Oil!

[ainwood]

Well, yes. In fact one of the issues that made the Iberian blackout this year worse was most nuclear reactors were stopped in the peak solar hours because electricity was so cheap it was not profitable to have them running.

But then all this sounds like a problem of traditional generation methods becoming obsolete more than a problem of solar energy, along the issue with turbines being damaged for being stopped. Technology must adapt to how humans use it not the other way around. It also explains why in Australia electricity is more expensive despite price of electricity being negative thanks to solar. Should make it clear where is indeed the problem.

I think a whole cost-of-supply needs to be considered. People want cheap energy, but they also want reliable energy.

As a proponent of solar, how do you think a grid should be comprised?

About inertia, the lack of inertia wasn't the primary cause of the blackout either. It made it worse and more extended though. The primary cause is still unknown. In fact still without inertia correction, in Spain photovoltaic solar power reaches the 50% of the mix or more everyday and nothing happens. It will need a solution of course to make it sure such kind of blackouts don't happen again and to go over that 50% safely (at the moment of the blackout photovoltaic was 60%), but it will be solved, and sooner than later I bet. And if we can have turbines running unnecessarily making electricity more expensive, I guess we can also have some batteries as backup too.

OK - I will infer that you think it is reasonable to replace unnecessary turbines that 'make electricity more expensive' and have a solar-powered grid with batteries. Let's look at how feasible this really is.

Spain typically uses around 700 GWh / day of electricity. Let's keep the numbers simple, and assume that 2/3rds of this is required during the day, and 1/3 at night, and that solar can supply all of this on its own (solar generation varies throughout the day with the angle of the sun, but lets say that this is compensated with sun-following servos, and just ignore the early morning and late afternoon when the sun is low). So assume that battery storage needs to provide ~230 GWh of electricity / day.

The world's largest BESS (according to this)has a capacity of 3.28 GWh. That's enough to power Spain for about 10 minutes...

So to store enough electricity for Spain's overnight demand, you need to take the world's largest BESS, and build 70 copies of it. And what would that cost? Hard to estimate, but let's assume around €250 / kWh (€250,000,000 / GWh). You need 230 GWh, so that's around €57,500,000,000.

So your "free" solar really costs nearly €60 billion, or more correctly, that's the absolute minimum cost to provide grid back-up for solar under perfectly ideal conditions, where it just has to get the country through one night after a perfect day of generation. What if you have a rainy day? That battery storage needs to be 3x the size. Or a rainy week? 21x the size.

Free solar isn't free. Yes, I'm providing capital costs where your point was mainly about operational (fuel) costs, but they are related by a total cost of ownership.

Solar needs back-up, and this back-up costs money. The back-up can either be via things like batteries (expensive, as illustrated above), or via gas / coal / hydro / nuclear, where a decision is made to recognize that the reduced utilization of those alternatives increases the unit cost of those back-ups. The increased unit-cost of hydro / gas / coal / nuclear is because of the solar. Those other systems actually need back-up, too. But their back-up is not required because of "night time" or "bad weather", they are for maintenance or breakdowns. You also don't get common-mode failures: one gas turbine out of 30 breaking down is a lot easier to cover than (say) a rainy day taking out the entire solar generation capacity for a country.

Sure, there is a place for solar in the generation mix. Where solar is providing a moderate amount of reliable baseload, and the back-up can be provided by other baseload generators (or batteries), then it may help reduce the overall electricity price.

When the solar penetration is so high that you have to have idle back-up for 60% of the grid, just to get you through a rainy day? That most definitely isn't cheaper. Sounds like a political strategy, not an economic of thermodynamic one.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I think a whole cost-of-supply needs to be considered. People want cheap energy, but they also want reliable energy.

As a proponent of solar, how do you think a grid should be comprised?

OK - I will infer that you think it is reasonable to replace unnecessary turbines that 'make electricity more expensive' and have a solar-powered grid with batteries. Let's look at how feasible this really is.

Spain typically uses around 700 GWh / day of electricity. Let's keep the numbers simple, and assume that 2/3rds of this is required during the day, and 1/3 at night, and that solar can supply all of this on its own (solar generation varies throughout the day with the angle of the sun, but lets say that this is compensated with sun-following servos, and just ignore the early morning and late afternoon when the sun is low). So assume that battery storage needs to provide ~230 GWh of electricity / day.

