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Current grids are or have been mostly fossil fuels. You can displace a lot of those with renewables, no problem. It's true that to get to 100%, or to start a n
by olau 7y ago
Current grids are or have been mostly fossil fuels. You can displace a lot of those with renewables, no problem.
It's true that to get to 100%, or to start a new grid, you need to have something to fill in the gaps. Here there's a wide array of options, of which the most deployed at the moment are hydro and biomass AFAIK. But there are other proposals.
In the past it mostly didn't make sense to store electricity, not when you are paying for coal or gas and could as well store that. So many of the latest proposals are not fully developed and operating at a massive scale yet.
- belorn 7y agoFor the US grid that is very true. There are nations which has reached closer to peak renewable and a good example is Denmark. At peak time wind production is almost 100% and if I remember right they export a lot when that happen, but then we have times like right now (when this comment is posted) and wind production is less than 10% of total usage and both natural gas and coal produce sits above 10% to compensate, in combination with imports from Germany which is also right now mostly produced from coal. (https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=DK-DK1 https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...) Hydro as a natural resource is not a perfect fit to use in case like this as natural lakes can only take so much changes in water levels, and in many cases you have chains of hydro plants and lakes which mean dumping a lot of water in one place means you have to dump a lot of it further down without causing flooding. Hydro plants must also manage how much water they have available. Swedish power prices is notorious effected by how much water winter/fall periods produce.