Prediction: Coal has fallen. Nuclear is next then Oil.

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

Gas turbines provide an equal amount of comfort at ~1/15th the cost per GW

The most important factor is $/GW. Emissions can be solved with more solar, wind and storage. Fuel cost can be solved with more solar, wind and storage. If you have 'base load' weighing you down the economic viability of wind, solar and storage is reduced because you have that $300M/yr/GW anchor weight.

Why not geothermal + battery storage then? geothermal provides baseload + off-peak battery charging, while the batteries provide the on-peak power "boost"?

seasonal fluctuations have been one of the hardest issues to solve with solar. It seems geothermal + battery provides good coverage of that weak point.

 

[nwdiver]

Why not geothermal + battery storage then?

Cost. The most economic purpose of storage isn't to provide reliable power, that's the role of gas turbines. The purpose of storage is to reduce renewable curtailment.

$/$ it's simply FAR cheaper to just reduce emissions with wind and solar. Provide reliability with gas turbines. As renewables are curtailed due to increased penetration... when it makes sense. THEN add storage. But first use demand response.

Divide it up. For ~$300M you get 1GW and ~8TWh of clean energy with thermal. With renewables plus NG you get 1GW and 14TWh. Why settle for 8TWh when for the same price you can get the same level of reliability and 14TWh?

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Because if demand increases or solar, wind drop... and it's already at 100%.... what meets demand?

'Base load' is just a marketing term invented by the nuclear industry to give them a purpose. Why have a costly, and artificial ceiling for wind and solar generation? If you can save $300M/yr by retiring a GW of nuclear and replace that lost clean energy cheaper with wind and solar and replace the GW of reliability with a GW of NG.... why not do that? The objective is GWh of clean energy and GW of power when needed. Spending $300M/yr on a GW of thermal generation doesn't help further either of those goals when gas is $1/w and renewables are $20/MWh.

Something else meets that demand.
I'm not talking about geothermal being a solution for all demand.
It's geothermal base + (solar + wind + storage + demand response + NGCT) v (solar + wind + storage + demand response + NGCT) everything.
If adding to the geothermal base solution is cheaper, it'd be mental not to use it. It has less potential than solar/wind solutions, but it's already not expensive.

Base load is used by lobbyists, but it's also the reality of demand, where minimum demand is often over half maximum demand.
Take a look at CAISO:

California ISO - Today's Outlook

Monitor real-time grid conditions. View current and historical data for demand, net-demand, supply, renewables, CO2 emissions and wholesale energy prices.

www.caiso.com

Currently the past 24 graph shows minimum demand over 19GW, with maximum demand expected at just over 29GW. Base load is a large chunk of overall demand.

The problem with the base load obsessives is that they push the narrative that you _can't_ meet demand with a lot of variable renewable, when in fact you can, and the only thing that matters is the cost of overbuild and filling in.

 

[nwdiver]

Something else meets that demand.
I'm not talking about geothermal being a solution for all demand.

Why not just use NG? Why spend ~2x more for a GWh from thermal vs a GWh from wind or solar? It's not cheaper. New wind is ~$20/MWh now. It's unlikely that most thermal is $40/MWh. I'd love to know where the EIA got that number. IIRC Ivanpah is ~$160/MWh.

 

[eevee-fan]

Why not just use NG? Why spend ~2x more for a GWh from thermal vs a GWh from wind or solar? It's not cheaper. New wind is ~$20/MWh now. It's unlikely that most thermal is $40/MWh. I'd love to know where the EIA got that number. IIRC Ivanpah is ~$160/MWh.

If we're talking about NG plants, then might as well burn hydrogen, green hydrogen produced with excess renewables.

 

[nwdiver]

If we're talking about NG plants, then might as well burn hydrogen, green hydrogen produced with excess renewables.

I agree. That should be the end goal. Reinforces the point that we need to stop thinking of storage as providing reliability and think of it as avoiding curtailment. The ultimate curtailment avoidance is when 100% of your energy is from renewables because you're using surplus wind and solar to produce more H2 than you can use.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

Cost. The most economic purpose of storage isn't to provide reliable power, that's the role of gas turbines. The purpose of storage is to reduce renewable curtailment.

$/$ it's simply FAR cheaper to just reduce emissions with wind and solar. Provide reliability with gas turbines. As renewables are curtailed due to increased penetration... when it makes sense. THEN add storage. But first use demand response.

Divide it up. For ~$300M you get 1GW and ~8TWh of clean energy with thermal. With renewables plus NG you get 1GW and 14TWh. Why settle for 8TWh when for the same price you can get the same level of reliability and 14TWh?

