Quote:
Originally Posted by roflwaffle
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.. |
Not all cloudy days are accompanied by storms.
Quote:
Originally Posted by roflwaffle
Guess 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. 
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.. |
I know you didn’t bring him up but since Amory Lovins was brought into it here is another chance to take a shot at his credibility. I believe that they probably can match supply to demand 100% of the time but what nobody is showing you is the demographics of their supply. If you look at the Ontario link I provided, 90-95% of peak demand is still there in the evening once the solar is gone. So you need 1x peak capacity in wind, 1x peak capacity in solar (to cover when there is no wind) and 1x peak capacity in your peaking supply to cover if solar and wind are both down at the same time. So your grid is consisting of 3x peak capacity when a conventional grid might be (guessing here) 1.2 to 1.25X required avg peak. Amory has the nerve to say that nuclear is more expensive (which it isn’t Wh for Wh) and totally ignores the fact you need multiple times the capacity on an already more expensive power supply. Nobody is going to pay for a utopian grid over a nuclear one if their power bill goes up by a factor of 4x or more.
I am not sure if you are supporting the huge HVDC network that Neil is proposing but nobody will go for that either and here is why. You will have areas like the NE and SE that will be the big importers because they are poor sites for solar and wind yet they have all the population. They would be connected by a few corridors of HVDC lines (we are talking long lines here maybe half the length of the county. You are putting millions of people on a circuit now. When lines go down for normal accidental reasons, unlike now when blocks or even a city goes out now regions will be without power and the line you need to trouble shoot the fault on won’t be 50 miles it could be 5000. The U.S. has shown that they can even defend their border from immigrants, how will they defend a 5000 mile power line from terrorists. Lastly nobody is going to put their energy supply in the hands of another govt. The people of the NE will not rely on the SW for their power because the day that there is a shortage, the govts in the SW will make sure that their needs are met before exporting power to other areas of the country. It is basic physics as well, current takes the shortest path.