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I’d love to know how it’s possible to supply peak demand in the UK on a still day in January purely from renewables and storage. Especially if you consider that

by padjo 2y ago

I’d love to know how it’s possible to supply peak demand in the UK on a still day in January purely from renewables and storage. Especially if you consider that demand is also going to have to increase massively to decarbonise heating, transport etc

hackerlight 2y ago
Europe is more challenging than US due to lower average solar irradiance per sqm combined with more seasonal variability in solar availability. Probably overbuilding wind in diversified locations since the correlation drops off with the square of distance I believe. Denmark's grid would be a template of what to expect. Transmissions with neighbors would help a lot given the decorrelation.
- chopin 2y ago
  AFAIK Denmark has the highest electricity prices in Europe. I wouldn't take Denmark as template.
  - hackerlight 2y ago
    This is extremely dishonest unless you carefully and methodically link that high cost to renewables. Iowa is a 60% wind grid with cheaper prices than the national average. Does that one data point make wind energy good, by your logic? This is a serious topic that deserves more than silly internet debate tactics.
Retric 2y ago
The short answer is trivially, but the longer answer is renewables include hydro and biomass not just wind both of which inherently provide long term storage. Having excess solar or wind on Monday means you curtail biomass and hydro for Tuesday. Excess power on Monday through Friday and you have a great deal ready to ramp op over the weekend. 0.01% edge cases don’t need to have anything special just as long as the general case is oversupply. At the same time Solar is always going to produce some power and the more excess generation you have to charge batteries and curtail hydro etc the higher that minimum worst case generation becomes. Net result is you don’t need to build some huge battery bank to store energy from sunny days in the summer, you just ‘over build’ cheap generation and eventually you have no need for seasonal storage.
greenthrow 2y ago
Solar still generates power on cold days. But also, wind and hydro work great even on cold days. And of couse, storage. C'mon. This is a solved issue. "Renewables don't work because it's cold/dark/etc." has been answered for decades.

by padjo 2y ago

hackerlight 2y ago

Europe is more challenging than US due to lower average solar irradiance per sqm combined with more seasonal variability in solar availability. Probably overbuilding wind in diversified locations since the correlation drops off with the square of distance I believe. Denmark's grid would be a template of what to expect. Transmissions with neighbors would help a lot given the decorrelation.

chopin 2y ago
AFAIK Denmark has the highest electricity prices in Europe. I wouldn't take Denmark as template.
- hackerlight 2y ago
  This is extremely dishonest unless you carefully and methodically link that high cost to renewables. Iowa is a 60% wind grid with cheaper prices than the national average. Does that one data point make wind energy good, by your logic? This is a serious topic that deserves more than silly internet debate tactics.

Retric 2y ago

The short answer is trivially, but the longer answer is renewables include hydro and biomass not just wind both of which inherently provide long term storage. Having excess solar or wind on Monday means you curtail biomass and hydro for Tuesday. Excess power on Monday through Friday and you have a great deal ready to ramp op over the weekend. 0.01% edge cases don’t need to have anything special just as long as the general case is oversupply. At the same time Solar is always going to produce some power and the more excess generation you have to charge batteries and curtail hydro etc the higher that minimum worst case generation becomes. Net result is you don’t need to build some huge battery bank to store energy from sunny days in the summer, you just ‘over build’ cheap generation and eventually you have no need for seasonal storage.

greenthrow 2y ago

Solar still generates power on cold days. But also, wind and hydro work great even on cold days. And of couse, storage. C'mon. This is a solved issue. "Renewables don't work because it's cold/dark/etc." has been answered for decades.