Re:Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
by acidburnNSA on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @10:43PM
(#26175422)
I'm sorry but it's not that simple, as you can see clearly right now. Between Feb 9 and Feb 17th wind and solar energy delivery has been a very small fraction of capacity, less than 10%. To do baseload over a period of 8 days with that kind of resource would require roughly a 20x capacity overbuild and some kind of ridiculous battery. It's just not practical. Most realistic scenarios these days have lots of wind and solar and some overnight batteries, and rely on large mostly-idled capacity of gas to get through the black-swan events like this. Though obviously this approach has challenges as well.
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Re:Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
by mnklo on Thursday February 18, 2021 @12:05AM
(#26176078)
I think you're overcomplicating the situation. A mix of renewable sources is quite stable, and there are more ways to store energy than just batteries. Here's a paper debunking the baseload myth.
http://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/publ...
A 10GW solar farm is already in the pipeline for northern Australia:
Re:Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
by snowwindwaves on Thursday February 18, 2021 @02:12AM
(#26176909)
The paper suggests solar thermal and wind plus gas peakers. So the overbuilt point from the parent stands.