3 ms·
True, but you just won't find the necessary storage capacity to run solely on renewables — you'd need a miracle battery breakthrough or a miraculously convenien
by Zopieux 4y ago
True, but you just won't find the necessary storage capacity to run solely on renewables — you'd need a miracle battery breakthrough or a miraculously convenient landscape close to population centers to build tons of reversible water reservoirs.
You need your baseload to come from a steady, highly available, weather independent source. Nuclear is basically this only carbon free solution ticking the boxes.
- Turskarama 4y agoThat depends on where you live, and 80% of the worlds population lives in places where overbuilding enough storage _with current technology_ is still cheaper than nuclear. For that last 20%, building more grid connections towards the equator is again still cheaper than nuclear.
- ianburrell 4y agoAlso, the overbuilt solar and wind solution is better in other ways. It gives extra, dispatchable capacity which can be used for things like extracting CO2, and making hydrogen. Those will be important, and made fuels could be storage mechanism. It is likely better to use gas peaker plants for rare times without renewables and extract the CO2 later when sun is shining.
- natmaka 4y agoSome gas turbines can now burn (green) hydrogen. Germany deploys those beasts. https://www.ge.com/gas-power/future-of-energy/hydrogen-fueled-gas-turbines https://www.ge.com/gas-power/future-of-energy/hydrogen-fuele...
- Schroedingersat 4y agoAlternatively just have 3 hours of storage and keep the gas generators hanging around for that one week in two years they're needed. All the money wasted on nuclear can then be put towards electrification of emissions sources which are vastly more important than that last 0.5% of emissions (which will further increase the flexibility as it does so).