In the power grid of today (and even more so in the future), that’s fairly slow.
Not really. Reciprocating gas engines are specifically designed for balancing loads with renewables and have maneuvering capabilities in the 25-100% range with the state of the art at ~25%/minute slope.
Startup time is 15min-1hr for gas, 30min-2hr for nuclear.
You’re correct that gas is better on all these metrics, but it’s far more comparable than you’re making it out to be.
Also needs to be mentioned that these are very oversimplified metrics and things look better for nuclear the deeper in the weeds you go imo.
it needs to be able to drop to 0%.
That’s not how any kind of turbine works.
shutting it down means it’s just a hunk of a building costing money.
The same could be said of solar. ‘It’s a very expensive capitol investment and as soon as the sun goes down it’s just a stupidly expensive roof costing money’.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 3 days ago
Solar is significantly cheaper. Like it’s not even funny how much cheaper it is. This means that other than the sun going down, they’re always going to be producing because it’s by far the cheapest power available. And because they easily earn back what they cost, it’s perfectly fine if they don’t operate at 100% efficiency.
For nuclear to remain economically viable in these market conditions it has to be similarly profitable, and it just isn’t.
SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The point wasn’t to denigrate solar, but to demonstrate the fallacious beliefs you’re operating under.
Yes, the plant owner will want to maximize the profit of their investments and get as quick a return as possible.
If gas/coal was held to the same exact safety, environmental and waste disposal standards as nuclear, and they should, then those would also need to be run at max throttle to justify the initial expense and have significantly shorter lifespans. It’s a “plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit” type issue.
Nothing you have said is an argument against a solar in the day + nuclear at night type of setup. It would certainly be a huge improvement over building out more CO2 based generators.