I disagree on your use of "reliable power". For me, reliable power is stable power, and thus the most economic use of storage IS to stabilize power (aka provide reliable power), which is how it helps reduce renewable curtailment. You're using "reliable power" to be a result of having enough supply to meet demand continuously, which for gas turbine is still open for debate.

I was going to use the fact that battery storage is needed anyway to reduce solar/wind curtailment, so might as well leverage that storage capacity to add geothermal into the mix, but I'm having trouble understanding your point about $300M for 1GW and ~8TWh of geothermal vs. 14TWh for gas turbine? Can you even get 1GW of gas turbine for $300M?! And how can geothermal only provide 8TWh of energy? Will the well grow cold afterwards?

 

[eevee-fan]

Probably safe to count on 5-10% of EV battery capacity with V2G.

 

[SageBrush]

Why not just use NG?

That was my opinion until I recently learned that NG extraction (aka leaks) adds up to a GHGe every bit as bad as coal, and that is before we talk about the impacts of fracking.

If NG use is 1% of the national power supply, I'll live with it for a few more years. Over 10% ? No thanks. The flip side is that a storage solution that is clean but 2x more expensive than NG is a small cost bump to a PV/Wind energy supply that is otherwise dirt cheap.

 

[nwdiver]

That was my opinion until I recently learned that NG extraction (aka leaks) adds up to a GHGe every bit as bad as coal, and that is before we talk about the impacts of fracking.

If NG use is 1% of the national power supply, I'll live with it for a few more years. Over 10% ? No thanks. The flip side is that a storage solution that is clean but 2x more expensive than NG is a small cost bump to a PV/Wind energy supply that is otherwise dirt cheap.

The problem with NG is GWh not GW. We use NG for its GW then use wind and solar to keep reducing the annual GWh we get from NG even if the peak GW rises. I'm not advocating for getting more energy from NG. I'm advocating for getting more peak power from NG so we can allow wind and solar to do what they do best... reduce emissions by reducing the amount of energy we get from hydro-carbons.

Use storage strategically. What's going to reduce emissions more? $20M in batteries or $20M in wind turbines or solar panels? The batteries only reduce emissions if they're being charged by solar or wind that would have otherwise been curtailed. What good is just shifting WHEN we use NG? From an emissions perspective investing in batteries doesn't make sense until they would avoid as much GWh curtailment as an equal investment in wind or solar could produce. EVEN THEN... the first and most cost effective approach is demand response.

Pick the right tool for the job

 

[SageBrush]

THEN... the first and most cost effective approach is demand response.

Pick the right tool for the job

View attachment 661167

That last one is funny

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Why not just use NG? Why spend ~2x more for a GWh from thermal vs a GWh from wind or solar? It's not cheaper. New wind is ~$20/MWh now. It's unlikely that most thermal is $40/MWh. I'd love to know where the EIA got that number. IIRC Ivanpah is ~$160/MWh.

The levelized cost for wind isn't the whole cost. That's for a wind farm able sell all of its output. But at that price it's not going to meet all of the grid demand. It needs some balance of overbuild, NG and demand-response to fill in under the curve. What's the cost per MWh of the combination?

Ivanpah is a terrible example of thermal generation. It's an inefficient steam generator powered by concentrated solar and natural gas (used as a morning starter fuel, I kid you not). It's an example of the kind of thing that happened when PV and batteries were expected to be expensive for ever. Just forgive it as a failed experiment.

Use storage strategically. What's going to reduce emissions more? $20M in batteries or $20M in wind turbines or solar panels? The batteries only reduce emissions if they're being charged by solar or wind that would have otherwise been curtailed. What good is just shifting WHEN we use NG? From an emissions perspective investing in batteries doesn't make sense until they would avoid as much GWh curtailment as an equal investment in wind or solar could produce. EVEN THEN... the first and most cost effective approach is demand response.

It's a nice idea in theory, but there's no way you can demand-reponse out the evening peak or fill it economically with solar and wind. So you're either going to fill it with the least efficient and most expensive natural gas generation or time-shift renewables.

 

[nwdiver]

The levelized cost for wind isn't the whole cost. That's for a wind farm able sell all of its output. But at that price it's not going to meet all of the grid demand. It needs some balance of overbuild, NG and demand-response to fill in under the curve. What's the cost per MWh of the combination?

Ivanpah is a terrible example of thermal generation. It's an inefficient steam generator powered by concentrated solar and natural gas (used as a morning starter fuel, I kid you not). It's an example of the kind of thing that happened when PV and batteries were expected to be expensive for ever. Just forgive it as a failed experiment.


