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Just over build the solar. Build out solar so demand in winter is met. Use the excess power in summer for some kind of industrial use.
by kilroy123 9mo ago
Just over build the solar. Build out solar so demand in winter is met.
Use the excess power in summer for some kind of industrial use.
- pfdietz 9mo agoThis can lead to a solution, but at high latitude it becomes infeasibly expensive. Insolation varies too much from summer to winter. Low round trip efficiency long term storage becomes much cheaper than doing (just) this.
- lambdaone 9mo agoSyngas (infinitely better than hydrogen, which was always a stupid idea), or huge-scale Carnot batteries (the square-cube law is your friend) would do the trick nicely in both cases.
- pfdietz 9mo agoSyngas has the problem of where do you get the carbon. With hydrogen, the exhaust (water) just gets released to the atmosphere. Syngas would require capturing and storing the CO2 of combustion for reuse in making more syngas, which adds to the cost. But yes, resistively heated ultra low capex thermal storage ("hot dirt") is very attractive.
- kilroy123 9mo agoThis assumes prices for the solar panels and batteries continue to fall as this build-out happens. I don't think it should or could happen in a single year, but slowly over the next 5-10 years.
- IshKebab 9mo agoYou would have to overbuild by a factor of 20 at least. Not at all practical or economical.
- aitchnyu 9mo agoCitation? We get 25 units in the sun and 5 in heavy rains.
- IshKebab 9mo agoI'm in the UK. I covered my whole roof with 6.5kW of panels (it's pretty ideal south facing etc.) I just checked our stats. Average consumption 16kWh/day. Sunny summer day we get 30-40kWh. Sunny winter day 10-20kWh. Cloudy winter day it's 0.5-2kWh. Also that's without a heat pump... Which you mainly use in the winter. And without an electric car but I doubt they're as big of an issue because you can charge them from cheap overnight power anyway.