4 ms·
> “if there is an extended deficit with wind / sun then even a battery might not do it.” It’s always windy (and sunny) somewhere. The combination of energy sto
by Reason077 5y ago
> “if there is an extended deficit with wind / sun then even a battery might not do it.”
It’s always windy (and sunny) somewhere. The combination of energy storage and grid transmission alleviates intermittency.
Chemical batteries are very useful, but far from the only way to store energy.
- MagnumOpus 5y agoIt's always sunny somewhere, but if that is on the opposite side of the earth during the night, good luck building grid transmission. It's always windy somewhere, but that also might not be on the same continent as you need it. So if you don't like gas peakers or don't run a nuclear baseload you need to bridge those short non-windy winter days or weeks with batteries. Multiple nation scale terawatt-hour batteries. Which means millions of Tesla li-ion megapacks or millions of pumped hydro plants - which gets expensive and unfeasible real quick as you run out of either the battery raw materials for the former or suitable sites for the latter.