4 ms·

You can have a few coal or gas plants on standby for those rate occasions when reserves are insufficient.

ctdonath 8y ago
Problem is you need enough "on standby" to run full-output indefinitely ... at a cost high enough that you may as well just use them instead of unreliable renewables. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for renewables. Run my office near 100% on solar in summer, and run my home partly on year-round. My experience convinces me that while it's nice/fun/clean/etc, it's also painfully unreliable. People talking about renewables while living on coal/etc energy don't seem to grasp this.
- peterashford 8y ago
  I don't get your argument. In NZ, were very largely running on renewables. Hydro filling in the rest. There's a coal plant in Huntly which can be fired up to fill in any gaps. Most of the time it's not needed and this isn't a big deal.
- cesarb 8y ago
  > Problem is you need enough "on standby" to run full-output indefinitely ... at a cost high enough that you may as well just use them instead of unreliable renewables. There are two components to the cost of a generator: fixed costs and variable costs, the later being mostly fuel. Even if you have enough standby generators and could run them all the time, if the "unreliable renewables" allow you to reduce their power (using less fuel) or even power some of them down completely, it can be a huge cost advantage. It's even better if you add a bit of storage to the mix: since most generators can't power up instantly, with enough storage they could all be completely powered off instead of idling, saving even more fuel and wear.
- torpfactory 8y ago
  If you look at any one solar setup's output, yes it varies wildly every time a cloud goes by. If you're off-grid and responsible for your own power, this is a huge problem. You would need a fairly large solar array and some also fairly large batteries to keep you supplied with power. With a large, geographically distributed grid of different types of generation (Wind, Solar, Hydro, Nuclear, maybe a bit of fossil generation, and battery storage to sop up the excess), these problems become much more manageable.

Problem is you need enough "on standby" to run full-output indefinitely ... at a cost high enough that you may as well just use them instead of unreliable renewables. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for renewables. Run my office near 100% on solar in summer, and run my home partly on year-round. My experience convinces me that while it's nice/fun/clean/etc, it's also painfully unreliable. People talking about renewables while living on coal/etc energy don't seem to grasp this.

peterashford 8y ago
I don't get your argument. In NZ, were very largely running on renewables. Hydro filling in the rest. There's a coal plant in Huntly which can be fired up to fill in any gaps. Most of the time it's not needed and this isn't a big deal.
cesarb 8y ago
> Problem is you need enough "on standby" to run full-output indefinitely ... at a cost high enough that you may as well just use them instead of unreliable renewables. There are two components to the cost of a generator: fixed costs and variable costs, the later being mostly fuel. Even if you have enough standby generators and could run them all the time, if the "unreliable renewables" allow you to reduce their power (using less fuel) or even power some of them down completely, it can be a huge cost advantage. It's even better if you add a bit of storage to the mix: since most generators can't power up instantly, with enough storage they could all be completely powered off instead of idling, saving even more fuel and wear.
torpfactory 8y ago
If you look at any one solar setup's output, yes it varies wildly every time a cloud goes by. If you're off-grid and responsible for your own power, this is a huge problem. You would need a fairly large solar array and some also fairly large batteries to keep you supplied with power. With a large, geographically distributed grid of different types of generation (Wind, Solar, Hydro, Nuclear, maybe a bit of fossil generation, and battery storage to sop up the excess), these problems become much more manageable.