2 ms·

Dunkelflaute is 0.5% - 1.5% of the year and most of the events last shorter than 24h https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wi

by froh 4y ago

Dunkelflaute is 0.5% - 1.5% of the year and most of the events last shorter than 24h https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute in my book 98.5% easily fits the bill of "close to 100%" so the answer is exactly what we do today: have a reserve capacity. part of that may even be traditional peaker power plants that remain turned off most of the year just like today. I'd be curious about climate data on the distribution of Dunkelflaute duration, by region.

golem14 4y ago
I believe the difference is that during a Dunkelflaute, peaker plants might have to generate a large amount of or the majority of electricity, whereas today, peaker plants are build to only generate relatively small amount of power at the margin. So, we'd have to build a large number of peaker plants, which are really expensive in that they have to amortize their costs over a small amount of uptime.
- froh 4y ago
  short term weather forecasts are amazingly accurate. this allows us to deliberately "extend" the "range" of buffer storage. and even today in some situations some energy intense heavy industries have to pause production for a few hours if there is a lack of energy supply. It's a political problem, not a technical one, and we do not, absolutely not have to build up new parallel peaker capacity. we can simply keep select plants alive.
  - golem14 4y ago
    Figuring out how much extra capacity is needed still needs to be done. Simply stating that no new peaker plants are needed "because storage capacity will be there" is a bit too simplistic. I'd be glad if that's the case, but I'm not convinced it's actually true.
    - froh 4y ago
      right we have 7 years to figure this out for 80% renewables and 17 years to figure it out for close to 100% it took 1 year to build and start operation of giga Shanghai, and not much longer for giga Berlin. it's a political challenge, not a technical one.

by froh 4y ago

golem14 4y ago

I believe the difference is that during a Dunkelflaute, peaker plants might have to generate a large amount of or the majority of electricity, whereas today, peaker plants are build to only generate relatively small amount of power at the margin. So, we'd have to build a large number of peaker plants, which are really expensive in that they have to amortize their costs over a small amount of uptime.

froh 4y ago
short term weather forecasts are amazingly accurate. this allows us to deliberately "extend" the "range" of buffer storage. and even today in some situations some energy intense heavy industries have to pause production for a few hours if there is a lack of energy supply. It's a political problem, not a technical one, and we do not, absolutely not have to build up new parallel peaker capacity. we can simply keep select plants alive.
- golem14 4y ago
  Figuring out how much extra capacity is needed still needs to be done. Simply stating that no new peaker plants are needed "because storage capacity will be there" is a bit too simplistic. I'd be glad if that's the case, but I'm not convinced it's actually true.
  - froh 4y ago
    right we have 7 years to figure this out for 80% renewables and 17 years to figure it out for close to 100% it took 1 year to build and start operation of giga Shanghai, and not much longer for giga Berlin. it's a political challenge, not a technical one.