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Apparently each of these structures stores 20 MWh of energy. By comparison, the US consumes 11.5 TWh of electricity daily. To reach the 12 hours of storage esti
by manfredo 6y ago
Apparently each of these structures stores 20 MWh of energy. By comparison, the US consumes 11.5 TWh of electricity daily. To reach the 12 hours of storage estimated to be necessary to reach 80% renewable generation we'd need 287,500 of these towers. To reach the 3 weeks of storage necessary for 100% renewable generation we'd need 12,075,000 of these towers.
- samatman 6y agoThe former is easily achievable, if the towers are profitable to install. We only have to build them one at a time, and if a collection of 10-50 is cheaper than a peaker gas plant, then the utility decommissions the latter and builds the former. The latter is simply not necessary. There are a number of ways to solve the last few percent, including leaving a few peaker plants running; presumably, we'll do all of them. Those peakers can be carbon-neutral, because it's possible to run CO2 extractors. One implication of our renewables is that there are times when they generate power considerably in excess of requirements: using that energy to sequester carbon is plausible. Of course, if we got over our civilizational horror of nuclear energy, we could solve this problem in a thorough and boring way. I'm not holding my breath.
- christkv 6y agoThorium reactors or pebble bed reactors might be options. The only reason we have the current designs is due to the us navies need to build a reactor that would fit on submarines and ships. That technology became the basis for our deployed reactors. Since then nothing else has been tried outside of small experimental plants from what I understand.