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| ▲ | ZeroGravitas 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| If you build batteries on the scale that the article suggests (and is probably going to happen in the real future) you can use batteries charged from fossil fuels. It's a few percent dirtier (round trip losses) but in return you can use gas plants that are 50% more efficient to charge them rather than run peaker plants. And of course that's ignoring wind which is nearly as cheap as solar and anti-correlated with it. |
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| ▲ | Ajedi32 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's fair, batteries are somewhat useful for peaking even in a world powered 100% by fossil fuels so there's some infrastructure that can be shared. And even on a cloudy day solar output isn't 0%. But I'm skeptical the overlap here is significant enough to invalidate my basic point, though I admit it's a big simplification. Reality is extremely complicated, so realistically the exact mix of solar + fossil fuels that makes sense is going to depend on a huge number of factors and vary from region to region depending on weather, fuel costs, construction costs, transmission costs, and probably a thousand other things I haven't thought of. The best thing to do is stay out of the way of both industries and let the market sort all of that complexity out. I would speculate the result of that is going to be a lot more renewables than currently exist, mainly due to the drastic reduction in the cost of solar and batteries that has been occurring over the last few decades, but I don't think it'll be 100% or even 90% renewables either (expect perhaps in the extremely long term). Time will tell. |
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| ▲ | pfdietz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It helps that the cost of a simple cycle gas turbine power plant (before the recent data center demand spike) is around $600/kW, maybe a factor of 20 cheaper per kW than a nuclear power plant. So backing up the whole grid with such generators wouldn't be that expensive. |
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| ▲ | pingou 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Good thing it's already built then! Well, of course it cost money to maintain though. |
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| ▲ | Ajedi32 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, but if you need to have all that infrastructure anyway it no longer makes sense to compare the cost of solar+batteries with the cost of fossil fuels because you actually need to have both. If you compare the total cost of solar with just the fuel cost of fossil fuels (ignoring its CapEx and non-fuel OpEx) that swings the equation a lot. |
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| ▲ | pishpash 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Infrastructure cost for 100% is the same as infrastructure cost for 10%? That's not true. The distribution network is the part that can't be scaled, but it can also be reused for either source, so it doesn't double in cost. |
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| ▲ | Ajedi32 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, I'm saying infrastructure cost for 100% is the same as infrastructure cost for 100%. You can't build 10% as much fossil fuel infrastructure and expect it to carry 100% of the load when solar isn't working. And obviously I'm talking about generation here, not distribution. |
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