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Ideally, you overbuild and have some flexible consumer of electricity that can arbitrarily ramp consumption up or down to suck off any excess supply whenever in

Ideally, you overbuild and have some flexible consumer of electricity that can arbitrarily ramp consumption up or down to suck off any excess supply whenever inflexible basal civilization demand doesn't match supply, e.g. ramp up when everyone is asleep and ramp down if a reactor needs to go offline. This is called demand response, https://www.energy.gov/oe/activities/technology-development/grid-modernization-and-smart-grid/demand-response https://www.energy.gov/oe/activities/technology-development/..., and it's probably as important of a component to future grid management as energy storage.

retrac 5y ago
Right. A useful sink for surplus energy could be something like surplus heat or electricity to synthesize carbon-neutral fuels. We're not likely to get large electric aircraft anytime soon.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Electric aircraft doesn't really strike me as this kind of customer. Aircraft has relatively inflexible fueling demands based on customer demand that is reserved weeks ahead of time. Bitcoin mining is commonly promoted as this kind of ideal electricity consumer. Hydrogen production could be another. However, I think more interesting for this community would be to build some kind of demand response general computing datacenter. Basically, sell computing resources with poor availability guarantees, but at a cheaper rate than standard datacenters. i.e. we'll run your batch jobs very cheaply, but we can't give you strong guarantees about how long it will take because we have to wait for excess grid electricity to have the energy to run them. Best case that's every night. Worst case we won't be able to run anything for weeks because Texas is going through another freak winter storm.
  - Gare 5y ago
    > Electric aircraft doesn't really strike me as this kind of customer. Aircraft has relatively inflexible fueling demands based on customer demand that is reserved weeks ahead of time. I think you misunderstood. The parent comment implied that excess electricity could be use to produce synthetic fuels (via carbon capture) to power conventional airplanes, ships or other machinery.
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      I did misunderstand. Thanks!
  - toast0 5y ago
    If you have datacenters on multiple grids (and applications that are favorable to being moved around), you could direct traffic to where energy was abundant. This is not uncommon for large commercial sites; you can usually get a better rate from the utility if you commit to demand response, and it's not too hard to shift load if you're already doing multi-site for reliability/continuity)
- kevinak 5y ago
  …or maybe a censorship resistant peer 2 peer cash that could also subsidise these plants

retrac 5y ago

Right. A useful sink for surplus energy could be something like surplus heat or electricity to synthesize carbon-neutral fuels. We're not likely to get large electric aircraft anytime soon.

anonporridge 5y ago
Electric aircraft doesn't really strike me as this kind of customer. Aircraft has relatively inflexible fueling demands based on customer demand that is reserved weeks ahead of time. Bitcoin mining is commonly promoted as this kind of ideal electricity consumer. Hydrogen production could be another. However, I think more interesting for this community would be to build some kind of demand response general computing datacenter. Basically, sell computing resources with poor availability guarantees, but at a cheaper rate than standard datacenters. i.e. we'll run your batch jobs very cheaply, but we can't give you strong guarantees about how long it will take because we have to wait for excess grid electricity to have the energy to run them. Best case that's every night. Worst case we won't be able to run anything for weeks because Texas is going through another freak winter storm.
- Gare 5y ago
  > Electric aircraft doesn't really strike me as this kind of customer. Aircraft has relatively inflexible fueling demands based on customer demand that is reserved weeks ahead of time. I think you misunderstood. The parent comment implied that excess electricity could be use to produce synthetic fuels (via carbon capture) to power conventional airplanes, ships or other machinery.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    I did misunderstand. Thanks!
- toast0 5y ago
  If you have datacenters on multiple grids (and applications that are favorable to being moved around), you could direct traffic to where energy was abundant. This is not uncommon for large commercial sites; you can usually get a better rate from the utility if you commit to demand response, and it's not too hard to shift load if you're already doing multi-site for reliability/continuity)
kevinak 5y ago
…or maybe a censorship resistant peer 2 peer cash that could also subsidise these plants