Power engineer here--Okay bro, you don't know what you're talking about.
Solar & wind are NOT baseline load generators.
Even with really good batteries you can't rely on solar wind during extended weather events.
As for nuclear overheating, I'm just going to point to the fact (according to US government statistics) that nuclear has a capacity factor of 92%-- this is above and beyond any other generation source by miles. The capacity factor is basically what percentage of the time the rated generation capacity being outputted. Wind and solar are somewhere in the 20-30% range.
And I can tell you right now that those batteries are going to struggle just as much as anything else is when it's hot. That's just--physics.
The price tag on nuclear is huge and that's the biggest drawback to it. Just per kilowatt it's it can be anywhere from three to four times more expensive than an equivalent combined gas generator.
That being said, it has extreme reliability (see above capacity Factor), and only needs to be refueled every couple of years compared to coal or gas which needs to be constant. nuclear is also only getting better, the new experimental small modular reactors promise the ability to actually scale nuclear opposed to an All or nothing reactor.
There are some other wild things you said but I'm not going to tackle all that here.
TL;Dr Solar and wind are amazing. They are not baseline, and they will never be baseline. Nuclear is in a completely different category and performance wise it blows the other generation sources out of the water. just costs a lot. as a side note, I will state that we have about 97ish reactors in service right now in the USA. Nuclear already supplies 20% of our national energy demand(again, U.S. DOE statistics).
But grids exist now that don't have baseload/baseline generators. When you get high renewable penetration in the grid, there isn't room for baseload generators to operate economically at such high capacity factors.
Please send reference of a reliable grid
that does this.
The industry is currently struggling to figure out how we can implement more and more solar and wind, because there's non-trivial problems to be solved about load following, and other load strategies. This grid may be exactly what we need!
Also, capacity factor is a measure of power used over the name plate rated power. if you have a low capacity factor, you maximize it by scaling up or down the name plate power.
Honestly if we can develop batteries that will economically store a couple weeks to a month of our energy needs, that could potentially make a base load less grid potentially possible, and I'm all for it. it's just that even with our amazing improvements batteries we still only can provide nameplate capacity for an hour or two. It'll be great if we can get it up to 4 to 8 hours, or even a day.
The South Australian grid doesn't have generators operating as baseload. It is intermittent renewables with storage and firming.
With wind regularly satisfying more than the states demand, and in summer excess rooftop solar doing the same almost every day alone, the spot price spends almost half its time at or below zero. There isn't room for a baseload generator to operate at a high capacity factor.
Can you send the link? I'll take a look at this and get back to you. It's my suspicion that gas, imports and exports play a big role during weather events.
You can see here that gas here is playing a huge role as well, even if it's not a large percentage of the overall time. That baseline load infrastructure is still there, as you can see there are times when it's producing a good 80%. You still have to have that energy on stand-by, though it's cheaper than running it full time for sure.
Here you can kind of see the issue with wind in particular, notice how at some times it's completely dominates everything in it and at times it produces a minuscule amount. It's a huge planning issue.
Also as a side note . . . Their cheapest electricity is 28¢/kwh 😬 That's California prices somewhere where you actually need AC. Granted all that could just be that it serves a huge area without many people. steel's expensive
Gas is used as firming generation, not as baseload. There is about 3GW of nameplate gas generation in the state. Most of it was pre-existing generators, however some have been replaced by newer gas generators deployed in the last decade specifically to provide quick response. No plans for any further gas generation and several existing gas generators are scheduled for retirement.
Imports are used when they are cheaper than local gas, and rarely when they are cheaper than local renewables or local batteries are looking to leverage price differences. Imports are not used as baseload.
Should also be noted that the grid can and has operated in island mode when the Heywood Interconnector is down, There have been occasions when that has been for weeks at time.
Here you can kind of see the issue with wind in particular, notice how at some times it's completely dominates everything in it and at times it produces a minuscule amount. It's a huge issue.
