Solar Passes 100% of Power Demand In California 270
Solar power in California has reached a new record output, briefly surpassing 100% of power demand. It comes just days after the state exceeded 100% of energy demand with renewables (wind, solar and hydro) over a record 45 days straight, and 69 out of 75. CleanTechnica reports: As you can see [here], at its peak, solar power was providing 102.1% of electricity demand in California. Together, wind, water, and solar peaked at 136.4% of electricity demand! [...] The best news is that California seems to quickly be chopping the duck curve down to size. [...] The solution for the duck curve is clear: energy storage. Store that bursting solar energy produced in the middle of the day and gradually use it in the evening as the sun goes down and electricity demand rises. The good news is that California has been making progress on this very fast! Look at the graph [here] regarding electricity generation from natural gas and note the line for 2023 versus the line for 2024. [...]
The overall story is that California renewable energy continues to lead the way forward. Solar power is now peaking at more than 100% of electricity demand, renewables as a whole are peaking at 134% electricity demand, the duck curve has been shaved down to basically no duck curve at all (but you could now call the battery charge/discharge curve a duck curve), and the whole state (and world) is benefitting. Get ready for more records in the days to come. We're still a few weeks away from the summer solstice. Further reading: Battery-Powered California Faces Lower Blackout Risk This Summer
The overall story is that California renewable energy continues to lead the way forward. Solar power is now peaking at more than 100% of electricity demand, renewables as a whole are peaking at 134% electricity demand, the duck curve has been shaved down to basically no duck curve at all (but you could now call the battery charge/discharge curve a duck curve), and the whole state (and world) is benefitting. Get ready for more records in the days to come. We're still a few weeks away from the summer solstice. Further reading: Battery-Powered California Faces Lower Blackout Risk This Summer
Germany has been doing that for years (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know what alternate universe you're in (Score:2, Insightful)
Meanwhile nuclear power plants are so plagued by cost overruns that without the government basically blowing my tax dollars on them for no particularly good reason they end up going bust before they're even finished. We could of course solve that by eliminating all those pesky safety regulations. And we can make them even more profitable
Re:I don't know what alternate universe you're in (Score:5, Insightful)
Solar and wind have never been able to provide baseload. Do you really think solar works at night? Do you really think wind works 24/365? Not even the combination has ever been able to provide baseload. And if solar and wind do provide baseload why is Germany at 400 g CO2 per kWh?
And the goal is low g CO2 per kWh. Nuclear helps achieve that goal.
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Do you really think solar works at night? Do you really think wind works 24/365?
That's what storage technologies are for.
Nuclear helps achieve that goal. And so does solar. So does wind. So does tidal. So does geothermal. And on and on... A diversified portfolio is always better than putting all your eggs in one basket. Why are the nuke-heads feeling so threatened by other forms of energy production that don't involve burning dead dinosaurs?
Re:I don't know what alternate universe you're in (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what storage technologies are for
The idiot I was responding too said that wind and solar provided baseload power with minimal storage and has been doing that for 15 years. That was a total lie.
Why are the nuke-heads feeling so threatened by other forms of energy production that don't involve burning dead dinosaurs?
We're not. The opposite is true. The vast majority of people who support nuclear also support solar, wind, geo, hydro, tidal and storage.
Not building a nuclear baseload does guarantee a spot on the grid for fossil fuels though.
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A diversified portfolio is always better than putting all your eggs in one basket. Why are the nuke-heads feeling so threatened by other forms of energy production that don't involve burning dead dinosaurs?
Most people supporting nuclear actually support all low-CO2 emitting energy sources: nuclear, hydro, solar, wind...
A diversified electricity mix is indeed the solution, as has been shown by France: they have been using nuclear/hydro/solar/wind for the last 50 years, and emit ~50g CO2eq/kWh.
On the other hand, most people very vocal about solar/wind on slashdot are explicitly anti-nuclear (amimojo, drinkypoo, rsilvergun, angelosphere...). Same for some well-known NGOs: greenpeace for instance is first and for
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Do you really think solar works at night? Do you really think wind works 24/365?
