5 ms·
> It's surprisingly effective to store thermal energy over several months. And how much would you need? Have you done the maths on this? I did. There are plent
by AnonymousPlanet 3y ago
> It's surprisingly effective to store thermal energy over several months.
And how much would you need? Have you done the maths on this? I did. There are plenty of times in e.g. November when neither wind nor solar are good for much (production drops to like 1-2% of the average). That goes on for weeks. Just trying to compensate those losses for two weeks for the current amount of wind and solar Germany has, takes > 10 TWh of storage. How much thermal storage do you think would we need to build to get that?
I made those calculations to get an idea how much storage we would need to be able to finally shut down power stations running on coal or gas. I was quite shocked about the number.
Whenever someone points out the realities of things some people are quick to counter with some utopian ideas, but usually they don't do the math on it. I encourage you to always make a calculation, at least on a napkin, to get an idea of the magnitude of what would be required.
Your comment reads like it would be as easy as the flick of a wrist because something "is surprisingly effective". It's not. It takes the amount of many, many Stuttgart 21s in dedication, costs and time.
- mschuster91 3y ago> There are plenty of times in e.g. November when neither wind nor solar are good for much (production drops to like 1-2% of the average). That goes on for weeks. So what. Either overbuild solar and wind to a degree that even with reduced generation capacity needs can still be met and use the over-generation in summer to produce hydrogen, e-fuels for air and maritime or whatever, or run the capacity of the storage until it's depleted and use gas peakers for the 2-4 weeks in the year where nothing else can fill the demand.
- cbmuser 3y agoOverbuilding doesn’t help when there is zero wind or solar generation. Wind is usually tied across the continent and low wind in Germany usually conincides with low wind in the rest of Europe.
- AnonymousPlanet 3y agoPlease have a thorough look at https://www.smard.de https://www.smard.de and download their data to do some statistics on it. This should give you an impression of what, when and how long is missing. Hint: It's not just two to three weeks per year. There are many such gaps. And they're not just a couple of days long. All your ideas hinge on storage that somehow magically comes to existence. I told you the numbers and you then argue with science fiction. No one knows how to build a reliable hydrogen network of the size that would be necessary. The efficiencies for generation are abysmal, especially if you try to generate just from water and electricity and not from natural gas. I don't believe you even remotely grasp the magnitude of the challenges ahead. Again, I would like to encourage the use of real data and math. Less science fiction and wishful thinking.
- adrianN 3y agoTry playing around with this: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/