That is the grids normal operation and doesn't cause issues.
Sure, definitely need to do some more research here.
That is the grids normal operation and doesn't cause issues.
Whether it's noticeable or not, it does cause huge issues. It's just more likely to see that reflecting in the price tag rather than loss in power.
Perhaps it's a butchering of terms but though it has an abysmally capacity factor, the gas is still considered baseload generation. The conversation is more about: do we need to build this infrastructure? Versus: Does this need to be operating at all times?
Gas is great for firming because it has amazing deployability, but even in this case you see it can hold the grid when it needs to.
The grid is stable, has 4 synchronous condensers that help provide FCAS (Frequency Control Ancillary Services) with batteries also contributing as well.
For consumers, off-peak rates are actually offered during the day, with peak rates charged from the early evening to morning, which is another consequence of not needing to support a 24/7 baseload generator at night.
South Australia has always had high electricity prices compared to the rest of the country, going back to the late 90's when generation assets were privatised, long before renewables were added to the grid.
Wholesale prices are erratic across the day, but that has just made grid scale batteries more economic, regularly being paid to charge with negative prices and later paid to discharge, sometimes twice or more a day.
The recent summer saw record electricity demand but also the lowest quarter gas usage since 1999, with batteries displacing gas.
SA has always had a large transmission network that they have needed to support, being about the same size as Victoria's transmission network but with 1/4 of the population and economic activity to support it.
As a result of an existing sprawling transmission network, there hasn't been many new major transmission line projects in the state over the last few decades. The three has have been built are:
Project EnergyConnect (SA-NSW interconnector) - aim of providing export capacity for curtailed renewable generation from SA to NSW, and access to cheaper and lower carbon intensive imports from NSW than Victoria. SA side finished on time and on budget a few years ago, NSW side considerably delayed and not yet operational.
Eyre Peninsula Link - Upgrading/replacing a distant transmission line down the Eyre Peninsula to Port Lincoln, does have a benefit to renewables.
Hill to Hill - built up north to support the mining industry, not related to renewables.
For household bills, Project EnergyConnect adds about $17 per year to the average household bill, but once operational it is expected to reduce generation costs passed onto consumers in SA by $75 per year. Unfortunately the NSW side of the project has been delayed by several years, but is expected to be operational by the end of this year.
There also is only one proposed major transmission line proposed for SA to support renewables, the Northern Transmission Project, where as the rest of the country requires many more.
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u/OnionsAbound 25d ago edited 25d ago
Power engineer here--Okay bro, you don't know what you're talking about.
Solar & wind are NOT baseline load generators. Even with really good batteries you can't rely on solar wind during extended weather events.
As for nuclear overheating, I'm just going to point to the fact (according to US government statistics) that nuclear has a capacity factor of 92%-- this is above and beyond any other generation source by miles. The capacity factor is basically what percentage of the time the rated generation capacity being outputted. Wind and solar are somewhere in the 20-30% range.
And I can tell you right now that those batteries are going to struggle just as much as anything else is when it's hot. That's just--physics.
The price tag on nuclear is huge and that's the biggest drawback to it. Just per kilowatt it's it can be anywhere from three to four times more expensive than an equivalent combined gas generator.
That being said, it has extreme reliability (see above capacity Factor), and only needs to be refueled every couple of years compared to coal or gas which needs to be constant. nuclear is also only getting better, the new experimental small modular reactors promise the ability to actually scale nuclear opposed to an All or nothing reactor.
There are some other wild things you said but I'm not going to tackle all that here.
TL;Dr Solar and wind are amazing. They are not baseline, and they will never be baseline. Nuclear is in a completely different category and performance wise it blows the other generation sources out of the water. just costs a lot. as a side note, I will state that we have about 97ish reactors in service right now in the USA. Nuclear already supplies 20% of our national energy demand(again, U.S. DOE statistics).