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Solar generation is much, much lower in the winter than in the summer, so we need to massively overbuild solar to have reasonable generation in the winter. And
by ericd 3y ago
Solar generation is much, much lower in the winter than in the summer, so we need to massively overbuild solar to have reasonable generation in the winter. And there are many times when there’s very little generation for a week or more because of weather, so you need to massively overbuild storage, too. Combined, it’s not cheap to reliably replace base load power.
Edit: I should note that one proposal I’ve seen to mitigate some of this is to improve long distance transmission, since it’s never cloudy everywhere, and taken to an extreme, you could, for example, put lots of solar in the Sahara to power the UK, or even send power from the hemisphere in summer to the hemisphere in winter. But then, besides the huge capital costs for building out transmission infra, you run into energy independence issues/trust issues between governments. But maybe within large political blocs like the EU, Italy/Southern Spain could sell solar power to the more northern European countries, with less risk.
- lumost 3y agoThis is true, however at the end of the day - this would work out to a per kwh cost of overbuilt infrastructure. Is there a reliable study of what this kwh cost is? In New England we pay upwards of 14 cents per kwh or higher. My understanding is that this would buy a substantial overbuilt, it's likely that energy prices upwards of 30 cents per kwh would be politically viable provided there were guardrails to keep heat/hot water cheap.
- ericd 3y agoRight, you can just wrap it into the cost. I'm not sure, I'm not an expert in this, but my impression is that permitting and labor are a really big portion of the cost in the US, rather than eg panels being the driving cost. There are also a lot of blockages in getting projects approved because there's not enough transmission capacity in many places, and many places require that the new producer fund the new transmission infrastructure, rather than that cost being shared, which is insane.
- ta1243 3y agoTransmission capacity does seem to be the main problem with expanding the grid in several countries - a problem that applies equally to new nuclear (which can't be where older coal/gas/oil plants are as they tend to need things like large amounts of water)
- konschubert 3y agoYou can build wind to compensate some of this. And of course a ton of short term storage. And then you build a bunch of cheap, inefficient gas peaker plants for the two weeks a year where neither are enough. At the moment it looks like that will be a lot cheaper than nuclear. But if nuclear gets cheaper, that’s also a great option!
- ericd 3y agoGood points, all. But you'd still need to overbuild solar by quite a bit in order to make a reasonable amount in winter, in many areas.
- konschubert 3y agoIn Northern Europe, you definitely need Wind power and probably some natural gas dispatchable capacity. In most other places, you can overbuild the PV panels. Which isn't too bad, since you do not have to overbuild inverters or grid connections.
- ta1243 3y agoOr hydrogen. On windy days (or sunny in the southern US) you use the excess electricity to generate hydrogen, and then when there's a shortfall you convert it back to electricity.