Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

Godzilla said:

I wonder what the curve looks like for China. I would imagine a country that have significantly more manufacturing activities would have a completely different power draw compared to Cali.

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This one focuses on industrial users. In general, China publishes a huge amount of scientific research on power engineering.

For heavy industrial users, demand is a flat line (see Figure 3), but for light industry that is labor intensive like food, it follows the California style "duck curve".

In general, the heavy industry demand is a flat line and forms the base load. Services and light industry that requires labor to be awake follows the sun. There's a demand tail at 6-10 PM for residential areas. Then everyone goes to sleep, and it's back to baseline.

It still fits the "duck" shape except with low renewables: it has 2 peaks at noon and early evening, coinciding with peak demand from light industry/services and residential, respectively. When renewables are added, the noon peak declines because that demand is met with renewables as much as possible.

AndrewS said:

Yes, wind and solar can match or beat coal electricity, based on the wholesale electricity cost of 4.2c per kWh.

But the problem is that the lowest cost battery storage solution currently is 11c per kWh, and you need batteries to even out supply.

Plus gas costs in Asia are very high compared to the US, so electricity made from burning gas would cost a lot more than coal in China.

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I expect the energy storage costs to come down as new technologies come online. And they shouldn't all be battery storage. Now, there is gravitational energy storage, pumped hydro storage and possibly new technologies coming online. There is also the talk of storing that energy in hydrogen fuel cells. Of course, Sodium ion batteries will have significant cost advantages to lithium ion batteries. All of which should lead to far lower energy storage cost in the future. You are probably still going to need nuclear or something like that to support wind/solar.

The reason gas costs are ver high in China compared to Coal is probably because they don't have the infrastructure to handle it. If you build the infrastructure, it should come down. This may not be worth it if their end goal is zero emissions.

tphuang said:

I expect the energy storage costs to come down as new technologies come online. And they shouldn't all be battery storage. Now, there is gravitational energy storage, pumped hydro storage and possibly new technologies coming online. There is also the talk of storing that energy in hydrogen fuel cells. Of course, Sodium ion batteries will have significant cost advantages to lithium ion batteries. All of which should lead to far lower energy storage cost in the future. You are probably still going to need nuclear or something like that to support wind/solar.

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Yes, energy storage costs will come down. But even if you halve electricity storage costs from 11c to 5.5c per KWh, the combination of solar+battery is still a little or somewhat more expensive than coal. If you also have carbon taxes, then I reckon by 2030 it will be broadly competitive against baseload coal.

And as I mentioned previously, it looks like large nuclear reactors are already competitive with baseload coal today.

tphuang said:

The reason gas costs are ver high in China compared to Coal is probably because they don't have the infrastructure to handle it. If you build the infrastructure, it should come down. This may not be worth it if their end goal is zero emissions.

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China doesn't produce much gas. China also consumes more than it produces.
So the cost of gas is based on the marginal cost of gas imported to China, which means gas from Australia/USA/Middle East.
That gas has to be liquified, then transported by LNG tanker and then turned into gas in China - which raises costs substantially.

Pipelines are far cheaper in the long-run, but then that would mean overly relying on Russia.

And we still need gas as a feedstock for various industrial processes

AndrewS said:

Yes, energy storage costs will come down. But even if you halve electricity storage costs from 11c to 5.5c per KWh, the combination of solar+battery is still a little or somewhat more expensive than coal. If you also have carbon taxes, then I reckon by 2030 it will be broadly competitive against baseload coal.

And as I mentioned previously, it looks like large nuclear reactors are already competitive with baseload coal today.



China doesn't produce much gas. China also consumes more than it produces.
So the cost of gas is based on the marginal cost of gas imported to China, which means gas from Australia/USA/Middle East.
That gas has to be liquified, then transported by LNG tanker and then turned into gas in China - which raises costs substantially.

Pipelines are far cheaper in the long-run, but then that would mean overly relying on Russia.

And we still need gas as a feedstock for various industrial processes

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according to world nuclear website, operational cost of nuclear reactor is not competitive with coal plants for China. About 30 to 40% higher. Obviously, if they add in carbon tax/trading, things may change. I think they can reduce electricity storage by a lot more than half. Especially with sodium ion batteries. And solar/wind power themselves will keep getting cheaper over time. The cost of carbon capture and other form of trying to lower coal carbon footprint is so unproven and expensive, the Chinese government will have to put carbon tax if they want to be seen as serious about reducing emissions.

I'm thinking of more pipeline gas from Russia if they want to go in that direction.

tphuang said:

I expect the energy storage costs to come down as new technologies come online. And they shouldn't all be battery storage. Now, there is gravitational energy storage, pumped hydro storage and possibly new technologies coming online. There is also the talk of storing that energy in hydrogen fuel cells. Of course, Sodium ion batteries will have significant cost advantages to lithium ion batteries. All of which should lead to far lower energy storage cost in the future. You are probably still going to need nuclear or something like that to support wind/solar.

The reason gas costs are ver high in China compared to Coal is probably because they don't have the infrastructure to handle it. If you build the infrastructure, it should come down. This may not be worth it if their end goal is zero emissions.

