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> Renewables need to be combined with power sources that can be turned on and off quickly and on demand. No they don’t. Wind and solar energy output can be ver

> Renewables need to be combined with power sources that can be turned on and off quickly and on demand. No they don’t. Wind and solar energy output can be very well predicted for hours and days ahead.

holomorphically 5y ago
Solar and wind do not have the required energy density and will never be viable without nuclear. The alternative is to keep burning fossil fuels and blow past 3C because we are already locked into 2C+ of warming with no viable path to large scale atmospheric carbon and methane removal.
asteroidbelt 5y ago
OK, lots of downvotes and no replies. HN becomes very toxic these days.
- DisjointedHunt 5y ago
  This is sadly true and frequent downvoters need to have their points halved.
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    Apply that the same way for up or down and I like it.
catlikesshrimp 5y ago
First, you can't predict solar or wind days ahead in the same way you can't predict rain, days ahead. There are "weather forecasts", not cloud reading. Second. Even if you knew two days ahead about wind speed fluctuations that lasted for 10 to 20 minutes. What, then? You can't inform the population there will be 10 minute outages, in advance, or ask them to turn off appliances for exactly 10 minutes, in advance. Solar and wind aren't reliable. The plan is to turn on thermal plants when the wind stops blowing. In my very humble opinion, solar and wind aren't THE long term future of energy production. They have their uses, but the way it is being marketed obeys to political discourse, not reality.
- unsung 5y ago
  On a technical note, the first point is not really true. Using atmospheric models like WRF get you pretty good irradiance forecasts that are roughly proportional to PV output. I (very briefly) worked with a group doing just that for power companies in the southwest, and it was pretty decent out to 5 days or so. It eventually got picked up into another program [1] that would contract out to big PV installations. [0] https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/ https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/ [1] https://forecasting.energy.arizona.edu/sveri/ https://forecasting.energy.arizona.edu/sveri/
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- adev_ 5y ago
  > First, you can't predict solar or wind days ahead in the same way you can't predict rain, days ahead. There are "weather forecasts", not cloud reading. You can. And there is companies specialized in that for the Wind and solar industry. [1] The reason is pretty simple: Weather variability tend to be high at the local level but pretty predictable at the national level (the energy grid level). And to answer to the original post, yes Nuclear energy can also be fine grained controlled to compensate the renewable energy intermittency. It is done every day in France. It can be done yes, Is it efficient ? Not really. [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_forecasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_forecasting

holomorphically 5y ago

Solar and wind do not have the required energy density and will never be viable without nuclear. The alternative is to keep burning fossil fuels and blow past 3C because we are already locked into 2C+ of warming with no viable path to large scale atmospheric carbon and methane removal.

asteroidbelt 5y ago

OK, lots of downvotes and no replies. HN becomes very toxic these days.

DisjointedHunt 5y ago
This is sadly true and frequent downvoters need to have their points halved.
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  Apply that the same way for up or down and I like it.

catlikesshrimp 5y ago

First, you can't predict solar or wind days ahead in the same way you can't predict rain, days ahead. There are "weather forecasts", not cloud reading. Second. Even if you knew two days ahead about wind speed fluctuations that lasted for 10 to 20 minutes. What, then? You can't inform the population there will be 10 minute outages, in advance, or ask them to turn off appliances for exactly 10 minutes, in advance. Solar and wind aren't reliable. The plan is to turn on thermal plants when the wind stops blowing. In my very humble opinion, solar and wind aren't THE long term future of energy production. They have their uses, but the way it is being marketed obeys to political discourse, not reality.

unsung 5y ago
On a technical note, the first point is not really true. Using atmospheric models like WRF get you pretty good irradiance forecasts that are roughly proportional to PV output. I (very briefly) worked with a group doing just that for power companies in the southwest, and it was pretty decent out to 5 days or so. It eventually got picked up into another program [1] that would contract out to big PV installations. [0] https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/ https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/ [1] https://forecasting.energy.arizona.edu/sveri/ https://forecasting.energy.arizona.edu/sveri/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
adev_ 5y ago
> First, you can't predict solar or wind days ahead in the same way you can't predict rain, days ahead. There are "weather forecasts", not cloud reading. You can. And there is companies specialized in that for the Wind and solar industry. [1] The reason is pretty simple: Weather variability tend to be high at the local level but pretty predictable at the national level (the energy grid level). And to answer to the original post, yes Nuclear energy can also be fine grained controlled to compensate the renewable energy intermittency. It is done every day in France. It can be done yes, Is it efficient ? Not really. [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_forecasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_forecasting