Since releasing my oil video I've had so many people claiming that renewables will never work and we need nuclear power instead.
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@mattsqu @notjustbikes battery (or other methods) storage goes a long way, and there's probably lower demand at night
plus most countries have a national grid (even tied into their neighbours) & it's not the same weather everywhere
@patterfloof @notjustbikes Sure but I imagine planning for a few days of heavy cloud cover, in mid winter, with low wind is really difficult. Edge cases will be the expensive part. And probably there will be a place for... something to fill those rare gaps other than eg doubling battery capacity. Maybe turbines and hydrogen? Something cheap but energy dense.
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When I did some reading on the current situation, I found a lot of sites out of Australia that were repeating this "base load" idea, in the context of nuclear power.
I suspect that this is fossil-fuel propaganda.
Fossil fuel companies love promoting nuclear power because they know it takes decades to get a reactor built (if it gets built at all), and in the meantime, everyone keeps using fossil fuels.
It's the perfect way to cripple renewables without being obvious about it.
@notjustbikes as an Australian, I can assure you that the Australian base load thing is hot garbage designed to keep control of energy in centralised corporate hands.
So yup, perfect for arguing against renewable / distributed energy with an authoritative sound that is actually hollow nothing.
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When I did some reading on the current situation, I found a lot of sites out of Australia that were repeating this "base load" idea, in the context of nuclear power.
I suspect that this is fossil-fuel propaganda.
Fossil fuel companies love promoting nuclear power because they know it takes decades to get a reactor built (if it gets built at all), and in the meantime, everyone keeps using fossil fuels.
It's the perfect way to cripple renewables without being obvious about it.
Lots of nuclear trolls/shrills.
Not all of them are real people.Here in Australia, we have lots of mainly uncontrolled rooftop solar.
The sun shines and The commercial solar farms get pushed out.
The constant on "baseload" coal plants lose money with negative prices. They have started to learn to dance. Like the UK coal plants. Ramping their output up and down. But they have their limits. No longer baseload.
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Since releasing my oil video I've had so many people claiming that renewables will never work and we need nuclear power instead.
What's odd is that almost all of the messages mention that nuclear power is the only solution for the "base load".
I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and I took several nuclear science electives. I like nuclear energy. But I received so much "base load" gaslighting that I started to doubt my own understanding of the situation.
sounds like renewables are the culprit here -
@notjustbikes for me, having experienced the Iberian peninsula blackout, base load is what keeps the electric grid stable, imagine a large flywheel on a car
it can be done with batteries, hydro, nuclear or gas
but I'm a software engineer, what do I know?
cheers
@luisfcorreia no, that is totally unrelated. The Iberian peninsula blackout had nothing to do with what we're talking about, and that's not how base load works.
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This means that the concept of "base load" is not really relevant, because there is no consistent base. And when the residual load goes negative, the wholesale price of electricity goes negative as well.
Last year the Netherlands had negative wholesale electricity prices for about 7% of the year, and that amount is only going to grow.
You can't afford to run a nuclear reactor when electricity prices are negative, but you also can't shut it down every day either.
@notjustbikes yeah, and then you’ll have nuclear energy lobbyists coming out of the woodwork and demanding similar coupling like we already have for natural gas with the current merit order model
aka “We need prices to be high in order for our expensive assets to appreciate over time” -
@notjustbikes Solar on suburban homes is a funny thing. At the latitude of Amsterdam, it can lead to demand evaporation for 7-8 months of the year if the home has a sufficiently sized battery.
The solar from a typical suburban home can carry 10-15 kWp of solar, leading to 7-11 MWh production per year in east/west configuration and 13-16 MWh production in a south facing ideal deployment.
There is a 1:10 production difference between January and June, though, so the household likely needs to buy power Nov-Feb, but will likely break even or almost break even in Mar, and not consume any power from the grid in April to September, and begin to load from the grid lightly on October.
Heating with a heat pump will have them but 3-4 MWh during winter.
(Numbers based on our 75 kWh/(year and qm) home, and our demand, but they seem to be applicable on a more general scale, too).
For power producers this means they have to supply power to homes like ours only for winter.
Fortunately wind + battery can actually do that without CO2.
@isotopp
Nachfrageverpuffung, oder wie heißt das auf deutsch? -
@patterfloof @notjustbikes Sure but I imagine planning for a few days of heavy cloud cover, in mid winter, with low wind is really difficult. Edge cases will be the expensive part. And probably there will be a place for... something to fill those rare gaps other than eg doubling battery capacity. Maybe turbines and hydrogen? Something cheap but energy dense.
@mattsqu No, this is totally unrelated to base load.
What you're talking about is "dispatchable power" from "peaker plants" which is the literal opposite of what a nuclear reactor provides.
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When I did some reading on the current situation, I found a lot of sites out of Australia that were repeating this "base load" idea, in the context of nuclear power.
I suspect that this is fossil-fuel propaganda.
Fossil fuel companies love promoting nuclear power because they know it takes decades to get a reactor built (if it gets built at all), and in the meantime, everyone keeps using fossil fuels.
It's the perfect way to cripple renewables without being obvious about it.
@notjustbikes that was literally what the conservative (Liberal & National Party coalition) opposition pulled at the last election here in Australia:
Cancel renewables.
Start up a nuclear program (despite multiple failed attempts).
Throw money at gas and coal.They didn't win the election
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Lots of nuclear trolls/shrills.
Not all of them are real people.Here in Australia, we have lots of mainly uncontrolled rooftop solar.
The sun shines and The commercial solar farms get pushed out.
The constant on "baseload" coal plants lose money with negative prices. They have started to learn to dance. Like the UK coal plants. Ramping their output up and down. But they have their limits. No longer baseload.
