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> one solution is to just over-construct renewables How is that a solution? No amount of solar/wind farms will make sun shine in Europe at night, or shine suff

• edhelas 4y ago
  THIS Maybe if we have enough solar-panels we can catch the moon-light enough to have a proper baseload, who knows!
• dane-pgp 4y ago
  > No amount of solar/wind farms will make sun shine in Europe at night Wind farms don't need to make the sun shine at night, they just need to make the wind blow at night. So far they have managed to achieve that quite well. More seriously, the amount of solar/wind farms you need is just enough to charge (home/car/grid) batteries during the day with the amount of energy that you will lack during the night. Fortunately energy requirements at night are lower than during the day, and the wind keeps blowing, so you might not even need batteries at all most nights, and could get away with just a 2x factor of wind farm over-construction. > shine sufficiently in winter (when energy needs are the greatest) Yes, this is the real problem. In the winter there are is greater demand and less supply; windless days become much more significant; and batteries can't store summer energy to be used in winter. For this, you do need more like 5x over-construction, perhaps combined with things like biofuels or atmospheric carbon capture using the excess energy during the summer.