Sorry but you can't have EVs everywhere, WA and CA banning natural gas for heat and cooking, WA and OR sabotaging hydro plant output for salmon habitat restoration, while shutting down your most reliable sources of power. The math does not add up.
Solar and wind output is not constant or reliable. NIMBYs sabotaged nuclear years ago. It takes how many years to bring a new plant online?
A lot of feel-good rules and regs were passed, pushing a massive shift to electric power, with no consideration as to where the additional power would come from.
You can't wave your arms like a Peanuts cartoon and have all that extra power appear, which is the logic that was used in passing many of these impractical regulations.
Until the sun goes down at night or the wind stops blowing. You ignored the word "output".
> Energy storage is required along with solar farms
How many batteries are we going to need for that? They literally just figured out how to get the child slaves in the Congo out of the supply chain with a shift to LFP.
Enough to store the energy between gaps, plus a buffer?
Batteries aren't exactly made from gold. Grid scale batteries especially, where weight and size doesn't matter as much, are totally viable on a mass scale.
You're not being pragmatic, you're being myopic. Our current energy systems are the result of deliberate complex work. It seems shortsighted to think it's somehow the only system that can ever be built just because other systems have new challenges to overcome.
There are technologies for battery storage that don't look like batteries. Thermal energy storage is an example. It consists of heating something very big that holds a lot of heat and releases it slowly, then using that stored heat to generate electricity while it cools down. This isn't suitable for home use, but at the city scale, or larger, it's quite efficient:
> There are technologies for battery storage that don't look like batteries. Thermal energy storage is an example.
Yeah, there's also pumped water storage, and other forms of gravity/kinetic storage, various means of chemical energy storage, and all kinda other neat battery-like ideas folks have been trying/using.
The UK has Dinorwig power station, a pumped hydro station capable of storing over 9 GWh of energy. This alone rivals the entire combined 10.5 GWh of battery storage across the whole country. It certainly seems much more feasible when you have the terrain to allow it.
reactordev · · focus · HN ↗
sippingabonedry · · focus · HN ↗
Solar and wind output is not constant or reliable. NIMBYs sabotaged nuclear years ago. It takes how many years to bring a new plant online?
A lot of feel-good rules and regs were passed, pushing a massive shift to electric power, with no consideration as to where the additional power would come from.
You can't wave your arms like a Peanuts cartoon and have all that extra power appear, which is the logic that was used in passing many of these impractical regulations.
reactordev · · focus · HN ↗
Energy storage is required along with solar farms.
sippingabonedry · · focus · HN ↗
> Energy storage is required along with solar farms
How many batteries are we going to need for that? They literally just figured out how to get the child slaves in the Congo out of the supply chain with a shift to LFP.
WarmWash · · focus · HN ↗
Batteries aren't exactly made from gold. Grid scale batteries especially, where weight and size doesn't matter as much, are totally viable on a mass scale.
Propelloni · · focus · HN ↗
sippingabonedry · · focus · HN ↗
harimau777 · · focus · HN ↗
rainsford · · focus · HN ↗
outside1234 · · focus · HN ↗
We have batteries for this. See Texas and California.
watwut · · focus · HN ↗
alexgieg · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage
blooalien · · focus · HN ↗
Yeah, there's also pumped water storage, and other forms of gravity/kinetic storage, various means of chemical energy storage, and all kinda other neat battery-like ideas folks have been trying/using.
aaronmdjones · · focus · HN ↗
UncleMeat · · focus · HN ↗