The section of the article that says "Now comes the bad news" actually sounds like a good news.
More pressure from banks, insurances and legislation to limit the development and usage of coal to produce electricity? I can understand there's going to be job losses, and that's never good, but for the benefit of the rest of the world it's a pretty good news. Finally a change in attitude towards carbon intensive energy production.
> But, more and more, base-load coal plants have been squeezed out of the market as ever more renewable energy – particularly solar power – flooded the system.
And so the coal power plants needed more money to stay afloat, but:
> But Delta, in a letter written to the body that makes the rules in the market, said none of the 15 banks it had met had been willing to provide it the necessary coverage because of environmental concerns.
And so
> "The coal-fired generation is going to go out of business in Australia over the next 10 years," he said.
It may surprise you, but all energy production is or was heavily subsidized at one point or the other in virtually all states. I'm sure I don't have to spell out where nuclear power would be today if not for the billions of subsidies.
Just visit the Wikipedia page for Hinkley Point [1], read the section on economics, and weep. That's your money at work. And it has been the same for coal, oil, gas, and now solar and wind energy, all over Europe and the US.
On a level playing field without subsidies, where we can build solar and wind power generators at scale like today, they would pummel all the other energy sources on costs alone (just think of all the raw material you don't need to burn to make your turbines turn).
On a level playing field without subsidies, we'd be in underdevelopped shitholes. The idea that a modern economy can grow without some agency being brought in somehow is utopia.
> where we can build solar and wind power generators at scale
How do you build those, without the decades of subsidies to ramp up production and decrease costs?
CFDs are a "collar trade". They pay the difference between the market price and a "strike price". If the market price is above the strike price, the CFD is a refund. So the CFDs have been returning money to the taxpayer lately.
Atleast in india, we have good subsidies on residential solar, and need to bring as much capacity (blue,green,black, whatever) online for a country whose electricity demand is growing rapidly (most villages now have access to electricity)
My dad worked on something similar, when during the 1980s the coal-fired station he worked at had to convert to two-shift operation, from the three-shift operation that it's 1950s design had intended. He described this process as, "bashing hell out the machines to make them do things they weren't designed to."
One interesting detail was that the more rapid startup and cooldown of turbines meant that blade spacing couldn't be as tight as before, reducing efficiency during operation. (The turbine casing has less thermal mass than the rotor, and hence contracts faster during cooldown. The spacing of the blades needs to account for this.)
I wonder what kind of arrangements they had to make to keep things hot while not producing power. I'm assuming that you could keep the shaft spinning at near operating speed, and hold the temperature of the turbines, etc... the big question for me is the boiler tubes themselves you'd have to essentially turn the whole firebox into a superheater, pulling just enough steam out to keep the turbine supplied, and the make-up water flowing.
This stuff really isn't designed to be throttled up and down like a yo-yo. I'm amazed they were able to do it at all, and seem confident they can keep it up.
Well said, but as the article goes on, it seems even with no technical hurdles this innovation seems dead in the water with policy. At least they're not doing what the Germans have done, shutting down coal power plants and buying Polish electrical generation... made with coal power plants.
Oh this is the oldest trick in the book. If you need to greenwash, then just burn the coal somewhere else. Easy.
Los Angeles has been doing this for decades - for years the largest single energy source for LAPW has been an 1800MW coal burning plant that they operated in Utah, which has very loose environmental regulations.
Yes, but not for power generation. The majority of Australia's coal exports are metallurgical coal, for manufacturing. Australia owns about 58% of the global trade for metallurgical coal, which means everyone imports it from us.
> At least they're not doing what the Germans have done, shutting down coal power plants and buying Polish electrical generation... made with coal power plants.
And shutting down nuclear power plants and buying French electricity.. ..made with nuclear power plants. Strong the hypocrisy is with this one.
But hey they're doing their part, right? This is the flaw in European and international agreements, they're still done on a per-country basis instead of EU or a continental basis.
This is a common talking point, but it really doesn't mean much in terms of the reliability of electric systems.