The world's largest BESS (according to this)has a capacity of 3.28 GWh. That's enough to power Spain for about 10 minutes...

So to store enough electricity for Spain's overnight demand, you need to take the world's largest BESS, and build 70 copies of it. And what would that cost? Hard to estimate, but let's assume around €250 / kWh (€250,000,000 / GWh). You need 230 GWh, so that's around €57,500,000,000.

So your "free" solar really costs nearly €60 billion, or more correctly, that's the absolute minimum cost to provide grid back-up for solar under perfectly ideal conditions, where it just has to get the country through one night after a perfect day of generation. What if you have a rainy day? That battery storage needs to be 3x the size. Or a rainy week? 21x the size.

Free solar isn't free. Yes, I'm providing capital costs where your point was mainly about operational (fuel) costs, but they are related by a total cost of ownership.

Solar needs back-up, and this back-up costs money. The back-up can either be via things like batteries (expensive, as illustrated above), or via gas / coal / hydro / nuclear, where a decision is made to recognize that the reduced utilization of those alternatives increases the unit cost of those back-ups. The increased unit-cost of hydro / gas / coal / nuclear is because of the solar. Those other systems actually need back-up, too. But their back-up is not required because of "night time" or "bad weather", they are for maintenance or breakdowns. You also don't get common-mode failures: one gas turbine out of 30 breaking down is a lot easier to cover than (say) a rainy day taking out the entire solar generation capacity for a country.

Sure, there is a place for solar in the generation mix. Where solar is providing a moderate amount of reliable baseload, and the back-up can be provided by other baseload generators (or batteries), then it may help reduce the overall electricity price.

When the solar penetration is so high that you have to have idle back-up for 60% of the grid, just to get you through a rainy day? That most definitely isn't cheaper. Sounds like a political strategy, not an economic of thermodynamic one.

And how much do you think a nuclear power plant costs? around 10 billions according to wikipedia. So according to your calculations my ´free´solar solution cost like six nuclear powerplants. In Spain there are 5 or 6 nuclear plants running as we talk afaik, add the cost of all combined cycle plants, gas infraestructure, etc... I find your 60 billion proposal pretty reasonable indeed, even if it is in ideal conditions as you say, for a definitive combustible-free energy solution. And that with current technology which is less than ideal, but batteries is an evolving tech and are going to get better and cheaper doubtlessly. Add other mass storage soluctions like hydro pump, thermal batteries, hydrogen, etc.

 

[ainwood]

And how much do you think a nuclear power plant costs? around 10 billions according to wikipedia. So according to your calculations my ´free´solar solution cost like six nuclear powerplants. In Spain there are 5 or 6 nuclear plants running as we talk afaik, add the cost of all combined cycle plants, gas infraestructure, etc... I find your 60 billion proposal pretty reasonable indeed, even if it is in ideal conditions as you say, for a definitive combustible-free energy solution. And that with current technology which is less than ideal, but batteries is an evolving tech and are going to get better and cheaper doubtlessly. Add other mass storage soluctions like hydro pump, thermal batteries, hydrogen, etc.

The 60 Billion is just illustrative: as a concept, it would give you enough battery storage to cover nighttime, provided that you have good weather during the day. Were such a system designed, would you design it to cover for a single day of rain (triple the cost at 180 billion?) or for a week (21 times the cost, at 1.2 Trillion?). Why would you not just invest the 60 / 180 / 1,200 billion in nuclear or any reliable technology instead? What is so good about solar that justifies having to build so much non-solar capacity & storage to support it?

 

[Samson]

I think a whole cost-of-supply needs to be considered. People want cheap energy, but they also want reliable energy.

As a proponent of solar, how do you think a grid should be comprised?

OK - I will infer that you think it is reasonable to replace unnecessary turbines that 'make electricity more expensive' and have a solar-powered grid with batteries. Let's look at how feasible this really is.

Spain typically uses around 700 GWh / day of electricity. Let's keep the numbers simple, and assume that 2/3rds of this is required during the day, and 1/3 at night, and that solar can supply all of this on its own (solar generation varies throughout the day with the angle of the sun, but lets say that this is compensated with sun-following servos, and just ignore the early morning and late afternoon when the sun is low). So assume that battery storage needs to provide ~230 GWh of electricity / day.

