Re:Germany lays out a path to quit coal by 2038
by oska on Sunday January 27, 2019 @03:25AM
(#19010885)
Batteries and pumped hydro can also deliver dispatchable and Australia is embracing and building both. The focus of today's markets is on flexibility and response time of supply, not on lumbering, inflexible baseload. Batteries are the most rapid and flexible, as the big battery constructed in South Australia has amply proved.
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Re:Germany lays out a path to quit coal by 2038
by zeroname on Sunday January 27, 2019 @04:04AM
(#19010987)
Flexibility is not the crucial issue. It's just what that large Tesla battery is good at, which is why everyone highlights it. In terms of capacity, it's next to nothing. No proponent wants to talk about that.
If you just look at the graph you'll see that dispatchable makes up almost 100% of base load during significant periods of time. Do the math on how many batteries and how much pumped storage you would need. It's simply not happening without fossils.
Australia uses natural gas so it can pull down CO2, but the coal is still exported and burned by someone else. It's a wash. Germany only has coal. If storage was feasible they wouldn't be standing there with their pants down on their CO2 goals. They would've built the best batteries and storage pumps the world knows.