9 ms·

> BTW, it's about 7 units of wind energy to 1 unit of solar energy plus significant overcapacity plus increase of the grid transmission capacity plus additional

> BTW, it's about 7 units of wind energy to 1 unit of solar energy plus significant overcapacity plus increase of the grid transmission capacity plus additional measures for grid stabilization (like synchronous condensers) to get to a "fairly modest amount of storage." No it doesn't. You install 12 hours worth of batteries at the factory and "there is no solar at night" is solved, and doing that is already cost competitive with coal on the majority of days. The problem comes when generation is low not because it's night but because it's cloudy for an extended period of time. But that only happens a small minority of the time, and doesn't require you to burn fossil fuels the other 90% of the time. You also don't need things like synchronous condensers when you're using a non-trivial amount of nuclear or hydro, neither of which is coal. > Yeah, it's because of the above points. Then how do so many other industrialized countries do it without that amount of coal? Canada and Spain are each only ~22% fossil fuels. France is <5%. The UK is 31% and only 0.1% of that is coal.

red75prime 6d ago
> You install 12 hours worth of batteries at the factory I literally laughed out loud, sorry. Providing baseload with BESS alone? That's rich. Literally. Extremely expensive. In addition to impractical amount of batteries it requires impractical overcapacity to compensate for seasonal variation. > Then why is no other country burning that amount of coal? China does about 30% of the world's industrial production and 40% of metal production, while having around 50% of world's coal power plants. They are working on it though. Many of their new coal plants are peaker plants.
- AnthonyMouse 6d ago
  > Extremely expensive. Battery storage has a levelized cost of ~$0.20/kWh. Solar is ~$0.04/kWh. If you're using the batteries for 50% of kWh you end up at an average of ~$0.14/kWh, which is in the same range as coal. > it requires impractical overcapacity to compensate for seasonal variation. Only if you're trying to do 100% of generation from one source. Solar generates more power in the summer, wind generates more power in the winter. Meanwhile you don't have to use overcapacity at all when your target isn't fully 100%. You have enough solar to not need fossil fuels in the warmer months at all, enough wind to only need them 20% of the time in cooler months, and then only 10% of your kWh come from fossil fuels. > China does about 30% of the world's industrial production and 40% of metal production, while having around 50% of world's coal power plants. Those are unwelcome numbers even proportional to the amount of manufacturing. > Many of their new coal plants are peaker plants. "New coal plants" is rather the problem in itself. The number we need to be going down is instead going up.
  - red75prime 6d ago
    1 tonne of steel requires around 5MWh of energy at 50,000 tonnes per day it's around 250GWh of batteries at 50% usage. The largest planned BESS is 19GWh. As I said solar+BESS is impractical. Wind is more expensive. Onshore wind turbines have higher variability. Offshore ones are limited to coastal areas. Overall, there's a lot of practical problems. It's all doable, but building infrastructure takes time. China's onshore wind potential is 12.6 PWh/year[1]. China's 2024 energy consumption is 9.85 PWh[2]. It's not much of overcapacity potential. Huh. I though it's higher. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032124005045 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640... [2] https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202501/20/content_WS678e47f8c6d0868f4e8ef000.html https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202501/20/cont...
  - red75prime 5d ago
    BTW, LCOE isn't that good estimate. It doesn't account for the system costs. LFSCOE (Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity) does better in estimating the amount of money you actually need to spend.

red75prime 6d ago

> You install 12 hours worth of batteries at the factory I literally laughed out loud, sorry. Providing baseload with BESS alone? That's rich. Literally. Extremely expensive. In addition to impractical amount of batteries it requires impractical overcapacity to compensate for seasonal variation. > Then why is no other country burning that amount of coal? China does about 30% of the world's industrial production and 40% of metal production, while having around 50% of world's coal power plants. They are working on it though. Many of their new coal plants are peaker plants.

AnthonyMouse 6d ago
> Extremely expensive. Battery storage has a levelized cost of ~$0.20/kWh. Solar is ~$0.04/kWh. If you're using the batteries for 50% of kWh you end up at an average of ~$0.14/kWh, which is in the same range as coal. > it requires impractical overcapacity to compensate for seasonal variation. Only if you're trying to do 100% of generation from one source. Solar generates more power in the summer, wind generates more power in the winter. Meanwhile you don't have to use overcapacity at all when your target isn't fully 100%. You have enough solar to not need fossil fuels in the warmer months at all, enough wind to only need them 20% of the time in cooler months, and then only 10% of your kWh come from fossil fuels. > China does about 30% of the world's industrial production and 40% of metal production, while having around 50% of world's coal power plants. Those are unwelcome numbers even proportional to the amount of manufacturing. > Many of their new coal plants are peaker plants. "New coal plants" is rather the problem in itself. The number we need to be going down is instead going up.
- red75prime 6d ago
  1 tonne of steel requires around 5MWh of energy at 50,000 tonnes per day it's around 250GWh of batteries at 50% usage. The largest planned BESS is 19GWh. As I said solar+BESS is impractical. Wind is more expensive. Onshore wind turbines have higher variability. Offshore ones are limited to coastal areas. Overall, there's a lot of practical problems. It's all doable, but building infrastructure takes time. China's onshore wind potential is 12.6 PWh/year[1]. China's 2024 energy consumption is 9.85 PWh[2]. It's not much of overcapacity potential. Huh. I though it's higher. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032124005045 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640... [2] https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202501/20/content_WS678e47f8c6d0868f4e8ef000.html https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202501/20/cont...
- red75prime 5d ago
  BTW, LCOE isn't that good estimate. It doesn't account for the system costs. LFSCOE (Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity) does better in estimating the amount of money you actually need to spend.