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This article is a mess. Energy is NOT power. Reporting on energy (which is what the original publication does; and even they confuse it) is almost pointless.

This article is a mess. Energy is NOT power. Reporting on energy (which is what the original publication does; and even they confuse it) is almost pointless. We need power. Not energy. Let me explain. There is no such thing as a useful measure of energy reliability. Energy is the accumulation of power over time. Here's a super simplistic example to illustrate the point: You spend all day walking through the desert. Your water bottle is empty. You drank it all. You really need water, yet there's none to be found. You nearly die a few times, yet manage to make it out to a settlement by nightfall. Someone there fills your bottle with water. A reporter says your bottle, over that 24 hour period, was full. That's the way you compute energy. You can have zero power for 12 hours and then have some for another 12. Energy just adds-up all the bits of power you had over 24 hours and reports it as one number. Energy comparisons are useless. Here's reality: Solar is, nominally, about 50% reliable (if this term isn't comfortable, think "available"). No? It turns off at night. Roughly 50% of the time...it does not work. Wind, on the other hand, does not suffer from this issue. It is much more reliable. With the addition of a nominal amount of storage wind can easily get up to 95% reliability. Solar, with the same amount of storage, runs about 70% reliability. This is about power delivery. Consistent. Water bottle in the desert, to use when you need water. Ignoring all other factors (environmental, wildlife, NIMBY, noise, etc.), wind is a far better technology than solar. Yet, again, to pull this back into the realm of what we should discussing: We need to talk about power, not energy. When you go to charge your electric car at the same time a million other people want to do the same thing, you need power.

danhor 4y ago
Both are great, since while the daily cycle is a problem with solar, the seasonal variations are a far larger issue (since much mobe energy storage is needed). But both complement each other. Wind is stronger in the winter and solar is strong in the summer. The best consistency is achieved when both are used, not one or the other.
- robomartin 4y ago
  No, not really. That's the impression most people have. For example, solar, in the northern hemisphere, is --to use your term-- stronger in March/April, not the summer. This is due to the panel negative temperature coefficient. > The best consistency is achieved when both are used, not one or the other. No. Wind with approximately three hours of storage is about 95% reliable. Once again, it's about power, not energy.
  - gwright 4y ago
    > No. Wind with approximately three hours of storage is about 95% reliable That isn't enough, unless you are happy with 18 days of no power per year. Of course you could maintain traditional power plans to provide power for those 18 days, but then you've doubled or tripled your power costs because you have purchased two systems for providing power. An intermittent system and a second system with the same capacity that is unused 95% of the time but must be available at a moments notice. And of course you have to maintain a viable supply chain for fuel, repairs, maintenance, labor, etc.
    - robomartin 4y ago
      > That isn't enough > you have purchased two systems for providing power. Precisely! Correct! Therein lies the problem of renewables few people seem to understand, talk about and want to talk about. Solar and wind require 100% backup for the period of time during which they are not locally available. BTW, a good deal of what I have been saying is supported with data from this paper [0]. It analyzes 39 years of data from 42 different countries. It does a good job of displaying the difficult relationships between various mixes and solar, wind and storage. Figure 2 is excellent. It takes a bit of study to internalize. After studying these charts almost everyone should have serious questions about solar. This is where the 95% figure for wind comes from. And, BTW, figure 2 also shows that without overbuilding capacity both technologies are challenging. There are ways to look at using distant solar and wind to provide for power holes. For example, have wind power brought in from 500 to 1000 miles away. The idea is you know there's a seriously good probability for the weather being different enough that you cover the power holes at location A using power from location B. That's great. The question then becomes: How do residents of location B deal with their issues when you are sucking-up their power from location A. No simple answers to this other than to say that both solar and wind have to be overbuilt and require 100% backup --of some form, I don't care what type-- for when they cannot deliver. And so your question is perfectly valid and one that really needs to be on the table, front and center. I have asked it before. It is usually met with attacks and insults. It can take many forms, the most basic being: If you need full 100% reliable backup available at a moments' notice, 24/7/365, are these truly the best technologies for the job? I have argued that nuclear is a solid solution with 100% availability and the power density to deliver our needs. That is met with even more violent attacks and insults. Apparently I am somewhere between a really stupid person and a criminal for suggesting any of this. Having devoted a significant effort towards understanding the many intricacies surrounding these issues, my thinking has morphed over time. I used to think we had to consider deploying a massive amount of nuclear power (somewhere beyond 1000 new power plants) for a full transition to electric vehicles and homes. That, of course, is as close to impossible as one can get. I think a sensible path might be to focus on the 95% reliability of wind (which is far better than anything solar can achieve) and provide that 5% backup with regionally shared nuclear power and other power sources. We would still need hundreds of nuclear power plants built over the next, say, 30 to 50 years. Difficult, yes. Here's the shocking reality of a transition to full electrification (homes and transportation): We have to, at a minimum, TRIPLE our power generation and transport capacity. Why triple? Well, if we are going to go clean, you have to replace all of our existing power generation with 100% reliable clean alternatives. That means we need to build 1200 GW of new clean power generation. As we do this, we shut down what we don't want (if we can). Next, we need another 1200 GW --at a minimum-- to power a full fleet of electric ground vehicles. If we start talking cargo ships and aircraft, we are likely at another 1000 GW or far more. The task, then, is to build somewhere around 3000 to 4000 GW of new clean power generation sources. They have to be 100% reliable, or you need to grossly overbuild to compensate for that. The, question, then: Can we do this? In 25 years? No way. How about 50 years? Maybe? Tough to say. It sure a hell isn't happening in ten or fifteen, which makes the dramatic claims being made by politicians and their supporters nothing less than ridiculous. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z

