$1B Solar and Battery Storage Project Breaks Ground in Utah

65 pointsposted 12 hours ago
by m463
(electrek.co)

29 Comments

jsight

9 hours ago

Can someone explain the economics of this to me?

As I understand it, battery storage isn't cheaper than just base load generation (nuclear, combined cycle). However, it sounds like natural gas peaker plants are significantly more expensive. Can that be quantified? ~80% more, or more than $.03kwh difference? Are the levelized costs of battery storage, including financing, now less than this? Are incentives a part of it?

I'm guessing the solar aspect plays into this as well, as a large plant like that likely produces at times when prices are relatively cheap. It'd be really to see it all quantified.

energy123

8 hours ago

Battery storage doesn't need to be cheaper than nuclear on a kWh vs kWh basis, because you only need about 5 hours storage to get to 98% renewables.

The combination of solar and wind and battery storage needs to be cheaper, and it is. The CSIRO, who factored in all costs on both sides, found that it's about 50% of the price of new nuclear in Australia. This conclusion may vary in places with less sun or an existing nuclear industry with a track record of building cheap plants quickly.

Note also that a nuclear grid will also need battery storage because demand itself is variable. Unless you overbuild nuclear and run at a low capacity factor, but that carries with it its own additional costs.

s1artibartfast

8 hours ago

I dont have the data you are looking for, but my take on California is that cost is largely an afterthought. regulatory pressure and regulatory costs drive up or eliminate the alternatives, and power companies have a captive market. As a result, I'm paying $0.50/kwh with a large green component, and have no choice on the matter.

My only alternative is to try and reduce my use of the grid, which also means going solar.

jsight

7 hours ago

One of the most compelling arguments that I hear from the anti-renewables types is that they do it in California and it doesn't work.

I think there's more to it than that, though. TX has seen tremendous growth in renewables, and grid pricing is excellent there from the prices that I've seen.

energy123

8 hours ago

There's private energy developers building multi-GW of utility scale battery storage in Texas at the moment.

tbrownaw

8 hours ago

> 400-megawatt (MW) solar and 400 MW/1,600-megawatt-hour battery storage

So 4 hours worth of storage is apparently enough to make this sort of thing work.

skybrian

7 hours ago

It’s enough to shift power to the evening when demand is highest.

user

7 hours ago

[deleted]

KennyBlanken

11 hours ago

[flagged]

lizknope

9 hours ago

Where does your electricity come from currently? I looked up Emery County on the map and I see I've driven through it on I-70 multiple times while visiting national parks. I've driven through Cottonwood Canyon Road in Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and there are power lines from Glen Canyon dam that are parallel to the dirt road. Do those lines extend to Emery County? Or do you have some other local power plants? Genuinely curious.

asah

10 hours ago

You want NIMBY/NIMBY, let Manhattan into the chat!

You have Elizabeth Street garden getting bulldozed for affordable housing, Chinatown bulldozed for a megajail (yes, in Manhattan), and who knows what'll happen with casinos in Hudson Yards. Then rezoning stopped in Soho, Noho, UWS, even Gowanus.

linotype

9 hours ago

Boomers will be dead before climate change impacts them. Therefore it is a non-issue.

jimt1234

10 hours ago

> ... Tesla is providing battery storage.

This supports my theory that Elon has become a right wing warrior in order to gain credibility and political capital in right wing states, allowing him to obtain massive contracts for electricity storage (and production, too?). And I think it's worked extremely well. 5+ years ago Tesla was a California, tech-weenie company, and that in itself is gonna keep a lot of doors closed in red states.

Loughla

10 hours ago

I think it's probably more likely that he became a right wing warrior because he was always that thing, but finally felt that he was untouchable.

mustafa_pasi

10 hours ago

To me it seems like the Democrats have a very weird hierarchy and Musk couldn't do any inroads there, because the incumbents at the top of that hierarchy consider him an outsider. So his options were to either suck it up and accept his status within hierarchy, or champion a Republican candidate which, if elected, would immediately propel him to the very front of the decision making.

Loughla

9 hours ago

Again, it's a theory. But I'm still saying it's WAY more plausible that he felt empowered to do whatever he wantedn instead of masking.

cma

8 hours ago

Lots of people seem to flip hard right after #metoo calls out their behavior. Musk had the horse for handjob thing and announced he was a Republican something like the day before it published after they had contacted him about it for the story.

ericd

8 hours ago

Maybe he just got tired of dems doing stuff like saying that GM had been leading the way on EVs, and not mentioning Tesla at all, because it wasn’t politically expedient? Or trying to structure the rebates to benefit the big 3 more than Tesla. Etc etc.

XorNot

8 hours ago

If your moral principles will be abandoned because people won't suck up to you enough for having them, they aren't moral principles.

ericd

8 hours ago

Who said anything about morality? Do you usually favor people who are habitually unfair to you? He has a few companies that he needs to lead, and being cut out of portions of federal rebates because they want to curry favor with unions directly harms his efforts.

That’s probably the main reason, but it’s just got to be especially grating when that decision is couched in patriotic language, and your company is making cars that are much more “Made in America” than any of your competitors.

matthewdgreen

7 hours ago

The credits are structured to bring battery and EV manufacturing on-shore, which is pretty crucial to the US for a bunch of reasons. They require a percentage of the battery materials to come from the US or allied nations, and final manufacturing to be done here. Some Tesla vehicles initially didn’t qualify because they were made in China. As of July of this year I believe all Teslas except for one model are now eligible for the full credit.

ETA: As I recall, Tesla had used up its $7500 credits from previous legislation (prior to the IRA) because they had sold so many cars. The new legislation restored the full $7500 and was basically a gift to Tesla in that sense. Turning this into a victim story for Tesla really does not make sense.

ericd

4 hours ago

Ah I wasn’t aware that any US Teslas were coming from China, I thought those all went to Europe/Asia, while we mostly got Fremont/Austin.

I was referring to the period when there was a piecemeal credit amount based on a few factors, one of which, iirc, was having final assembly conducted in a unionized factory.

They have of course been massive beneficiaries of federal subsidies, including a massive boost early on from the DOE Loan Programs Office, this isn’t to say they’ve been a victim overall, but it seems there’s been an attitude shift, and the legacy carmakers are getting more love from the current admin despite contributing only token efforts to the transition.

threeseed

10 hours ago

> This supports my theory that Elon has become a right wing warrior in order to gain credibility and political capital in right wing states

Tesla is facing securities and wire fraud charges by the DOJ and SEC over their FSD claims.

He would be looking at jail time given his previous run-ins with the SEC.

Trump can make all of that go away.

harry8

9 hours ago

I don't know the answer but it seems like a reasonable question to ask:

"Would he be facing those charges presently if he was the no. 1 public voice of democrat orthodoxy?"

Maybe he would.

Maybe we all suffer from Gell-Mann amnesia knowing how corrupt it all is when we turn the page and get concerned about maybe the tribe you dislike more will get power, which they always will in a 2 party system.

I don't care for Elon or his politics.

I am convinced that entrenched and accepted corruption is the biggest threat to continuing to have a democracy. Right there exists a cross-partisan rage that someone will tap and ride to power. Let's hope they're not genuinely evil.