I don't think that's the same thing, but what expenses are you thinking of specifically? The German grid for example got much more reliable with additional solar.
I don't think that's the same thing, but what expenses are you thinking of specifically? The German grid for example got much more reliable with additional solar.
Grids were designed to operate in tight tolerances. Cycling power levels up and down a lot, while handling the frequency variation lots of renewables inputs bring, wears down the grid without protective measures. Those measures are called firming [1].
Not sure what Germany did (or plans to do—you can run an unfirmed grid until stuff starts failing for several years).
[1] https://www.gevernova.com/gas-power/applications/grid-firmin...
"Capacity firming" will be carried out by legacy gas turbines as they run less and less, and eventually by batteries.
Batteries are also much better than gas at frequency regulation, and even at the prices a decade ago, completely took over the market for frequency regulation in the PJM market in the US. But frequency regulation is very very tiny in terms of power needs, it only takes a very small number of grid batteries to completely solve that problem.
The amount of batteries waiting in the interconnection queue completely dwarfs gas. There will be no "firming" coming from new gas turbines, unless old-school corrupt utilities are able to sneak it by PUCs by creating some sort of crisis and tricking them.
> "Capacity firming" will be carried out by legacy gas turbines as they run less and less, and eventually by batteries
At least among the American TSOs, there are zero I know of that plan to do this. Do you have a source for one that does?
Trillions have already been spent on gas. That infrastructure will need to earn its return through the 2040s at the very least, and that precludes running them exclusively for firming. To the extent retrofits are being discussed, it’s as an add-on amidst full peaked functionality.
> Batteries are also much better than gas at frequency regulation
Limiting solar and wind by utility-scale battery capacity means scaling back EV adoption or solar and wind deployment. The math simply doesn’t work. (Again, in America. Without significantly raising rates. Not sure elsewhere.)
> it only takes a very small number of grid batteries to completely solve that problem
Frequency regulation is one component of firming. Batteries are good at some components, marginal at others. (As a system. Technologically, they're fine.)
Apart from de-industrialised grids, a batteries-only approach has been practically abandoned through the 2030s. It's why we're building so many turbines and abandoning nukes.
If every (second) house would have a powerwall, wouldn't that make the grid stable?
> every (second) house would have a powerwall, wouldn't that make the grid stable?
At 131mm American households [1] and $11.5k per PoweWall [2] that’s over $750bn at 50% loading.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of-househo...
[2] https://www.thisoldhouse.com/solar-alternative-energy/review...
China is starting to mass produce NaCl batteries. They will be cheaper.
And also only Powerwalls produced in this quantity would have way lower prices. My point was batteries are getting cheaper every day.
It could be less stable, if each and every powerwall is slightly out of phase.
But this is something, one can avoid by only allowing well tuned batteries to the grid? Or is this a serious problem to get right?
A powerwall is $12k installed.
That's about 5 years worth of power bills for most people.