It’s not just base load, turbines also provide grid stability. All the quick fluctuations as people turn things on and off are hard to load balance with solar, wind, or battery. A big spinning turbine has a lot of inertia. That helps keep thr grid at a constant frequency. As solar gets bigger and bigger we might need big solar powdered flywheel generators just to stabilize the grid.
Comment on World's largest sodium-ion battery goes into operation - Energy Storage
DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months agoNice. This seems to be the future that solves a lot of problems. Right now in Australia, we’re seriously entertaining building nuclear power plants for the first time ever, to provide base load power that renewables allegedly can’t. Large sodium batteries could help us avoid that.
Hugin@lemmy.world 2 months ago
carleeno@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Inverters could also provide “virtual inertia” which help to stabilize the grid frequency. However most of today’s inverters don’t have it, or it’s disabled.
This means we don’t need solar powered flywheels, which are inherently inefficient, we just need software more or less:
Hugin@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Partially. Inverters providing virtual inertia is good but has the problem of still being active and reactive. It helps and is cheaper and more efficient than flywheels.
Flywheels and turbines however provide a very sticky frequency. They help out a lot with stability and give inverters time to respond.
Think balancing a stick on your hand vs anchoring it in clay.
If we take enough turbines off line we are still probably going to need some mechanical power stabilization no matter how inefficient.
But yeah I think we are going to see a blend using as much electrical and as little mechanical as possible.
Kualk@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Lol,
Batteries are perfect for load balancing.
Please, know your facts
Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
The main issue with using batteries for load balancing is the massive resource investment required for them at a grid level, BUT that’s more of a concern with lithium based batteries due to a number of factors. Sodium batteries use way more easily accessible and abundant materials.
NGL I’m hella fuckin hyped about sodium batteries vs lithium batteries.
themurphy@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Batteries can’t stabilise frequency. If the frequency changes too much, the grid will go down.
You literally need a giant spinning turbine for this.
It’s pretty basic energy engineering, and is not related to load balancing.
frezik@midwest.social 2 months ago
The other side of that is matching supply to demand is basically instant. You pull power from batteries and they give you more (provided they’re not at their safe limit). There’s always a lag in getting turbines to spin up and down, and so there’s a non-trivial mismatch time.
Hugin@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Actually no. Batteries and thier inverter adapt in the about one second to half a second range. The massive inertia of a turbine adapts in the millisecond range.
To maintain 60 hz you need to be in the very low milliseconds range. Remember at 60 hz you do a full sin wave cycle in 16ms.
Turbines act as a tremendous power smoother in the grid.
stoy@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Nuclear power should be expanded, but a lot, it is the only realistic way to replace fossil plats for base demand.
And before anyone starts whining about “radiation scary”, nuclear waste is a solved problem.
You dig a hole deep into the bedrock, put the waste in dry casks, put the full drycasks in the hole, and backfill it with clay.
Done, solved!
A bigger radiation hazard is coal ash, from cosl power stations, they produce insane ammounts of ash which is radioactive.
scientificamerican.com/…/coal-ash-is-more-radioac…
Storing coal ash is also a big problem:
www.southeastcoalash.org/…/coal-ash-storage/
Here is an interesting documentary about our fear of radiation, it is called Nuclear Nightmares, and was made by Horizon on BBC:
Chronographs@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Imo “put it in a hole” isn’t exactly a great solution when the alternative is renewables but you’re definitely right about coal that shit is terrible.
stoy@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
So far I have not seen any real renewable energy source that can cover base demand, I am sure there will be eventually.
Nuclear is not a replacement for renewable energy, it is a shortcut to getting rid of fossil power generation and buying us time.
Cypher@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Nuclear power plants take a long time to do properly. Starting to build nuclear now would take a decade plus.
They’re also more expensive per watt of energy generated over the lifetime of the plant than renewables.
It would be cheaper and faster to build renewables, batteries, hydro electric, and other storage methods.
Nuclear is a distraction and you fell for it.
frezik@midwest.social 2 months ago
Nuclear power should be expanded, a lot, it is the only realistic way to replace fossil plats for base demand.
This 90’s talking point against Greenpeace is no longer valid. The economics have changed.
stoy@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
I am not buying a book to prove your point.
At least here in Sweden, the high cost of nuclear power is due to artificial taxes, that are being lowered.
CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
Context is important here. The conversation here was about Australia’s nuclear capacity. A country where nuclear power is banned at both state and federal levels. Where the plan for it’s use is currently uncosted, the planned sites have been selected without environmental protection studies and several of which are supposed to be SMRs.
Would you build a bleeding edge nuclear reactor without a legal framework to govern its construction or operation? Without a workforce trained in its functions? Without consider the environmental factors of its geography? Without considering the cost?
Probably not. But that’s the current plan put forward by the reactionary right in Australia and this from a party who doesn’t believe in climate change, have no emissions targets, and whose whole plan is to continue to run and build coal power until whatever time they work out the details on nuclear.
stoy@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
This is perfectly fair, I saw several anti nuclear power articles before thls, and I approached it from a more general viewpoint.
But if the alternative is coal, I’d go nuclear.
CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
Well it’s not really an either or situation. The current Labor government’s plan is a combination of majority renewables with gas and hydrogen. They are also running coal at the moment but have no plans to force those plants to renew those plants during the transition. They’ve signed on to emissions reductions of 75% by 2035.
So you’ve got one plan which has some reduction targets (probably not steep enough) planned transition, costed and budgeted that doesn’t require more coal, and one plan which will pull funding from renewables, and requires more coal until some time as which they can get nuclear approved, built and commercialised.
Wanderer@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Sounds like a way to waste loads of money and keep people on fossil fuels.
Must be way cheaper to build more batteries and build out inertia. (Would still need backup power at this point though).
DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
Reminds me of Elon’s Hyperloop. Not intended to actually work, but instead be a distraction to deflate interest in public transportation.
noevidenz@infosec.pub 2 months ago
The LNP doesn’t have a legitimate interest in transitioning to nuclear power or they would’ve begun over the last decade or so that they were in power.
Instead they’ve proposed - now that they’re in opposition - a technology which is banned at the Federal level and individually at the state level, because they know that gives them years of lead time before they ever have to begin the project.
On top of that, all of the proposed sites are owned by companies who’ve already begun transitioning to renewable generation or renewable storage, and most of them are in states in which the state Premiers have publicly stated that they will not consider overturning their bans on nuclear power.
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
All this talk about nuclear only does one thing, keeping fossil fuels relevant for longer.
noevidenz@infosec.pub 2 months ago
Exactly. They’ve brought up nuclear because they’re desperate to have some kind of energy policy, but one they know they’ll never have to bring to fruition because that allows them to continue with coal and gas for as long as possible.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 months ago
I tend to agree. The right time to build nuclear was like 30 years ago.
The same people who opposed it then are the same people saying it’s the future now. If anybody agrees to build it, the you’ll have 15-20 years of renewable energy being cancelled because the “nuclear is on the way”.