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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 21m

The figures are bad because a large part of the French fleet is nearing the point where it needs a runiously expensive refurb.

Once we have finished replacing the remaining fossil fuels, we will be retiring the nuclear and biomass.

Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 22m

Yes, but folk who follow the tech more closely than I do could see that the price of batteries was about to drop. So they delayed making investments knowing they could get it cheaper.

Its going to be storage everywhere pretty soon.

Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

I misread that as 'Bari Weiss launched her own path to Sodom...'.

I mean fair enough...

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

Washington was a terrorist, his goal was to preserve slavery in the US.

The Tea Party was a pro-slavery riot held to protest the Mansfield Decision which would have abolished slavery in Massachusetts.

The abolitionists only sided with the slavers because the Crown's response was stupid.

Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

I don't think many people understood just how vast the volume of coal burned at those stations was. Multiple train loads per day at peak output.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

What we have here is a political caste that has absolutely no understanding of technology that is applying the arithmetic of 2015 to plan energy policy for 2035.

It is like when the UK government decided to double down on punch card technology in the 1950s.

Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

And it isn't just one project that is delivering power at a fraction of the cost of nuclear. The UK is not the ideal site for solar but France and Spain have many locations and solar output tends to compliment wind. Floating offshore wind platforms will start deploying very soon.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

Despite starting much later than Hinkley C, Dogger Bank Wind is already delivering power and a fourth stage D is in the final stages of agreement. At current rates of deployment the project will be delivering three times the power by the time of Hinkley C's latest projected start date in 2031.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

The cost of firming the electricity from Dogger Bank Wind isn't exactly cheap, it will add $6 billion or so to the $12 billion already spent. But that is a bargain compared to the absurd cost of Hinkley C.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

Dogger Bank Wind phases ABC and Hinkley C are both designed to produce roughly the same amount of electricity in a year. Dogger Bank Wind cost $12 billion to build and pays money to rent the site from the Crown Estate. Hinkley C cost $60 billion so far and that could easily double a third time.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

Cheap batteries make grid level storage attractive even if you are not dealing with intermittency. Building out batteries at the site of old coal power stations allows them to be used to perform load shifting on the increasingly stretched grid.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

There is a limit to this game of course, but we won't reach it until 2028 or so at which point we can start deploying the next generation of grid level storage batteries which cost roughly 10% of the cost in 2023.

CATL predicts a price of $10/kWh for sodium chemistry batteries.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

That situation is about to change as the next tranche of wind deployment in the UK will mean the UK is running a surplus much more frequently. But again, there is another solution, when there are no fossil fuel plants to shut down in the UK, we export the electricity to Europe.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

Until now, there has been no need to store surplus renewable electricity because there simply hasn't been enough surplus to make the cost of storage worthwhile. Instead of trying to get a constant output from wind+solar, all we do is reduce the output from the remaining fossil fuel/biomass plants.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

Yes, we know that renewables are intermittent, my doctorate is from Oxford University Department of Nuclear Physics, I had noticed the sun only shines during the day. More to the point so have the people planning for the renewables transition.

The solution is battery storage.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

Nuclear was never price competitive with coal, let alone gas or the much cheaper wind and solar replacing fossil fuels. Politicians love to build nuclear stations because they think it makes them look good. It only makes them look weak and gullible.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 2h

The cost of the Hinkley C boondoggle continues to rise. The best thing the government could do is cancel the project today, next best is never turn it on. Disposal costs will soar once it is loaded with fuel.

The only reason the nuclear levy is needed is nuclear is uneconomic.

Dr Paul Dorfman @drpauldorfman.bsky.social · 10h

Charities could see their bills rise up to £2,500 a year - UK #nuclear levy on energy bills.
www.thirdsector.co.uk/exempt-chari...

Exempt charities from nuclear levy on energy bills, government urged

Some charities could see their bills rise up to £2,500 a year

www.thirdsector.co.uk

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 4h

Pretty soon, storage batteries are going to be a standard household installation even for people without solar roofs. Instead of worrying about whether to start the dishwasher now or when the electricity is cheap to save 20p, the battery will be performing continuous arbitrage.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 4h

Bottom line is that it made perfect sense to delay building out storage to the last minute. Unlike the Hinkley-C boondoggle that will likely get cancelled before startup, renewables and batteries can be deployed quickly.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 4h

CATL are predicting $10/kWh for battery storage in 2 years. So your 13.5kWh Tesla Power Wall costing $12K is replaced with a unit costing $2K.

At those prices, it makes good sense to turn every former coal station location into a battery farm to firm up the grid.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 4h

We have always known that we can do storage. The question has been what technology to use. I invested in flow batteries at one point, worked on load shifting domestic demand. At this point, CATL has proved sodium chemistry batteries win for grid and home storage.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 4h

True and that is going to be a regular occurrence in 2028 and on as the next phase of Dogger Bank etc go online.

But shutting down gas and exporting to Europe are effectively competitors for storage. So storage demand goes from nothing to matching new renewables capacity in a very short period.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 5h

I knew one of the prostitutes who work for Koch. I call them 'Kochstitutes'.

He gets $80K a year which is not exactly a princely salary in Washington DC for an Oxford graduate.

Oh and he knows he sold out, he won't speak to me because he knows what he is.

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Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 17h

Charlie Kirk was fond of pal'ing around with terrorist Kyle Rittenhouse.

Phillip Hallam-Baker @phill.hallambaker.com · 19h

Well thats a stock to short then.

Wait for the bubble to inflate a bit more... then...