Quote:
Originally Posted by oil pan 4
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/grid..._authority/PNM
With out natural gas wind and solar would be impossible.
You can see the huge swings in wind power output in just a few hours and natural gas power plants compensating.
Coal power plants also cut in and out depending on demand but they operate in an on/off manor.
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Discussions on the max that Wind and solar can contribute has been ongoing for a few years now. Original estimates were in the 5% range before the grid went unstable.
As more Wind and Solar come online, it turns out that the grid control has figured out how to make it work. I expect that a *LOT* of time and effort was required to make more than 5% solar and wind work for the grid .. but it got done.
Grid level batteries (chemical, gravity, et al) are one way of getting rid of SOME of the natural gas turbines that take up the slack when renewables are not generating, and when Peak demand hits.
I'm generalizing .. but EXCESS solar and wind (which I have read requires that they get to somewhere around 2X and 3X the peak power that is required on the grid at any one time) .. needs to be stored in something and made available when required.
More generation - nukes, solar, wind, wave, unicorn farts, clean coal?, hydrogen? - is obviously needed to get rid of coal. It would be nice if that new generation was not as intermittent as solar and wind. And if it is solar and wind, a solution like the 'grid level batteries' needs to be some portion of the new generation.
I don't see natural gas turbines being decommissioned until SOMETHING takes over the slack between renewables - or maybe the EXCESS solar and wind can be used to recycle a stream of emissions into synthetic fuel, which is then used to fill in the gaps for renewables. Unfortunately there are efficiency issues with synthetic fuel (20% - 25% round-trip efficiency is one)
To summarize: .. IMHO .. More renewables will get us closer. Excess renewables can be leveraged to be stored as .. something .. synthetic fuel, hydrogen (which is sort of synthetic fuel), compressed air, gravity batteries ... and progress toward less Coal and less fossil fuel natural gas.
.. getting off my soap box now ..
