To operate reliably, the US electrical grid needs to balance supply and demand: to make sure, at any given moment, that the amount of electricity demanded by homes, businesses, and factories is equal to the amount being supplied by nuclear reactors, gas turbines, and other types of power plants.
Agreed. Enhanced geothermal is more speculative, but offers some of the same benefits as nuclear: cheap heat, spinning turbine, and baseload power with good location flexibility.
This is excellent but omits a critical component of adding batteries to the grid. COST. Batteries are still very expensive. Have you modeled out what an "optimal" grid looks like with full battery deployment and how that impacts the cost per KWh? Thanks.
EDIT: the take home point is "At $400 a kw solar and $100 a kwh batteries (costs China is probably achieving right now), we could meet 80% of electricity demand with solar PV for roughly current US average combined cycle gas turbine costs"
Note that it doesn't include nuclear, wind, and hydro (which constitute ~35% of US electricity generation today but could grow) in the energy mix.
For a more comprehensive approach, report proposes a path to a "90% clean" electricity generation mix that's slightly cheaper than today's electricity:
Plus PV and battery costs per unit of power or energy are still dropping -- they're _not_ yet fully mature technologies where we can only eke out modest gains on cost or quality.
Batteries have caused some serious grid oscillations in the western US. Also, Chinese inverters have been found to have remote control capabilities so they can damage and destabilize the grid.
I suspect that issue will get resolved with performance standards for the firmware that runs the inverters. Tesla already has put a lot of work into meeting standards in Australia and the EU for making battery inverters look to the grid like a spinning chunk of metal, providing "virtual inertia". A quick google turns up a couple articles from as long ago as 2022 on that work:
Performance has only improved since then. Because the frequency response logic is built directly into the embedded board operating the MOSFET gates, at like 40 kHz or higher, you can get frequency response behavior in less than a cycle.
It does blow my mind that we're installing enormous numbers of internet-connected Huawei inverters. Insert Archer "do you want ants?" meme, except replace ants with collapsed grids.
Each connection has to be reviewed. How will it affect the current grid? What are the lines available and how much can they carry? How will the power be balanced against demand?
What happens if we suffer another Carrington Event, or our enemies figure out how to send an EMP to the grid? We already have a transformer shortage, a rare Earths shortage too, with China the main supplier of these critical electrical materials. As we go all-electric in everything from the grid to cars to ovens and appliances, what is our protection against inevitable disruptions, natural or manmade?
I think these events would damage the grid regardless of energy source. Long power lines and grid equipment are the point of failure, not energy generation per se.
More localized energy production via batteries and renewables probably makes the grid more resilient. There are ways to harden the grid to these events and build more transformers. We just don't because of bad policy choices.
Solar and lithium iron phosphate batteries don't use rare earths or any hard-to-obtain resources.
I wonder if the little spike in battery discharge just after midnight is meeting demand from a large number of EVs that are programmed to start charging at ultra-off-peak ToU prices at midnight?
Great intro! Would love to see you write on what is bringing battery costs down so much (big reason as to why they are growing of course) and on what the revenue and financing outlook looks like!
Unfortunately it is apples and oranges - grid connected batteries are not required to move. The only real problem with battery powered aeroplanes is the weight.
There are some promising avenues for low weight batteries which might allow electric only passenger planes, but this is decades away at best.
100%. The energy density issue compounds with distance. Batteries lose very little weight with discharge, while av gas burden on the plane decreases as it is consumed.
You do have to remember that you can't just count the weight/volume of the fuel, you have to count the weight/volume of the system that converts the fuel into thrust, as well. It turns out that electric motors win over engines and turbines, on that side of things, though not by enough to swing the overall calculation in their favor yet.
David Roberts has talked with people who are trying to attack that problem.
Batteries are a promising fix to electrical sustainability. I have a question about generation.
If the problem is gas/coal/solar/wind generation, why isn't Nuclear being thrown in the mix?
Nuclear provides more power, cheaper, and it's easy to maintain, especially the new salt and boron reactors.
Agreed. Enhanced geothermal is more speculative, but offers some of the same benefits as nuclear: cheap heat, spinning turbine, and baseload power with good location flexibility.
