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0 pointskonschubert2y ago0 comments

You can build wind to compensate some of this.

And of course a ton of short term storage.

And then you build a bunch of cheap, inefficient gas peaker plants for the two weeks a year where neither are enough.

At the moment it looks like that will be a lot cheaper than nuclear. But if nuclear gets cheaper, that’s also a great option!

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ericd2y ago

Good points, all. But you'd still need to overbuild solar by quite a bit in order to make a reasonable amount in winter, in many areas.

konschubertOP2y ago

In Northern Europe, you definitely need Wind power and probably some natural gas dispatchable capacity.

In most other places, you can overbuild the PV panels. Which isn't too bad, since you do not have to overbuild inverters or grid connections.

ta12432y ago

Or hydrogen. On windy days (or sunny in the southern US) you use the excess electricity to generate hydrogen, and then when there's a shortfall you convert it back to electricity.

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