Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

Renewables with batteries are cheaper than new nuclear or even new natural gas.

Does that price include enough storage to heat the entire Twin Cities area (~4M people) for six continuous weeks of average -20C weather with overcast skies, where power failure means widespread death and property damage (broken pipes)? It might do, I don't know, but I'm skeptical. That's a lot of power! My gut feeling is a baseload solution is better for that kind of situation, though what I'm really advocating for is for every option to be on the table for the real experts (not me!) to decide.

Pump water uphill on sunny & windy days. One thing that MN doesn't lack is water.

During the long winter season, that water is largely in solid form, making it less useful for hydro-battery use.

Hydro plants in cold regions usually have an "ice laying" period where they reduce the output to form a thick layer of ice at their desired level to enable the flow they need and prevent ice-slush from entering the turbines.

Seems like Minnesota is more lakes, but that same concept should apply, and it is not like they freeze to the bottom each winter.

You've also got a sizable river on the eastern border that extends up into northern Minnesota.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monticello_Nuclear_Generating_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Crosse_Boiling_Water_Reacto...

Wtf does six weeks of peak power consumption for a city look like in volume of water? Probably bigger than a city

bit short on hills though

Nope. The only "cost-competitive" solar+storage installations I've seen lack sufficient storage to maintain their advertised overnight--even after a perfect, sunny day! For solar with sufficient storage to handle consecutive cloudy days (when panel production is <30% of max), the cost would be many times higher than natural gas. And solar that can't handle consecutive cloudy days requires redundant backup capacity... which, oddly, is never priced in!

In 20 years I think we'll look back on this idea that cheap solar could be the cornerstone of our electricity production as a goofy idea which was about as realistic as the ethanol fuel schemes of the early 2000s.

But at a grid scale we don't need a single installation to provide continuous power and it wouldn't necessarily make sense for it to do so. Load is not uniform across the day and other sources may be cheaper at any particular moment.

Weather patterns can be very large. So essentially all installations in one area will act same way. And we are not really doing any intercontinental grids with large enough capacities to move whole demand. Or overprovisioning in each area so that also other areas can be covered...

At a grid scale you don't have to do everything all at once. Overprovisioning takes time, as does interconnection and storage.

We need a New Deal-type mobilization to build https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Landing_Solar_Communit... everywhere across the country. Like building the Hoover Dam, it will generate massive amounts of carbon-free energy for a long time and with a relatively short ROI. It's embarrassing parallelizable. We could be off fossil fuels for heating in fifteen years across all homes, saving thousands of dollars a household per year.

52 entire dwellings on 250 acres? Thanks but no. You would literally need to pave America to make this happen.

50 dwellings on one acre is at the low end of the urban density scale.

First, that's literally not even close to true about paving.

But I meant retrofit all existing housing stock with solar collectors and heat storage, neither of which require much room.

It is though. This is a net 5 acres per dwelling, there are only ~300 million arable acres in the USA and there are 200 million households.

This is a tangent. Only the garage roofs have solar thermal collectors on them. Every existing suburban area in the USA regardless of density has enough building roof volume to fully supply a Drake Landing-type thermal system and eliminate heating inputs. Drake Landing shows it will work even in the exurbs. I would guess it could provide enough heating for low-rise apartments and row houses as they have reduced heat loss compared to SFH to make up for the lower available roof area. They cover the deep bore thermal system with dirt and make it a park. I would expect you could put a building over it too. It literally doesn't need to take up any additional land area, so the fact that Drake Landing is an exurb does not mean the system would only work there.

What I haven't read enough about is whether it's limited to a certain geology. I assume it wouldn't work in Florida, but it's not needed there.

Back to your tangent, Drake Landing isn't a giant paved area: the vast majority of the area is not paved or building. I also don't know why you're counting only arable acres as they're houses not farms. Since the system only needs a large-garage-roof-sized thermal collector and the average house roof is larger than that (and if the roof is even smaller so is the thermal load) it's completely irrelevant.

You might be surprised at the rigor applied in studies like the NREL Standard Scenarios, viewable here: https://scenarioviewer.nrel.gov/. I'm guessing the Twin Cities region doesn't actually see 42 days of overcast skies, but if it does, that can be captured in these studies. And transmission is important - load in the Twin Cities area does not have to be served by generation in that area.

Batteries in their current form are incredibly harmful to the environment, and I think would need to be replaced more than nuclear fuel sources.

Exactly, and the reason why they're cheaper now is because it's easier to dump their externalities on developing countries with lax environmental policy, whereas nuclear has unreasonably strict safety requirements which drive up costs substantially, along with the lost expertise in the work force by pausing it for so long.

TANSTAAFL

Batteries, if recycled, have less environmental impact than the massive amounts of concrete used in a nuclear facility.

Absolutely not. You might want to look up where that cobalt for batteries comes from as well and how much recycling actually gets done.

LiFePO4 batteries need no cobalt. You do not need fancy batteries for stationary services. Grid-scale storage batteries can be as big, heavy, dumb, and cheap as you like. You don't even need lithium really.

Cool. Would you like to let us know where all the other materials are mined from and how environmentally friendly that is? I suggest you look up nickel mining.

LiFePO4 batteries don't use nickel either.

I see that now. Yes, they seem to be a better option than other batteries. However, you're still mining stuff from the earth and the idea that disposing of current vehicles (or other fossil fuel powered things) is better for the environment is just silly.

