3 ms·
There also is no upper bound on the maximum time, just a lower and lower probability. Like with flooding, there's a recurrence interval. An hour long blackout
by itishappy 3y ago
There also is no upper bound on the maximum time, just a lower and lower probability. Like with flooding, there's a recurrence interval.
An hour long blackout may happen once a week.
A day long blackout may happen once a year.
A week long blackout may happen once a decade.
(Numbers have been made up to illustrate the point.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100-year_flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100-year_flood
- littlestymaar 3y agoThe problem is that is non-tropical regions, in winter you get less sun and long periods (3 weeks is routine in European winter) with no winds so you need to be able to supply enough power for a very big amount of time.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoThere has never been a 3 week wind drought recorded on the North Sea. Wind droughts on cloudy days are even more rare.
- eldaisfish 3y agonot three, but 2022 saw a two week period of wind drought in the north sea. This was well documented.
- littlestymaar 3y agoYou don't need to have complete wind drought to have issues (three weeks with only occasional spikes topping at 50% available power is the kind of behavior I'm referring to, and this is routine). And most wind turbines aren't located in the middle of the North sea either.
- gpm 3y agoThe same is true of other types of energy production... like when France lost 50% of it's nuclear simultaneously... https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220902-france-to-restart-all-nuclear-reactors-by-winter-amid-energy-crunch https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220902-france-to-restar... Ultimately every technology has some unplanned downtime, and there will always be a risk of too much not generating simultaneously.