If you import a lot and export a lot, that doesn't mean both countries could be autonomous, it may mean your country strongly depends on imports sometimes, and on exports at other times, which typically is the case for Germany.
Because electricity is difficult to store, but because of how the grid works you always have to generate exactly as much as is used. Not electricity generation fluctuates (obvious with wind and solar; all plants need maintenance; nuclear often has to shut down in the summer either because rivers don't carry enough water or are so hot that feeding warm cooling water back into them endangers fish). Demand also heavily fluctuates both over the course of a day and with the seasons.
Trading electricity over geographically large areas smoothes out some of these fluctuations and gives you more options to deal with planned outages
> nuclear often has to shut down in the summer either because rivers don't carry enough water or are so hot that feeding warm cooling water back into them endangers fish).
I don't believe this has much impact on Germany's export patterns: in fact, summer is usually the time scheduled maintenance is planned in France, because electricity usage is much lower during summer than during winter. So there's still a lot of wiggle room before France ends up being forced to import in the summer because of that phenomenon.
The main driver for import/export patterns are different consumer patterns (not all countries have the same daily load curve - for instance, France and Spain both benefit a lot from trading because France's peak use time is an hour ahead of Spain's) and renewables availability.
If you look at the electricity map at various times of day or over a week, you'll see the import arrows flip direction depending on the weather and time of day.
The UK exports wind power at night, but imports power during the day. Scandinavia often exports hydro power.
Taxes on carbon emissions mean Poland will import green power if it's available, as it will be cheaper than burning their own coal.
It's strange to see Germany so against nuclear, but happily buying all that clean nuclear energy from it's neighbour. Nuclear accidents don't care about borders, you'd think if they really meant what they preached they'd boycott their closest nuclear plants aswell
It’s short term measures while it transitions to a heavily renewable based energy system. Aren’t they currently at 60%+ renewable and are aiming to be 80% by 2030? Claims of greenwashing with those stats is disingenuous.
A part of the increasing of the renewable share in Germany electricity production is also the result of a decrease in total electricity production. In 2017 Germany was producing 560 TWh (with 138TWh solar + wind) vs 430TWh (with 192TWh solar + wind) in 2023 and probably even less this year. That's why Germany is importing electricity.
These are very informative numbers one reads nowhere in the news.
From destatis[0], we go from 608 in 2019 to 514TWh in 2023. So not the same absolute values, but same trend. Thank you.
We often read equivalent figures in the British news, as it shows the energy efficiency push of the last 30 years has reduced power use, leaving space for charging electric vehicles.
If you look at the data, capital spend on these things is plummeting because the operators know they aren't here to stay. This has caused decreases in their reliability and increases in their downtime. I wonder if this new "operating mode" will further accelerate the aging of the plants and continue the death spiral?
It would be a good thing if you could trust utilities and energy companies to use this new-found flexibility as a way to minimize coal use on the way to carbon neural energy generation.
But I think we've seen there can be no trust there and so this is a bad thing that will help the coal industry survive. I'm not saying other industries are "good" but this industry is definitely evil.
It's a matter of necessity. Until grid storage catches up shortfalls in renewable output need to be mitigated somehow. The other option is to just keep all the gas and coal baseload and switch off the renewables, which would be much worse for emissions
The consequences of "just shutting of coal" right now would be blackouts. People would riot and people would die. It would kill any support for climate action.
No, there are more options. In fact it’s rather impossible to choose „everybody is rioting“ in democratic countries, and very difficult in dictatorships.
But.. health services. But.. utilities. But.. transport. But.. basic goods. But.. writing comments on hacker news. Sure, big business will suffer, but so will everyone else. It's fairly understandable why rolling blackouts are not politically sensible.
It makes sense to run coal for another 5-10 years if you can to transition to batteries. This will likely put more stress on the parts and the plant will become unserviceable sooner but that’s better then retiring it now
Is this a valid generic political argument? Do the bad thing or the bad people will support your bad opposition and do the bad thing anyway? No wonder there's so much bad.
