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A comment on Nuclear power looks to regain its footing 10 years after Fukushima. Parent comment

Re:Nuclear power looks to regain its footing 10 years after ... by ehnto on Thursday March 11, 2021 @08:41AM (#26423882)
I think energy storage outside of chemical batteries is where infrastructure scale storage should be happening. Things like pumped dams or gravity batteries. Instead of thinking of them as longer term storage of excess energy, we can think of them as capacitors for the grid overnight. In this way while we still rely on a fossil fuel turbine as a last resort, the vast majority of the year can be covered by renewables.

Lets say the split looks like:

8am - 8pm : 100% renewables

8pm - 8am : Split between remaining renewables then gravity storage begins discharging

If you are going to run out of gravity storage, you will have ample warning, and you will have a comfortable amount of time to bring a backup gas turbine plant online. One of the big challenges with all grids is continuity and keeping everything in sync, most of the time the issue is not having the ability to rapidly respond to fluctuations in the grid. Gravity storage helps solve that issue by being very predictable, and (with a smart grid integration) instantaneously available.

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Re:Nuclear power looks to regain its footing 10 years after ... by Aachen on Thursday March 11, 2021 @10:36PM (#26431965)
Don't have time for a proper response, just a short note:

Yep people are looking into that, but it ain't trivial. Apparently one needs a fairly specific slope for it to be econom at the moment (competitive with chemical batteries). If you look on YouTube for the (clickbaity, unfortunately) title "the truth about pumped storage" (iirc), you should find a video from some engineering channel where some of this is mentioned. Another keyword might be Ireland. There's gotta be more information-dense / less time-consuming sources than that video though, it's just the one I got this from. My point being, if it were this simple, yeah. Looks like we'll (recurring theme) need a bit of everything to get there on the timescale we're looking at to avoid worse issues.

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