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All correct, all down voted for being unfashionably true. Dumping lots of solar power during the day makes usually efficient power generation inefficient. Whe
by brc 12y ago
All correct, all down voted for being unfashionably true.
Dumping lots of solar power during the day makes usually efficient power generation inefficient.
When dealing with countries with a majority of coal-generation (like mine), it's even worse because they can't idle a coal plant, so they just keep it spinning and sell the power at a loss. This drives up the cost of the power for other times to subsidise the loss, and makes the overall market distorted. This then makes large scale capital investment for base load stations risky, meaning that grid instability is a given issue for the future.
The hand-wavers will say 'just use grid storage' - but the truth is that this is an order-of-magnitude more expensive than conventional generation.
When the push for design of energy generation stopped being an electrical engineering issue and became a social engineering issue, the seeds of the problem were sown.
The day when extreme cold or extreme heat shuts down a grid because of insufficient conventional generation will be the day people will realise.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoConvert your coal fired plants to natural gas fired plants. It can then be idled, and its pollution controls are much easier to implement and maintain. Did I mention its carbon footprint is lower as well?
- brc 12y agoRight, natural gas is a good alternative. Base load power and cleaner burning. But that is an entirely different proposition to subsidising purchase and use of solar panels at above-market rates.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago> But that is an entirely different proposition to subsidising purchase and use of solar panels at above-market rates. I don't think I agree. Fossil fuels have been subsidized for over a century. Are you saying you don't believe renewables should be subsidized to get us "over the hump" until they're a lower cost option? Because I would disagree with that. We have the opportunity to move to energy that is clean, reliable, and unable to be controlled by a small group of people. We shouldn't just be subsiding it; we should be producing wind turbines and solar flat out like the US produced tanks and aircraft on automotive assembly lines during both world wars.