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> To provide more context, wind and solar were both in the low $30's/MWh of LCOE (levelized cost of energy) 3 years ago[0], with that number predicted to contin

> To provide more context, wind and solar were both in the low $30's/MWh of LCOE (levelized cost of energy) 3 years ago[0], with that number predicted to continue falling rapidly. This is like comparing cost of water during a flood and during a drought. London water authority can purify rainwater/river water for $0.1 per tonne, or can desalinate seawater for $2 per ton. Why would they go with expensive desalination? Obviously when there is a drought there is no rainwater to purify, and it has worked out cheaper to install a more expensive, reliable source of water, than it was to create water storage for all of London to last through the worst possible drought. Water and energy are similar in that, if they really run out, people start dying. They are different because you can easily store a week's worth of water in your house, but try store a week's worth of energy. Some countries, like India, Australia and US, can really rely on Solar. But northern countries really cannot. In UK solar panels give 10x less energy in the Winter than in the Summer. And some countries don't even have good wind sources.

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
The biggest differences between electricity and water is that water is that water is really hard to transport (cause heavy) and droughts can last for years and effect giant areas. With solar and wind on the other hand, their supply is fairly predictable and variation is mostly local (i.e. it sometimes is cloudy in Germany, but Germany and Britain have almost completely uncorrelated weather). Also it's easy to send electricity 2-4 thousand miles with only minor (10%) losses using high voltage DC. As such you can build a grid with 60-80% renewables with minimal storage. You just make it large to remove local variation in weather and use a mix of wind and solar for your renewables (which are anti-correlated which gives you better reliability). You then can make up any renewable shortages with peaker plants that burn fossil fuels, but if you have a little extra renewable capacity you can keep them from running most of the time. Edit: Also hydro makes a really good battery for the several week timespan. It can't meet 100% of power needed but (especially if you bank water) can provide a decent percent of total demand for a while.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
If you actually look at those northern cloudy countries case by case they all have solutions. You can vaguely handwave at "not everywhere has hydro resource", "some countries don't have neighbors with uncorrelated wind", "offshore windns prohibitive in deep water", "some countries have cloudy winters" and so on, but where about 98% of the world live each negative in one category is met with enough positives in the other categories that it turns out that VRE is the most cost effective strategy and the gaps can he filled with existing known solutions like W2E and turbine upgrades on hydro. Having 2% of the world needing to source 30% of their electricity from gas isn't a good reason to put the brakes on the 99% of electricity and 80% of other energy that can be decarbonized much more quickly with wind and solar than any other choice. Even if it were impossible to decarbonise fully with a VRE dominant strategy, pipelining it until it hits around 50% curtailed as the emissions it avoids while nuclear is being built will be more than funding the nuclear 20% sooner and it will remain useful for producing hydrogen/ammonia/etc. In this case the optimal strategy would be fund both immediately (which china, india, japan, and france are doing), rather than using hypothetical nuclear to attack and slow real VRE buildout.

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago

The biggest differences between electricity and water is that water is that water is really hard to transport (cause heavy) and droughts can last for years and effect giant areas. With solar and wind on the other hand, their supply is fairly predictable and variation is mostly local (i.e. it sometimes is cloudy in Germany, but Germany and Britain have almost completely uncorrelated weather). Also it's easy to send electricity 2-4 thousand miles with only minor (10%) losses using high voltage DC. As such you can build a grid with 60-80% renewables with minimal storage. You just make it large to remove local variation in weather and use a mix of wind and solar for your renewables (which are anti-correlated which gives you better reliability). You then can make up any renewable shortages with peaker plants that burn fossil fuels, but if you have a little extra renewable capacity you can keep them from running most of the time. Edit: Also hydro makes a really good battery for the several week timespan. It can't meet 100% of power needed but (especially if you bank water) can provide a decent percent of total demand for a while.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

If you actually look at those northern cloudy countries case by case they all have solutions. You can vaguely handwave at "not everywhere has hydro resource", "some countries don't have neighbors with uncorrelated wind", "offshore windns prohibitive in deep water", "some countries have cloudy winters" and so on, but where about 98% of the world live each negative in one category is met with enough positives in the other categories that it turns out that VRE is the most cost effective strategy and the gaps can he filled with existing known solutions like W2E and turbine upgrades on hydro. Having 2% of the world needing to source 30% of their electricity from gas isn't a good reason to put the brakes on the 99% of electricity and 80% of other energy that can be decarbonized much more quickly with wind and solar than any other choice. Even if it were impossible to decarbonise fully with a VRE dominant strategy, pipelining it until it hits around 50% curtailed as the emissions it avoids while nuclear is being built will be more than funding the nuclear 20% sooner and it will remain useful for producing hydrogen/ammonia/etc. In this case the optimal strategy would be fund both immediately (which china, india, japan, and france are doing), rather than using hypothetical nuclear to attack and slow real VRE buildout.