Re:What if carbon removal becomes the new Big Oil?
by kayaeb on Sunday July 26, 2020 @10:33AM
(#23957312)
Not on the scale of "we need to move the bulk of the energy from Texas to New York for 3 hours, then when the sun sets shift state-level power supply routing from the cornbelt to cover the drop."
Handling a plant going offline is totally different from the logistics of shuttling variable regions of production across the entire country.
Re:What if carbon removal becomes the new Big Oil?
by dragonwriter on Sunday July 26, 2020 @02:43PM
(#23959162)
> Not on the scale of "we need to move the bulk of the energy from Texas to New York for 3 hours, then when the sun sets shift state-level power supply routing from the cornbelt to cover the drop."
Sure, but that's why you favor a regionally balanced mix of renewables, with regional peaker plants (which may not be clean/renewable, but are better than relying on dirty sources for your core needs) not geographic concentration of single sources.
Non-renewable plants have variable output even if it is not dependent on weather, and the grid in fact deals with variations in total and per-plant inputs whether or not solar or wind is attached. If there are problems with that, the need to address them is independent of the use of solar and wind.