So we have a solution.
Give away 3 hours of electricity for free in the middle of the day. When we have the most amount of negative prices and spare solar capacity.
Perfect for charging evs. Or shifting loads away form peak.
Also a big boom in home batteries is also seeing demand reduction in evening peaks. Charge own batteries, rather then export, then use your own electricity in peak. Or sell it back to the grid when it is needed.
The hours the market wants back: Free daytime power, or a fix for solar and wind curtailment?
What does it mean when an offer appears consumer-friendly but is also system-convenient? And what becomes visible when price is placed beside curtailment rather than read in isolation?
Renew Economy (reneweconomy.com.au)
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I used to be very pro-nuclear, but I am now very pro-fusion.
I have a number of remote nuclear fusion receivers on the roof of my house, and they are netting me around 7 MWh/year at zero running cost.
The remote fusion collection contraptions don't have any moving part either. I think this is important, maintenance-wise.
@sgued @notjustbikes -
@patterfloof @notjustbikes Sure but I imagine planning for a few days of heavy cloud cover, in mid winter, with low wind is really difficult. Edge cases will be the expensive part. And probably there will be a place for... something to fill those rare gaps other than eg doubling battery capacity. Maybe turbines and hydrogen? Something cheap but energy dense.
@mattsqu @patterfloof @notjustbikes This is a "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good" objection. We're in a transition, and the best ways to finish it might not be obvious until there's more experience with the whole tech stack. But it's doable: engineers are doing it.
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@notjustbikes the only honest reason for using nuclear power is the desire to have nuclear weapons.
"The neglected factor is the military dependence on civil nuclear industries. Maintaining a nuclear armed navy or weapons programme requires constant access to generic reactor technologies, skilled workers and special materials. Without a civilian nuclear industry, military nuclear capabilities are significantly more challenging and costly to sustain. "
The hidden military pressures behind the new push for small nuclear reactors
If billions are being invested to power submarines not homes, the public deserves to know.
The Conversation (theconversation.com)
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When I did some reading on the current situation, I found a lot of sites out of Australia that were repeating this "base load" idea, in the context of nuclear power.
I suspect that this is fossil-fuel propaganda.
Fossil fuel companies love promoting nuclear power because they know it takes decades to get a reactor built (if it gets built at all), and in the meantime, everyone keeps using fossil fuels.
It's the perfect way to cripple renewables without being obvious about it.
@notjustbikes My theory us that it's smart, liberal, pro-science, pro-enviornment. But they grew up in the 70s-80s, when nuclear was the "cool" solution to oil. They are intelligent and educated people, but their information is out of date.
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When I did some reading on the current situation, I found a lot of sites out of Australia that were repeating this "base load" idea, in the context of nuclear power.
I suspect that this is fossil-fuel propaganda.
Fossil fuel companies love promoting nuclear power because they know it takes decades to get a reactor built (if it gets built at all), and in the meantime, everyone keeps using fossil fuels.
It's the perfect way to cripple renewables without being obvious about it.
There seems to be a widespread desire to forget that there is such a thing as a battery.
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@mattsqu @patterfloof @notjustbikes This is a "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good" objection. We're in a transition, and the best ways to finish it might not be obvious until there's more experience with the whole tech stack. But it's doable: engineers are doing it.
@andygates @patterfloof @notjustbikes Absolutely, and nuclear would be terrible in this scenario. In a world where peak renewables output is way over 100% of peak demand, we will need something that's mostly never used, is reasonably cheap to keep idle, and starts up quickly. This is the first time I'm thinking investment in nuclear now, for 10-20 years time, could be a terrible idea.
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When I did some reading on the current situation, I found a lot of sites out of Australia that were repeating this "base load" idea, in the context of nuclear power.
I suspect that this is fossil-fuel propaganda.
Fossil fuel companies love promoting nuclear power because they know it takes decades to get a reactor built (if it gets built at all), and in the meantime, everyone keeps using fossil fuels.
It's the perfect way to cripple renewables without being obvious about it.
@notjustbikes I'm not an electrical engineer, but it seems to me that the concept of base load is useful because, at least for now, we don't have enough yearly renewal production to cover the consumption needs. But we also need better ways of using excess production. Two of them are storage and hydrogen production. It would probably make businesses sense for renewable power plants to invest in plugging storage or hydrogen production solutions to their operations.
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This means that the concept of "base load" is not really relevant, because there is no consistent base. And when the residual load goes negative, the wholesale price of electricity goes negative as well.
Last year the Netherlands had negative wholesale electricity prices for about 7% of the year, and that amount is only going to grow.
You can't afford to run a nuclear reactor when electricity prices are negative, but you also can't shut it down every day either.
>You can't afford to run a nuclear reactor when electricity prices are negative, but you also can't shut it down every day either.
What the lobbying for NPP in countries like the Netherlands is doing is securing legislation where "you" as in the company operating the nuclear reactor actually CAN afford that.
A big component of that is making the concept of "base load generators" a special category with financial compensation. So even at negative prices costs are compensated.
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@mattsqu @patterfloof @notjustbikes This is a "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good" objection. We're in a transition, and the best ways to finish it might not be obvious until there's more experience with the whole tech stack. But it's doable: engineers are doing it.
@mattsqu @patterfloof @notjustbikes As a "surprise, that's obvious" example, California recently had so much "4h storage" that they discharged it in tranches overnight, time-shifting cheap solar so the sun really does shine all day. Storage is a cheat code.
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@wall0159
However, the assumption that nuclear power is dispatchable is a myth: once you payed all the sunk cost to build a nuclear plant, it has to run 24/7 for a very long life if it ever wants to have remotely competitive prices per output.
@notjustbikes
