4 ms·
With wind power, storage is hardly required to the extent that is needed with solar. Wind farms, especially in the UK which is my point of reference, are almos
by ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
With wind power, storage is hardly required to the extent that is needed with solar.
Wind farms, especially in the UK which is my point of reference, are almost always producing something. This can be statistically modeled, so you can then say: "Building <x> MW of wind capacity will meet our needs of <y> MW <z> % of the time."
You can then decide where to be on this tradeoff curve. So over-provisioning wind will reduce the need for storage or other generation types.
This is of course not possible at all for solar, which only produces power during sunlight hours, with a peak generation between the morning and evening demand peaks, limiting its usefulness.
- earthboundkid 7y agoWhat if you took the solar energy and used it to heat up a thermal differential between two areas, and then you tapped into the kinetic energy from that?
- WhompingWindows 7y agoToo fancy, IMO. The easiest path is demand respond: you just need to control when you put on A/Cs, refrigerators, lighting intensity, industrial manufacturing, etc. By incentivizing responsive demand, the intermittency issue becomes far less important.
- ourlordcaffeine 7y agoIn the UK, there is "economy7" pricing, where consumer electricity is cheaper during the night. In high solar output countries, I could see the opposite happening, that you start seeing tariffs where energy is cheapest around midday when solar output is high.