This is something that has been occasionally happening in Europe (at least in Germany, don't know about France) for well over 10 years now. Probably more like 15.
What's sorely needed at this point is much more storage to make this energy available when it is needed instead of when it isn't. Before that happens, you cannot really decommission any gas or coal power plants, because you still need them during times of much less renewable production.
this is why we still need nuclear, to replace the fossil fuel baseline.
The concept of baseline power is no longer needed. Scientists wrote about that for years now. Battery storage and smart grids are growing faster and cheaper than nuclear ever could.
Greenfield nuclear is (probably) not economically relevant.
Refurbishing existing NPPs has a LCOE on-par with renewables and gives breathing room for variability issues that will otherwise be absorbed by fossil fuels until that eventual transition to storage/smart grid.
Any discussion of nuclear's costs/profitability that does not distinguish between greenfield and existing/refurbished is agendaposting since most of the costs of a NPP are upfront.
Can storage technology reach 100% coverage by 2050? Because that's the target for net-0 afaik.
If not, we should invest in something else to help us reach that goal, and Nuclear seems the most promising medium-term solution.
If there was enough funding or political backing anything could get done by 2050. That's a huge amount of time. Any time someone mentions a climate goalpost like that they are pulling the cloth over your eyes
France has plenty of nuclear power.
It doesn't help with renewable peaks in the slightest.
What is needed are storage solutions and flexible usage that can utilize cheap power at peak times.
You can absolutely reduce coal and gas without batteries. Hydro is a thing, nuclear also exists. Maybe it's cheaper and more environmentally-friendly to disconnect some solar and some wind from the grid during excess peak production and keep the nuclear running, than having huge storage? Also you're forgetting about the possibility for instant demand response, imagine things like AC units in summer or heaters in winter, where they could be turned on automatically during peak production to keep your house comfier for no cost.
Let's
Fucking
Go
Lol get rekt fossil fuel barons
The amount of subsidies they need just to mimic a fraction of our power!
I'm a Fiscally Responsible American Republican and this is EXACTLY why we SHOULDN'T transition away from Oil! Imagine all the RESEARCH into YACHTS and MANSIONS the CEOS can't do now that prices are NEGATIVE!
Prices go negative in Texas somewhat regularly
Though it won't show up as negative in the bill, not even a discount
If you have a dynamic pricing contract of course you get a discount... If you don't, you chose not to in return for price stability 🤷
Though yeah, last time prices went negative in Germany I was still paying 10ct/kWh in just taxes and fees. Would be pretty cool if they'd have paid me for using electricity during that time, but of course that's not how that works.
Negative prices aren't necessarily a good thing because they tend to curb investments. A Reddit comment explains it well: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1didv4q/comment/l938q2a/
Edit---I forgot the most important bit: Obviously that doesn't mean that we should invest less in renewables, but that we should invest in large-scale battery research like yesterday.
Depends on where you live. With my tariff I get paid to use energy during negative price periods.
Edit: typo.
Yet whenever prices for something go negative we're never paid for taking it off their hands.
Lemmy and the nuclear propaganda is so funny. France recently increased the electricity prices because nuclear energy is way more expensive than solar and they will have to increase them again because half of their plants are in severe need of repair.
It's a tricky thing, but renewables and nuclear fission plants are not two mutually exclusive things that can't coexist. The issue with renewables is that, right now, they are not consistent enough to be relied upon 24/7, and we don't have, right now, a good enough storage technology to solve the issue.
Without this, the only other option is to have renewables cover 30-50% of the production capacity, and another technology to provide a base capacity when renewables cannot be used. This can be hydro, if you have it, nuclear, gas or coal. Choose your poison.
There's some promising research in using heliostats (mirrors to direct sunlight) towards a central tower to create molten salt, allowing solar energy to be stored and released at night.
It's a cool idea, but has not worked well in practice. The plant referenced in the 2016 article you linked (Crescent Dunes) stopped operation in 2019 due to performance and cost issues. It appears to have restarted after the original owner filed for bankruptcy and sold the asset, but at a lower capacity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Project
This!
Problem is not producing electricity, problem is producing electricity ON DEMAND. That is something only Fossil fuels can do for now.
Nuclear can absolutely produce power on demand, once the reactors are up and running. I just wish we would have invested in molten salt reactors that cannot meltdown back when we invented them in the '60s. Of course you also can't make weapons with those reactors, or the isotopes that we need for modern medicine.
We can't entirely get rid of nuclear power because of the aforementioned isotopes, but I would be very happy to see all the for profit reactors shut down permanently. You cannot safely run a nuclear reactor when you care about profit.
Oh and those molten salt reactors are why China is probably going to start selling nuclear waste disposal services to the rest of the world in about a decade once they turn the ones they are currently building on.
I have high hopes for EVs being used as a decentralized buffer via V2G. I'm thinking of something like you either buy an EV outright and you have no obligations to participate in V2G, but can sell electricity that way if you wish. Or, the government subsidizes your car to a certain extent but you have to give maybe 20% of your battery up as a buffer as long as it's connected to the grid.
Article is paywalled, but love the headline. Imagine a future with energy as an essentially free resource. We have a LONG way to go, but just the fact that we are moving in the right direction gives me a glimmer of hope for the future.
For a long time nuclear power was going to make electricity so cheap it wasn't worth billing. Turns out they were right, the reactor is just 92 million miles away
is this end consumer prices? This sounds more like we're totalling in french energy exports, (france exports a LOT of nuclear energy, as well presumably, renewable)
I'm not French nut usually the price of transmission is omitted, netting in a positive cost for end consumers. If it was really negative, there would be businesses just burning energy to make money.
Battery business should be good in the future though.
French government make electricity price scale on the most expansive one. So with the war in Ukraine, the price of gas plumed up, and so do every electricity bill that was never so expansive, by far.
The "liberalization of energy market" force everyone to buy electricity from courrier that don't do anything; they do not produce or invest, they just buy and sell electricity. This firms take all the money between the price and the cost. This severely threat the electricity production, that is still made by the former public firm (ex « Électricité de France » ); even if it's electricity is the cheapest, and it's the firm that invest the more in renewable energy.
Negative? Sounds like music to the crypto-miners. Heck, can I get paid for shorting two wires together?
^oh ^no!
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