[ExI] Trump Is Obsessed With Oil, but Chinese Batteries Will Soon Run the World

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 24, 2026 at 10:27 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

*> The costs quoted do not include the cost of energy storage needed to
> meet reliability specifications.*


*I grant you that, but when it comes to comparing the costs that AI data
centers need to pay for electricity, energy storage is not a factor because
regardless of where they get their energy from they can't have ANY
interruption of it whatsoever, at the very least they're going to need to
operate their data center for several hours on battery power so it can be
shut down gracefully and not catastrophically. No matter if you're using
gas turbines or nuclear power or solar power or wind power, you're going to
need battery backup. The storage cost is already baked in so the
intermittency disadvantage of solar and wind largely disappears.*


*John K Clark*








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> *From:* John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Trump Is Obsessed With Oil, but Chinese Batteries
> Will Soon Run the World
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> On Fri, Jan 23, 2026 at 9:50 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
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> *> **Coal plants are not at all complicated.  All the equipment to make
> those go are with us.*
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> *Because of advances in technology, coal** is no longer an economically
> competitive way of producing electrical energy.  *
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> *A **new new coal **p**ower plant **would **produce electrical* *energy **at
> a** cost* *between $69 and $169 per megawatt-hour.*
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> *W**ind** costs $27 to $53 per MWh**.*
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> *S**olar** costs between** $38 to $78 per megawatt-hour**.*
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> *Natural **gas** turbines between $48 to $109**.*
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> *John K Clark*
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> *John these are the numbers Californians were told as well.  But the power
> company disputed them, saying the cost of intermittent unpredictable power
> generation grows dramatically once the percentage goes over about 15 to
> 16%.  The costs quoted do not include the cost of energy storage needed to
> meet reliability specifications.*
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> *The political literature used comparisons with Washington state, which
> has the dams on the Columbia River and nice steady reliable wind blowing
> thru the Columbia River Gorge.  California has nothing analogous to that.*
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> *We still see examples of the conflation of power generation and power
> storage, as is seen in the title of this thread, as well as politicization
> of technology.*
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> *We learned over the past decade that the power company was telling the
> truth.  But the truth is more complicated than the subtleties the
> politicians were able to sell.  In politics, simplicity sells.  In
> technology, the best solution is often complicated.*
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> *spike*
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