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We don't need to switch summer production to winter if we keep improving grid inter-connectors. We will still need a lot more storage though. And insulation.
by caoilte 5y ago
We don't need to switch summer production to winter if we keep improving grid inter-connectors. We will still need a lot more storage though. And insulation.
- ncmncm 5y agoGrid interconnection adds strategic risk, particularly for small countries. This is Europe's problem, particularly. It will be West Africa's, and South America's. China is building a submarine cable to South America for winter solar, but you may be sure they are also stockpiling coal for when the cable fails. They all need enough storage to not need interconnection, and then rely on interconnection to reduce cost and drawdown from storage.
- pfdietz 5y agoHow does that work? Are you connecting Europe to Africa? Even Spain has a large winter/summer swing in insolation.
- ncmncm 5y agoMost European connections to Africa have been cancelled as a consequence of massive photovoltaic cost reductions enabling local placement and overbuilding to compete. A few projects connecting Spain to African generation remain. Probably the most effective use for African solar energy production will be synthesis of hydrocarbons to be delivered by supertanker to high latitudes in winter, and for aircraft fuel.
- pfdietz 5y agoRight. Which means that transmission in Europe cannot be anything other than an ineffective solution to seasonal variation in solar generation. The seasonal variation in solar energy available to the European grid will be large, and one either uses storage to deal with that, has extremely large amounts of demand that could be dispatched on a seasonal basis, or just wastes most of the summer production. What would end up happening instead would be the excess and otherwise curtailed production would create an irresistible force driving something -- like hydrogen production -- to soak up that otherwise wasted output.