According to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), more than 20 gigawatts (GW) of battery capacity have been added to the US electric grid in the last four years. This rapid expansion is equivalent to the production of 20 nuclear reactors and is crucial for averting power disruptions, especially in states that rely significantly on intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.
I’d like to see a cost comparison. I’m guessing all that battery storage cost less than the price of a nuclear reactor over its lifetime.
The 2 most recent reactors built in the US, the Vogtle reactors 3 and 4 in Georgia, took 14 years at 34 billion dollars. They produce 2.4GW of power together.
For comparison, a 1 GW solar/battery plant opened in nevada this year. It took 2 years from funding to finished construction, and cost 2 billion dollars.
So an equivalent in solar power generation/storage vs nuclear is about 7x faster and 1/8th the cost than nuclear.
Not trying to be a “nuclear shill”, but it is worth mentioning from the article you linked:
The 1.8 million solar panels are expected to generate up to 690 MW and they’re co-located with 380 MW of 4-hour battery energy storage (1,400 MWh).
The capacity factor of solar is something around 25%, so that 690 MW solar array (even with batteries) produces about as much energy as ~160 MW nuclear… So 7x faster, but the costs are closer than you suggest. Solar is still cheaper because the O&M costs are minimal, but pretending 690 MW solar + 380 MW battery is equivalent to 1 GW nuclear is a bit disingenuous.
That’s a solid critique. We can math it out more.
So each 1.2GW reactor works out to be 17bil. Time to build still looks like 14 years, as both were started on the same time frame, and only one is fully online now, but we will give it a pass. You could argue it took 18 years, as that’s when the first proposals for the plants were formally submitted, but I only took into account financing/build time, so let’s sick with 14.
For 17bil in nuclear, you get 1.2GW production and 1.2GW “storage” for 24hrs.
So for 17bil in solar/battery, you get 4.8GW production, and 2.85gw storage for 4hrs. Having that huge storage in batteries is more flexible than nuclear, so you can provide that 2.85gw for 4 hr, or 1.425 for 8hrs, or 712MW for 16hrs. If we are kind to solar and say the sun is down for 12hrs out of every 24, that means the storage lines up with nuclear.
The solar also goes up much, much faster. I don’t think a 7.5x larger solar array will take 7.5x longer to build, as it’s mostly parallel action. I would expect maybe 6 years instead of 2.
So, worst case, instead of nuclear, for the same cost you can build solar+ battery farms that produces 4x the power, have the same steady baseline power as nuclear, that will take 1/2 as long to build.
Yet every time renewables are mentioned, the nuclear shills are out in force
Yes, but one must also factor in the cost of the power source. Is it a solar or wind farm? Is it just off the grid? One way or another, the cost of the power source does factor into this. You know, because nuclear reactors, etc, generate power, but batteries merely store it.
That second one is a solar farm / battery installation. So it’s included.
Oh, ok
Although renewable + bess still wins according to most recent studies on that matter, cost comparison between nuke and renewable / Bess is not that useful. Assumptions on the longevity of nuke reactors, for example, helps little if the fleet of reactors end up constantly break down and require repairment as in France and Belgium. So lcoe of nuke over long time span is highly uncertain and contingent; even in construction phase nuclear projects already entails higher risk in time and budget overrun than renewables. Plus the positive feedback loop of learning curve, evident in renewable and Bess, is not so visible for nuclear.
What is more useful for sake of current policy discussion is deployment rate and scalability, which renewable plus batteries clearly wins.
Can we still get a nuclear reactor or two though?
I don’t think anyone really should have a problem with nuclear being built.
Just as long as the government doesn’t have to pay for the construction, or for running costs including subsidising electricity or for the clean up costs. If a company wants to go ahead and pay for it I say let them.
They wouldn’t because it would be financially stupid. But I wouldn’t be against it.
The government should be building long term waste storage and mandating it’s use by the nuclear facilities at cost.
Yea I agree with that actually.
But the point was when the cost is held by the companies it is a bad idea for them.
True, the companies get subsidised to build meaning you already paid for a lot of the up front cost through your taxes and are later price gouged again. And once it’s over probably they stick the populace with the waste and decommissioning costs.
Example in the Netherlands, we actually had a foundation setup to run the nuclear powerplant, and they had to reserve money for the decommissioning. Once the end of the reactors life was passed, the decommissioning was paid for from the foundation, the money that was left was paid to the shareholders. Turned out the decommissioning was 20 million more expensive… Guess who had to pay…
Can we please not post such dumb articles? Like any article mentioning battery capacity in watts
Sorry! I have dyscalculia, so I’ll admit I didn’t try to analyze the numbers at all. I can delete the post
Ignore them they’re being mildly pedantic
How can an article reliable convey information when the core measurement unit used in article is invalid? Not taking about slightly wrong numbers, but the foundation of the article.
Storage does have 2 relevant metrics. how fast it can charge/discharge in GW, and the amount of energy available in gwh. Batteries typically have both these amounts equal. While other storage technologies usually can discharge a large amount of gwh at a slow rate. The discharge rate is often limited to the line capacity available as well.
They’re equal if they’re running at a 1c discharge rate. Lfp, which are stable and good for safety, can have higher discharge rates of 5c up to 25c. Which would mean the capacity would be much less. To compare apples to apples, it’d be much better if they gave both the GW and GWh numbers.
Yep, the two numbers picture the actual status. What good is having a GW power if it lasts for a second, sort of speak.
No they’re equal if the battery is designed to provide 1 hr of coverage.
A 1 GWh batter will last 1 hour if its discharge rate is 1 GW.
It’s the timeframe of 1 hour that makes these two measures numerically equal.
That’s what 1c means. If it were designed to provide 25GW but only lasted 1hr, then it’d be 25c.
Thats what was said, for some applications 1c is good, for others 0,5 or even 0,25 is better. It depends on your usecase. Frequency regulation is often 1c, while if you are primarily concerned about depth, you could choose another configuration. It is also partly dependent on chemistry.
As an example: a 100kWh can be at either 1c discharge rate, or 0,5c. 50 kW(0,5c) is usually cheaper because there is less need for hardware (and I believe less risk of thermal runaway)
No worries, no need to remove it, it’s just articles that don’t make sense.
Batteries’ output is measured in watts.
Energy capacity is in kWh, discharge capacity would be in W.
Welcome to the rabbit hole of energy storage.
Turns out nobody cares about the capacity but about the discharge rate. Which is why you’ll often hear about how many Gigawatts a certain energy storage project has, and nothing about GWh.
If you think about it for a bit, it does make sense. A lot of solutions would take days to fully discharge, so you might think “oh we have an entire city’s energy consumption for a week in some storage”, but in reality you could maybe power one neighborhood with that cuz of the discharge rate.
So, capacity refers to the “output capacity”.
