[mikefallen]

Except wind and solar cannot be used to sustain base load energy demands. Until battery technology improves drastically the issue with solar and wind is the variability of output. One of the greatest challenges of operating a power grid is matching the supply of electricity with demand. Thats why they build gas and coal plants to meet peak energy demand periods. Nuclear energy supplemented by win and solar is by far the cleanest way to meet our energy needs currently.

[Pxtl]

Alternately, if wind and solar can be made absurdly cheap, there are are less-energy-efficient but lower-cost per unit output forms of storage that can help. Pneumatic storage is promising for this for example. So like instead of one wind turbine and one battery, you build two wind turbines and one pneumatic energy storage vessel and get the same amount out.

[goodpoint]

Not to mention that load can be modulated depending on energy availability.

[Schroedingersat]

Oh no. You only get one unit of wind, one unit of solar, one unit of methane by electrolysis, and one unit of combined cycle gas plant for the same price rather than the usual of double all that.

However can we figure out how to get the same result with twice the energy and the ability to store it indefinitely at 40% efficiency. Especially given that the costs of all these technologies are going down at two digit percent per year.

[nl]

This is mostly untrue.

Coal plants in particular are dramatically unsuited for the rapid changes in output to respond to changing demands for power.

Gas plants on the other hand are. And gas plants are cheap!

Overbuilding renewables with combinations of solar, geothermal (where available) and wind gives pretty good availability on it's own and with gas plants as a backup it gives you plenty of grid stability.

Edit: A link you posted elsewhere (thanks!) points out how well this works:

> If other sources meet demand 5% of the time, electricity costs fall and the energy capacity cost target rises to $150/kWh.

Battery storage is already well below this $150/kWh price.

https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30300-9

[brutusborn]

Do you have any non-Lazard data for the claim "Battery storage is already well below this $150/kWh price."?

[nl]

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf lists a lot of difference references, and the Lazard range covers them all.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-wind-and-battery-storage-n... gives "Utility-scale battery (four-hour storage duration) $145-167 per MWh" and references BloombergNEF

Better link for Bloomberg reference: https://www.energy-storage.news/behind-the-numbers-the-rapid...

[brutusborn]

Again, this is only for very short term storage. We are comparing apples and oranges.

As an example, for most of Aus, 5 hrs storage will only work for <80% renewables [0]. It's only practical on smaller scales which doesn't mean it isn't useful now but just means that the ~$100/MWh systems will not be practical everywhere, especially when renewables become more ubiquitous.

[0] https://reneweconomy.com.au/much-storage-back-high-renewable...

Edit: I had a deeper look at the NREL paper and most of their costs seem to be in the $100s/kWh rather than MWh. E.g ~$300/ kWh for 6 hour systems on Fig. 6.

[hdevalence]

You can go buy them for $100/kWh on batteryhookup.com right now if you want.