It's a nice idea in theory, but there's no way you can demand-reponse out the evening peak or fill it economically with solar and wind. So you're either going to fill it with the least efficient and most expensive natural gas generation or time-shift renewables.

I worked in a thermal plant for 6 years. They're ~an order of magnitude more complicated than a gas turbine. It's also a heat engine. Which means that on a good day for every 100MWh of heat you produce you have to dispose of ~65MWh. The cold start time of a gas turbine is minutes. The cold start time for a thermal plant is hours to days.

The cost per MWh isn't the most accurate way to look at NG + RE. For one because there's more RE every year which means less fuel and fuel is the dominant cost of a gas turbine unlike thermal plants which is maintenance. But with gas prices currently at record lows even the cost per MWh is going to be cheaper. The last rate case I read from Xcel their fuel costs are ~$30/MWh. Curtailment is still < 5%. But even if it was 50% wind would STILL be cheaper per MWh than thermal. And that's when you could use demand response to reduce curtailment or eventually storage.

Divide it up. What's your objective? Do you want more MW or more MWh? If it's more MW a gas turbine costs $20M/GW/yr while thermal is >$200M/GW/yr. It is more MWh to reduce fuel use? Wind is ~$20/MWh. Best case thermal is ~2x that and usually 5-6x.

Nothing wrong with ramping gas turbines to meet evening demand. That's the job they're built for. Reducing Blackouts

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I worked in a thermal plant for 6 years. They're ~an order of magnitude more complicated than a gas turbine. It's also a heat engine. Which means that on a good day for every 100MWh of heat you produce you have to dispose of ~65MWh. The cold start time of a gas turbine is minutes. The cold start time for a thermal plant is hours to days.

The cost per MWh isn't the most accurate way to look at NG + RE. For one because there's more RE every year which means less fuel and fuel is the dominant cost of a gas turbine unlike thermal plants which is maintenance. But with gas prices currently at record lows even the cost per MWh is going to be cheaper. The last rate case I read from Xcel their fuel costs are ~$30/MWh. Curtailment is still < 5%. But even if it was 50% wind would STILL be cheaper per MWh than thermal. And that's when you could use demand response to reduce curtailment or eventually storage.

Divide it up. What's your objective? Do you want more MW or more MWh? If it's more MW a gas turbine costs $20M/GW/yr while thermal is >$200M/GW/yr. It is more MWh to reduce fuel use? Wind is ~$20/MWh. Best case thermal is ~2x that and usually 5-6x.

The only cold start for a geothermal plant should be after a maintenance period. It'd be a generator meeting base generation, not a peaker.
Cost should be levelized cost / capacity factor. If we add 1/3 for the optimistic capacity factor and then divide by 0.743 for the 2020 capacity factor for overbuild, you have $65.3/MWh. Not matching CCGT, but then again, the EIA gives CCGT 87% capacity factor, while the national average peaked at 57.3% in 2019 so maybe they're underestimating that as well. Or maybe they're thinking that they'll be replacing nuclear (93.4% 2019)?

So, again, what's the total cost of generation per MWh to meet base demand with wind + NG + demand response?
What will the wind cost be overall with the overbuild? Onshore wind has capacity factors between 34.4% to 35.4%, which implies some pretty big holes to fill. A good chunk of daytime should be able to be handled with solar but evening and night would have to be wind, NG, demand response and storage.
What is the cost per MWh of demand response? I can't seem to find good information about that anywhere.
What will the cost of the storage and natural gas fill-in be?

Just give me your estimate of the costs of the various resources that will be combined and the resulting total cost. At the moment you're doing too much hand-waving.

Nothing wrong with ramping gas turbines to meet evening demand. That's the job they're built for. Reducing Blackouts

Nothing wrong except NG use and the cost. EIA put levelized cost for 2026 for CT as $107.83/MWh at 10% capacity factor, with just the variable costs alone at $44,13/MWh. Solar hybrid is $47.67/MWh unsubsidized. That's looking like hybrid solar's going to eat the evening peak on the basic economics of building solar with an eye on serving the evening peak, not just taking advantage of curtailed solar.

 

[nwdiver]

Just give me a cost per MWh overall based on the various resources that will be combined.

I did... with the current cost of NG it's ~$30/MWh. Either going down every year as we get more renewables or possibly up slightly if the cost of NG rises faster than consumption falls.

