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I don't think you will find a day where there is no sun and no wind in all of europe. The costal areas usually gave constant wind and the south constant sun. A

by lukan 1y ago

I don't think you will find a day where there is no sun and no wind in all of europe. The costal areas usually gave constant wind and the south constant sun. And we do have and build much more high voltage transmission lines. And otherwise there is no technical limit to build lots of rare earth free batteries. Once they are common in allmost every household and once electric cars can be used for that, too, I don't see any technical problem. It takes time and investment of course. And pragmatism till we are there. I don't like coal plants, but I am not in favor of just shutting them down now.

deleted 1y ago
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Animats 1y ago
> I don't think you will find a day where there is no sun and no wind in all of europe. For the US PJM (US east coast and midwest) and CAISO (California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada) grid areas, total wind power fluctuates over a 4:1 range on a daily basis. Both grids post dashboards where you can see this. Averaging out wind over a large area does not help all that much.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  Solar fluctuates too; there's not much at night. This largely means we have to build a bit more of each, and store some. The chances of an entire continent being devoid of wind and solar for an extended period becomes vanishingly small pretty fast.
  - Animats 1y ago
    Here's the CAISO wind graph. This is the total wind energy from four large states. Note that the low point is 1/7 that of the peak, which is around noon.[1] Here's the PJM wind graph.[2] Low point is about 1/4 the peak, again, around local noon. It just doesn't "average out" across even a sizable country. [1] https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply [2] https://dataviewer.pjm.com/dataviewer/pages/public/wind.jsf https://dataviewer.pjm.com/dataviewer/pages/public/wind.jsf
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      Now click the demand view. It goes dramatically up and down on a daily pattern, too.
      - Animats 1y ago
        The demand curve and the wind curve are not synchronized in any way. Solar at least peaks with peak air conditioning load.
        ceejayoz 1y ago
        If only we could store some energy for a while!
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    There is a paper floating around showing that for both US+Canada and the continental EU there has never been a single hour where there has been no wind and no sun somewhere in a 30 year period.
    - Animats 1y ago
      > There is a paper floating around This needs a better cite.
      - lukan 1y ago
        I mean, would you believe it the other way around? Someone claiming, there was a day with no wind and no sun in whole north america in the last 30 years? I wouldn't believe that. But concrete data to have, is of course better than assuming ..
ajsnigrutin 1y ago
Every night there is no sun, and there are many times where there is not enough wind for all of our needs. ...or we can just build nuclear powerplants, no need for millions of batteries, power at night too, and all it takes is removing a few "greens" from their position of power.
- ben_w 1y ago
  Need the batteries regardless for the cars, and the scale of cars' needs exceeds the current use of the electricity grid.

by lukan 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

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Animats 1y ago

> I don't think you will find a day where there is no sun and no wind in all of europe. For the US PJM (US east coast and midwest) and CAISO (California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada) grid areas, total wind power fluctuates over a 4:1 range on a daily basis. Both grids post dashboards where you can see this. Averaging out wind over a large area does not help all that much.

ceejayoz 1y ago
Solar fluctuates too; there's not much at night. This largely means we have to build a bit more of each, and store some. The chances of an entire continent being devoid of wind and solar for an extended period becomes vanishingly small pretty fast.
- Animats 1y ago
  Here's the CAISO wind graph. This is the total wind energy from four large states. Note that the low point is 1/7 that of the peak, which is around noon.[1] Here's the PJM wind graph.[2] Low point is about 1/4 the peak, again, around local noon. It just doesn't "average out" across even a sizable country. [1] https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply [2] https://dataviewer.pjm.com/dataviewer/pages/public/wind.jsf https://dataviewer.pjm.com/dataviewer/pages/public/wind.jsf
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    Now click the demand view. It goes dramatically up and down on a daily pattern, too.
    - Animats 1y ago
      The demand curve and the wind curve are not synchronized in any way. Solar at least peaks with peak air conditioning load.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        If only we could store some energy for a while!
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  There is a paper floating around showing that for both US+Canada and the continental EU there has never been a single hour where there has been no wind and no sun somewhere in a 30 year period.
  - Animats 1y ago
    > There is a paper floating around This needs a better cite.
    - lukan 1y ago
      I mean, would you believe it the other way around? Someone claiming, there was a day with no wind and no sun in whole north america in the last 30 years? I wouldn't believe that. But concrete data to have, is of course better than assuming ..

ajsnigrutin 1y ago

Every night there is no sun, and there are many times where there is not enough wind for all of our needs. ...or we can just build nuclear powerplants, no need for millions of batteries, power at night too, and all it takes is removing a few "greens" from their position of power.

ben_w 1y ago
Need the batteries regardless for the cars, and the scale of cars' needs exceeds the current use of the electricity grid.