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Comment by coryrc | Hacker News Reader

As usual, explain how you're going to power heat pumps in the Northern half of the country during a 3 week bomb cyclone. There are answers and they cost money.

The only answer we're using is to build 1:1 natural gas capability for solar, which is roughly double the cost. That's a solution, but it needs to be accounted for when comparing options.

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Alternative to natural gas? Wind, geothermal, or nuclear. Wind is already in the northern half of the country and operates well when winterized, unlike the ones in Texas that broke since they were not winterized during that freeze a while back.

Natural gas and fossil fuels are not our only options, they are the easiest options.

Context is solar and pricing. You can't only build solar, because people will freeze to death. So you can't say "solar+batteries is only $X/W!!!” because you're ignoring that you must also have a rarely-used natural gas, or install a rarely-used long-distance transmission line, or install rarely-used storage capacity. Which is fine, but you're being dishonest about costs if you don't.

It's also like to see a comparison to giving people/companies a discount if they have alternative methods of heating for 3 weeks and agree to be powered off. Places like hospitals and universities often have generators and do this. Sand "batteries" (aka electric resistive heaters in a few tons of sand heated to 1000°C) might be cost-effective if standardized. You keep it insulated and hot until the power goes out, then you let it bleed heat out to keep you from dying.

You’re ok if governments give up and simply tell consumers “you deal with it”?

Places like hospitals have back up in case the mains goes out. It’s no longer a back up if used as the primary supply.

They get cheaper electric rates by agreeing to be the first loads shed if the grid is overloaded. This is a standard thing. If their generators didn't start, they wouldn't be cut off, but it'd be a big deal.

> You’re ok if governments give up and simply tell consumers “you deal with it”?

Paying people to be prepared and willing to go without electricity in times of extreme supply-demand balance is a part of the solution. It's a regular thing for data centers, hospitals, etc. It may be cheaper to pay people to install sand batteries than to install longer-distance interconnects, and if people voluntarily agree, why would you object?

Couldn't this also be solved with transmission from other parts of the country? or is that what you're saying?

Yes, but you have to pay for a line you don't plan to use much, so its capital costs should be attributed to the generation method requiring it. Which is fine, but not including it is dishonest about the true costs.

I think if you designed and built it with the idea in mind that you're building your renewables in the sunny/windy centre/south of the US to be transported to a these places all year round it's a better idea than it being a backup. But I agree that the cost of over generation should be factored in to comparison pricing. But I also think we don't include enough of the costs in FF infra either.

The coal plant in my hometown was always running on cold days. It didn't need anything else to be available when needed besides several hours of lead time.

Mostly relying on long-distance transmission has high costs in capex, opex (losses), reliability, and security.

> a 3 week bomb cyclone

Sounds pretty windy to me.

I'm not sure how often the upper Midwest gets Dunkelflaute. If rare enough, then overbuilding wind is a possible solution (especially combined with additional transmission) but, again, those costs must be accounted for or the solar costs are dishonest.

https://www.ehn.org/europe-faces-challenges-from-low-wind-an...

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