts that the technology works, but everything I'm aware of suggests it's experimental with respect to the economics.

Experimental technology does not get billion-dollar orders.

Factories for iron-air storage are being built today, to start supplying grid-scale storage in 2023. Everybody knows the demand is there and will remain there, so there is plenty of capital for anything known to work. But it takes time to build out.

After costs shake out, build-out will concentrate on the cheapest alternatives, but everything already built will still work, and still be used, because the cost is capital cost. It will be a long time before the storage market is saturated and storage providers have to compete on prices.

It will be ready and waiting when the economic incentives needed to put it into place are there. These incentives by all evidence will be less than what would be needed to put nuclear into its place.

BTW, if you object to hydrogen on these grounds, you must also object to nuclear on these grounds, and more strongly. This is especially the case if you imagine a nuclear powered world economy. You need to imagine a jump in technology more radical than for hydrogen storage -- either massive scale up of seawater uranium extraction (many orders of magnitude, from gram scale to megaton scale) or use of breeder reactors instead of burner reactors.

If you want proven tech, methane isn't much worse efficiency.

We don't need to switch summer production to winter if we keep improving grid inter-connectors. We will still need a lot more storage though. And insulation.

Grid interconnection adds strategic risk, particularly for small countries. This is Europe's problem, particularly. It will be West Africa's, and South America's. China is building a submarine cable to South America for winter solar, but you may be sure they are also stockpiling coal for when the cable fails.

They all need enough storage to not need interconnection, and then rely on interconnection to reduce cost and drawdown from storage.

How does that work? Are you connecting Europe to Africa? Even Spain has a large winter/summer swing in insolation.

Most European connections to Africa have been cancelled as a consequence of massive photovoltaic cost reductions enabling local placement and overbuilding to compete. A few projects connecting Spain to African generation remain.

Probably the most effective use for African solar energy production will be synthesis of hydrocarbons to be delivered by supertanker to high latitudes in winter, and for aircraft fuel.

Right. Which means that transmission in Europe cannot be anything other than an ineffective solution to seasonal variation in solar generation. The seasonal variation in solar energy available to the European grid will be large, and one either uses storage to deal with that, has extremely large amounts of demand that could be dispatched on a seasonal basis, or just wastes most of the summer production. What would end up happening instead would be the excess and otherwise curtailed production would create an irresistible force driving something -- like hydrogen production -- to soak up that otherwise wasted output.

For basically every big factory it is not easy to stop and startup again. For example for a large metal melt factory it would take a year to shutoff and another year to startup. For large oil production facilities it takes at least one year to halt operations. That's why they have these huge silos. Thosr factories are build with constant production in mind. Same thing for container ship logistics. A complex system that can take years to startup. Currently visible everywhere.

Having broadly-deployable (i.e. few geographic limitations), toggle-able, economically-productive ways to burn power that are carbon neutral or negative is the real solution.

There's no reason prices should ever be negative... except for a lack of power sinks. If there were intermittent hydrogen production facilities, or direct air capture of carbon + a carbon market that rewarded that, the intermittency accounting quirk would correct itself.

Those are probably good ideas but they're still not necessarily the cheapest options. They'll have capital costs to pay off over time like anything else, and if they only run half the time then the capital cost is doubled for the amount of output you get.

> direct air capture of carbon + a carbon market that rewarded that

That could be nice. Maybe if the DOE money helped with capital to build a direct air carbon capture system. Then the nuclear plants can sell credits to oil/gas based energy companies similar to how like Tesla sells its credits to other car manufacturers.

I agree. And I think that framing it as quirk(not by the OP but by the gentleman in the article) is disingenuous and being used to push for what just looks like more subsidies for private energy companies. It's hard to read the following and not feel a bit rankled.

>"Matt Crozat, senior director of policy development for the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), said the industry is "encouraged" by the creation of the credit program, but is still pushing for more permanent economic support."

The Nuclear Energy Institute looks like it's an just industry trade group that likely retains some powerful lobbyists.

> what just looks like more subsidies for private energy companies

I don't think there's a future where "energy policy" (a euphemism for subsidies/lobbying/permitting) ceases to exist.

If nuclear power is the least-worst of the industry trade groups, it should count for something.

However, it might behoove us to consider the wisdom in allowing the whims of "energy policy" to vaporize twenty-year, $10 billion infrastructure projects.

Precisely!

Look at ~2001/02 -- ENRON...

My energy bill went from $100/mo to over $1,000/mo for NO REASON..

My power was shut off in february because my regular energy bill literally went up 10X during that period (no change in use) -- and I was ~25 and it was the first downturn, and while I owned my house - I had to borrow money from parents to pay the fucking power bill due to enron shenanigans... (san jose ca, so not even super cold/winter conditions)

Look at fuel prices right now - same fuckery about today: When the war started and fuel went to $90/barrel - the gas pump first time ever went to $3/gallon...

Look at fuel prices today $92/barrel --

$5.19 at the pump.

Yeah - FN BS.

And then when you try to go self-sufficient with EV, PV, & Batteries, the state of California attempts to pass legislation to tax your PV array. Goofy.

I haven't done much research about enron so I'm not going to comment on it, but your remark about "same fuckery about today" does not seem to check out. If you plot out spot crude and gasoline prices[1], you'll see they track pretty closely starting from when records began (1990s). Also, if you dump out the data and calculate the ratio of gas prices to crude prices (after converting 42 gal = 1bbl), you see it remains pretty steady across the years. For the latest available data the ratio was 1.267, and the average for all available data is 1.222. That's higher, but definitely not in line with the numbers you claim.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_spt_s1_d.htm

Read this about 2001 enron BS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000%E2%80%9301_California_ele...

