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Re:Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost? by cycomanic on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @03:14PM (#21995274)
Actually there have been numerous studies how wind and solar could provide 100% power for a country like the US. The thing is you need significant upgrades to your power grid, this will become easier and easier with improving battery and storage tech. The myth of base load is essentially nuclear propaganda that keeps getting debunked. Power plants that can't easily be adjusted are pretty much the worst for operators.
Re:Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost? by renaudg on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @04:08PM (#21995816)
Citation much needed, because that sounds like unsubstantiated wind/solar kool aid that's not worth much more than "nuclear propaganda".

My impression is that battery storage tech and infrastructure is nowhere near able to provide 100% of US power when it's night and the wind doesn't blow (which is surprisingly often)

Re:Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost? by magduf on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @05:03PM (#21996271)
It's absolutely not. These calls for relying on renewables are pure fantasy; the storage technology doesn't exist yet, so you can't build a reliable power grid based on something that isn't in existence.

It's just like the calls to rely on fusion power instead of building fission plants. Fusion doesn't exist (as a usable power generation method), so calling for it to be planned for now is ridiculous. It's the same with storage systems; we don't have any that can supply the entire grid yet. We're having a hard enough time just getting enough lithium to make batteries for the relatively small number of electric vehicles on the road now. There are things like pumped-hydro, but those only work in some places, and we already have them (i.e., we can't make more of them, because we've already exhausted all the available hydropower sites), and they're not enough.

Don't get me wrong: renewables are great for what they're good at: supplying variable power, especially on sunny days, and the US in particular could definitely stand to deploy much more, particularly in the sunny states where a lot of power is used for A/C. But it's not a solution yet for baseload power.

Re:Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost? by renaudg on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @06:26PM (#21996902)
Thank you, this should be the top comment.