danhor 4y ago

Both are great, since while the daily cycle is a problem with solar, the seasonal variations are a far larger issue (since much mobe energy storage is needed). But both complement each other. Wind is stronger in the winter and solar is strong in the summer. The best consistency is achieved when both are used, not one or the other.

robomartin 4y ago
No, not really. That's the impression most people have. For example, solar, in the northern hemisphere, is --to use your term-- stronger in March/April, not the summer. This is due to the panel negative temperature coefficient. > The best consistency is achieved when both are used, not one or the other. No. Wind with approximately three hours of storage is about 95% reliable. Once again, it's about power, not energy.
- gwright 4y ago
  > No. Wind with approximately three hours of storage is about 95% reliable That isn't enough, unless you are happy with 18 days of no power per year. Of course you could maintain traditional power plans to provide power for those 18 days, but then you've doubled or tripled your power costs because you have purchased two systems for providing power. An intermittent system and a second system with the same capacity that is unused 95% of the time but must be available at a moments notice. And of course you have to maintain a viable supply chain for fuel, repairs, maintenance, labor, etc.
  - robomartin 4y ago
    > That isn't enough > you have purchased two systems for providing power. Precisely! Correct! Therein lies the problem of renewables few people seem to understand, talk about and want to talk about. Solar and wind require 100% backup for the period of time during which they are not locally available. BTW, a good deal of what I have been saying is supported with data from this paper [0]. It analyzes 39 years of data from 42 different countries. It does a good job of displaying the difficult relationships between various mixes and solar, wind and storage. Figure 2 is excellent. It takes a bit of study to internalize. After studying these charts almost everyone should have serious questions about solar. This is where the 95% figure for wind comes from. And, BTW, figure 2 also shows that without overbuilding capacity both technologies are challenging. There are ways to look at using distant solar and wind to provide for power holes. For example, have wind power brought in from 500 to 1000 miles away. The idea is you know there's a seriously good probability for the weather being different enough that you cover the power holes at location A using power from location B. That's great. The question then becomes: How do residents of location B deal with their issues when you are sucking-up their power from location A. No simple answers to this other than to say that both solar and wind have to be overbuilt and require 100% backup --of some form, I don't care what type-- for when they cannot deliver. And so your question is perfectly valid and one that really needs to be on the table, front and center. I have asked it before. It is usually met with attacks and insults. It can take many forms, the most basic being: If you need full 100% reliable backup available at a moments' notice, 24/7/365, are these truly the best technologies for the job? I have argued that nuclear is a solid solution with 100% availability and the power density to deliver our needs. That is met with even more violent attacks and insults. Apparently I am somewhere between a really stupid person and a criminal for suggesting any of this. Having devoted a significant effort towards understanding the many intricacies surrounding these issues, my thinking has morphed over time. I used to think we had to consider deploying a massive amount of nuclear power (somewhere beyond 1000 new power plants) for a full transition to electric vehicles and homes. That, of course, is as close to impossible as one can get. I think a sensible path might be to focus on the 95% reliability of wind (which is far better than anything solar can achieve) and provide that 5% backup with regionally shared nuclear power and other power sources. We would still need hundreds of nuclear power plants built over the next, say, 30 to 50 years. Difficult, yes. Here's the shocking reality of a transition to full electrification (homes and transportation): We have to, at a minimum, TRIPLE our power generation and transport capacity. Why triple? Well, if we are going to go clean, you have to replace all of our existing power generation with 100% reliable clean alternatives. That means we need to build 1200 GW of new clean power generation. As we do this, we shut down what we don't want (if we can). Next, we need another 1200 GW --at a minimum-- to power a full fleet of electric ground vehicles. If we start talking cargo ships and aircraft, we are likely at another 1000 GW or far more. The task, then, is to build somewhere around 3000 to 4000 GW of new clean power generation sources. They have to be 100% reliable, or you need to grossly overbuild to compensate for that. The, question, then: Can we do this? In 25 years? No way. How about 50 years? Maybe? Tough to say. It sure a hell isn't happening in ten or fifteen, which makes the dramatic claims being made by politicians and their supporters nothing less than ridiculous. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z