To solve the emission problem we need to be able to turn 100% hydrogen in to electricity.
204 karma · joined November 3, 2020
"Combustion turbines for 100% hydrogen are not commercially available today."
Yes. What do I get for $15B? How many GWh of storage and electricity generation?
> It would be cheaper still to throw pumped storage and batteries into the mix.
What pumped storate? Everybody is already about maxed out on hydro capability.
What batteries? The world is barely producing enough for EVs and other stuff, there aren't enough GWhs available for utility storage.
Oh, really? What's your solution to producing non-polluting power when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow?
> Electricity usage is not actually constant and nuclear power doesn't do load following unless you double the cost again
Can you explain how you've come to this conclusion?
We recently turned up a new nuclear power plant in Finland and they did nothing but turn up and down the generation levels when doing tests. Looking at the graphs, I can see output has varied between 3,3 and 4,3 GW this week.
The local wikipedia article on nuclear power states that power output can be regulated 5%/min, which is faster than almost all other generation methods.
> Theres a reason only France tried that - strongly related to the reason why Areva went spectacularly bankrupt.
Are you saying that Areva went over budget because they build us a load following nuclear plant?
> Theres no reality in which it makes any economic sense except #1 providing military support or #2 a pretend reality where all available storage options dont work.
Pray do tell what those available storage options are. Give us the real skinny then, none of that FUDD.
Today, in Finland, renewables produced between 0,2 GW and 1,5 GW.
Does that mean I would need $450M (1,5 GW * $300/kW) in electrolysers to soak up all that power?
For simplicity's sake, let's say output averages 1GW over 24 hours? What do I get for the day with my $450M electrolysis plant?
What opportunity cost? What else are you going to spend the money on that gives you non-polluting 24/7 power output rain or shine?
> If you have $15 billion today -- you could tie it up for a decade and you might get a working 1GW reactor in 10 years (though probably more like 15).
The best time to build a nuclear power plant was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
What we need is to build nuclear power at scale. Doing the same thing repeatedly for years in bound to bring both the construction time and cost down.
> Or you could spend $1 billion/year and end up with probably 15GW of utility solar in the same time frame?
What use is 15GW of solar in northern climes when you cannot use it when you need it and you cannot store it? In Finland solar has no output three months of the year and an additional two months of marginal output. Additional we need power 24/7, especially in winter.
> Even at a 20% capacity factor instead of a 95% one, you'd be making far more money from Day 1 with solar and since we're not remotely at the saturation point of renewables, every watt generated would still be useful.
I must confess I am unsure how the long term economics of renewables will work out. Around here renewables are pushing prices into the negative and increasing volatility.
As a funny aside, 15 GW is the peak power usage in Finland. Adding that much generation capacity would totally saturate the market.
> The right answer to whatever qualms people have about time-of-use / duck curves would be to invest more like $800M/year in generation and $200M/year in storage -- but still -- literal multiples of energy produced with almost zero ongoing costs.
How many GWh of storage can you get for $200M? My guess is far from enough.
We need days at a minimum, weeks for preference. 4 hours is nowhere enough.
https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e...
How are you going to use hydrogen to generate electricity without generating CO2 and other emissions?
How are you going to make e-fuel or other synthetic fuels cost effectively? Even if electricity is free, the plants aren't.
Capital costs are high and utilization will be low.
In Finland solar produces no power three months of the year. The months before and after that are marginal. To add joy, there are windstill periods of days, sometimes more than a week, in winter.
To add insult to injury, there isn't enough transmission capability to import all the renewable energy we would need to solely rely on renewables. There isn't enough hydro either so rely on that to take up the slack.
So, grid storage really is the hidden cost of both solar and wind, and multiple weeks of total grid output storage is needed for energy security if relying on renewables.
To reinterate, I really want to learn more about real long term storage. Anybody know where I can find solid info on that?
The price can go negative, and it does.
Having power and not freezing to death when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow is a pretty solid point.
We just put a new nuclear power plant into service in Finland.
> Its LCOE is 5x that of solar and between 1.5x-3x more expensive than solar/wind paired with just about all viable forms of green large scale storage (hydrogen, batteries, pumped storage).
Do you have any sources to back up these figures? I’m genuinely interested.
How is hydrogen a viable storage form when you cannot burn 100% hydrogen and fuel cell aren’t available or cost effective at utility scale?
How are batteries a viable storage form when there isn’t enough global manufacturing capacity to store energy at scale?
How is pumped hydro a viable storage form when you are limited by geography and can’t really build any more?
If we wait the same number of years, we might have some form of viable long term storage. Or not.
I can find very little information about long term storage, not that 1-2 days is much.
Most seem to think 4 hours qualifies as storage.
The author carefully avoids saying they haven’t actually used it.
And even if it did, the real issue is how to supply power when the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow, i.e. windstill winter days.
During such periods Norway does not have sufficient excess in hydro power generation to satisfy neighboring countries needs.
