4 ms·
The problem with solar is unpredictability and A LOT of batteries needed to bridge the mismatch between production peaking at noon and consumption peaking at la
by ajuc 5y ago
The problem with solar is unpredictability and A LOT of batteries needed to bridge the mismatch between production peaking at noon and consumption peaking at late evening.
Both of these are solved with fusion power.
Energy market operates on the assumption that whoever unbalances the network has to pay for balancing it. Providing too much and too little energy is both bad - you have to pay someone else to use more/less or to produce less/more to balance the mess you made. There are specialized powerplants for this, they are "on standby" and jump in when needed - and they charge much more than the normal powerplants. When there's a big shortage they can charge absurd prices for energy. And if you caused the shortage by mispredicting weather - you have to pay for it.
This makes the energy provided by solar panels much less valuable than the energy provided by a predictable, controllable source. Often by 1:10 factor.
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- Joeri 5y agoBut nuclear power is also not predictable, as plants regularly experience unexpected downtime. No power source is fully predictable, which is why you need controllable power sources to make up the difference. I would say solar’s problem is controllability. You can only turn it up to the limit of the amount of sun received, which is none at night, and sometimes very little in the day. It remains to be seen how controllable fusion power will be. Will it be for base load only, or will it also be useful to flexibly dial up and down for variable load? Much of current nuclear power is base load only. Clean base load power is still super useful, but it is not a complete solution.
- ajuc 5y agoYes, unexpected stuff happen to baseload powerplants too. Once every year on average maybe? Probably less. If that happens you may need to pay for balancing once a year. Meanwhile solar is unexpected on the scale of minutes to hours, every day. It's not the same.
- chess_buster 5y agoNo its not. https://www.energymeteo.com/products/power_forecasts/wind-solar-power-forecasts.php https://www.energymeteo.com/products/power_forecasts/wind-so...
- st3ve445678 5y agoBut if we as a society decided to put a large investment into solar and had that augmenting the grid, you should be able to dramatically reduce the amount of fossil fuels used to produce our daily energy, thus slowing climate change. Imagine if we could cut fossil fuel energy by 40-50% and rely more heavily on solar/wind. Fusion may not be available for another 40 years and who knows what the environment situation will be then so we should probably be looking to leverage any clean sources that are available right now.
- socialdemocrat 5y agoYou don't need batteries for this. You could build concentrated solar power (CSP), instead. These have trailed PV development for years because they have not been paid a premium for being able to deliver power on demand. Thus PV has outcompeted them. But with better regulation giving them a premium for delivering power at night they are getting a comeback. Also thermal storage and cryogenic storage can easily provide enough capacity. The problem is that they are not as efficient as batteries. If you buy electricity but only get 50% of that electricity back after storage, then you need to sell at 200% the price you paid. Electricity prices don't swing enough today to make the feasible. But if far more wind and solar was built, then you would get much cheaper power at peak, which storage providers could buy and sell with a profit.