Re:Google is officially 100% sun and wind powered – 3.0 giga...
by allenz on Friday December 01, 2017 @06:14AM
(#15823187)
3 GW measures average power. Google just buys the entire output of wind or solar farms, so supply is not matched with demand.[1] This is a known problem with renewables. Elon Musk claims that he can solve it with a relatively small area of batteries like the Powerpack, but he's sold less than 1 GW so far because batteries are expensive.
Re:Google is officially 100% sun and wind powered – 3.0 giga...
by fulafel on Friday December 01, 2017 @11:44AM
(#15825015)
I guess that accounting is natural for marketing numbers.
I don't generally think it's a problem, it's just a feature of those generation methods and just means we need overprovisioning. Whereas fossil fuels have unsurmountable problems and cause untold human suffering, famines and damage to the environment.
Re:Google is officially 100% sun and wind powered – 3.0 giga...
by allenz on Friday December 01, 2017 @05:52PM
(#15828468)
I think that Google has made a fantastic step forward. However, solar and wind require some form of energy storage, such as pumped hydro or batteries (which Google hasn't addressed). Overprovisioning by itself isn't sufficient.
BTW there's a big difference here between GW (power) and energy - do they contract 3 GW 24/7 or are they buying 24*3 GWh per day whenever the spot prices are lowest, or are they paying companies to average 3 GW per day over a multi year contract? In the first scenario there will be surplus over 3GW for most of the day.