I can't tell if this is a good thing. It seems like maybe a good thing that you can shut off plants that historically couldn't be shut off. But it seems like a bad thing since it means these plants will likely stay in service longer. Is there a tipping point in the foreseeable future where these plants are unprofitable regardless of whether they run only part time?
Probably once there enough batteries in service to soak up enough negative-priced rooftop solar power produced during the day to meet the overnight demand, baseload coal/gas will be less needed or no longer needed.
I haven't come across this. Our power company has cheaper 'shoulder' rates between 10am and 3pm, during which I schedule more things to be 'on', but haven't heard about a free power time range.
I'm with AGL, and don't tend to shop around (because hassle), but this might inspire a review.
Also need to factor in the possibility of grid connectivity.
If there is ever a Western to Eastern Australia connector that would have a big impact on excess capacity given the 3 hour time zone difference and just how warm it gets there.
Correct. It will take around 10-20 years for this happen at current scaling of grid storage. In the meantime it doesn't make sense to scale up new gas, coal, or nuclear, as they won't have a decent ROI over their lifespan.
At least in Australia, the oversupply of rooftop solar is already getting to be enough of a problem that its a signal to investors that getting into grid scale batteries could be profitable, and to home owners that house scale batteries are a good idea.
> and to home owners that house scale batteries are a good idea.
There's a middle ground to exploit for business that I've seen few (although some) examples of in Australia - "neighbourhood" batteries that cover 200 homes or so.
Good for small towns, developments, suburbs, etc - about $1 million (AUD) as I recall, decent economics - work with grid provider to soak charge container sized battery from surrounding solar, feedback on demand, etc.
Sodium-ion battery packs are starting to enter the market, and are already quite cheap. I think within a couple of years the economics will be difficult to resist.
It sounds like it's a mixed bag. It'll be quite difficult to transition to renewables before storage projects like Snowy Hydro 2.0 are complete, and an increased service life really just means an increased service life before we need to pay for an expensive infrastructure project the cost of which companies will try to recoup, so a longer lifespan might actually cause the plants to shut down sooner.
> Delta, the Czech firm that owns the aging Vales Point coal plant near Lake Macquarie, reported that it had been unable to get the financial backing of any major bank in Australia
It is very good news that the banks are refusing to finance the fossil fuel greed heads and vandals.
Surely this kind of experiments must be first done in controlled conditions and not on a live plant. The article doesn't mention any sort of fatigue study. Remember how a Russian hydro plant blew up because one of its turbines was throttled back and forth?
It's presumably not practical to find a multi-GW load to test with aside from the grid. The plant probably had arrangements in place if things didn't work out.
I don't know why, from the start, we haven't used nuclear power more for baseload.
China is already building between 6 to 8 nuclear power plants a year and plans to expand that number to 10 a year.
It's nothing compared to all the other sources of power they are creating, but it seems to me that rather than investing in mass battery storage, a few dozen modern nuclear power plants would be a good idea.
Assuming, of course, you can actually get costs down and cut through red tape like China can.
Nuclear plants are not a replacement for batteries. You either have enough nuclear plants to cover peak demand, in which case you don't need any renewables at all, or you need batteries (or rather, storage, batteries are not the only option). Economics seem to favor storage and renewables over 100% nuclear.
The difference being nuclear only needs something to cover the peak, whilst renewable needs capacity to cover 100% of production because of wild variability.
Because no one cares about nuclear whilst the costs are so high, return on investment questionable and there aren't simple solutions for dealing with the waste. Plus for better or worse the politics of it are terrible.
Meanwhile every year solar and batteries are getting cheaper. And we may see a future with lots of EVs capable of being used as grid batteries.
Agreed. Nuclear is cool but beaten in so many ways by the current renewable revolution. Distributed, low risk, cheap energy generation backed by batteries seems strictly superior to nuclear generation.
Backed by batteries is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Batteries required to make them viable are never included in the LCOEs for renewable, because it'd make them ridiculously more expensive than nuclear. The problem is we need power now, all the time. It's much easier to develop new technologies when the lights are still on.