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theres only 2 ways to do grid scale storage at low cost:

1. pumped hydro using existing hydroelectric dams.
2. having tons of EVs charging their onboard battery at night to even out demand difference to justify high investment into base demand power like nuclear and coal instead of dispatch power like gas turbines.

that's pretty much it. massive stacked dedicated batteries aren't useful for grid scale storage, at most they can do local utility scale. they're far too fragile and expensive even relative to just pumping up and down a water tower with a turbine in it, and that's already a bad choice relative to pumped hydro in regular dams and reservoirs.

FairAndUnbiased said:

theres only 2 ways to do grid scale storage at low cost:

1. pumped hydro using existing hydroelectric dams.
2. having tons of EVs charging their onboard battery at night to even out demand difference to justify high investment into base demand power like nuclear and coal instead of dispatch power like gas turbines.

that's pretty much it. massive stacked dedicated batteries aren't useful for grid scale storage, at most they can do local utility scale. they're far too fragile and expensive even relative to just pumping up and down a water tower with a turbine in it, and that's already a bad choice relative to pumped hydro in regular dams and reservoirs.

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gravitational energy storage is going to get better and more efficient over time

I'm sure there will be other form of energy storage too.

As for batteries, there is definitely already home and industrial uses. You are right that they do not make sense for grid scale at the moment. However, if they can continue to improve the energy density and cost of sodium ion batteries, I don't think it should be ruled out.

China is going big on flow batteries. Supposed to be massive government investment into it.
Those should be much cheaper than lithium ion for grid level storage. Not as cheap as pumped storage hydro per unit of energy but you can't put pumping stations just anywhere you want.

tphuang said:

according to world nuclear website, operational cost of nuclear reactor is not competitive with coal plants for China. About 30 to 40% higher. Obviously, if they add in carbon tax/trading, things may change. I think they can reduce electricity storage by a lot more than half. Especially with sodium ion batteries. And solar/wind power themselves will keep getting cheaper over time. The cost of carbon capture and other form of trying to lower coal carbon footprint is so unproven and expensive, the Chinese government will have to put carbon tax if they want to be seen as serious about reducing emissions.

I'm thinking of more pipeline gas from Russia if they want to go in that direction.

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Do you have a link to the 30%-40% higher cost for Chinese nuclear than coal?

I think you guys are going on a bit extreme in terms of reliance on all renewables & batteries.
For me, there needs to be a balance between cheap renewable energy, some storage at the right price, stable baseload nuclear, but also the flexibility to maintain some form of gas/coal generation capacity. The solution for China is probably a combination of these! There is room in that market for significant growth for everything that works.

There are going to be some freak days when there is a whole section of solar and wind not producing, it might be rare but there will be these days, and usually they correspond to massive demand due to the weather/climate pattern that cause these freak days. Its always going to be useful to keep some gas plants around for these. e.g. in Australia, some of these peaking plants will only run a few days a year, yet are still profitable, because of the power market. Extreme demand sometimes drive power prices up to $14000+ per mwh on the NEM, thus these peaking plants are useful. (Those days happened because it was way too hot, and some interconnectors for power imports from other states was down for maintenance and another died and there was rolling black outs for weeks while it was repaired!). Having the experience for the rolling power cuts in several provinces last year in China, I am certain they will keep that in mind too! They aren't the type that say, meh, we can live with it for a few odd days.

Also, lets not forget that coal and gas are essential feedstocks for other petrochemical products. There is a massive coal gasification industry in China that makes plenty of syngas for fertilizers and other chemicals, just as easy to reroute the syngas directly to the power plants (not ideal since its the least $$$ you make out of it), or make more ammonia to fuel the new gen ships etc.
Plus, the rest of the world, especially the third world will still be craving for power as they develop, so China naturally will be exporting more ultra super critical coal power stuff to it, or gas, thus it'll be good to maintain at least a skeleton industry at home to keep the technology evolving. We might have lots of storage battery and dams pop up all over the place, but some places are just gonna be easier dealt with by a gas turbine sitting idle, or a ultra super critical running the heating for the city in winter and backing up for power gen when needed.

One day we might get to a stage where there is a perfect solution, but until then its probably best to be pragmatic, and make do with things that will steer you in the right direction (i.e. improve efficiency, cut reliance on foreign feedstock, reduce resource use intensity, make most use of resources already in country and have vast reserves of), rather than gamble your nation's fait on unproven stuff. (by all means get in deep to try them, but don't overcommit until its proven!)

tphuang said:

gravitational energy storage is going to get better and more efficient over time

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I'm sure there will be other form of energy storage too.

As for batteries, there is definitely already home and industrial uses. You are right that they do not make sense for grid scale at the moment. However, if they can continue to improve the energy density and cost of sodium ion batteries, I don't think it should be ruled out.

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people have done the math on block based gravitational energy storage. it's hilariously shit. pumped hydro is the 10000x better form of gravitational storage.


and this is not complex math, anyone with a very simple high school understanding of physics knows that block based gravitational storage is shit compared to pumped hydro once you think about the challenges of moving a solids vs liquids (think of why coal was replaced by oil).