You also didn't address the recyclable part. From what I can see LiFePO4 batteries are supposedly easier to recycle but I'm going to take that with a grain of salt. Almost all the things they've told us are being recycled just get dumped in the ocean in China. I have my doubts that anyone is actually recycling these batteries effectively.

> Almost all the things they've told us are being recycled just get dumped in the ocean in China.

Post-consumer recycling is quite poor, but post-industrial recycling is much better because they don't have to sort out random junk. Many battery plants already recycle the batteries that fail validation.

Cars are recycled quite thoroughly. In the US: 99% of lead acid batteries are recycled. 95% of vehicles are recycled, and of those 95%, 80% of the materials in the vehicle are recycled. (mostly steel).

In 2023 stationary storage batteries don't use cobalt.

Stationary storage batteries are expected to last 25 years. Given that we've only been doing stationary storage batteries for about 5 years, it's not really surprising that they aren't being recycled.

What's your point here? You're only supporting my stance.

This lie is promulgated by the oil industry.

The oil industry uses slave labor to mine cobalt in the congo with zero environmental concerns on how they get it out of the ground?

Your lie is promulgated by the "green energy" industry.

There's just as much money and bs coming from the other side. You can't pretend there's not when you have massive donors and and entire elitist political party backing something like that.

You have fallen into a trap. You are informed enough to be concern-trolled by fossil fuel propaganda, but not well-enough informed to realize it. Many battery technologies need no fancy metals. Even lithium is optional. But lithium, even if we have to get it, has an environmental footprint far smaller than fossil fuels production. Other things that have dramatically larger environmental footprints than lithium include soap and table salt.

Oh stop with the strawman attacks and wake up. You're being fed bs by your side just as much as the oil industry feeds their "constituents" lies. Big Green energy is backed by massive amounts of money and political interests just like big oil and it's not even close to replacing fossil fuels as a main energy source. All you need to do is ask Europe how things are going now that they don't have natural gas coming in from Russia.

Here's the deal... right now, fossil fuels heat my home, get me to work, cook my food, create a massive amount of the household products I own. They've kept my family alive and well and several generations back as well. Green Energy CAN'T do this effectively at all right now.

If/When it does I'll switch. However, I'm not going to listen to some shill, bully and shame me into using something because they feel they're morally justified in doing so.

Green energy does not have to be able to do 100% of everything to be useful. It is not as simple as CAN Vs CANT. And it won't suddenly flip from CANT to CAN in an instant.

You're strawmanning again.

The issue here is everyone knows green energy can't provide enough energy on it's own and yet governments and sjw's every seem to think it's a good idea to pull the rug out of the average middle class person and force them onto green power by taxation, social pressure etc.

And your "everyone knows" is an "appeal to the people" falacy. The grid operator in the UK certainly thinks it is possible to have a 100% renewable grid.

Although I guess that the political situation in the USA precludes a rational policy. Every argument turns into a culture war sooner or later. The opposition is criticised for moral weakness (child slave battery) whilst your own side are blameless victims.

WOW you're going to use the UK as an example for renewable energy right now??? Have you been paying attention at all?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/05/uk-prepares...

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/uk-wind-solar-builde...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/01/uk-effor...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/21/energy-cris...

https://e360.yale.edu/features/africa-europe-solar-wind-powe...

I'm actually surprised you had the gall to even make this comment.

This ISN'T a political side argument. It's a reality argument and it's time for you to wake up. I'm choosing the side that keeps my family I alive during the winter. When/If renewables do that I'll embrace them, right now they aren't cutting it.

The hilarity here is you've chosen some cult type rational to convince yourself "renewables" are your Jesus and you'll never stop praying to your renewable "God" even when it strikes you down over and over again. Stop drinking the koolaid bud.

The issues ovet winter in the UK were caused by gas supply concerns and low availability of French nuclear power. I am not really sure why you think that is the fault of the renewable industry. But anyway I pointed to the UK because the grid operator has a plan to deliver 100% renewables. But it doesn't need to be reached immediately and may never be reached. It is not a binary thing. The brilliant thing about electricity is that it is fungible. It is the same regardless of which particular "god" you have faith in. I actually live in a country with full electric heating and much of the electricity comes from renewables. Have not had a power cut for years and am still alive and warm. It is not faith in fossil fuels or renewables that keeps me alive but high quality engineering. That can exist in fossil fuel or renewables.

You're right, it's not a binary thing. So, stop using legislation to remove fossil fuels from the people that can't afford your renewables, and then turning around and taxing the shit out of those same people to push renewables that can't stay on par with fossil fuels yet.

Yep... and the cobalt they need to in order to be produced it mined by child slave labor in the Congo.

People need to realize nothing about living in our modern culture comes without a cost.

Right, does it survive week with bad weather and max load ? Coz that's called "a winter"

I’d like to read about this - can you point me towards some reputable articles

Not an article, but I find the summary from Sabine Hossenfelder neutral and trustworthy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xsg9iK5yo

That's a great video, and I think it's important to point out to the other jackass in this thread that the issue is relevant to Germany because most of that country is north of fucking Saskatoon while this article is about Georgia which is at the same latitude as Iraq.

That video is missing demand response enabling sector coupling.

Take green steel using hydrogen as a chemical feedstock. Oversize the electrolyzers and add some storage and the plant is now able to utilize low prices and leave the firm 10% to more important consumers, while enabling more producers to exist.

This without paying the round-trip cost.

Almost all studies looking into 100% renewable systems finds them easily possible globally but a holistic approach is required. Simply shifting the current electricity sector to renewables won't cut it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

Reply on news.ycombinator.com