Comment on Anon questions our energy sector
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 11 hours agoSo you agree that solar + battery resolves 90-99% of power needs now at a drastically reduced cost and build time than nuclear today?
I expect that 10% will get much closer to 1% in the next decade with all the versatile battery/solar tech coming onboard, but to compensate for solar fluctuations, you use wind, you use hydro, and you use the new “dig anywhere” steady state geothermal that is also being brought online today. We can run more HVDC lines to connect various parts of the country. We are working on some now, but not enough. With a robust transmission system, solar gets 3hrs of “free” storage across our time zones.
Worst case? You burn green hydrogen you made with your excess solar capacity in retrofitted natgas plants.
iii@mander.xyz 11 hours ago
I’m saying you can get to 90% yes.
But, as often happens, the last 10% is as hard or harder as the first 90%. The law of diminishing returns.
I’m aware of and have studied them. But general public seems to greatly underestimate the scale of storage that’s needed.
Pumped storage, if geology allows for it, seems like the only possible technology for sufficient storage.
Demand side reduction is possible as well, but that’s simply a controlled gray out. The implications for a society are huge. Ask any cuban or south african.
Others, like lithium ion batteries, green hydrogen, salt batteries, ammonium generation, … have been promised for decades now. Whilst the theory is there, they do store power, it simply does not scale to grid scaled needs.
The sad part is that it sets a trap, like we in EU have fallen into. You get far along the way, but as you can’t bridge the last gap, your reliance on fossil fuels, and total emissions, increases.
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 2 hours ago
There is no law of diminishing returns. That’s an aphorism, not an actual scientific principle. If your power source can generate the power, it does so.
You don’t need to store an entire county’s power per day. Thats never been anyone’s goal, nor is it needed. You generate power for at least half of it, then continue to generate power with other green sources while also storing it.
You need to “restudy” the current state of battery tech and geothermal. There are huge arrays of different batteries being built now, and active 100+MW geothermal plants in operation, with more coming. The tech is here now, being built as we speak.