As you know, solar works when the demand is highest, and over a wide enough range and especially when including offshore, there is always wind blowing. We can move power astonishingly long distances with little loss, though we do have to be willing to spend some money on infrastructure.
There is also a need for some power storage, various forms of which keep getting cheaper. Most people have an assortment of batteries in their lives already, and the number of batteries per person continues to increase, so it
Re:I don't know what alternate universe you're in (Score:5, Insightful)
In most locals during the majority of the year the demand is highest in the evening when solar produces nothing. During the summer the peak shifts to a little earlier in the day due to air conditioning and solar can help with that. Also the wind might always blow somewhere but it often blows at less than 10% capacity.
Transmission lines and storage will also help nuclear.
Here on Earth antinuclear Germany is at 400 g CO2 per kWh after spending 500 billion euros on renewables. Meanwhile pronuclear France is at 53 g CO2 per kWh.
If the goal is to deep decarbonize building a grid with nuclear wins.
Your goal isn't to deep decarbonize. It's to get rid of nuclear energy.
Germany has halved it's carbon emissions already (Score:2)
Germany has halved it's carbon emissions, and is on the way to halve them again, at the same time as axing all their old nuclear power.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
I agree it is happening too slowly, but you have to consider economics in the equation.
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If the goal is to deep decarbonize building a grid with nuclear wins.
If your goal is to decarbonise anything within any meaningful time nuclear wins. The best technology in the world does nothing if the fastest we can build it is glacial (which is ironic since there may not be many glaciers left by the time your nuclear project comes online).
The world needs real solutions not fantasy. May as well pin my hopes on fusion if we're all banking on some tech that would be way to late to make any meaningful difference.
The time for discussions about nuclear power was in 2000, not 20
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The time for discussions about nuclear power was in 2000, not 2024. We need solutions now, not in 2050.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
There are no immediate solutions to deeply decarbonize. If you and your likes hadn't been actively fighting against deep decarbonization (by fighting nuclear power) since 40+ years, we would be there already. It takes ~4 years on average in the world to build a nuclear plant (yes, China is building a lot of them, and are bringing the average time down). You can still fight it, and in 4 years say "see, we didn't build enough becaus
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May as well pin my hopes on fusion if we're all banking on some tech that would be way to late to make any meaningful difference.
The time for discussions about nuclear power was in 2000, not 2024. We need solutions now, not in 2050.
I like fusion power generation. We have that nice fusion reactor around 150 million kilometers away. We can put up solar panels and capture a bit of it. Store it in batteries.
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In most locals during the majority of the year the demand is highest in the evening when solar produces nothing. During the summer the peak shifts to a little earlier in the day due to air conditioning and solar can help with that. Also the wind might always blow somewhere but it often blows at less than 10% capacity.
Transmission lines and storage will also help nuclear.
Here on Earth antinuclear Germany is at 400 g CO2 per kWh after spending 500 billion euros on renewables. Meanwhile pronuclear France is at 53 g CO2 per kWh.
If the goal is to deep decarbonize building a grid with nuclear wins.
Your goal isn't to deep decarbonize. It's to get rid of nuclear energy.
The entire German power mix on average is at 354 g CO2/kWh so you are already misrepresenting that by lumping together renewables with the 25% of the German power mix that still generates energy by burning lignite, coal and natgas in an apparent attempt to make renewables look bad. Credible estimates of the carbon emissions for wind are around 20 CO2/kWh, for solar the global average is about 55 g CO2/kWh. As for all-nuclear France another thing you are misrepresenting, this time by omission, is that in 202
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You misunderstood the OP point. Fact is that Germany, which prioritized solar/wind over nuclear, still has to burn coal/gas. They even increased the amount used in recent years, after closing down their nuclear plants for political reasons. They are also importing a lot of electricity to compensate for days with low solar/wind (or nights). Today for instance, they are basically relying on France for ~5GW of capacity [rte-france.com], the equivalent of 2 nuclear plants. Even without having to be accountable for those emissio
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In most locals during the majority of the year the demand is highest in the evening when solar produces nothing.
