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Grid connections will be used when they are cheaper than drawing down storage. You need them anyway, and want them as a place to dump excess power when local st
by ncmncm 4y ago
Grid connections will be used when they are cheaper than drawing down storage. You need them anyway, and want them as a place to dump excess power when local storage is full.
Storage cost is falling even faster than renewable generation did, coming from behind. Now the factories for storage are under construction. By the time we have enough renewable generation capacity to charge storage from, storage will be very cheap. It would be stupid to build out more storage than you have excess to charge it from, beyond some batteries for load smoothing.
Unsurprisingly, people responsible are doing non-stupid things. (Except placing solar farms in the desert, that is indefensible.)
- ben_w 4y ago> (Except placing solar farms in the desert, that is indefensible.) You should blog or vlog about this. I've seen you write this enough times over the last few years(?), and linking to a longer-form argument may be worthwhile. (I should do the same for the global power grid; there are some wrinkles I want to explore with that also).
- ncmncm 4y agoIt's trivial, really: heat and dust drag down conversion efficiency and panel life. There are just so many other, better places to put them that may continue being used.