Comment by mlyle
2 days ago
Current prices of installed systems at peak scale are 150-350k/MWh.
Replacing it all on a 20 year cadence seems like a reasonable assumption.
Arguments assuming a positive return to scale 4 orders of magnitude out may be true— or may be unduly optimistic. I don’t like to have too much faith extending the lines too far off the right of the graph. When that is required, I want whatever margin and ways to reduce risk as possible: which is why I would like more nuclear in the mix. A grid with 12pc nuclear and the rest renewable (so about 3-4pc of nameplate power nuclear) would require much less over provisioning and storage.
You don't have to go all the way to battery prices scaling to 5% of the price they are today to consider it likely the price continues to fall at all.
Replacing the whole system every 20 years still seems really wild to me, especially in worlds where price doesn't fall past the cost of maintenance, because the only wear part is the battery, and batteries are modular. We could, sure, I just showed the cost is a fraction of today's energy spend, it just seems really weird not to do something smarter instead.
> Replacing the whole system every 20 years still seems really wild to me, especially in worlds where price doesn't fall past the cost of maintenance, because the only wear part is the battery, and batteries are modular.
It may be pessimistic. At the same time, you amortize things based on history.
Things like substations are amortized over 30-40 years. Battery banks don't have the history; a 20 year timeframe seems like a reasonable amortization time. Indeed, if technology improves and costs reduce like people are advocating for here, it'll be thrown away and replaced. If it wears out in ways that don't justify refurbishment, same. And refurbishment/recycling/etc are not well understood processes at scale, yet, nor are future usage patterns well enough understood to know if we will have those resources at the right places.
Again, we could get lucky: batteries could last longer than expected; we could use technologies that are close enough cousins and have a really good time at refurbishment; we could not hit any kind of scaling limitations with battery storage; etc. I agree battery storage is great. And I agree it could be sufficient alone (well, combined with other storage options) if we hit the top third of possible scenarios.
I just am concerned about the other scenarios. I can't rule them out. And if we're going to have insurance against them, it's time to buy it now.
I'd much rather face a future where people say that we wasted a few tens of billions on nuclear power plants than to face a future where people shake their head that we wasted the opportunity to save the climate by foregoing nuclear.
I'm not really following. You said, "I don’t think we can scale up storage enough at any reasonable cost." We checked the math. The math said that even with pessimistic numbers, that assume no cost improvement and that everything deprecates as fast as the batteries, the amount of storage needed was readily affordable. You agree that there's a reasonable chance the price could go down, and agree that parts other than the battery chemistry do indeed last much longer.
Isn't that the whole debate? What are we arguing about at this point?