Yea.. it's a pretty long way to go to seamlessly pick up summer and some winter loads, though. Look at the CAISO supply trend on Sep 07 2022:
https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html
Similarly, examine it on Feb 07 2022.
https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html
Similarly, examine it on Feb 07 2022.
I'd conclude that until solar has excesses on the peak demand days that it probably makes financial sense to keep rolling out more solar.
And that increase in excess on non-peak days then makes rolling out batteries make financial sense.
And then the presence of those batteries makes rolling out even more solar make sense.
And indeed that is what is happening.
The amount of storage build-out that justifies, thus far, is easy to accommodate with batteries. Later, as renewables shoulder more of the load, the storage needs to get bigger and you start looking for economies of scale.
Ultimately, instead of paying to build out long-term storage, most places will rely on imports of synthesized liquid fuel to burn in peaker plants, from places that produce excess reliably, e.g. tropics, for solar, and reliably windy places. It is always windy somewhere. That synthetic liquid fuel is most likely ammonia.
And, while waiting for those to come online and undercut NG, you just continue peaking with NG.
Today people are breaking ground for factories to build ammonia synthesis equipment, which will take remarkably long to finish and start producing. Then those need to build enough synthesis equipment to absorb hundreds and thousands of excess GW. And we will have ships to transport it in, tanks to keep it in.
All that is a huge job, but it will be done. The stuff that handles an equal amount of petroleum and NG was built and is used, and will wind down and be scrapped.
If build-out matches predictions, collapse is an easy call. But build-out has been consistently beating predictions.
On 9-7-22 solar production reached a peak just under ~13MW and was at that level for about 7/8 hours.
To me the average seasonal difference actually seems insignificant in the big picture. If its feasible for solar to power most energy on the summer days then it would be doable to get there for winter days especially since demand on 2-7-22 peaked at about 60% of the peak on 9-7-22.
The larger issues seem to be unpredictable off days due to off-season weather (cloud cover or wilfire ash or whatever) and of course storing power at night. But it seems like batteries will improve and running off solar on the day reduces need for natural gas until night.
Not totally sure why solar would ever be negative, but that's the wider explanation I think.
One possibility is that batteries are often colocated with solar, so possibly a solar/battery combination has been misfiled under solar.
They're also vulnerable to hail, and require a lot of copper wiring.
I would buy any stock related to mini nuclear reactors. It seems like a promising solution, since it's faster and simpler to deploy, they can probably be sold to less rich countries, they're probably even safer.
I'm not a nuclear engineer, but I wish there was more news about it.
Both are here, right now, and getting cheaper every year. Nuclear seems to be something climate skeptics points to as a way of doing nothing.
The first small modular civilian reactor in the United States in 2022. However, the United States has been producing small modular reactors for military use since the late 1950s.
Ignore dogma and consider cases why nuclear power might be beneficial even if the dollar cost for wind and solar is globally lower: - The power output variance for nuclear is not very correlated with solar, wind, and hydro. Given the issues related to supply and demand variance, adding power sources whose variance isn't correlated with other power sources stabilizes supply and reduces risks of blackouts. - Solar, wind, and hydro are very geographically-dependent sources. To a small degree, so is nuclear— it requires cooling— but it can be built in places that aren't great choices for wind and solar. This means it's very useful for some local markets. - Nuclear has a different set of mineral requirements from batteries. In many ways, they are more complicated (e.g., enriching Uranium for light water reactors), but they are nonetheless different. Using nuclear alongside batteries reduces risk from mineral supply chains being broken.
Most of these effects run in both directions. Relying entirely on one source of energy is more risky than utilizing an ensemble of sources.
There are alternatives that can fill the same roles you envisage for nuclear. We'll get some of those instead.
Don't talk to us nerds, go knocking on doors and persuade soccer moms and instagram influencers that nuclear is safest, cheapest, best for their kiddies. That's who you need to convince.
V.C. Summer and Vogtle 3/4 were the nails in the coffin for nuclear here in the US. Nuclear has no time now to rebuild a reputation for honesty.
Soccer moms and instagram influencers have nothing to do with this.
We are living in the world Edward Bernays built, where democracy holds vanishingly little sway as PR machinery reliably generates votes for whatever whoever pays it wants.
Sometimes opposing payers compete.
Nukes have the extra ball-and-chain of huge capital cost to amortize over all the kWh they will produce over their lifetime. This means that if you end up operating only half time, there are half as many kWh to amortize over, and each kWh costs even more, making you even less competitive. (Operating a steam turbine less might reduce maintenance cost, but probably not if you are starting and stopping it every night, or if you keep it cycling to avoid that.)
So the expectation is that nukes will very quickly become unable to produce enough revenue to pay for continued operation. Then they are mothballed. Suddenly, all that capex is amortized over a much smaller lifetime kWh total, and the actual cost of every kWh ever produced jumps instantly to greater than you ever were able to charge for it. Then you go into receivership, or anyway write off that capex you thought you had invested, but really just poured down a hole.
We will need every non-carbon kW we can muster.
prices change, physical units don't.
We should not care what tech get us to cheap, abundant, emission-free power, and the current trends from nations around the world points in multiple directions. We don't see examples of cheap small modular reactors, but we also don't have national grids that operates exclusively on solar and batteries. Solar seem to have the best cost curve, while short duration batteries looks great in replacing natural gas when those are used in short (a few hours) duration. Battery technology is also looking great to replace grid stabilizers, ie something to temporary supply or take energy when energy plants on the grid boots up or goes winds down.
Skeptics of solar and batteries is generally directed towards the idea of replacing all worlds existing fossil fueled power plants. Replacing them all with nuclear looks conceptional feasible. Getting the solar capacity up to 100% seems also feasible, but batteries is generally were people start to have doubts.
No it isn't, as demonstrated by all the solar being installed alongside the zero mini nuclear reactors.
> require a lot of copper wiring
Intuitively I'd expect the quantity of wiring to be roughly proportional to output power, regardless of method; how much do you need for the coils of reactor turbines, for example?
> panels generally generate much less power after 20 or 30 years.
Maybe? That's the expected lifetime, but the actual outcome will vary depending on how weather-beaten they are. Being entirely solid state with no moving parts larger than an electron-hole pair is quite an advantage.
> can probably be sold to less rich countries
We're just going to stop worrying about proliferation?
Who cares that the panels are mostly made in China? Most of the electronics that would control your hypothetical nuclear plant would be made in China too.
Fusion reactors in theory can be much safer in that regard, but until they are realized and shown to work I do not see any sensible alternative for building solar or wind while keeping coal and gas power stations running.
D-3He reactors might someday find uses in the outer solar system, or in military rapid-deployment corps, if they turn out possible. But availability of 3He will always be a problem. Probably it will be bred by using solar power to accelerate protons.