this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
2176 points (94.1% liked)

World News

39142 readers
2936 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At present, we don't even have the technical means to have enough storage to afford 100% wind + solar in a country,

I reject your premise.

I agree that we do not have the storage capacity to maintain the supply-shaping model we currently use.

However, we do have all the technological tools necessary to shift to demand-shaping as our primary model for matching supply and demand. Basically, we can move the times that we use most of our power to the times that power is easy to generate.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Basically, we can move the times that we use most of our power to the times that power is easy to generate.

How?

For example, the typical risk period for a power grid is during winter nights, when people come home and turn on the heat, cook and do their chores, or relax watching their TVs or playing videogames. How can we postpone such a power usage to another time?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

How can we postpone such a power usage to another time?

We don't.

The most efficient traditional generation comes when we can perfectly flatten out demand curve. When there is no variance, we can meet 100% of our demand with cheap, efficient, baseload generation. When we have some variance, we meet our minimum demand with baseload generators, and everything above that minimum is met with expensive peaker plants.

So, what we have done is provided extremely cheap power to heavy industry (steel production, aluminum smelting, etc) over night, when regular demand is low. This raises our minimum load, and lowers our maximum, but it increases night-time consumption. To meet that with solar requires storing power when it is produced, and releasing it overnight.

But the only reason why we need it overnight is because we drove them to those overnight hours. When we have them run during the day, we don't need to store that power first.

We don't have to shift all of our consumption to daytime hours. We have plenty of excess nuclear generation capacity available for residential needs after we shed those heavy, industrial loads.