The world's largest BESS (according to this)has a capacity of 3.28 GWh. That's enough to power Spain for about 10 minutes...

So to store enough electricity for Spain's overnight demand, you need to take the world's largest BESS, and build 70 copies of it. And what would that cost? Hard to estimate, but let's assume around €250 / kWh (€250,000,000 / GWh). You need 230 GWh, so that's around €57,500,000,000.

So your "free" solar really costs nearly €60 billion, or more correctly, that's the absolute minimum cost to provide grid back-up for solar under perfectly ideal conditions, where it just has to get the country through one night after a perfect day of generation. What if you have a rainy day? That battery storage needs to be 3x the size. Or a rainy week? 21x the size.

Free solar isn't free. Yes, I'm providing capital costs where your point was mainly about operational (fuel) costs, but they are related by a total cost of ownership.

Solar needs back-up, and this back-up costs money. The back-up can either be via things like batteries (expensive, as illustrated above), or via gas / coal / hydro / nuclear, where a decision is made to recognize that the reduced utilization of those alternatives increases the unit cost of those back-ups. The increased unit-cost of hydro / gas / coal / nuclear is because of the solar. Those other systems actually need back-up, too. But their back-up is not required because of "night time" or "bad weather", they are for maintenance or breakdowns. You also don't get common-mode failures: one gas turbine out of 30 breaking down is a lot easier to cover than (say) a rainy day taking out the entire solar generation capacity for a country.

Sure, there is a place for solar in the generation mix. Where solar is providing a moderate amount of reliable baseload, and the back-up can be provided by other baseload generators (or batteries), then it may help reduce the overall electricity price.

When the solar penetration is so high that you have to have idle back-up for 60% of the grid, just to get you through a rainy day? That most definitely isn't cheaper. Sounds like a political strategy, not an economic of thermodynamic one.

I am not expert, but there is this that says it can be done for ~$100/MWh

 

[Thorgalaeg]

The 60 Billion is just illustrative: as a concept, it would give you enough battery storage to cover nighttime, provided that you have good weather during the day. Were such a system designed, would you design it to cover for a single day of rain (triple the cost at 180 billion?) or for a week (21 times the cost, at 1.2 Trillion?). Why would you not just invest the 60 / 180 / 1,200 billion in nuclear or any reliable technology instead? What is so good about solar that justifies having to build so much non-solar capacity & storage to support it?

No fuel dependence, full energy sovereignty, zero carbon emissions, near zero operating costs, not big infraestructures, possibility for common people of becoming self-sufficient... Not attractive at all.

I have also chosen not do discuss your calculations, but I find them extremely pessimist if not plain wrong at some points. A rainy day doesn't mean zero solar power, never. Even with densest cover enough UV light goes through cloud for solar panel work at like a 20% of it's capacity, with a normal clody day they work at a 70% or even more. And a country never gets completely covered by clouds. In fact even cloudy places like Germany have invested heavily in solar power, and they are not dumb. For some real data in the link below (Spanish electric network operator) you can find the composition of the mix in Spain for every day from several years ago. You will find solar contribution is pretty constant. Variations goes from 40 and something to 50 something every day in at peak hour. And I asure you it rains in Spain too:

Seguimiento de la demanda de energÃa eléctrica

demanda.ree.es

I have always been waiting for fusion to become the final solution, but at this pace solar is probably going to make it moot with all the delays.

 

[Samson]

Someone tell me this is a joke: Transferring electricity by moving batteries with diesel powered trains?????

Colorado officials think freight trains are the key to renewable energy transmission statewide.

In Eaton, there's an experimental train car. It carries materials for energy but it isn't oil, natural gas or coal. Essentially, it's a giant battery lumbering down the tracks to help alleviate Colorado's increasing electricity needs.

The challenge is there is currently a lack of transmission lines in the state and nationwide. Construction of these lines -- which are extremely costly and time-consuming to build -- is lagging far behind what is needed to adequately transmit energy around the state. Currently, much of the solar and wind energy produced in Colorado is tucked away in the southeast corner of the state.

So the solution, SunTrain officials say, is to move it by rail instead. The argument is exceedingly simple. Energy has been transported by rail since the dawn of America's industrial age. There are defunct energy plants -- particularly coal plants -- that can be makeshift power substations for the trains coming in from the solar or wind farms. Then, the trains can power up in Pueblo, take their energy to the Denver metro area or wherever in the state needs the energy.