Nothing wrong except NG use and the cost. EIA put levelized cost for 2026 for CT as $107.83/MWh at 10% capacity factor,

What other option is there? Any tool you're using to 'reduce blackouts' is going to have a generally low CF.

 

[SmartElectric]

#1 Re: "base load" nuclear
Pro: low emissions
Con: requires backup generation in case of outage, radioactive waste, mining for fuel, thousands of well paid operators and engineers required to build/run/manage

#2 Re: "base load" geothermal
Pro: no emissions
Con: requires backup generation in case of outage, very specific locations for plant, hundreds of well paid operators and engineers required to build/run/manage

#3 Re: overbuild of wind + solar + gas peaking
Pro: lower cost, and backup for when wind+solar are low, few people needed post deployment
Con: gas use in peak or outage

Ontario has bet on #1 with nuclear and built out massive gas plants to back up during outages and nuclear refit. Power costs have skyrocketed due to the nuclear refit, taking many GW offline for years at a time and supplemented by new gas build. When you put your eggs in a small number of baskets you don't get the benefit of spreading the risk.

All of the 1,2,3 options require backup power, ALL of them. At least with #3, the backup power is used more often to handle peaks, and rarely for big outages (transmission lines down to wind farm etc), whereas the other two, the backup power is almost always idle, but get paid to sit on their hands.

Gas will be with us for decades to come. At least #3 pushes renewable wind+solar prices down due to scale.

 

[Dave EV]

California proposes to steer new homes from gas appliances

The California Energy Commission released a draft building standards code on Thursday that would require new homes to be equipped with circuits and panels that support all-electric appliances for heating, cooking and drying clothes.

It's too bad they aren't pushing to eliminate gas hookups all together for new buildings, but forcing electric hookups everywhere might be good enough. The biggest problem we have now with any new gas appliances is that we will be stuck with it for another 10-30 years until it dies.

Figuring out how to incentivise and cost-effectively replace gas appliances with electric appliances is crucial to cutting emissions.

A lot of utilities also run the gas lines. PG&E for example. My guess is that they would prefer to keep collecting the ~$20/mo gas connection fee than another $10/mo in kWh sales.

There is a very significant utility lobby not even or just barely hiding the fact that they are promoting "natural gas". Even the name "natural gas" is pure marketing BS.

"Natural gas" supplies a lot of companies with a lot of guaranteed profits. Having this go away and piggy back on top of existing electricity infrastructure with only minimal upgrades required means a lot of money will no longer be going into their pockets.

 

[SageBrush]

Pick the right tool for the job

I've read that 6 hour battery storage in a locale with wind+sun covers close to 100% of non-corner-case demand. If WS is 2¢ a kWh and battery is 10¢ a kWh** the weighted wholesale price is 4¢ a kWh.

Since that scenario is available today and will only improve in the future, I don't think battery storage should be pigeon holed as a curtailment solution. Not that I really understand what 'avoiding curtailment' means in this context, since one would plan for clean energy production in excess of immediate demand to use later. But maybe I'm just tilting at a semantic proposition without a practical difference. One thing for sure though, the notion that that we should overbuild cheap WS to partly cover the generation lows has never made sense to me as an isolated idea.


** 0.9 cycles a day for 12 years, $400 a kWh installed

 

[eevee-fan]

I've read that 6 hour battery storage in a locale with wind+sun covers close to 100% of non-corner-case demand. If WS is 2¢ a kWh and battery is 10¢ a kWh** the weighted wholesale price is 4¢ a kWh.

Since that scenario is available today and will only improve in the future, I don't think battery storage should be pigeon holed as a curtailment solution. Not that I really understand what 'avoiding curtailment' means in this context, since one would plan for clean energy production in excess of immediate demand to use later. But maybe I'm just tilting at a semantic proposition without a practical difference. One thing for sure though, the notion that that we should overbuild cheap WS to partly cover the generation lows has never made sense to me as an isolated idea.


** 0.9 cycles a day for 12 years, $400 a kWh installed

It comes down to time to implement. With actual batteries, we have so many conflicting needs, mostly for transportation and grid stabilization... for storage, perhaps using other solutions like CAES and even producing green hydrogen. Firing on all cylinders will let us get to 100% CLEAN faster.

Here's an EIA report (Jul 2020) on renewable plus storage implementation.

https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/electricity/batterystorage/pdf/battery_storage.pdf

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

One thing for sure though, the notion that that we should overbuild cheap WS to partly cover the generation lows has never made sense to me as an isolated idea.

The shape of renewable generation doesn't match demand.
So if you want high renewables, you need overbuild, either to fill in lows, or to generate surplus that can be stored and time-shifted.