> I don't know why, from the start, we haven't used nuclear power more for baseload.
Because it was too expensive and took a long time to build. At least one utility in the US was forced into bankruptcy due to nuclear builds when power demand growth suddenly slowed during the long construction time.
The section of the article that says "Now comes the bad news" actually sounds like a good news.
More pressure from banks, insurances and legislation to limit the development and usage of coal to produce electricity? I can understand there's going to be job losses, and that's never good, but for the benefit of the rest of the world it's a pretty good news. Finally a change in attitude towards carbon intensive energy production.
Lots of good news in the article
> But, more and more, base-load coal plants have been squeezed out of the market as ever more renewable energy – particularly solar power – flooded the system.
And so the coal power plants needed more money to stay afloat, but:
> But Delta, in a letter written to the body that makes the rules in the market, said none of the 15 banks it had met had been willing to provide it the necessary coverage because of environmental concerns.
And so
> "The coal-fired generation is going to go out of business in Australia over the next 10 years," he said.
> And so the coal power plants needed more money to stay afloat,
Green energy is great. Going really well in the uk. Super cheap with all those subsidies……………… I mean contracts for difference we pay for it.
It may surprise you, but all energy production is or was heavily subsidized at one point or the other in virtually all states. I'm sure I don't have to spell out where nuclear power would be today if not for the billions of subsidies.
Just visit the Wikipedia page for Hinkley Point [1], read the section on economics, and weep. That's your money at work. And it has been the same for coal, oil, gas, and now solar and wind energy, all over Europe and the US.
On a level playing field without subsidies, where we can build solar and wind power generators at scale like today, they would pummel all the other energy sources on costs alone (just think of all the raw material you don't need to burn to make your turbines turn).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...
> On a level playing field without subsidies
On a level playing field without subsidies, we'd be in underdevelopped shitholes. The idea that a modern economy can grow without some agency being brought in somehow is utopia.
> where we can build solar and wind power generators at scale
How do you build those, without the decades of subsidies to ramp up production and decrease costs?
CFDs are a "collar trade". They pay the difference between the market price and a "strike price". If the market price is above the strike price, the CFD is a refund. So the CFDs have been returning money to the taxpayer lately.
https://www.current-news.co.uk/cfds-set-to-pay-back-10-5bn-a...
Unlike natural gas, which has been made much more expensive by the war.
It's an investment in the future, just like the coal power plants and grid received for as long as electricity has been a thing.
Let's hope countries like China and India will put the same pressure on their industry. Otherwise we're just offloading work to them even further.
https://climatecooperation.cn/climate/china-issues-action-pl...
Atleast in india, we have good subsidies on residential solar, and need to bring as much capacity (blue,green,black, whatever) online for a country whose electricity demand is growing rapidly (most villages now have access to electricity)
My dad worked on something similar, when during the 1980s the coal-fired station he worked at had to convert to two-shift operation, from the three-shift operation that it's 1950s design had intended. He described this process as, "bashing hell out the machines to make them do things they weren't designed to."
One interesting detail was that the more rapid startup and cooldown of turbines meant that blade spacing couldn't be as tight as before, reducing efficiency during operation. (The turbine casing has less thermal mass than the rotor, and hence contracts faster during cooldown. The spacing of the blades needs to account for this.)
I wonder what kind of arrangements they had to make to keep things hot while not producing power. I'm assuming that you could keep the shaft spinning at near operating speed, and hold the temperature of the turbines, etc... the big question for me is the boiler tubes themselves you'd have to essentially turn the whole firebox into a superheater, pulling just enough steam out to keep the turbine supplied, and the make-up water flowing.
This stuff really isn't designed to be throttled up and down like a yo-yo. I'm amazed they were able to do it at all, and seem confident they can keep it up.
Well said, but as the article goes on, it seems even with no technical hurdles this innovation seems dead in the water with policy. At least they're not doing what the Germans have done, shutting down coal power plants and buying Polish electrical generation... made with coal power plants.
