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This is true for power but it's not true for energy in total. A lot of energy is used at night by burning fossil fuels for heat directly in the home. This is s
by stormbrew 4y ago
This is true for power but it's not true for energy in total. A lot of energy is used at night by burning fossil fuels for heat directly in the home.
This is something you have to factor in when reading boldly optimistic claims about how somehow solar and wind can work everywhere without even storage.
Maybe if we never stop pumping natural gas into our homes to burn it, but that's not exactly in line with the goals.
In reality, for anything north enough to get snow on the regular you can't use today's electricity consumption numbers to judge future needs. When everyone switches to heat pumps base load at night is going to skyrocket.
- tuatoru 4y agoI agree that you can't run on PV alone without storage, without a grid that circles the world. But that's not the situation we face. There are PV, wind, and hydro for generation, and a huge variety of storage options from pumped hydro and compressed air through thermal and batteries to electrolyzed hydrogen and derivatives. Gas (methane) doesn't have to come from the ground. The price of electrolysed hydrogen is dropping. It's early days; there's a lot of learning curve ahead, so we can expect further falls in price. Once you have hydrogen you can use it as-is or combine it with air-captured carbon for synthetic methane and re-use existing infrastructure. Electrolysis is quite complementary to solar. It uses DC voltage (direct from the panels); and PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane) electrolysers start in a second or so, so passing clouds and such are not a problem. Solid oxide and alkaline methods have slightly longer startup times so may require an hour or so of battery storage alongside the panels. Carbon capture is similar to these latter two as I understand it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]