4 ms·

Another way of thinking about "baseline" power is that is produces power 24/7. Energy demand fluctuates a lot during the day[1]. Cheap, reliable sources of ener

Another way of thinking about "baseline" power is that is produces power 24/7. Energy demand fluctuates a lot during the day[1]. Cheap, reliable sources of energy serve as a "baseline", and additional "peaker" plants spin up to serve the spikes in demand during the day. Solar and wind are unreliable power sources. That is OPs point - you can't compare nuclear and solar kw for kw because they are not the same. Nobody has near enough storage to allow solar to be treated as a 24/7 reliable power source. [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915

jillesvangurp 5y ago
I know the theory; the practice is different though: plenty of places doing just fine on solar, wind, and battery. Wind still blows at night though. And if you install a bit more than you need, you can deal with temporarily reduced local capacity as well. And with the cost savings, 2x or 3x is entirely feasible (but probably overkill). And if you use interconnected grids like this article talks about, it's always going to be windy somewhere and you can add remote solar setups, hydro, batteries, etc. to the mix. Batteries alone remove most of the need for expensive gas peaker plants in a lot of places already. Interconnecting a diversity of solutions provides plenty of base load and resilience. Texas could have uses some when their baseload providing gas, coal, and nuclear failed them last winter. The issue I have with "base load" is that it's a very fuzzy term that seems to be rarely specified in GW. As soon as you do that or specify the amount of time you need to bridge with that capacity, the relevant unit becomes GWH. Which of course is a common unit of storage and energy production. Plenty of ways to provide large quantities of that sustainably; and people already do in many ways. It's just a function of cost and engineering proper solutions. It's not even that expensive mostly. Especially compared to building nuclear power plants.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  > plenty of places doing just fine on solar, wind, and battery. Do you have more information about this? I've seen lots of claims about "X city/country is running on 100% renewables", but these are always talking about net numbers. i.e. they produce enough renewable energy to power themselves if they had the storage, but they don't. They still import fossil fuel electricity when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

I know the theory; the practice is different though: plenty of places doing just fine on solar, wind, and battery. Wind still blows at night though. And if you install a bit more than you need, you can deal with temporarily reduced local capacity as well. And with the cost savings, 2x or 3x is entirely feasible (but probably overkill). And if you use interconnected grids like this article talks about, it's always going to be windy somewhere and you can add remote solar setups, hydro, batteries, etc. to the mix. Batteries alone remove most of the need for expensive gas peaker plants in a lot of places already. Interconnecting a diversity of solutions provides plenty of base load and resilience. Texas could have uses some when their baseload providing gas, coal, and nuclear failed them last winter. The issue I have with "base load" is that it's a very fuzzy term that seems to be rarely specified in GW. As soon as you do that or specify the amount of time you need to bridge with that capacity, the relevant unit becomes GWH. Which of course is a common unit of storage and energy production. Plenty of ways to provide large quantities of that sustainably; and people already do in many ways. It's just a function of cost and engineering proper solutions. It's not even that expensive mostly. Especially compared to building nuclear power plants.

dahfizz 5y ago
> plenty of places doing just fine on solar, wind, and battery. Do you have more information about this? I've seen lots of claims about "X city/country is running on 100% renewables", but these are always talking about net numbers. i.e. they produce enough renewable energy to power themselves if they had the storage, but they don't. They still import fossil fuel electricity when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.