Oh this is the oldest trick in the book. If you need to greenwash, then just burn the coal somewhere else. Easy.
Los Angeles has been doing this for decades - for years the largest single energy source for LAPW has been an 1800MW coal burning plant that they operated in Utah, which has very loose environmental regulations.
I sometimes wonder how directly some of the big flashy renewable energy projects in Australia are funded by coal exports to China...
I was under the impression that China had large coal deposits of its own. Do they really import a lot of coal?
Yes, but not for power generation. The majority of Australia's coal exports are metallurgical coal, for manufacturing. Australia owns about 58% of the global trade for metallurgical coal, which means everyone imports it from us.
But it's offset by Australia being able to validate approaches e.g. South Australia's battery.
Yeah, unlike e.g. European countries or US states, Australia is an island and they can't import / export electricity or connect grids easily.
> At least they're not doing what the Germans have done, shutting down coal power plants and buying Polish electrical generation... made with coal power plants.
And shutting down nuclear power plants and buying French electricity.. ..made with nuclear power plants. Strong the hypocrisy is with this one.
But hey they're doing their part, right? This is the flaw in European and international agreements, they're still done on a per-country basis instead of EU or a continental basis.
Poland imports slightly more from Germany than it exports to it, and isn't in the top 5 countries that Germany imports electricity from.
This is a common talking point, but it really doesn't mean much in terms of the reliability of electric systems.
If you import a lot and export a lot, that doesn't mean both countries could be autonomous, it may mean your country strongly depends on imports sometimes, and on exports at other times, which typically is the case for Germany.
> Poland imports slightly more from Germany than it exports to it
Why do they import/export the same product between each other?
Honest question. In general, not just about Poland and Germany.
Because electricity is difficult to store, but because of how the grid works you always have to generate exactly as much as is used. Not electricity generation fluctuates (obvious with wind and solar; all plants need maintenance; nuclear often has to shut down in the summer either because rivers don't carry enough water or are so hot that feeding warm cooling water back into them endangers fish). Demand also heavily fluctuates both over the course of a day and with the seasons.
Trading electricity over geographically large areas smoothes out some of these fluctuations and gives you more options to deal with planned outages
> nuclear often has to shut down in the summer either because rivers don't carry enough water or are so hot that feeding warm cooling water back into them endangers fish).
I don't believe this has much impact on Germany's export patterns: in fact, summer is usually the time scheduled maintenance is planned in France, because electricity usage is much lower during summer than during winter. So there's still a lot of wiggle room before France ends up being forced to import in the summer because of that phenomenon.
The main driver for import/export patterns are different consumer patterns (not all countries have the same daily load curve - for instance, France and Spain both benefit a lot from trading because France's peak use time is an hour ahead of Spain's) and renewables availability.
If you look at the electricity map at various times of day or over a week, you'll see the import arrows flip direction depending on the weather and time of day.
The UK exports wind power at night, but imports power during the day. Scandinavia often exports hydro power.
Taxes on carbon emissions mean Poland will import green power if it's available, as it will be cheaper than burning their own coal.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
For instance, Germany could import on windless winter days, and export on windy summer days.
Germany is a net exporter of power to Poland.
Exactly, Germany in 2024 mainly import electricity from France, Denmark, Switzerland and Norway, which are all low carbon producers.
It's strange to see Germany so against nuclear, but happily buying all that clean nuclear energy from it's neighbour. Nuclear accidents don't care about borders, you'd think if they really meant what they preached they'd boycott their closest nuclear plants aswell
It's "not in my backyard" politics, but Europe is full of that.
It’s short term measures while it transitions to a heavily renewable based energy system. Aren’t they currently at 60%+ renewable and are aiming to be 80% by 2030? Claims of greenwashing with those stats is disingenuous.
A part of the increasing of the renewable share in Germany electricity production is also the result of a decrease in total electricity production. In 2017 Germany was producing 560 TWh (with 138TWh solar + wind) vs 430TWh (with 192TWh solar + wind) in 2023 and probably even less this year. That's why Germany is importing electricity.
