[llm_trw]

At grid scale it doesn't matter either because most installation are saturated anyway. The periods where they care about are the ramp up to noon and the ramp down till sunset, if you can keep the installation producing at it's stated capacity for as long as possible you make a killing, middle of the day power often costs nothing or has a negative price.

People think renewables are efficient in some way. They aren't. It's literally the most wasteful way to produce power because it doesn't get here when we need it and grid scale storage is orders of magnitude more expensive than production.

[Retric]

It's not an orders of magnitude difference anymore. Grid scale energy storage costs about the same amount as nuclear power per KWh right now with the added benefit it doesn't need to operate 24/7 or massive subsidies to break even. Though only if they can be charged with ultra cheap solar power.

Which is why so many grid scale solar installs come with enough batteries to store ~50% of daily output. It's not about nighttime power it's about reducing demand for peaker power plants. Basically combined cycle natural gas operates at ~64% efficiency assuming long term operation, but open cycle has much lower efficiency and thus much higher costs.

[llm_trw]

> Grid scale energy storage costs about the same amount as nuclear power per KWh right now

[[Citation needed]]

[Retric]

How about you first.

> grid scale storage is orders of magnitude more expensive than production.

[[Citation needed]]

PS: I have little interest in looking for citations when you can do your own research using 2024 data.

[llm_trw]

If you can't back up your claims it's fine. No need to be so unpleasant about it.

[stavros]

That said, I would like to see some references for your claims.

[llm_trw]

Sure, here's the world's largest battery installation: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/batteries-large-scale-energy-...

It can provide 400MW of power for 4 hours before it goes offline and cost $560m.

You need 6 of them to provide 24 hours back up. That's $560M * 6 = $3.4B. That's not counting the three times as large solar plant that you will need to build to charge the battery or that the battery will lose 50% of it's output within a decade unless you build an even larger battery installation to prevent full discharge. On top of that to prevent yearly black outs you'd need somewhere between 3 to 20 times the capacity above depending on region and climate.

Meanwhile the latest nuclear power plant produces the same power without degradation for less than half the rosiest estimate above and was build in a country with no history of nuclear power and no indigenous expertise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant

[throwitaway222]

I think in the next ten years we're going to see solar farms "saving" power and selling it at night.

[close04]

We're already seeing it today but the "saving" part is still expensive. What we'll hopefully see in 10 years is this storage getting substantially cheaper, maybe even cheap enough that it's standard for any PV installation while still being competitive with the alternatives.