That's now how the sun works, the amount of light in the evening depends on the time of year. Currently we have light until well past 9 PM.
In the winter we have fewer hours, but it's also easier to store energy as heat which goes a long way to mitigating that. Americans forget that European homes are better insulated.
And of course that's just solar, we have wind and hydro too. The North Sea is getting some massive baseload-capable wind farms.
Re: I don't know what alternate universe you're in (Score:2)
They may not want it, but they do NEED it, it's the only carbon free baseload generation we have.
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Baseload is an aging concept.
And also, you're wrong. Hydro is also baseload.
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They may not want it, but they do NEED it, it's the only carbon free baseload generation we have.
So tell us why the only possible way to generate "baseload" power is nuclear.
We hear this a lot from people, but it is surprising to me that no other methods are possible.
Explain. Give me the base and peak loading of a system, and I can design a non-turbine based power supply. But if you know the technical reasons why it isn't possible, let me know, and I'll forgo the wast of time.
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Nuclear is the best option if you want "green" energy for mass usage. Come join us in Reality.
I like reality. You need to go to South Carolina and tell them to restart their failed plant that never generated electricity. That is a part of reality as well
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Because someone has to provide France with power in the winter [rte-france.com] when nuclear is insufficient for their heating needs, and even occasionally in the summer when they shut down some nuclear plants due to insufficient cooling. [slashdot.org]
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Re: I don't know what alternate universe you're in (Score:2)
Nuclear maintenance outages are typically short, a couple weeks a year. Refueling is 4-6 weeks every 18 to 24 months, depending on a host of plant specific engineering decisions. That very little downtime, but most importantly it's scheduled. The outages can be timed and staggered such that they have no grid impact. The RTOs actually take submissions of outage plans from participating utilities and move them around for explicitly that purpose.
Forced outages are the real concern. The best nuclear facilities
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What never gets mentioned is that they have shutdown a nuclear plant for weeks on end for maintenance and/or refuelling (as well as the examples quoted above) therefore dispelling the myth nuclear is a 24/7/365 power plant
Typical strawman fallacy. Nobody except you claimed that nuclear is 24/7/365.
Here are some facts. Nuclear average capacity factor in the US sits at around 93% [eia.gov]. France is a bit different, because they use their reactor in load-following mode (meaning they actually shut some down when they or their neighbors don't need it), so their capacity factor is low by world standards, at about 70% [world-nuclear.org].
Also, that allows France to do most of the maintenance/refuelling during summer, when they need less power and some nuclear
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I don't think it's cherry picking to point out that France, with the world's largest share of electricity generated by nuclear power, can't produce enough electricity for its own monthly needs for at least 2 months of every year. And they're having a lot of trouble getting a new reactor online (Flamanville 3). But I have faith that they will get it running before Germany closes its last coal plant.
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Flammanville is an economic suicide.
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I don't think it's cherry picking to point out that France, with the world's largest share of electricity generated by nuclear power, can't produce enough electricity for its own monthly needs for at least 2 months of every year.
It is cherry-picking when you only provide an example of the only year in the last 50 years when France had to import electricity (for ~4% of its electricity needs).
On the other hand, the other 49 years they were (and are again as of 2023) net exporter to the rest of Europe, and mainly Germany.
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Are you trolling? Because according to my link above, from 2005-2022 (18 years), France was a net annual exporter to Belgium/Germany 11 times, and a net importer 7 times.
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France is getting screwed today because it only has expensive nuclear energy and a piddly amount of renewables. Meanwhile the renewables in other countries are massively under-cutting them. The French are forced to buy that nuclear energy because it can't ramp down, at far higher cost than the renewables.