 

[Arwon]

I think a whole cost-of-supply needs to be considered. People want cheap energy, but they also want reliable energy.

As a proponent of solar, how do you think a grid should be comprised?

OK - I will infer that you think it is reasonable to replace unnecessary turbines that 'make electricity more expensive' and have a solar-powered grid with batteries. Let's look at how feasible this really is.

Spain typically uses around 700 GWh / day of electricity. Let's keep the numbers simple, and assume that 2/3rds of this is required during the day, and 1/3 at night, and that solar can supply all of this on its own (solar generation varies throughout the day with the angle of the sun, but lets say that this is compensated with sun-following servos, and just ignore the early morning and late afternoon when the sun is low). So assume that battery storage needs to provide ~230 GWh of electricity / day.

The world's largest BESS (according to this)has a capacity of 3.28 GWh. That's enough to power Spain for about 10 minutes...

So to store enough electricity for Spain's overnight demand, you need to take the world's largest BESS, and build 70 copies of it. And what would that cost? Hard to estimate, but let's assume around €250 / kWh (€250,000,000 / GWh). You need 230 GWh, so that's around €57,500,000,000.

So your "free" solar really costs nearly €60 billion, or more correctly, that's the absolute minimum cost to provide grid back-up for solar under perfectly ideal conditions, where it just has to get the country through one night after a perfect day of generation. What if you have a rainy day? That battery storage needs to be 3x the size. Or a rainy week? 21x the size.

Free solar isn't free. Yes, I'm providing capital costs where your point was mainly about operational (fuel) costs, but they are related by a total cost of ownership.

Solar needs back-up, and this back-up costs money. The back-up can either be via things like batteries (expensive, as illustrated above), or via gas / coal / hydro / nuclear, where a decision is made to recognize that the reduced utilization of those alternatives increases the unit cost of those back-ups. The increased unit-cost of hydro / gas / coal / nuclear is because of the solar. Those other systems actually need back-up, too. But their back-up is not required because of "night time" or "bad weather", they are for maintenance or breakdowns. You also don't get common-mode failures: one gas turbine out of 30 breaking down is a lot easier to cover than (say) a rainy day taking out the entire solar generation capacity for a country.

Sure, there is a place for solar in the generation mix. Where solar is providing a moderate amount of reliable baseload, and the back-up can be provided by other baseload generators (or batteries), then it may help reduce the overall electricity price.

When the solar penetration is so high that you have to have idle back-up for 60% of the grid, just to get you through a rainy day? That most definitely isn't cheaper. Sounds like a political strategy, not an economic of thermodynamic one.

You uh. You know that wind power exists right.

 

[Arwon]

Synthetic inertia is complicated, and not yet full mature. I know that there are some systems using it with batteries, I'm not aware of anything other than micro-scale (basically experiments) with solar or wind

South Australia has been running synchronous condensers (spinning mass) for two years now, it's let them massively cut the amount of gas generation they keep running on standby mode. They're now at about 75% VRE which is I think just about the highest penetration of VRE in a decent sized grid in the world (ahead of Denmark). Along with their batteries providing services at the microsecond scale they're very much at the point of maturity with frequency in a VRE system, and leading the way in this space and sharing their learnings, which is why Spain is looking at them as they catch up.

 

[Ordnael]

South Australia has been running synchronous condensers (spinning mass) for two years now, it's let them massively cut the amount of gas generation they keep running on standby mode. They're now at about 75% VRE which is I think just about the highest penetration of VRE in a decent sized grid in the world (ahead of Denmark). Along with their batteries providing services at the microsecond scale they're very much at the point of maturity with frequency in a VRE system, and leading the way in this space and sharing their learnings, which is why Spain is looking at them as they catch up.

I am suddenly reminded that I read elsewhere, a couple of years ago, about a big purchase from an Australian town/county of a battery system from Tesla to store renewable production! Another one for Musk good!

 

[Joij21]

It will consume you as though you were soup. And through it you will be made whole yet devoured.

 

[Broken_Erika]

World oil and gas demand could grow until 2050, IEA says​

Energy agency bases forecast on current policies, not climate pledges, after U.S. complaints​

Global oil and gas demand could grow until 2050, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday, departing from previous expectations of a speedy transition to cleaner fuels following U.S. criticism about its climate focus.