Matt Yglesias has written a number of columns about how dysfunctional regulation has mired development of commercially-viable new reactor models.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-nuclear-policy-america-needs
https://www.slowboring.com/p/can-america-get-to-yes-on-a-new-reactor
https://www.slowboring.com/p/unleash-the-power-of-bipartisan-nrc
This is excellent but omits a critical component of adding batteries to the grid. COST. Batteries are still very expensive. Have you modeled out what an "optimal" grid looks like with full battery deployment and how that impacts the cost per KWh? Thanks.
You may be interested in this construction physics post on supplying the grid with solar, batteries, and natural gas.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/can-we-afford-large-scale-solar-pv
EDIT: the take home point is "At $400 a kw solar and $100 a kwh batteries (costs China is probably achieving right now), we could meet 80% of electricity demand with solar PV for roughly current US average combined cycle gas turbine costs"
Note that it doesn't include nuclear, wind, and hydro (which constitute ~35% of US electricity generation today but could grow) in the energy mix.
For a more comprehensive approach, report proposes a path to a "90% clean" electricity generation mix that's slightly cheaper than today's electricity:
https://www.2035report.com/electricity/
Plus PV and battery costs per unit of power or energy are still dropping -- they're _not_ yet fully mature technologies where we can only eke out modest gains on cost or quality.
Batteries have caused some serious grid oscillations in the western US. Also, Chinese inverters have been found to have remote control capabilities so they can damage and destabilize the grid.
How on earth would a battery cause grid oscillations?
Do you have a link?
I will get the link to the report. It’s the inverters that caused the oscillations. Batteries are DC and the grid is AC.
I suspect that issue will get resolved with performance standards for the firmware that runs the inverters. Tesla already has put a lot of work into meeting standards in Australia and the EU for making battery inverters look to the grid like a spinning chunk of metal, providing "virtual inertia". A quick google turns up a couple articles from as long ago as 2022 on that work:
https://electrek.co/2022/07/27/tesla-virtual-machine-mode-coming-big-battery/
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/01/world-1st-tesla-batteries-providing-inertia-services-at-scale/
Performance has only improved since then. Because the frequency response logic is built directly into the embedded board operating the MOSFET gates, at like 40 kHz or higher, you can get frequency response behavior in less than a cycle.
It does blow my mind that we're installing enormous numbers of internet-connected Huawei inverters. Insert Archer "do you want ants?" meme, except replace ants with collapsed grids.
Wait till China decides to cause roof top solar panels to overload and burn. There goes the neighborhood.
Why is the interconnection queue so long?
Each connection has to be reviewed. How will it affect the current grid? What are the lines available and how much can they carry? How will the power be balanced against demand?
What happens if we suffer another Carrington Event, or our enemies figure out how to send an EMP to the grid? We already have a transformer shortage, a rare Earths shortage too, with China the main supplier of these critical electrical materials. As we go all-electric in everything from the grid to cars to ovens and appliances, what is our protection against inevitable disruptions, natural or manmade?
I think these events would damage the grid regardless of energy source. Long power lines and grid equipment are the point of failure, not energy generation per se.
More localized energy production via batteries and renewables probably makes the grid more resilient. There are ways to harden the grid to these events and build more transformers. We just don't because of bad policy choices.
Solar and lithium iron phosphate batteries don't use rare earths or any hard-to-obtain resources.
I wonder if the little spike in battery discharge just after midnight is meeting demand from a large number of EVs that are programmed to start charging at ultra-off-peak ToU prices at midnight?
Great intro! Would love to see you write on what is bringing battery costs down so much (big reason as to why they are growing of course) and on what the revenue and financing outlook looks like!
Maybe am comparing “apples to oranges” if batteries are effective for electric grids why are they not effective for airplanes?
Unfortunately it is apples and oranges - grid connected batteries are not required to move. The only real problem with battery powered aeroplanes is the weight.
There are some promising avenues for low weight batteries which might allow electric only passenger planes, but this is decades away at best.
Excessive weight, probably. The energy density of oil-based fluids (such as kerosene) is hard to beat.
100%. The energy density issue compounds with distance. Batteries lose very little weight with discharge, while av gas burden on the plane decreases as it is consumed.
You do have to remember that you can't just count the weight/volume of the fuel, you have to count the weight/volume of the system that converts the fuel into thrust, as well. It turns out that electric motors win over engines and turbines, on that side of things, though not by enough to swing the overall calculation in their favor yet.
David Roberts has talked with people who are trying to attack that problem.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-up-with-electric-aviation
https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-up-with-hydrogen-electric-aviation
Looking at back of the envelope math, this seems like a place where hydrogen is actually pretty promising.