Re:Prevented mortality from historical and projected nuclear...
by cesarb on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @02:22PM
(#20043596)
> And as promising as renewables are, they still cannot [...] modulate their output to comply with variances in grid demand
Even if you forget to count hydroelectric as a renewable (my country has a huge amount of hydroelectric, and every time I look at the realtime power generation graph, it's the hydroelectric that's following the load, while thermal generation is flat), other renewables like solar and wind can also reduce their output as necessary to match the load. They currently don't because, since they're the cheapest power source, it makes more sense to reduce the generation elsewhere first.
And as promising as renewables are, they still cannot fully replace baseline energy sources (such as coal or nuclear), nor modulate their output to comply with variances in grid demand (batteries, physical or otherwise, would still need to be accounted for in any fair comparison).