Longer term it won't be sustainable. France needs to invest a huge amount of money in replacing its old nuclear fleet that is reaching EOL, but it's clear that it's never going to be cost effect. The countr
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The countries you complain about not having nuclear are headed for abundant cheap energy AND net zero, and regularly offer energy prices that even Americans can only dream of.
If there's one thing that can't be taken away from you, it's that you're full of hopes.
Unfortunately, hope can only get you so far.
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I've shown you the website before: https://agileprices.co.uk/ [agileprices.co.uk]
A quick search suggests that the cheapest electricity in the US is 10 cents/kWh, so in the next 30 minutes my energy is going to dip below that price and stay there for some hours. And this is the UK, far from the best example.
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Which energy provider? How is it subsidised?
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Even with France relying on Germany because all the nukes were undergoing maintenance...
TImeline of the last 50 years of European electricity history:
- for 49 years, France provided cheap nuclear electricity to its neighbors
- in 2022, during one summer, France asked its neighbors to import some electricity in order to prioritize maintenance on ~half of its nuclear plants
- in 2023 (and 2024 as of today), France is back to its net electricity exporter status
Yet, anti-nuclear folks like to focus on the 2022 summer. I guess when you have no arguments, you have to grasp at straws...
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When you're proven to be completely wrong, you change the goalposts.
You have to be more specific when making such claims.
First time participating in a logical debate I guess?
Re: I don't know what alternate universe you're in (Score:5, Insightful)
Being able to provide 100%+ for a period is growing trend. Next year it will be yet higher. Storage is increasing significantly as well.
Still probably at least a decade to full renewable generation, likely 2. But it's coming
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And so is extremely cheap energy, if you can shift your demand to take advantage of it. Most of the time there will be an excess of renewable energy available, so if you can say run your AC overnight to drop your home/office a degree or two, or heat up your hot water tank during the peak solar hours, it's going to cost you very little.
All assuming you have a functional energy market, of course. Make sure your suppliers don't rip you off, and/or get your own solar so they can't.
So I get that you're behind the times (Score:3)
We have not gone anywhere near the maximum capacity of wind and solar both of which are cheaper and more profitable than nuclear can ever hope to be barring some sort of magic technological leap that isn't in the cards. It wou
Re:So I get that you're behind the times (Score:4, Insightful)
You didn't say it was feasible. You said it had already been done. You said "But here in the real world where mortals live wind and solar have been able to provide base load power with minimal storage and in poor conditions for close to 15 years" which is a straight up lie.
Something being feasible doesn't make it viable. That defiantly applies in this case. Wind and solar providing baseload is not viable.
Answer my question
And if solar and wind do provide baseload why is Germany at 400 g CO2 per kWh?
Re:So I get that you're behind the times (Score:4, Informative)
Wikipedia actually has a list of countries that are already 100% renewable powered for electricity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
As well as countries there are some regions of countries that are 100% renewable, such as the Aller-Leine Valley in Germany. The biggest source of energy there is wind at 63.5%, followed by biogas.
Of course the more renewables you have, the easier it becomes to be 100% renewable, as geographic distribution helps maintain minimum output levels (base load).
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The technology has been able to do it even if nobody has finished building it yet.
Mmm, so Germany, who has been building solar/wind since 30 years now, while spending 500+ billion on it, and who also actively closed its nuclear plants, while burning coal/gas, has still not finished building it yet.
How much longer should we wait before we call that a failed experiment? Is there a savegame we can load by 2050, when we all acknowledge it didn't work? You do realize this is not a videogame, right?
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His problem is, he does not even know what "baseload" is meaning.
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Maybe he means freebase load?
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So it's an imaginary number that nobody knows.
Going by your definition for this imaginary "baseload", then Solar can do it for hours.
if you are being pedantic, then yes.
In the real world, we know for instance that Germany baseload is ~45GW, France is ~32GW, UK is ~20GW.
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Solar and wind have never been able to provide baseload.
Explain the technical reasons. In my world, you can meet base load and peaking load with solar and wind. Explain why it is not possible.
Do you really think solar works at night?
Oh...
