manugutito t1_iuife1f wrote
Reply to comment by grundar in New solar capacity 10 times cheaper than gas, says intelligence company Rystad by EnergyTransitionNews
I think while it's good to know the power these batteries can provide, the capacity is ultimately more important. I wager if they work at 6.3 GW they would use up the stored energy quite quickly. Such a system could be very useful e.g. in a nuclear+renewables scenario, i.e. to get rid of gas peakers. The batteries can take care of the peaks while nuclear ramps up/down with load following.
grundar t1_iuiiwiu wrote
> I wager if they work at 6.3 GW they would use up the stored energy quite quickly.
Yes -- they're typically 4h systems.
As a point of interest, 600GWh is modeled to be enough for 90% clean electricity for the entire US (sec 3.2, p.16), supporting 70% of electricity coming from wind+solar (p.4). That's 150GW of 4h systems, vs 15GW planned installation from 2021 to 2024, so a significant increase but not unreasonably so, especially with the rate of growth of battery manufacturing.
> The batteries can take care of the peaks while nuclear ramps up/down with load following.
That would absolutely be effective (and nuclear can absolutely load-follow if designed for it), but nuclear is being added at <1/10th the scale of renewables and will take 20 years to scale up, so simple logistics have already baked in wind+solar+batteries as the drivers of decarbonizing our energy supply.
It doesn't even really matter at this point if nuclear is better and cheaper; it's just not getting built in anywhere near large enough amounts to play a meaningful role in new decarbonization before about 2040.
(That being said, I do think the US and EU should start building nuclear again so they'll have an additional source of clean energy available to deploy at scale in the mid-century. It may end up not being needed, but better to have it available and not need it than to need it and not have it available.)
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments