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Yes but renewable energy is difficult to build such that its always there to meet baseline demand. That is likely to get worse if the climate shifts for differe
by rob_c 5y ago
Yes but renewable energy is difficult to build such that its always there to meet baseline demand. That is likely to get worse if the climate shifts for different countries and technologies.
Solar in the Sahara great. Wind in the uk great.
Solar in counties with moderate climates requires effort to moderate between supply and demand however.
- cratermoon 5y agoBut solar is not the only renewable. Wind is pretty ubiquitous.
- stavros 5y agoNuclear is too.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoHydro already provides more than both of those, and they often come with their own reservoirs so they are able to easily handle changing load requirements. Not that we have many hydro opportunities left, unfortunately.
- jacquesm 5y agoAnd - and this is often underestimated - it's fast. Hydro can spin up in an extremely short time, dealing with fluctuating demand in on the order of seconds. A typical example is everybody hitting the kettle/coffeemaker during rest time in an international soccer match. That is a noticeable increase in load and hydro can cover that without even trying hard, whereas for nuclear or coal there is no way that they could compensate for such a surge so quickly so unless you have some hydro to back you up you'd need to run those plants at well above the current load to be able to catch the spike without a problem.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoCoupling a nuclear plant with a reservoir and hydro could work. But with EVs, I’m sure it’s done somewhere.
- rob_c 5y agoMain downside is the requirement for dredging the sediment from many of them. Reservoirs make for awesome batteries as well as power supplies.
- jonnycomputer 5y agosome concern about carbon and dams. but the argument is pretty complicated. also, doesn't help when there is a drought, like in the West, and the dams have no water to produce electricity from anymore.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoMost dams here put west still have water. Some dams have shut down. They also have more water to work with in spring than late summer even in normal non drought seasons (assuming they are fed by glaciers).
- jonnycomputer 5y agoDams and carbon: https://phys.org/news/2021-05-carbon-emissions-considerably-underestimated.html https://phys.org/news/2021-05-carbon-emissions-considerably-... About dams and drought: Dams may still have water, but for how long? https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/todays-drought-in-the-west-is-nothing-compared-to-what-may-be-coming/2015/02/12/0041646a-b2d9-11e4-854b-a38d13486ba1_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/today... (2015)
- cratermoon 5y agoHydro has lots of downsides that solar and wind don't. See e.g. California drought.
- rob_c 5y agoIndeed. I was trying to provide an example
- toomuchtodo 5y agohttps://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/debunking-three-myths-about-baseload https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/debunking-thr... (Debunking Three Myths About “Baseload”)
- jacquesm 5y agoYou can pretty much auto-repost that in every thread that mentions renewables.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rob_c 5y agoThis promptes the use of gas over a carbon neutral emitter like nuclear as a significant part of the can be ramped up/down solution. It will doesn't address the problem of evening out supply. I'm 100% certain we could go to a co2 neutral solution not one involving nonsense like clean coal or gas. You need to buffer supply and demand from __any__ supply to increase efficiency. If your not doing that we might as well start burning trees for power
- epistasis 5y agoIn addition to the other links here, I would add that grid modeling of renewables matched with weather records shows that it's fairly easy to get to 70%-80% renewables without massive storage or new technology. And even in France, this is the level of penetration that nuclear was able to provide. Germany is a country with absolutely terrible solar resources, but even they are starting to make solar work on their grid. And they spent a ton of money to subsidize the solar industry in its early days to drive down future solar prices. So even the worst case scenarios for cost are not hopeless.
- imtringued 5y agoYou always see snarky HN comments talk about how energy storage technologies don't exist. The reality is that we are drowning in grid storage tech but there is barely any demand for it because we haven't even reached the maximum potential of a renewable grid without storage. There simply isn't enough excess energy to justify it. There are some load shifting setups that extend solar energy 4 hours into the evening but that is about it.
- epistasis 5y agoThis is changing with new renewables installs, more than half of them include storage, if I recall correctly.
- kortilla 5y ago> The reality is that we are drowning in grid storage tech but there is barely any demand for it That means it’s too expensive. If it made sense everyone would be expanding solar/wind quickly and all fossil fuel plants would be being shut down. That’s not happening though because renewables+storage for base load costs a fortune.