The Paris-based energy security watchdog also predicted in its annual outlook that the world will likely fail to meet its goal to cap the rise in temperatures to as close as possible to 1.5 C (2.7 F) above pre-industrial times to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change.

The IEA has been under pressure from the U.S. for a shift in recent years toward a focus on clean energy policies as President Donald Trump called on American companies to expand oil and gas production.

During the Biden administration, it predicted that global oil demand would peak this decade and said there should be an end to investment in new oil, gas and coal projects if the world wanted to reach net zero emissions by mid-century.

IEA changes scenario used for forecasts​

Trump's Energy Secretary Chris Wright has called its demand peak projections "nonsensical." The IEA is funded by member countries, with the U.S. the largest contributor.

In its World Energy Outlook published on Wednesday, the IEA predicted under a current policies scenario that oil demand will hit 113 million barrels per day by mid-century, up around 13 per cent from 2024 consumption.

It predicted that global energy demand will climb by 90 exajoules by 2035 — a 15 per cent increase from present levels.

The scenario, which the IEA first used in 2019 before switching to one more in line with a clean energy transition, is based on existing government policies and not aspirations to achieve climate goals.

IEA head Fatih Birol said on a press call the scenario was restored to reflect differing choices governments are making about energy.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has previously disputed peak oil demand forecasts.

"We hope ... we have passed the peak in the misguided notion of 'peak oil.'" OPEC said on its website on Wednesday.

This year's outlook ditched the pledges scenario as the IEA said not enough countries had submitted new commitments to produce a meaningful picture.

In the stated policies scenario, which considers proposed but not necessarily adopted policies, oil demand peaks around 2030. The difference in projections is largely due to diverging expectations of EV uptake.

The IEA says its scenarios explore a range of possible outcomes under various sets of assumptions and are not forecasts.

Renewables growing, along with fossil fuels​

Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the IEA report shows "extraordinary progress" in renewable energy and energy efficiency around the world, but that it's still too slow to outpace fossil fuels.

"So, there's no path to meeting our climate goals unless we also have a fast fair phase out of fossil fuels alongside this extraordinary renewables growth," she said.

But Wilmar Suarez, an energy analyst with the think-tank Ember, said the IEA is underestimating the size and pace of renewable energy growth in its report, especially in developing countries.

"Prices are going down," he said, "which allows emerging markets access to technology..to make cleaner use of electricity in their territories."

LNG capacity to soar​

Meanwhile, final investment decisions for new liquefied natural gas projects have surged in 2025, the IEA report noted. Operations for about 300 billion cubic metres of new annual LNG export capacity will start by 2030, marking a 50 per cent increase in available supply.

Based on the current policies scenario, the global LNG market increases from around 560 bcm in 2024 to 880 bcm in 2035 and to 1,020 bcm in 2050, driven by rising power sector demand fuelled by data centre and AI growth.

Global investment in data centres is expected to reach $580 billion in 2025, the report said, noting that if achieved this would surpass the $540 billion a year spent globally on oil supply.

The report includes a scenario describing a pathway to reduce global energy emissions to net zero by 2050.

More than 190 countries pledged at the Paris climate talks in 2015 to try to keep the world from warming more than 1.5 C.

The report shows the world warming more than that in all scenarios.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/climate/iea-energy-outlook-2025-9.6976107

 

[Thorgalaeg]

The orange pedoclown is doing everything possible to promote fossils like himself.

Meanwhile:

Sodium batteries are finally here and could solve the energy storage issue. They are way cheaper than lithium batteries (15,000€/ton lithium carbonate vs 300€/ton sodium carbonate) and sodium is everywhere, so no need to import any rare earths from weird places They are also more stable and can last more charging cycles (it charges faster btw) and are safer too. Only con (for now) is energy density being lower tha lithium batteries (around 100–160Wh/kg vs 150–265) but that is not a significant issue in statical storage applications like houses and grid storage.

Sodium-Ion vs Lithium-Ion Batteries: 5 Key Advantages

Discover why sodium-ion batteries offer superior safety, lower costs, and better sustainability than lithium. Ideal for grid storage and microcars. Learn more now.

www.deriyenergy.com