[earthnail]

The problem is that only a fraction of power consumption is electric. The rest is burning fossil fuels.

In order to get away from these, we have to increase electricity production significantly. And we have to build a better electricity grid.

It is completely unclear how renewable energy should provide this in the short or medium term (i.e. until 2050). Without nuclear, we’ll just continue burning fossil fuels.

[WhompingWindows]

Renewables paired with batteries can improve grid resilience, actually. Distribution of generators means less loss in the wires travelling, batteries paired with renewables to provide overnight power and load-smoothing, these are good things. Renewables also are very predictable, so you can use a little natural gas to supplement at night while you build out batteries and more wind. Solar will take care of our day-time needs no problem, it's the overnight stretches and the wind-less winters where nuclear would really shine.

[izacus]

How much batteries and renewables do you need to provide baseline power on the level of a single 1000MW nuclear plant?

And how will you construct all that sooner than constructing those plants?

[jhgb]

Batteries are a bit of a red herring. The combination of pumped storage plants, overgeneration, and demand response already has you covered for at least two decades even in Germany. The minimal cost solution calculated for Germany assumes 1.6 GWh of storage for your 1000 MW nuclear equivalent for a 60% RE penetration scenario, only some of which needs to be batteries (Germany is currently at ~45% or so, many other countries are considerably behind). At the expense of extra costs, lower storage could be compensated for by higher overgeneration (= by not consuming all the power you produce).

However, this was all calculated for current grid conditions. Spread of BEVs would likely put dedicated grid storage needs lower, since in Germany, for each of your 1000 MW nuclear equivalents, there's 700k cars which already have ~600 MWh of storage capacity even just in form of lead-acid batteries, and even replacing just 10% of these cars with 40 kWh BEVs would give you a whopping 2.8 GWh of capacity per your 1000 MW nuclear equivalent, necessitating higher overgeneration to provide the vehicles with motive energy and lowering grid storage capacity because of demand response ("smart charging"). For reference, a 100% replacement of ICE cars with BEVs in Germany would require a ~25% increase in average power generation - by around 250 MW of average power per your 1000 MW nuclear equivalent.

Electrolytic hydrogen production would do exactly the same thing to grid storage - require more generators, and with demand response, lower grid storage capacity. Just replacing German ammonia with "green" ammonia using electrolysis would necessitate another 60 MW of average power generation per your 1000 MW equivalent that could be subject to demand response.

[littlestymaar]

> (= by not consuming all the power you produce).

This is a bit of a nitpick, but this is a physical impossibility. On a AC electric network, if the power input is higher than the power output, the frequency of the current goes up quite quickly, until the grid collapses (because there are security to avoid frequency deviation). You cannot “not consume all the power you produce”, all you can do is not producing as much as you could.

Btw, I'm interested by the sources of your “1.6 GWh of storage for your 1000 MW nuclear” because it sounds really low to me. I did a simulation[1] a while ago based on French data, for a 100% RE scenario and my calculation arrived at around 250GWh per GW of installed capacity. For sure it's not the same country, and a 60% vs 100% RE is a huge step, but the differences between those two results is a lot more than what I would expect.

A mistake I've frequently seen with people discussing wind power storage, is taking the average capacity factor and calling it a day. The storage need for wind-based power generation is enormous because (at least in France, but given the geography of Germany I'd expect it to be even worse there) you can have severe wind deficit which can last for weeks!!

[1]: https://bourrasque.info/images/20180116-moulins-%C3%A0-vent/...

[jhgb]

> This is a bit of a nitpick, but this is a physical impossibility. On a AC electric network, if the power input is higher than the power output, the frequency of the current goes up quite quickly, until the grid collapses (because there are security to avoid frequency deviation). You cannot “not consume all the power you produce”, all you can do is not producing as much as you could.

I probably should have said "all the power you could produce", since for example with photovoltaics you can produce at any moment any amount of power from zero up to the MPPT point on the I/V curve, depending on how much charge you remove from the panel. I hope this clears it up.

> Btw, I'm interested by the sources of your “1.6 GWh of storage for your 1000 MW nuclear” because it sounds really low to me

I used the figures in the 2018 Zerrahn et al. article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429211...

> I did a simulation[1] a while ago based on French data, for a 100% RE scenario and my calculation arrived at around 250GWh per GW of installed capacity.

Maybe you've just taken Sinn's approach instead of Zerrahn's? That number would seem to fit it.

[littlestymaar]

> I used the figures in the 2018 Zerrahn et al. article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429211...

Thanks for the link !

> Maybe you've just taken Sinn's approach instead of Zerrahn's? That number would seem to fit it.

I wasn't aware of that paper (thanks again!), but from skimming Sinn's paper, our methodology seems to be pretty similar. I'm even more excited to read Zerrahn's paper now!

[JoeAltmaier]

I'm not sure there are (can be?) enough batteries in the world, to support the grid for any length of time.

[nmehner]

There was a project to try this: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/german-utility-...

Unfortunatly this project was cancelled since Germany taxes electricity from batteries two times: Once when charging the battery and once when discharging it (since it is then seen as "producing" electricity).

[jhgb]

Why wouldn't this be solved by co-locating the battery with its own generator?

[tim333]

There are not now but there may be a solution in the future eg "Seasonal energy storage in aluminium for 100 percent solar heat and electricity supply" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259017451...

[aagd]

Not completely unclear. Renewable energy can be even more local than nuclear plants. A good grid is a valueable tool, but not the only solution. The zero-energy-house is a working example for self-sufficient development. Large office buildings or small residential houses are already being build this way. It's a matter of where to put the subvention money - to the big old coal companies (and their lobbies) or the innovative smaller engineers.