Quote:
Originally Posted by niky
In your link:
Pleasantly surprised that Wind is so cheap, even without subsidies. But wind power is simply too intermittent to replace fossil or nuclear fueled base load. In the end:
It's time for a global lifestyle check.
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The UK uses wind along with Nuclear and Coal as the base load, if we have wind available then it is used first. Hydro pumped storage fills in the peaks and then a mixture of gas and imported Nuclear and wind power fills in the remaining variable demand.
The wind isn't intermittent unless you have a very small number of turbines in a very small number of locations. Having many thousands of turbines spread throughout our island and also access to power from turbines in other countries so that a single high pressure weather system cannot take out the whole lot, it is variable but those variations can be accurately predicted days in advance so giving a reliable supply, you don't need lots of non-renewable plants on immediate standby wasting power.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IamIan
Keep in mind the argument those PHDs were making , is that no type of RE can possibly be cheaper than coal not even 40 years from now ... reality is that ... Some RE already is today .. even without any subsidies ... much less what will be around 40 years from now... simply put , their wrong.
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I think they were looking at using 100% RE which would indeed be very difficult today but we don't need to replace our Nuclear plants with RE so 100% isn't necessary.
Some RE has always be financially viable, in the UK we have used sustainable hydropower since the very start of household electricity and some of our most important power plants today are the pump storage systems, not technically RE but with 30 GWh of power stored and retrievable at 70% efficiency they are very important for meeting peak demand, storing excess power and reducing the spare capacity requirement.