I find it hard to believe that some people keep dragging that old chestnut out in here. Do you really think that intelligent people don't understand that solar needs storage? And storage is happening right now, and we're shaking it all down. You can look it up.
Do you really think wind works 24/365?
Some places it does. 300 feet above the Allegheny escarpment, it doesn't stop. Sorry.
Nuclear helps achieve that goal.
Give your pitch to the
Re:I don't know what alternate universe you're in (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, it's you again with your deluded fantasy that industrialised nations can run entirely on wind and solar.
So riddle me this. How does Germany have one of the largest installed base of wind and solar but yet has one of the highest per MWh CO2 outputs in Europe, in addition to having one of the highest electricity costs in the world?
Meanwhile France emits just 15% of Germany's CO2 per MWh. How exactly do they do that?
Because largest doesn't mean large enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Riddle me this who went to jail over Fukushima or Flint Michigan? Hyper capitalist societies run by right wing conservatives and nuclear power do not
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And we are literally just getting started rolling out wind and solar in mass.
That's just bullshit. Wind and solar power have been getting government subsidies for decades. I've been seeing windmill parts being moved on the interstates around here my entire adult life. I see windmills all over the place.
Maybe solar power has had some delay but I get the impression that's a regional thing. I live in tornado alley, but it's now the "wind corridor" because that sounds better to those trying to sell windmills. I've been seeing more homes with solar panels recently, and my brother wa
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Right about now is when you try to bait me with scary climate change [...] to risk losing my home and everything I own and being homeless in America one of the cruelest first world countries on the planet...
You do realize you are the one trying to bait people with your sad story of risking losing everything your own. You poor thing.
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Have a look at this to explain why that's false, and furthermore why using solar and wind for base-load stability is very difficult:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Brady's videos are very well done and accurate.
Even battery storage stations have the same issue that they cannot provide power unless there is already power on the grid to sync frequency with. Progress is being made with newer inverters that can simulate some of the generator characteristics like inertia as the grid frequency sags under load.
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Ahem, Grady is his name.
Re:I don't know what alternate universe you're in (Score:4, Insightful)
Even battery storage stations have the same issue that they cannot provide power unless there is already power on the grid to sync frequency with
This is a much, much simpler problem to solve than making cheap batteries.
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All inverters can stabilize the frequency. There is nothing magical about it.
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Oh well it's easy then. I guess the challenges to grid stability that Grady speaks about in his excellent video on the subject are nothing then. Good to know.
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Tesla Megapack is already able to provide inertia services including black start.
https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/tesla-software [tesla.com]
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https://www.achgut.com/artikel/netzbetreiber_warnen_stromnetz_kollapsgefaehrdet_wie_nie [achgut.com]
Corrected link (Score:2)
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Sure, if you completely redefine what "baseload" means.
Re:Germany has been doing that for years (Score:4, Informative)
Their CO2 from energy production is less than half [cleanenergywire.org] what it was in 1990, and renewables form a rapidly increasing [cleanenergywire.org] share of all generation while coal is shrinking.
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It is astonishing me that a guy with your IQ does not grasp, that the sites he is citing made those numbers up. ... I linked it already dozens of times to you.
You could google for an official site
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You talk as if all of that is a win. 354g is unacceptably high and is one of the highest CO2 outputs per kWh generated in Europe.
In contrast, Britain has almost entirely abandoned coal in just two decades. Energiewende has been an abject failure.
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UK never had many coal plants. Facepalm : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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And they are still at 400 g CO2 per kWh.
Indeed, it's almost like there was some kind of upset in the energy use and electricity production that swept through Europe over the past 2 years that massively upset the process of decarbonising. I just can't remember what it was comrade.
Looking at a number is stupid. Looking at a trend, Germany looks pretty fucking awesome even rapidly closing the gap with France and this despite shutting down their nukes - another upset in the electricity production that swept through Germany specifically around 2011.
Al
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Germany's emissions were down to 354 g/kWh last year, and they are falling rapidly. You just jumped the gun in writing it off, but Germany is playing the long game.
