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If you lower this to, say, 75%, a good analysis will show that a renewables grid with zero storage is possible around the world. Storage is only required for t

If you lower this to, say, 75%, a good analysis will show that a renewables grid with zero storage is possible around the world. Storage is only required for the last n% and n is much larger than most people realize. If we accept that the energy economy will shift with supply-and-demand based pricing, what can actually happen is having peak production oversupply which will find users with its lower prices enabling off-peak-production to be high enough to meet peak demand. (this is a kind of thing that maybe needs blog posts with graphs to make the most sense) We would be in a very much better place if we were near n and it's probably not worth worrying that much yet because n is also quite far away.

skrause 4y ago
That was Germany's plan. Go to at least 80% renewable and fill up the rest with natural gas power plants that can change the load quickly. Oops.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Germany’s problem wasn’t the end goal but the path to it.
- pydry 4y ago
  That was literally everybody's plan. The alternative was to continue using coal while ramping up renewables. For all the handwringing about the turned off nuclear plants they were getting old in the tooth and wouldnt have made a substantive difference to the current crisis. New plants would take 3x as long and cost 3x as much. France is in just as much shit as germany this winter coz their nuke plants are aging out. The realistic alternatives for germany avoiding a gas crisis were dont turn off coal plants "just in case a war with russia starts" or dont try to rile up russia.
  - caf 4y ago
    Or build LNG import terminals.
    - pydry 4y ago
      Good luck doing that in the next 3 months.
      - caf 4y ago
        Sure, but you were talking about options to avoid the crisis before it happened.
        pydry 4y ago
        Fair point. I still doubt that it'd be enough, though. It just changes the bottleneck from port capacity to shipping capacity.
        caf 4y ago
        Japan manages to run on LNG imports. If Germany had the import infrastructure and started waving it's chequebook around, the ships would come.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  They could use hydrogen instead of natural gas. Today, green hydrogen in Europe would be cheaper per BTU than natural gas.

skrause 4y ago

That was Germany's plan. Go to at least 80% renewable and fill up the rest with natural gas power plants that can change the load quickly. Oops.

colechristensen 4y ago
Germany’s problem wasn’t the end goal but the path to it.
pydry 4y ago
That was literally everybody's plan. The alternative was to continue using coal while ramping up renewables. For all the handwringing about the turned off nuclear plants they were getting old in the tooth and wouldnt have made a substantive difference to the current crisis. New plants would take 3x as long and cost 3x as much. France is in just as much shit as germany this winter coz their nuke plants are aging out. The realistic alternatives for germany avoiding a gas crisis were dont turn off coal plants "just in case a war with russia starts" or dont try to rile up russia.
- caf 4y ago
  Or build LNG import terminals.
  - pydry 4y ago
    Good luck doing that in the next 3 months.
    - caf 4y ago
      Sure, but you were talking about options to avoid the crisis before it happened.
      - pydry 4y ago
        Fair point. I still doubt that it'd be enough, though. It just changes the bottleneck from port capacity to shipping capacity.
        caf 4y ago
        Japan manages to run on LNG imports. If Germany had the import infrastructure and started waving it's chequebook around, the ships would come.
pfdietz 4y ago
They could use hydrogen instead of natural gas. Today, green hydrogen in Europe would be cheaper per BTU than natural gas.