This is part of why plans for a primarily renewable grid assume that hydrogen or some other heretofore untested system will fulfill the overwhelming majority of storage. Because none of the existing electrical storage mechanisms are sufficient for grid-scale storage.
1. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4dc8
It is unclear if nuclear would fill the gap they calculated.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chinas-dominance-in-battery...
https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/growt...
There is no such thing as a 'moderate amount of storage'. The best you can get is pumped storage (if you have the correct geography for it).
Outside of that, sure, you can add solar/wind to the energy mix - does that invalidate my point? Does that actually support OP's point?
Wait, you say, natural gas? But natural gas is dirty. Well, in the US if we could magically remove all other sources of greenhouse gas emissions except for the natural gas power plants, we'd be at net zero right now.
Where is the bottleneck with mass producing batteries, that don't need rare elements, like saltwater batteries?
Surely it is not cheap either, but it is working technology, cannot burn, nor contaminate entire landscapes if something goes wrong.
"Today there isn't even a small city anywhere in the world actually powered solely by solar/wind"
Because of economics and not really factoring in external costs, fossil fuels are simply cheaper. But it surely can be done with current tech. And El Hierro, a canarian island, is pretty close:
https://renewablesnow.com/news/spains-el-hierro-island-beats...
1. https://cdn.aiidatapro.net/media/9b/7d/7c/t780x490/9b7d7ca4d...
Not saying it’s environmentally friendly, but if you have sunshine all year round it’s easily doable.
Here in South Australia we also have a massive Tesla battery to stabilise grid output.
I’m all for Nuclear though.
1) I simply dont think that is true unless you are willing to be powerless 5% of the year or have backup generators
It is doable and people do it.
Here in Australia anyway.
You just need enough Solar, enough battery, and controls on your power load.
Not saying it’s easy or commonplace right now, but if you really want to, you can go off-grid!
In Australia at least.
Of course with enough money you can put in three times the panels you need on average to account for winter days. Similarly, you could put in a week's storage battery in case a nasty storm comes through.
But you can, if you want to...
That sounds great for everyone living in Spain, Italy and Greece, as well as New Mexico, Arizona, Southern Cali Georgia, Florida, Mississippi and Alabama. I guess everyone who lives north of thst is just SOL then.
That’s how it goes.
For them, other tech works though.
Wind and hydro to whatever extent.
And of course Nuclear.
You might want to pause and re-read GP's comment. It seemed clear to me that GP was saying that solar and wind are winning over nuclear, because of the special challenges that nuclear represents. While I agree with many of your points, it doesn't strike me as crazy at all to say that wind and solar are winning v. nuclear. Of course, whether they should be is a totally different question.
The options are Solar+Wind+coal/gas VS Solar+Wind+Nuclear.
I think nuclear is cool tech but am doubtful it will play a big role in most countries since renewables are so much cheaper (1/3rd the price, so you can overbuild substantially) for getting to 90% emissions free generation.
Renewables (wind/solar) could be free and they wouldn't be able to support a modern economy - that's the problem. It's why wind/solar, today, do not even power a small city, much less a nation.
No energy source will support an entire modern economy, but like nuclear they can supply the majority of electricity for one.
Denmark share of electricity production from wind power 2022: 55%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun...
France share of electricity production from nuclear power 2022: 63%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun...
OK ... If you want to claim that the future is wind + natural gas/coal - go ahead, but that's not what the public is being told. The public is told that wind/solar can replace fossil fuels, and they can't.
Here's the reality:
If you have nuclear, you don't need wind/solar - at all. In fact, you will not be able to use wind/solar, because nuclear can't be easily spun up and down to deal with the wind/solar intermittency. In your France example, wind/solar is pointless.
If you have hydro, and you have enough of it, you don't need wind/solar. If you don't have enough hydro, you need natural gas though you can optionally throw in wind/solar. Once you hit your geographic hydro capacity, the only way to increase is to build out your natural gas/coal infrastructure (regardless if you throw in wind/solar in there)
If you don't have nuclear, and you don't have hydroelectric, then wind/solar will not be able to replace fossil fuels. You will be forced to build out coal or natural gas infrastructure (or burn wooden pallets), as your Danish example shows.
Here are other examples: - Germany, which closed its nuclear plants, and now is using wind but also more coal/gas than ever before: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun...
- Portugal, which is blessed by geography that gives it access to hydro, but because they don't have enough, and they built out their wind infrastructure, need significant natural gas capability: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun...
- Costa Rica is another poster child for renewable usage .. but really, it's a poster child for hydroelectric power. They don't need wind/solar at all. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun...
As the cost of generating electricity from gas is mostly the cost of the gas its perfectly reasonable to have those gas plants built and operated 10% of the time so long as the total system cost is much lower than building nuclear.
There's an arguable case that for 100% carbon-free electricity (rather than 90% carbon free) the economics of nuclear are potentially viable, at least for places like northern Europe where you can't just build a huge amount of solar and 24 hours of battery storage.
But it seems far more important to decarbonise the grid as fast as we can and that means building lots of cheap renewables. Nuclear is simply too expensive and too slow to build. Which is a shame because it is cool tech!
Closing existing nuclear plants like Germany has done is an absolute disgrace. We should keep existing plants open for as long as possible.
And of course, if anyone can figure out how to build nuclear cheaply then build a bunch more. Then maybe they will replace the renewables currently being built as they end of their service lives.
You can build an entirely solar/wind-powered storage and distribution center capable of putting out 1 GW of power 24/7 with modern PV panels, wind turbines, battery storage, hydrogen storage, etc. It's entirely feasible, and although costs for such a system are high (comparable to that of a 1 GW nuclear power plant), those costs are steadily falling and the long-terms costs are much lower as you don't need to acquire uranium fuel or store the hot waste.
Worrying about running out of uranium (and the subsequent plutonium) is on the same level of worrying about what to do when the sun goes supernova. Both are problems on century long timescales.
Stop. Just stop. They are not winning. Neither solar or wind can actually replace traditional ways of generating power (nuclear, coal, gas, hydro). Solar and Wind are intermittent power sources and there is no grid-scale battery technology to remove this fatal intermittency problem. They cannot power a modern economy. Today there isn't even a small city anywhere in the world actually powered *solely* by solar/wind, much less a modern economy. Regions that overinvest in solar/wind, when they aren't dealing with gird problems, simply end up building up their natural gas infrastructure or buying electricity from neighboring regions.
Solar/Wind is never going to replace fossil fuels.