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Germany is colder than california! California has a climate which lends to PV energy production!
Germany is climate wise southern canada...
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And they are still at 400 g CO2 per kWh. And that is after spending 500 billion euros on renewables. A total failure. We're a little better in California at 262 g CO2 per kWh. A few minutes at 100%+ on a sunny day won't reduce the reliance on fossil fuels without excessive amounts of storage.
Excessive? Considering things we build already, it is difficult to imagine how battery storage is a bridge too far.
Chemistry, electrics, and demand. We know the cyclical nature of demand, and the amount of supply needed. So calculating and placing the batteries is a matter of a few minutes of work.
Those calculations are needed in legacy turbine plants as well. You have to build the generating equipment to meet the maximum demand. When you demand exceeds capacity, you have to switch in other generating
Wrong metric (Score:4, Insightful)
The success of a renewable energy system is measured by the maximum non renewable demand during a given time period, not the maximum renewable penetration. South Australia regularly witters on about how renewable its grid is, quietly forgetting that quite often it is 100% reliant on diesel and brown coal from interstate.
As the FA says, enormous amounts of storage (weeks or months) is at once necessary and impossible for wind+solar grid to work at an acceptable reliability. And/or nukes.
Re:Wrong metric (Score:5, Insightful)
quite often it is 100% reliant on diesel and brown coal OBJECTION. Citation needed, and ridiculously vague.
180 of 365 days out of the year at 100% coverage [sa.gov.au] is a DAMN sight better than ZERO days. And it gets better every year as storage technologies and generation efficiency improve.
STORAGE (Score:2)
Storage, storage,Storage, storag e,Storage, storage...
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https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.... [thomsonreuters.com]
Still a long way to go and yes it only gets harder once renewables are peaking over 100%.
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Solar is just really inefficient nuclear power.
Re:Wrong metric (Score:5, Insightful)
As the FA says, enormous amounts of storage (weeks or months) is at once necessary and impossible for wind+solar grid to work at an acceptable reliability. And/or nukes.
I think you're misunderstanding the goal here. The goal is not to eliminate 100% of fossil fuel usage. The goal is to reduce fossil fuel usage to a low enough level that it doesn't pose an existential threat.
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What makes you think we can't get weeks or even months of energy storage? It's a question of willpower. It can be done if we make it a priority over say high speed rail. My biggest concern is centralization; having all the energy storage and production in just a few locations would be terrible.
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You don't need weeks, let alone months, of storage. The wind never stops blowing, the night only lasts for weeks near the poles.
What you need is more renewables to collect that energy.
Decentralization (Score:3, Insightful)
We need more decentralization of power. People must implement rooftop solar. Centralization leads to monopolization, by either the government or by a private entity. Either one is terrible.
phase stability? (Score:2)
I read an article recently that Germany needed to keep one of their coal plants on for frequency and phase stability for the grid. The article pointed out the engineers have been worried about this issue for years, but it has yet grabbed the attention of politicians.
but facebook says... (Score:3)
EVs are destroying the grid? /s
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yeah, that's B.S.
Why so expensive? (Score:4, Interesting)
With this glut of renewable energy coming online, why electricity prices still so high in Cali?
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Uh, it's called monopoly. The dominant power company in California is making record profits. https://abc7news.com/pge-earni... [abc7news.com]
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Many utilities are regulated in exchange for having monopoly control over a specific area. What they can charge is set by a regulatory board. The one exception - recouping money they spend on investments in infrastructure.
https://www.nrdc.org/bio/jc-ki... [nrdc.org]
"...Utilities can collect their spending on operating expenses from you and me, on our bills. In practice, they almost always cover their costs, but they donâ(TM)t get anything extra beyond what they spent. So, if a utility spends $100 on operating e
Not quite (Score:2)
Electrical power demand, not total power.
Re:so in other words (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong, renewable energy was failing because fossil fuels are allowed to dump their waste into the atmosphere. Now, renewable energy is winning anyways.