These are very informative numbers one reads nowhere in the news. From destatis[0], we go from 608 in 2019 to 514TWh in 2023. So not the same absolute values, but same trend. Thank you.
[0]: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energ...
We often read equivalent figures in the British news, as it shows the energy efficiency push of the last 30 years has reduced power use, leaving space for charging electric vehicles.
Efficiency, sure, but also industry getting wiped out.
The article skirts around saying that not much damage is happening in two-shifting operation.
What kind of damage is expected? Is two-shifting a sacrificial operational mode that’s planned to see the coal be sunset in the next decade?
If you look at the data, capital spend on these things is plummeting because the operators know they aren't here to stay. This has caused decreases in their reliability and increases in their downtime. I wonder if this new "operating mode" will further accelerate the aging of the plants and continue the death spiral?
It would be a good thing if you could trust utilities and energy companies to use this new-found flexibility as a way to minimize coal use on the way to carbon neural energy generation.
But I think we've seen there can be no trust there and so this is a bad thing that will help the coal industry survive. I'm not saying other industries are "good" but this industry is definitely evil.
It's a matter of necessity. Until grid storage catches up shortfalls in renewable output need to be mitigated somehow. The other option is to just keep all the gas and coal baseload and switch off the renewables, which would be much worse for emissions
> The other option is to just keep all the gas and coal baseload and switch off the renewables
The other option is to shut down the coal plants that are destroying the climate.
And put up with the consequences.
But, money.
The consequences of "just shutting of coal" right now would be blackouts. People would riot and people would die. It would kill any support for climate action.
Exactly. We have to choose between everyone dying and everyone rioting.
No, there are more options. In fact it’s rather impossible to choose „everybody is rioting“ in democratic countries, and very difficult in dictatorships.
U so right
Let's just do nothing now and leave it for later :)
No, what we need to do now is not "just shut off electricity lol". It's building carbon free alternatives as quickly as we can.
Homie
You flinched. But you came through.
That's a transparently gross oversimplification, and I find it very hard to believe that you're not aware of that fact.
But.. health services. But.. utilities. But.. transport. But.. basic goods. But.. writing comments on hacker news. Sure, big business will suffer, but so will everyone else. It's fairly understandable why rolling blackouts are not politically sensible.
It makes sense to run coal for another 5-10 years if you can to transition to batteries. This will likely put more stress on the parts and the plant will become unserviceable sooner but that’s better then retiring it now
> It makes sense to run coal for another 5-10 years
No, it does not. It is a bad idea.
We are better to do without the electricity.
Inconvenience, or climate meltdown. Take your pick
Do that and all support for the environment goes completely out the window.
Do this and that's pretty much the end for any kind of green transition.
Is this a valid generic political argument? Do the bad thing or the bad people will support your bad opposition and do the bad thing anyway? No wonder there's so much bad.
I can't tell if this is a good thing. It seems like maybe a good thing that you can shut off plants that historically couldn't be shut off. But it seems like a bad thing since it means these plants will likely stay in service longer. Is there a tipping point in the foreseeable future where these plants are unprofitable regardless of whether they run only part time?
Probably once there enough batteries in service to soak up enough negative-priced rooftop solar power produced during the day to meet the overnight demand, baseload coal/gas will be less needed or no longer needed.
To encourage this, here in South Australia, households can get free power between 11am and 2pm, to charge their EVs.
We also charge our home batteries and run other things like the dishwasher, washing machine and so on...
It's actually a bit of a thing, where you can be out and the 11am alarms on peoples phones will start going off!
I haven't come across this. Our power company has cheaper 'shoulder' rates between 10am and 3pm, during which I schedule more things to be 'on', but haven't heard about a free power time range.
I'm with AGL, and don't tend to shop around (because hassle), but this might inspire a review.
Also need to factor in the possibility of grid connectivity.
If there is ever a Western to Eastern Australia connector that would have a big impact on excess capacity given the 3 hour time zone difference and just how warm it gets there.
