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What do you do when there is no sun nor wind ?
by Kuinox 4y ago
What do you do when there is no sun nor wind ?
- pfdietz 4y agoYou use a backup source. Currently that would likely be gas; increasingly batteries are taking over for short term, and in the long term hydrogen can be added. At reasonable cost projections, renewables + batteries + hydrogen will give a 100% renewable grid at a cost less than one including new nuclear plants. Additional strategies (transmission, demand dispatch, other storage technologies) can only improve the case for renewables vs. nuclear.
- Kuinox 4y agoThank you for describing Germany strategy that have been internationally shown to be a bad idea these last months.
- pfdietz 4y agoGermany failed to roll out enough renewables. They were depending on gas for more than backing up renewables.
- Kuinox 4y agoExcept you still need a backup energy source like you said. They failed to roll out enough renewables ? How much do you want them to install ? Right now they have: - 55GW of installed solar, outputing 0% because it's the night. - 65GW of installed wind power, at 22% because not enough wind. Except, they need 60GW right now. They would need 390W of installed wind power to handle this totally regular evening. That's more wind energy than what both USA, and China have currently installed.
- pfdietz 4y agoYes, you need a backup source. In a 100% renewable grid, that backup source could be (for example) hydrogen instead of natural gas. Some other shorter term storage systems would handle most of the short term load shifting, and hydrogen would cover seasonal shifting and rare prolonged dark/calm periods.