Baseload generation like nuclear requires leveling loads by driving large industrial customers to off-peak hours. This artificially inflates overnight demand that can’t be met by solar directly.
Removing the off-peak incentives and shifting them to hours of peak solar production allows solar to meet that demand. Without those off-peak incentives, solar can operate without nearly as much nuclear “backup” required.
The remainder of your argument is sunk-cost fallacy. Nuclear is much more expensive than solar. Assuming all coal-fired plants are offline, excess nuclear plants should be decommissioned.
Why do you need to force industrial users off during the day, and how do you decommission your backup nuclear power with intermittent wind, when all you did was move from 100% uptime nuclear to variable uptime wind and solar?
Nuclear pushes major industrial users (steel mills, aluminum smelters, etc) to overnight. Nuclear can’t be ramped up or down fast enough to match the normal demand curve, so they use “off peak” incentives to raise the trough and lower the peak. This allows nuclear to meet a much larger percentage of total demand. Without such incentives, nuclear has even more problems than solar. It would only be able to produce about 20% of our power, with 80% coming from “peaker” plants. With those incentives, nuclear can meet about 80% of out need, with peaker plants filling in.
By driving consumption overnight, those same incentives prevent solar from being able to meet the overnight demand.
Removing those “off peak” incentives, and providing new “on peak” incentives pushes those customers to daytime consumption that can be easily met by solar.
Stop thinking of nuclear as a “backup”. Its not a backup. It is baseload generation. “Backup” is not provided by baseload generators. “Backup” is provided by generation that doesn’t suffer from the limitations of baseload generators. “Backup” is from generators that can ramp up and down to match a fluctuating demand curve. “Backup” is provided by “peaker” plants.
Nuclear cannot be used as a “backup”. France is using nuclear for baseload generation, just like every other grid with nuclear generators.
And that is the underlying problem. Like all grid providers, they are incentivizing overnight consumption to improve the efficiency of their baseload generators.
Those perverse incentives are the primary cause of the problems you are describing.
Remove those perverse incentives.
Those industries currently taking advantage of the incentives switch to cheap daytime power instead of cheap night time power. They increase daytime demand, reducing the overcapacity problem.
Now the overnight baseload has dropped. We can now reduce nuclear baseload generation overnight, which also reduces it during the day. Now the daytime overcapacity problem is also reduced.
Nuclear isn’t 100% up, France had significant issues due to the summer heat raising riverwater temps, forcing plants to shut down because they couldn’t cool effectively.
Renewables are too cheap to keep nuclear economically viable, even when including battery storage to keep supply up.
Storage and production of renewables is also done by shipping in Chinese products created burning coal and ignoring environmental concerns. This all hinges on exporting emissions and labor to areas that don’t care about pollution.
I’d also argue that nuclear tech can likely proceed faster than storage, given the dangerous nature of energy storage. Even something as basic as storing water can cause deaths given what happens when dams break, stored energy is volatile by nature.
Storage is a red herring. Storage is attempting to make solar operate the same way as existing generation models: “supply shaping”. Attempting to match supply to demand.
Supply shaping doesn’t even work for our existing baseload generators. We use demand shaping to move our biggest loads to a time of day when we can most easily meet them with legacy generators. Which happens to be overnight. Which is the worst time of day to generate power with solar.
When we get rid of the current counterproductive demand-shaping models, we drop the overwhelming majority of our storage needs as well.
The heart of your argument is a Myth.
Baseload generation like nuclear requires leveling loads by driving large industrial customers to off-peak hours. This artificially inflates overnight demand that can’t be met by solar directly.
Removing the off-peak incentives and shifting them to hours of peak solar production allows solar to meet that demand. Without those off-peak incentives, solar can operate without nearly as much nuclear “backup” required.
The remainder of your argument is sunk-cost fallacy. Nuclear is much more expensive than solar. Assuming all coal-fired plants are offline, excess nuclear plants should be decommissioned.
Why do you need to force industrial users off during the day, and how do you decommission your backup nuclear power with intermittent wind, when all you did was move from 100% uptime nuclear to variable uptime wind and solar?
Nuclear pushes major industrial users (steel mills, aluminum smelters, etc) to overnight. Nuclear can’t be ramped up or down fast enough to match the normal demand curve, so they use “off peak” incentives to raise the trough and lower the peak. This allows nuclear to meet a much larger percentage of total demand. Without such incentives, nuclear has even more problems than solar. It would only be able to produce about 20% of our power, with 80% coming from “peaker” plants. With those incentives, nuclear can meet about 80% of out need, with peaker plants filling in.
By driving consumption overnight, those same incentives prevent solar from being able to meet the overnight demand.
Removing those “off peak” incentives, and providing new “on peak” incentives pushes those customers to daytime consumption that can be easily met by solar.
Stop thinking of nuclear as a “backup”. Its not a backup. It is baseload generation. “Backup” is not provided by baseload generators. “Backup” is provided by generation that doesn’t suffer from the limitations of baseload generators. “Backup” is from generators that can ramp up and down to match a fluctuating demand curve. “Backup” is provided by “peaker” plants.
Well I mentioned France, who are using nuclear as a backup to the rewables they implemented.
Nuclear cannot be used as a “backup”. France is using nuclear for baseload generation, just like every other grid with nuclear generators.
And that is the underlying problem. Like all grid providers, they are incentivizing overnight consumption to improve the efficiency of their baseload generators.
Those perverse incentives are the primary cause of the problems you are describing.
Remove those perverse incentives.
Those industries currently taking advantage of the incentives switch to cheap daytime power instead of cheap night time power. They increase daytime demand, reducing the overcapacity problem.
Now the overnight baseload has dropped. We can now reduce nuclear baseload generation overnight, which also reduces it during the day. Now the daytime overcapacity problem is also reduced.
Nuclear isn’t 100% up, France had significant issues due to the summer heat raising riverwater temps, forcing plants to shut down because they couldn’t cool effectively.
Renewables are too cheap to keep nuclear economically viable, even when including battery storage to keep supply up.
This study disagrees after taking into account storage.
https://advisoranalyst.com/2023/05/11/bofa-the-nuclear-necessity.html/
Storage and production of renewables is also done by shipping in Chinese products created burning coal and ignoring environmental concerns. This all hinges on exporting emissions and labor to areas that don’t care about pollution.
I’d also argue that nuclear tech can likely proceed faster than storage, given the dangerous nature of energy storage. Even something as basic as storing water can cause deaths given what happens when dams break, stored energy is volatile by nature.
Storage is a red herring. Storage is attempting to make solar operate the same way as existing generation models: “supply shaping”. Attempting to match supply to demand.
Supply shaping doesn’t even work for our existing baseload generators. We use demand shaping to move our biggest loads to a time of day when we can most easily meet them with legacy generators. Which happens to be overnight. Which is the worst time of day to generate power with solar.
When we get rid of the current counterproductive demand-shaping models, we drop the overwhelming majority of our storage needs as well.