4 ms·

Providing 90% of power is not "powering the world". It really helps to also have a complementary storage technology with low capacity capex, even if the round

• teucris 7mo ago
  The article specifically notes the following: >We can get far without worrying about the last 5-10%. The solutions for the last 5-10% could be fossil fuels in the short-term, long-duration storage as it matures, or easily storeable e-biofuels.
  • mtoner23 7mo ago
    So then they are wrong. The last 5-10 percent is the hardest part and it's the one consumers complain the most about! You can't run a factory on 90% power availability
    • IshKebab 7mo ago
      Sure but I think if solar really did provide 90% of the world's electricity it wouldn't be inaccurate to say it powered the world. (Heating and transport are harder to solve of course.)
      • pfdietz 7mo ago
        It would be inaccurate in that it would not, in fact, be powering the world. The bigger deceit in the statement was the implication that only batteries were needed to "power the world". This. Is. Wrong.
    • DangitBobby 7mo ago
      But you _can_ run it on 90% solar plus 10% fossil fuels to achieve 100% power availability, which is what GP and the article suggest.
      • Ajedi32 7mo ago
        The issue is that to achieve that you can't just build 90% solar plus 10% fossil fuels. You would need to build 100% solar + 100% fossil fuels for the 10% of the time solar doesn't work.
        • pingou 7mo ago
          Good thing it's already built then! Well, of course it cost money to maintain though.
          • Ajedi32 7mo ago
            Yes, but if you need to have all that infrastructure anyway it no longer makes sense to compare the cost of solar+batteries with the cost of fossil fuels because you actually need to have both. If you compare the total cost of solar with just the fuel cost of fossil fuels (ignoring its CapEx and non-fuel OpEx) that swings the equation a lot.
        • pishpash 7mo ago
          Infrastructure cost for 100% is the same as infrastructure cost for 10%? That's not true. The distribution network is the part that can't be scaled, but it can also be reused for either source, so it doesn't double in cost.
          • Ajedi32 7mo ago
            No, I'm saying infrastructure cost for 100% is the same as infrastructure cost for 100%. You can't build 10% as much fossil fuel infrastructure and expect it to carry 100% of the load when solar isn't working. And obviously I'm talking about generation here, not distribution.
        • ZeroGravitas 7mo ago
          If you build batteries on the scale that the article suggests (and is probably going to happen in the real future) you can use batteries charged from fossil fuels. It's a few percent dirtier (round trip losses) but in return you can use gas plants that are 50% more efficient to charge them rather than run peaker plants. And of course that's ignoring wind which is nearly as cheap as solar and anti-correlated with it.
    • whynotmaybe 7mo ago
      You can run anything on 90% renewable and anything else for the remaining 10%. As my house is on hydro-energy and everything is electric, I'm currently on 100% renewable and majors factories around me are the same. Yes, hydro isn't available everywhere, just like solar or wind isn't, but wherever it's possible, we should have it.
    • zekrioca 7mo ago
      Yes, one can. The issue is that it requires synchronization.
• outside1234 7mo ago
  The goal of getting to renewables is to not remove every carbon source but to slow the rate of change so we can adapt. 90% meets that.
  • pfdietz 7mo ago
    The goal ultimately is to get to 100% non-fossil fuel. CO2 is removed so slowly from the atmosphere that emissions have to go to nearly zero (preferably, to less than zero) or else we're just delaying disaster. The point I was making before, btw, was that renewables can get to 100%, but doing it with just batteries as storage is really stupid in many places. Batteries, while necessary and very useful, are not a panacea. In a place like Europe, adding the complementary low capex storage could cut the cost in half (otherwise, excessive overprovisioning of solar, wind, and/or batteries are needed.)