It's rather more than a rarity and for periods much longer than a few hours.
Case in point:
"European Wind Turbines at a Standstill Amid an Ongoing “Wind Drought” ... But as of recently, barely even a breeze has made its way through the through the winter air. ... "Britain is in the middle of a wind drought — and the timing couldn't have been worse. For several days now, the U.K. and western Europe have been calm, with barely a breeze," Thomas Moore writes for Sky News. ... Wind speeds in the U.K. have been rather slow recently, and this is impacting the country's ability to utilize wind energy.
According to Yale Environment 360, the phrase "wind drought" is exactly what it sounds like — it refers to an extended period of time that an area lacks wind, or experiences slower-than-usual wind speeds. In 2021, wind speeds were 15 percent slower than in previous years, making for one of the least windy periods in the U.K. in nearly 60 years."
https://www.greenmatters.com/news/wind-drought
> Renewables will have to recoup their investments in the winter
How is solar going to recoup its investment when it produces no power during the winter months?
Tell that to the folks actually building these transmission networks.
Sure. Finland is adding an additional 1000 MW of capacity to Estonia. It's expected to be ready for service in 2035.
In case you didn't notice, that's less than a nuclear power plants worth of interconnection capacity in a decade.
That page is little much than fancy hand waving. What's more amusing is that you can also find the summary of a study from Finnish engineering firm Pöyry on the very same page that concludes the following:
> some of them currently being implemented.
Which ones? Specifically which ones will add the required tens of GWs of interconnection capacity?
That's putting it charitably. You need a rather large leap of faith from those hallucinations to a real solution.Olkiluoto 3, Finlands newest nuclear reactor sells electricity for 40€/MWh. Even if you double that, to account for the French subsidy, you only end up at $86/MWh after currency conversion.
The same Lazard research report also states that: "Combustion turbines for 100% hydrogen are not commercially available today".
Given that you have to produce something other than hydrogen to produce clean energy this drives down efficiency further.
So, what are these completely insane things that you can do with renewable energy sources and still come out ahead?
How about when the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow?
> Hydropower is popular in the Nordics, I believe.
Popular, but insufficient. Only Norway could ostensibly be run on hydro.
> Overproduction of both wind and solar is also feasible.
But is it economically viable?
> Winter production of solar is not nothing
Yeah, it pretty much is in the Nordics.
> Scaling up the number of collectors will still get you more production.
Nope. Zero times a large number is still zero.
> Having summer electricity be nearly free can create business opportunities, whereas high winter prices will reduce demand from industrial consumers.
Sure, business opportunities for end users. But is it sustainable?
With too much supply renewables make no money and other producers have to make all their money in the winter months.
You cannot lay a 2000 mile subsea cable from Greece to the Nordics.
The Nordic grid is separate from the Central European grid and interconnection capacity is limited.
Time to let your imagination fly. What’s your solution?
Once base load and/or peaker plants become unprofitable, you either lose those or end up paying for them to idle.
Neither outcome is very desirable.
Energy storage is unlikely to come to the rescue in time.
LOL
In the Nordics, there is no PV production for five months of the year. Two months have marginal production rates.
Zero times any large number is still zero.
It would be, let's say, less than ideal if Europe were dependent on North Africa for their energy security.
In practical terms this would mean that large countries would feel the need to establish military control over critical energy production areas.
Energy security is no laughing matter in the Nordics. In the winter, without power, people die.
Even if the political and operational risks are acceptable, building long distance transmission is no simple matter. Everybody knows that more transmission lines are needed between Norway, Sweden and Finland, but regardless no real progress has been made. Heck, Sweden can't even manage to connect their north and south regions!
The vagaries of weather and the requirement for redundancy would require significant over-investment in generation capacity and long distance transmission networks.
Looking at averages in weather and wind is also very myopic. Power generation is instantaneous, so you have to look at sustainable base load. But the question is, can wind sustain any kind of base load since it is so variable?
On Saturday wind production was down to 53 MW in Finland, less than 2% of peak production. And that wasn't even the lowest this month. What are you going to do, build 100x more wind power? And even if you do, you are only producing less than 20% of total power required to power the country, so it's more like you need 500x more wind power.
Since you cannot do base load with wind power, nuclear is off the table, what are you going to do? Hydro power?
You cannot run off hydro power for days or weeks since the generation capacity just isn't there. For the Nordics, Denmark has no hydro, Finland only has about 20% of generation capacity and Sweden has about 45%. Norway is the only country that can run off hydro and Iceland is a very far away.
This means you are back to peaker plants. Say bye-bye to zero carbon emissions.
So all this brings us back to the questions, are renewables really a realistic and cost effective option compared to nuclear?
It’s just not feasible currently.
The further north you go, the less solar power you have. In the Nordics, you get no solar output for months.
You also have windstill days in the winter.
No amount of overbuilding is going to cure that.