3 ms·
We also need to consider that even with the rapidly improving costs of renewbales, the dollars per GwH generated are still beyond nuclear, and require orders of
by cknight 10y ago
We also need to consider that even with the rapidly improving costs of renewbales, the dollars per GwH generated are still beyond nuclear, and require orders of magnitude more space, which not all countries have available. "Wildly expensive" nuclear is simply not true when put in to the perspective of a national grid vs wind+solar+storage.
The space factor is also at play when you look at geographical dispersion. It's one thing for Australia or the US to have enough solar and wind farms around the country where conditions vary, but what about the UK? A cloudy winter with hardly any sun means they are left with wind, and a day with little wind across a geographical area the size of the UK is not uncommon. It has happened for some lengthy periods, in fact: http://euanmearns.com/flat-calm-across-the-uk/ http://euanmearns.com/flat-calm-across-the-uk/. No storage solutions proposed so far have the longevity needed for the odd extended calm+dark spell.
Europe is at least fortunate enough to have an international electricity market across its internal borders to help manage this, but that largely works because of France's nuclear plants. It is the largest electricity exporter in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_exports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...