Re:yeah....about that.... (Score:5, Informative)
Chopping-up endangered birds is a criminal act, unless done with windmills, in which case it is FINE.
From MIT [mit.edu]: " Those studies gave a wide range for the number of birds that die in wind turbine collisions each year: from 140,000 up to 679,000.The numbers are likely to be higher today, because many more wind farms have been built in the past decade. Those numbers are not insignificant, but they represent a tiny fraction of the birds killed annually in other ways, like flying into buildings or caught by prowling house cats, which past studies have estimated kill up to 988 million and 4 billion birds each year, respectively.
However, I don't believe for one minute you actually care about endangered birds.
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Not only that, but the number of birds killed per kWh for wind is lower than pretty much anything else, except solar. Nuclear, fossil fuels, hydro, they all kill more birds. Any large industrial plant does.
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Oh and you're a fuckwit.
Re:so in other words (Score:5, Interesting)
Storage is part of the solution, but far from the whole of it. And the good news is there is progress on all fronts. The key components are:
1. Storage (short, medium, long term) -- as the article shows, short term battery storage is being built out fast and getting cheaper, and the same is also true for medium and long term storage. And V2L EVs will become a large distributed storage facility over time too
2. Demand flex. To take just one tiny example, time shifting when appliances run is trivially easy and will become more and more common
3. Heterogenous power gen mix. The big two, solar and wind, are pretty complementary: in many countries, wind speeds are on average higher in the winter and at night, while solar is obviously the opposite. Other low carbon sources help further (MacMann's love shineth brightly like a nuclear reaction on this point, but there's also hydro, geothermal, etc).
4. Overbuild. If X is delivers Y at 100% capacity, then 5X will deliver Y at 20% capacity. And as capacity becomes ever cheaper, overbuild works (and then we have the fun new problem, which humanity has never had before, of what to do with all that cheap excess power)
5. Geo distribution. The wind is always blowing and the sun is always shining somewhere. You can tackle a big chunk of variability by connecting places that have different patterns (or in the case of places like North Africa, much more reliable insolation than Europe).
This is a systems problem and it's being solved at pace and scale, albeit not fast enough yet
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I've seen plenty of optimistic and pessimistic modelling of this. And don't whine on about a failure to cite, when your own citations are "Study I remember seeing on this from a few years back" and "Modeling I remember seeing". Either you care about properly citing models or you don't. Shit or get off the pot.
As for your specifics:
1. Pumped hydro is economically viable long duration ESS, and has been in use for decades
2. A shift of a few percentage points is very helpful, but in practice, larger shifts are
Re:so in other words (Score:5, Insightful)
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only passing the fifth grade makes adult a loser in most job markets.
without storage solar is doomed as serious base load source
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Solar is partially failing because we don't have efficient cheap storage yet. To be a heavyweight contender for powering our civilization, we need that.
I think it is all a step situation. The storage options are becoming available, and are being phased in. One type will look like the bottom picture on this link, the warehouse model https://power-evolution.com/so... [power-evolution.com] Another might look something like this one https://pv-magazine-usa.com/20... [pv-magazine-usa.com]
So it is happening.
The same with wind, although there are places where the wind never stops. Our local wind farms don't do storage, although even there, storage could have some use, given the nature of power demand
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I see no evidence that solar is "failing" unless 10x growth in the past ten years is "failing". Storage costs are dropping at a blink-and-you'll-miss-it rate, having halved in the past five years and being projected to drop at comparable rates over the next five.
The biggest obstacles to progress now are necessary improvements in the grid -- which is relatively cheap but requires political will -- and consistency of funding for advanced grid storage technologies. A lot of startups in that space are facing
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It's true. California is great for astronomy because of that. If I need to use a computer at night I drive across the border to Nevada or sometimes even Oregon or Mexico.
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Yep.
Even better will be upcoming masses of cars doing AC based V2G. Hopefully it will be mandatory function available in every car.
And it will bring in money while your car sleeps in