Correct. It will take around 10-20 years for this happen at current scaling of grid storage. In the meantime it doesn't make sense to scale up new gas, coal, or nuclear, as they won't have a decent ROI over their lifespan.
At least in Australia, the oversupply of rooftop solar is already getting to be enough of a problem that its a signal to investors that getting into grid scale batteries could be profitable, and to home owners that house scale batteries are a good idea.
> and to home owners that house scale batteries are a good idea.
There's a middle ground to exploit for business that I've seen few (although some) examples of in Australia - "neighbourhood" batteries that cover 200 homes or so.
Good for small towns, developments, suburbs, etc - about $1 million (AUD) as I recall, decent economics - work with grid provider to soak charge container sized battery from surrounding solar, feedback on demand, etc.
Sodium-ion battery packs are starting to enter the market, and are already quite cheap. I think within a couple of years the economics will be difficult to resist.
It sounds like it's a mixed bag. It'll be quite difficult to transition to renewables before storage projects like Snowy Hydro 2.0 are complete, and an increased service life really just means an increased service life before we need to pay for an expensive infrastructure project the cost of which companies will try to recoup, so a longer lifespan might actually cause the plants to shut down sooner.
Why isn't this transition happening in the United States - or is it?
There is a lot of gas in the US.
Money.
> Delta, the Czech firm that owns the aging Vales Point coal plant near Lake Macquarie, reported that it had been unable to get the financial backing of any major bank in Australia
It is very good news that the banks are refusing to finance the fossil fuel greed heads and vandals.
Surely this kind of experiments must be first done in controlled conditions and not on a live plant. The article doesn't mention any sort of fatigue study. Remember how a Russian hydro plant blew up because one of its turbines was throttled back and forth?
It's presumably not practical to find a multi-GW load to test with aside from the grid. The plant probably had arrangements in place if things didn't work out.
I don't know why, from the start, we haven't used nuclear power more for baseload.
China is already building between 6 to 8 nuclear power plants a year and plans to expand that number to 10 a year.
It's nothing compared to all the other sources of power they are creating, but it seems to me that rather than investing in mass battery storage, a few dozen modern nuclear power plants would be a good idea.
Assuming, of course, you can actually get costs down and cut through red tape like China can.
China finished 1 reactor in 2023 and are in track for a massive 3 finished reactors in 2024.
On the other hand they are building enough renewables to cover their entire electricity growth.
Even China has figured out that nuclear power is not economically viable.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/chinas-quiet-energy-revolution-t...
Nuclear plants are not a replacement for batteries. You either have enough nuclear plants to cover peak demand, in which case you don't need any renewables at all, or you need batteries (or rather, storage, batteries are not the only option). Economics seem to favor storage and renewables over 100% nuclear.
The difference being nuclear only needs something to cover the peak, whilst renewable needs capacity to cover 100% of production because of wild variability.
The difference between minimum and maximum demand is not that far from 100%.
You're basically just talking to yourself.
Because no one cares about nuclear whilst the costs are so high, return on investment questionable and there aren't simple solutions for dealing with the waste. Plus for better or worse the politics of it are terrible.
Meanwhile every year solar and batteries are getting cheaper. And we may see a future with lots of EVs capable of being used as grid batteries.
Agreed. Nuclear is cool but beaten in so many ways by the current renewable revolution. Distributed, low risk, cheap energy generation backed by batteries seems strictly superior to nuclear generation.
Backed by batteries is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Batteries required to make them viable are never included in the LCOEs for renewable, because it'd make them ridiculously more expensive than nuclear. The problem is we need power now, all the time. It's much easier to develop new technologies when the lights are still on.
Lazard had figures that include a couple of hours of storage for years. https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost...
Lots of reasons, but in Australia it's pretty simple: because nuclear power is prohibited by law.
> I don't know why, from the start, we haven't used nuclear power more for baseload.
Because it was too expensive and took a long time to build. At least one utility in the US was forced into bankruptcy due to nuclear builds when power demand growth suddenly slowed during the long construction time.