20X increase in energy costs at that time

---

ELI5:

While you're speaking that SPOT crude remains relativistic constant/regular over time, may you please explain if this is true, what the cost increases at the pump are directly related to?

When I began driving, the spot price tracking you mention was the same, but the pump price was $.99/gallon for gas...

So, I admit I do not have an understanding of the reasons behind the price at the pump, but shouldn't that price match the same graph?

If not, please ELI5 how it now apparently costs 5X the cost to deliver gas to the pump?

Shouldnt any company be seeking economies at scale and more efficient everything - especially in OIL/GAS where they are really reliant on compute for the future success of their industry and the power of compute is 10,000X more powerful today than in 1990?

Yet - the pump always goes up...

(I'll go ahead and you're going to excuse it as "the cost of doing business/expenses have gone up)

If true, then why isn't toilet paper $50/roll? Trees are not going to replenish themselves at the same rate as our consumption... so shouldn't toilet paper be super expensive?

What is your opinion on the following video on the origins of oil and the origin of the term "Fossil Fuel" coined by Rockefeller:

https://youtu.be/vdSjyvIHVLw

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000%E2%80%9301_California_ele...

1. your own article lists multiple non-eron related reasons for the crisis

2. AFAIK energy markets are the norm. state regulators might regulate the rates that retail customers pay, but the utilities are buying the electricity from the free market. Therefore the supply/demand dynamic when it comes to prices should already be factored in, which was why I was confused it was initially brought up.

>While you're speaking that SPOT crude remains relativistic constant/regular over time, may you please explain if this is true, what the cost increases at the pump are directly related to?

helpful page from eia.gov: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/

>When I began driving, the spot price tracking you mention was the same, but the pump price was $.99/gallon for gas...

obvious question: were you in the same state? taxes are baked into the gas price, so if you moved from texas to california, it wouldn't be surprising that your gas price went up for no reason.

>So, I admit I do not have an understanding of the reasons behind the price at the pump, but shouldn't that price match the same graph?

I went a step further and compared crude oil prices to retail gas prices (available from https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_w.htm), and found that the ratio hovers at around 2, with that ratio being higher in the 80s/90s than today. While there's some fluctuation, it's nowhere close to the amounts implied by your anecdotes. Speaking of which, I find your anecdotes impossible to substantiate. Which state did you live in? When was "the war"?

>If true, then why isn't toilet paper $50/roll? Trees are not going to replenish themselves at the same rate as our consumption...

I'm not sure where you're getting that conclusion from, but pulpwood trees are effectively farmed. The growth cycles are longer than something like corn, but they're still planted/replenished at approximately the same rate they're cut. The deforestation stories you hear are largely from developing countries cutting down forest for development purposes.

I think we are in 50/50 agreement: you have 50% the knowledge that I have, I have 50% the knowledge you have:

Thus, I am happy to capitulate and learn from your insights as well.

But the ratio doesnt take into many factors such as inflation and actual wage-buying-power

So while the maths ratio sounds small... the Human ratio is much greater based on the buying power of a dollar-vs-salary of the avg buyer...

so while it may seem one-way, the reality for the buyer is much different...

Here is an anecdote:

My GF has worked at The French Laundry for several years...

The top rest in the world according to some...

She lives in Sonoma Ca and it costs her $5.19 per gallon of gas. She drives an modern car with good gas mileage.

She pays $70 to 3/4 fill her car and travels ~30 miles one way to commute to a job at the top restaurant in the world which pays her $12/hour.

The bill says "Service Included" which leads guests to believe that "TIP IS INCLUDED" -- and so people that pay $75,000 for a meal (including wine) often DONT TIP...

Because they believe that "Service" == "Tip" NOPE.

The point is, that her commute costs her ~half a weeks actual pay to pay for fuel.

The point being that we THINK that the ratio --> relation to buying power has been constant, or even better these days with higher wages, the reality in the wallet is not such.

Even with a great job, at one of the best companies in the world (supposedly) -- She still struggles with just filling her car with gas.

Fuck big oil.

> but only during the day, and there's a massive deficit during the night

Only if you assume the demand stays constant, but it doesn't; Demand is usually the highest when PV output is also the highest, the middle of the day when everybody is at work, using all kinds of electricity drawing machines.

It also would heavily advantage power plants that could turn on and off quickly to only produce power when the cost of that power is high.

Especially if these plants produced a lot of pollution that was also not accounted for.

Based upon the UK's National Grid Data (https://grid.iamkate.com/) I would disagree with you - It seems that peak demand lies at about 6PM, and solar peaks about 11:30AM - This leads to a significant increase in fossil fuel consumption around this time

The UK is a curious example to use for this, afaik a big part of that "peak demand" is people starting up their electric tea kettles in a phenomenon known as TV pickup [0]

For contrast, here are the stats for Germany [1] and the consumption peaks during the day contrast very well with the night consumption.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

[1] https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/recent-electric...

> Demand is usually the highest when PV output is also the highest

Not quite, the mismatch in timing between solar generation and energy demand has been called the "duck curve" [1][2]. Peak demand is normally in the evening when people are done with work [3].

[1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/confronting-duck-curve-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve

[3] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915

> Demand is usually the highest when PV output is also the highest

In California, demand peaks are around 6-8pm, well past the peak of solar production. This disparity has a name, the "Duck Curve". You can view the near real-time power demand on the CAISO[1] website. Your region may have a similar way to see live demand.

[1] http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx

Not really, the peak is around 6PM when people get home from work, turn on all their lights, tvs, appliances, etc. This will change as well with the push to fully electrify residential homes, which would mean very heavy electricity usage in the evening for heating, electric stoves for cooking, electric dryers, and electric cars being plugged in.

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/ebf483/node/534

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