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There's a lot of reasons for optimism. Renewables plus storage are getting better than nuclear in so many ways. This alternative is faster to deploy, more resil
by markvdb 4y ago
There's a lot of reasons for optimism. Renewables plus storage are getting better than nuclear in so many ways. This alternative is faster to deploy, more resilient, (getting) less dependent on questionable imports, (getting) cheaper. The only structural disadvantage is space requirements, but even in that area, there is research on the benefits of symbiosis, like between agriculture and solar.
My experience tells me that no lobbyist will be able to fend off something intrinsically better in the long term.
- Cwizard 4y agoIs there a design yet for a power system that can run on fully on renewables in realistic conditions? I looked into this in 2017 and at the time there was no realistic design, they all relied on Gas powered plants to provide on demand production. Because at the time battery technology was not at the point it could provide reliable baseload. Did this change? From my research at the time, all the articles claiming renewables where improving to the point of being the most cost-effective where just taking the average production output of a solarpanel/windturbine, dividing that by cost and then extrapolating. Obviously this does not work beyond a certain percentage of production.
- markvdb 4y agoA lot has happened since 2017. There's been enormous evolution in: - solar and wind electricity generation: drastic cost reduction, massive scale-up - interconnects: lower cost, strong growth, especially in the EU - green hydrogen ecosystem: incredible cost reduction, massive scale-up - battery storage: drastic cost reduction, massive scale-up - pumped hydro storage: eking out the last bits - other storage tech: liquid metal, compressed CO2, ... - heat pumps: massive scale-up, incremental efficiency improvements, also large scale sea source like Helsinki I'm especially hopeful when it comes to green hydrogen derivatives as energy carriers. One of the more popular studies in this regard is https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2021.11.067 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2021.11.067 .