3 ms·

> What do you do if the sun decides not to shine and the wind decides not to blow for a long time? I always see this argument in these kinds of discussion, but

by cesarb 5y ago

> What do you do if the sun decides not to shine and the wind decides not to blow for a long time? I always see this argument in these kinds of discussion, but does anyone have real statistics as to how often that actually happens? And how widespread these disruptions actually are, keeping in mind that solar and wind power are often distributed over a wide area? (Keep also in mind that, unless there's a solar eclipse, photovoltaic panels can still produce some power even when it's very cloudy, so that might not lead to a total loss of generation.)

rsj_hn 5y ago
If you need a grid that has, say, three 9s of reliability (US grid) or four 9s reliability (European grid), then it can only happen for like 15 minutes per year in Europe or 150 min per year in the US. Now if you are only using wind for 10% of your power needs, a 10% drop in wind is not a big deal. But when you are using wind for 30% of your power needs, then the same variability becomes a bigger deal and might start to impact reliability, even though the wind itself is not more variable than before. Same for solar.
worrycue 5y ago
Well just last month … https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-prices-in-europe-hit-records-after-wind-stops-blowing-11631528258 https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-prices-in-europe-hit-rec... Renewables like solar and wind depend on the weather - which we cannot control at all. Non-renewables have dependencies too like politics and economics but at least it’s something we have some control over. If solar and wind is to completely replace non-renewables, their intermittency is going to have to be dealt with somehow - and huge excess in generation and storage capacity is only way that comes to mind at the moment.
pfdietz 5y ago
You can play with designing a renewable + storage system to supply "synthetic baseload" using actual historical weather data at this website: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ (The handling of transmission is greatly simplified, but that's ok for what that is.)

by cesarb 5y ago

rsj_hn 5y ago

If you need a grid that has, say, three 9s of reliability (US grid) or four 9s reliability (European grid), then it can only happen for like 15 minutes per year in Europe or 150 min per year in the US. Now if you are only using wind for 10% of your power needs, a 10% drop in wind is not a big deal. But when you are using wind for 30% of your power needs, then the same variability becomes a bigger deal and might start to impact reliability, even though the wind itself is not more variable than before. Same for solar.

worrycue 5y ago

Well just last month … https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-prices-in-europe-hit-records-after-wind-stops-blowing-11631528258 https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-prices-in-europe-hit-rec... Renewables like solar and wind depend on the weather - which we cannot control at all. Non-renewables have dependencies too like politics and economics but at least it’s something we have some control over. If solar and wind is to completely replace non-renewables, their intermittency is going to have to be dealt with somehow - and huge excess in generation and storage capacity is only way that comes to mind at the moment.

pfdietz 5y ago

You can play with designing a renewable + storage system to supply "synthetic baseload" using actual historical weather data at this website: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ (The handling of transmission is greatly simplified, but that's ok for what that is.)