Re:Solar and Wind Power So Cheap They’re Outgrowing Subsidies
by beat on Thursday September 19, 2019 @02:03PM
(#21018810)
Technically, storage is a solved problem. It's not even hard, and y'all keep saying it's impossible. The unsolved problem is cost. And it's a simple formula... how much grid storage is needed to account for variations? And what does that storage cost? The moment the combined wind/solar + storage cost drops below the cost of coal/nuclear, it wins.
And intermittency for wind is completely overblown (no pun intended). Tower-height winds are much steadier than surface-height winds, due to lack of surface-related turbulence. And we have a couple of decades of measurement of large wind installations, so the expected variation isn't exactly a surprise unknown.
Re:Solar and Wind Power So Cheap They’re Outgrowing Subsidies
by lightedman on Thursday September 19, 2019 @11:50AM
(#21017338)
"No, it just expose the realities of that market, seasonal storage is not a solved problem."
It's called a flywheel, batteries, pumps to power hydro reservoirs, and more. The solutions are there, you refuse to see them.
Battery do not solve seasonal storage, for the USA it needs 8 to 16 weeks of it, and Tesla global battery output is just a few minutes of it per years.
Higher capacity factor still doesn't mean on demand.
Markets with very high % of renewables all benefits form big hydro or geothermal sources, it doesn't apply in every countries.