Gas power generation is a necessary evil to balance out the variability of intermittent energy generation (i.e. wind and solar).
Hydropower isn't a feasible alternative because the easy resources have been developed.
The only alternative source of flexibility available today is demand side response.
Edit: I appreciate the down votes, as I've not explained in detail. It is a complex issue. My opinions are based on having a phd in the topic, 10+ years in control rooms, years of market operations and design, and years contributing to europe-wide risk assessment methodologies.
Maybe you're the person to answer this question then.
How can I find the price of battery storage, per kWh delivered to the customer, assuming a pure wind/solar/battery grid?
I can easily find the price per kWh of battery capacity but that's not the same thing. I'm looking for the effective levelized cost of electricity, over the lifetime of the battery, so I can compare against generation sources.
Europe has 100 days worth of natural gas storage facilities. All it needs to do is to get renewables + batteries + nuclear above ~70% or so to be able to withstand being cut off for a year. Getting to ~95% is relatively cheap and easy. 100% is hard and expensive, but they don't need 100%. If they get to 95%, that's multiple years worth of storage.
The easiest money I ever made was investing in natural gas infrastructure during the COVID insanity of everyone calling it dead due to renewables.
I really don’t understand the disconnect otherwise very intelligent people have on this subject. Every single person I’ve talked to in the actual industry seems to be aware of this fact and how dire things are getting. However it seems that everyone else believes that grid scale batteries are somehow going to save the day in the next decade or two.
Energy storage is energy storage. Natural gas is just a giant underground battery.
And that’s before you get to industrial uses of natural gas as a feedstock, while ignoring how much is still used for heating infrastructure and how long it would take to retrofit everything to heat pumps.
I often wonder what I’m missing, but I’m confident enough in this one to have put my money where my mouth is at least.
Completely wrong. Renewables plus battery storage and long-distance transmission lines can potentially solve the power generation problem, although we're decades away from being able to scale that up in a way that addresses base load requirements for heavy industry in an economical way. But beyond power generation, natural gas is a crucial feedstock for the chemicals industry. Renewables won't solve that and the German chemical manufacturing industry is dying.
Many people only look at "electricity" generation when they think about renewables, but fail to recognize that that is only part of energy consumption (and a surprisingly small one at that). Globally electricity production only accounts for ~21% of energy usage, so even if we had an entirely green grid across the entire planet we still would have a long way to go as far as having sustainable energy usage.
The largest source of "renewable" energy (not just electricity) in the EU is biomass [0], which, in many cases is wood pellets shipped (using bunker fuel to power the ships of course) from North America to the EU.
Page 8 of this report [1] gives a pretty good visual of how this trend has increased over time.
Europe is basically reverting to using wood for it's primary heating fuel.
It's a prerequisite. But we actually need to make the policy decisions to stop using fossils, otherwise we'll just burn it all in addition to using renewables and look pretty bad in the history books for bringing about the climate apocalypse.
probablypower|5 months ago
Gas power generation is a necessary evil to balance out the variability of intermittent energy generation (i.e. wind and solar).
Hydropower isn't a feasible alternative because the easy resources have been developed.
The only alternative source of flexibility available today is demand side response.
Edit: I appreciate the down votes, as I've not explained in detail. It is a complex issue. My opinions are based on having a phd in the topic, 10+ years in control rooms, years of market operations and design, and years contributing to europe-wide risk assessment methodologies.
I emplore anyone who is actually interested in how energy mix actually impacts grid stability/reliability to look into the Eirgrid DS3 programme (https://www.eirgrid.ie/ds3-programme-delivering-secure-susta...).
DennisP|5 months ago
How can I find the price of battery storage, per kWh delivered to the customer, assuming a pure wind/solar/battery grid?
I can easily find the price per kWh of battery capacity but that's not the same thing. I'm looking for the effective levelized cost of electricity, over the lifetime of the battery, so I can compare against generation sources.
lukan|5 months ago
If prices continue to drop, there will be a powerwall alike in every second house in some years.
bryanlarsen|5 months ago
phil21|5 months ago
I really don’t understand the disconnect otherwise very intelligent people have on this subject. Every single person I’ve talked to in the actual industry seems to be aware of this fact and how dire things are getting. However it seems that everyone else believes that grid scale batteries are somehow going to save the day in the next decade or two.
Energy storage is energy storage. Natural gas is just a giant underground battery.
And that’s before you get to industrial uses of natural gas as a feedstock, while ignoring how much is still used for heating infrastructure and how long it would take to retrofit everything to heat pumps.
I often wonder what I’m missing, but I’m confident enough in this one to have put my money where my mouth is at least.
tharmas|5 months ago
Meanwhile team tRump are all in on oil and gas because non carbon is for libtards.
PunchTornado|5 months ago
nradov|5 months ago
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
roadside_picnic|5 months ago
extraduder_ire|5 months ago
roadside_picnic|5 months ago
Page 8 of this report [1] gives a pretty good visual of how this trend has increased over time.
Europe is basically reverting to using wood for it's primary heating fuel.
0. https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/bioenerg...
1. https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadRepo...
8note|5 months ago
in canada and the US, a lot of that wood is going up in smoke without powering any industry already
fulafel|5 months ago