4 ms·

Transition to solar is a challenge. Solvable probably, but transitions are hard. This explains it well: https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/the-solar-power-du

• ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  People not understanding the duck curve is a pet peeve of mine and I thought it had died out over time but that article is only months old and full of misinformation. The duck curve "problem" is that the gas plants need to ramp up fast. If they can't ramp fast enough, you need to start them slightly early and turn some other more easily adjustable source down, usually wasting solar. The fix, apart from just asking gas plants to ramp faster, is battery storage. When the duck curve was first discussed you couldn't even get cheap solar, never mind cheap battery storage and they thought that this small waste of solar might prevent it being cost competitive. This did not turn out to be a problem anyway, but batteries also fixed it. You can see the batteries charging and discharging on the CAISO live graphs. But, it is not about the height of the peak. We have more than enough capacity to meet the peak because we build enough for the yearly peak which is higher than the other peaks. We just didn't have stuff that could ramp fast enough. Now we do. Batteries. Building coal or nuclear as that proposes does nothing to solve this problem.