[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by Duffman

Yes I have, you know those days when it is cloudy and/or raining, solar potential is low, all you need is low wind in combination and you are up a creek without a paddle.

Guess what happens when a storm system moves in? The winds tend to pick up... Granted, forecasting isn't 100% accurate, which is why we have dispatchable power from biogas and pumped hydro in sufficient quantity to account for the potential shortfall in production. This isn't anything new, it's already ben demonstrated. All we need is the appropriate mix of renewable energy.

Originally Posted by Duffman

Ontario Wholesale Electricity Demand and Price Information
Supply and demand are similar but there is are gaping holes in supply for a few hours as well. Do you think the wind is only going to blow during those times or are you counting on your peaking supply to be as large as your solar?

That's why, along with wind and solar, we also have geothermal and wave for baseload, pumped hydro for storage as well as dispatchable power, and biogas for dispatchable power. What's done is forecasting and implementation of a resource mix that can provide the energy needs of a given area, along with enough dispatchable power so that any drop in output can be handled. It's not like the wind will stop blowing, the sun will stop shining, the water will stop moving, and the Earth will grow cold, all at once over thousands of square miles. And if that happens, I'm pretty sure we'll have bigger fish to fry than worrying about electricity.

Originally Posted by Duffman

Yes actually they are talking about replacing coal and nuke. That means MW for MW

It's not just MW for MW, it's MW for MW over the same time period, and they've successfully demonstrated they can follow demand with renewables just like coal and nukes follow demand.

Originally Posted by Duffman

I agree we need to reduce our consumption but I frequent a few other boards than this one and I see no indication that your avg Canadian or American is willing to change yet.

So far in California they have been. IIRC the cheapest MW was the one not produced, at something like 2-5c/kWh. In other words, it's cheaper to offer rebates on energy efficient stuff and encourage residents to save power than it is to add additional infrastructure, at least it has been for the past few years.

Originally Posted by Duffman

Again Germany is running on 85% conventional power, when their 15% eco-power runs silent they dont see disruptions because their baseload is probably only running at 80% on an avg day anyway and has room to meet the shortfall.

As I've said before, the project was using their demand profile with proportionally smaller renweables. Clearly they can't do that for all demand right now since they don't have the requisite infrastructure, however, as they have shown, given a mix of renewables, they can keep up with demand, so all they need to do in order to implement the system is scale up the renewable mix.