points by adrianN 3 days ago | 0 comments
A week of low solar and low wind is a yearly or every-couple of years event that you definitely need to solve for a completely renewable grid.
[–] ZeroGravitas 2 days ago
[–] adrianN 2 days ago
It looks like we’re pretty much in perfect agreement, but I think it doesn’t hurt to already start planning what to do about the last couple of percent. These are all projects with long time horizons
[–] fpoling 3 days ago
Keeping coal plants around is cheap to cover that. Longer term things like producing ammonia during summer and converting it to electricity in fuel cells will allow to remove needs for fossil fuels completely.
[–] adrianN 3 days ago
I’d keep gas plants around, but anyway, you need to cover that case and can’t just handwave it away.
[–] fpoling 3 days ago
The main advantage of gas plants is that they support variability. In a world with enough battery storage to last for days that would be irrelevant. And as an insurance against rare events it is better to keep coal plants as transportation and storage of coal is vastly more resilient to interruptions.
[–] adrianN 2 days ago
Gas turbines can also run on synthetic methane or hydrogen, which is nice.
[–] leonidasrup 2 days ago
Building new gas power plants for backup is currently the plan the Germany is implementing for it's future renewables powered electric grid.
https://biz.liga.net/en/energy/news/germany-to-build-11-gw-i...
In mean time, it looks like coal in Germany will used for longer.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-regulator-says-n...
[–] fpoling 2 days ago
Germany has not learned anything from the war in Ukraine and still think that dependence on gas imports from other countries is fine even for backup.
Anything below 800g of CO2 (which means basically every current grid) means electrifying is a net win. Even the famously coal heavy South African grid is already past that barrier and even if it wasn't all grids are getting cleaner over time.
A grid that has maxed out wind and solar and then used only coal for 2 weeks would be one of the cleanest grids in the world right now, on par with France or Sweden.
Chasing 100% on a grid to satisfy the complaints of people who are concern trolling isn't smart nor necessary. What you need is bulk cheap electricity to allow you to reduce your heating and transport costs and clean your air at the same time.