[Manuel_D]

> Here's the quote you missed:

Nowhere in that quote does it list how much of each type of storage is required. Again, they just list a range of storage systems, most of them never deployed at scale, and just don't even bother to lay out a concrete plan. The quotes you're posting are fitting this pattern of vague statements about storage and a total absence of concrete plans.

How many TWh of batteries? How many TWh of pumped hydro? How many TWh of some more exotic storage systems like compressed air or hydrogen? There's a reason why plans for a renewable grid don't go into this detail and stick to vague statement: actually sketching out how much storage would be required would show just how infeasible it really is.

Like I said, proponents of a mostly renewable grid don't have a plan to address intermittency. Or rather their plan is, "assume something solves storage, and don't worry about it".

[ViewTrick1002]

I have already given you all that but you keep dodging instead single mindedly focusing on what is outside the scope of a meta studie of the entire field.

Trying to frame it like you disprove something when you truly don’t. You can go and read the individual studies it sources the statements from, which are then used to build those arguments arguments.

But I suppose that is too hard when you gotta find any possible straw to grasp instead of accepting reality.

Lets go back to the to studies you’ve decided to completely ignore. Likely because they answer your complaints and you haven’t found any nitpick to paint as the end of the world.

So again:

See the recent study on Denmark which found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load.

> Focusing on the case of Denmark, this article investigates a future fully sector-coupled energy system in a carbon-neutral society and compares the operation and costs of renewables and nuclear-based energy systems.

> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources.

> However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour.

> For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...

Or the same for Australia if you went a more sunny locale finding that renewables ends up with a grid costing less than half of "best case nth of a kind nuclear power":

https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2024-25Co...

[Manuel_D]

> I have already given you all that but you keep dodging

No, you have not. The quotes you posted just list various storage systems and don't bother to set specific capacity requirements. I'll ask again:

How many TWh of battery storage are provisioned in your hypothetical 100% renewable world?

How many TWh of pumped hydro?

How many TWh of other storage? And what are these alternative storage systems?

The posts you link only talk about the cost of storage, but not the total capacity requirements. This is important, because 12 hours of storage for global electricity consumption is 30TWh. Only about 1 TWh of batteries are produced each year globally. So actually trying to provision grid scale storage would massively increase battery demand and drive up prices. This is the a reason why nobody wants to talk about the total capacity requirements for a primarily renewable grid.

[adgjlsfhk1]

12 hours of storage is likely more than needed. With a 20% nuclear, 40% solar, 40% wind generation mix (for a very simplified example), you will have solar producing solid power for 10 hours, with wind and nuclear keeping up overnight.

However lets say that it is 12 hours/30TWh. In 2023, the world produced ~1.1 TWH of batteries. In 2014, the world produced 0.05 TWH of batteries (with steady growth year over year while prices fell by 10x). If you give grid scale batteries a 5 year lifespan (before recycling), that means we need 6TWh/year of grid scale battery production, which at current rates of increase in battery production, we are 5-7 years away from.

For comparison, 5-7 years is roughly the time it takes to build a single nuclear reactor.

[cupcakecommons]

This is under current assumptions which hinge primarily on political will and regulation - not on physics or true construction time.

[Manuel_D]

Unfortunately 12 hours of storage is still going to be a shortfall, even with overproduction. Researchers analyze historical weather data and simulate how renewable grids would perform on that historical trends, measuring periods of underproduction. Even with 50% overproduction and 12 hours of storage, we're still looking at an unacceptably unreliable grid: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z

> However lets say that it is 12 hours/30TWh. In 2023, the world produced ~1.1 TWH of batteries. In 2014, the world produced 0.05 TWH of batteries (with steady growth year over year while prices fell by 10x). If you give grid scale batteries a 5 year lifespan (before recycling), that means we need 6TWh/year of grid scale battery production, which at current rates of increase in battery production, we are 5-7 years away from.

Even ignoring the fact that 12 hours is insufficient, you're making the following assumptions:

1. The production of batteries will sextuple in the next 5-7 years.

2. 100% (or close to 100%) of battery production will be dedicated to grid storage.

3. Electricity consumption will remain static.

The first one may or may not pan out. Battery production is already bottlenecked by resource extraction, and it's unclear if the rate of extraction can keep up. The nature of extraction is that once easily accessible deposits are exhausted, companies shift to the harder-to-access deposits. This is only economically viable if cost increases enough to incentivize that investment. The HN crowd tends to assume that everything adheres to Moore's law, but that doesn't work in reality. The price of steel, for instance, doesn't exponentially decline.

The second two are certainly not true. EV are predicted to make up the vast majority of battery sales. Redirecting batteries to grid storage would necessitate delaying EV adoption, ultimately increasing emissions. Stationary storage accounts for a small fraction of battery production (https://rmi.org/the-rise-of-batteries-in-six-charts-and-not-...). Electric vehicles only account for a bit under 20% of vehicle sales worldwide. With many countries slated to stop sales of ICE vehicles in the next 5-10 years, we're still looking at most future battery production going to satisfy EV demand even if it grows to 6TWh per year as per your assumptions.

And electricity use will certainly increase. Both as poorer countries develop and start deploying air conditioning and other electricity consumption. And as other sources of primary energy consumption is shifted to electricity. Remember, electricity generation only makes up ~40% of total energy consumption. The remainder will have to be converted to electricity as part of full decarbonization.

[adgjlsfhk1]

That nature paper is garbage. It's imagining a grid that is 100% solar+wind, which no one is proposing building. Changing that to a grid that has 20% nuclear/geothermal would completely change the figures (in that it would dramatically shift the wind/solar ratios).

Also my battery assumptions were missing the fact that the world already has ~5TWh of hydro which can be used as a battery (even when not pumped hydro by releasing only when you need power).

[Manuel_D]

Dams don't double as energy storage in the same way as batteries. Their rate of recharge is limited by precipitation. You can't run a dam turbine in reverse and fill the dam with excess power (you can with pumped hydro, but we have way less than 5 TWh of that). The best you can do is totally shut them off and let them refill. And in reality, dams have to constantly release a minimum amount of water to avoid creating a totally dry riverbed.

[ViewTrick1002]

Open the study. It provides a Sankey diagram showing the entire energy flow of the Danish energy system. You know, all those TWh you want.

Why do you keep dodging? Because you truly can't bring yourself to read anything that would disprove your nuclear fanboyism? You truly keep tumbling strawmen instead of disproving the studies.

Pathetic.

I'll add the studies without any picked out quotes:

See the recent study on Denmark which found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...

Or the same for Australia if you went a more sunny locale finding that renewables ends up with a grid costing less than half of "best case nth of a kind nuclear power":

https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2024-25Co...

Come one now. Stop dodging! Is accepting that nuclear power is horrifically expensive that scary? Is your income dependent on the nuclear industry?