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Well, then you need some diversity strategy such that you aren’t just building more stuff that also goes offline. And you would need it to be able to flex up in
by drob518 1y ago
Well, then you need some diversity strategy such that you aren’t just building more stuff that also goes offline. And you would need it to be able to flex up in a controlled fashion to make up for losses in other geographies. That’s hard with wind and solar. They don’t flex very well. When things are going well, you get what you get. There’s no way to make the wind blow harder or make the sun shine more brightly when you want it. You need well controlled base load capacity. Of nuclear, gas, and coal, nuclear is clean and basically renewable for all intents and purposes (it’s not, but it might as well be).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoI'm sure utilities will build whatever they think is cheapest, whether that be nuclear, excess wind and solar, batteries, or whatever.
- AndrewDucker 1y agoDepends on whether they go to zero, or just drop to 50% of normal output. If it's the latter, then it might be cheaper to build twice as much wind as you'd need at optimal times than to build a nuclear plant. You'd need to do the maths for the specific situation. (And also if they drop to 0% for an occasional hour then you can use batteries. If once every five years they drop to 0% for two weeks then you absolutely need to have something else that can fill that gap.)