I can't see why solar isn't now the leading candidate. Nuclear is cool and all, but the simplicity of a butt-tonne of solar in a field can't be overlooked. It's not likely to fail catastrophically, maintenance is modular and low-impact. The skills needed are trades not degrees and if we can get the power output/battery/backup balance right, as a society we have clean, reliable energy indefinitely.
I say that knowing we are barreling toward fantastic solar participation in the grid in many countries, and I feel it's just a matter of time before it becomes the dominant source of our energy, especially as battery solutions come into play. It's also not the end of the world to have some backup gas generators that fire up once in a blue moon. Compared to 100% fossil fuels, the occasional gas turbine firing up on a stormy week would be negligible. Alternatively, novel storage methods such as hydro storage could make even backup energy green.
There are probably cities where it wouldn't work right now, but I can't imagine there being many places where it couldn't work at all.
Solar and nuclear are complementary technologies. Nuclear produces power at night when solar doesn't, solar produces power during the day when the demand is higher. It significantly reduces the amount of storage batteries you need, which is the primary impediment to using solar exclusively.
Solar is also problematic during winter. We need to replace fossil fuels as a heat source, but when heating with electricity at scale during winter, the demand rises at night meanwhile the days are shorter and solar generates less. Heating New York and Chicago in winter using solar and batteries doesn't have promising economics.
Storage is easy for renewables, regardless of local geology, using already existing tech.
In many places, the winds blows powerfully at night. With a capable grid like the one China has build in the last 10 years, that energy can be efficiently moved a thousand miles.
Storage is easy for renewables, regardless of local geology, using already existing tech.
By the time you generate power from some actual generation source, pay the conversion losses both ways and then pay the equipment, land and maintenance costs of the storage technology, it isn't cost-competitive. And then people keep burning carbon.
In many places, the winds blows powerfully at night. With a capable grid like the one China has build in the last 10 years, that energy can be efficiently moved a thousand miles.
Wind is regionally intermittent. If it's a still night in one place there is a significant probability that it will also be a few miles from there. But transmitting power over a thousand miles isn't cost-competitive. Both the infrastructure cost and the transmission losses scale with the distance, making the cost quadratic with the transmission distance. On top of that, it multiplies your costs for the generation, because if you're not going to use storage you need enough generation in Region A to power both Region A and Region B when it's a still night in Region B, but you also need that much in Region B for when it's still in Region A. Even if that only happens one night out of five.
There are also national security implications. For all but a small handful of countries "1000 miles away" is in another country. Who does Israel connect its grid to? Or Japan? Does Germany enjoy buying power from France? What do you do when your neighbor raises the price?
Then everyone, including the bigger countries, takes on a large-scale dependency. Lose the long-distance transmission lines and the brownouts aren't just regional, it's the whole continent. There are ways to harden against that but then we're raising the cost even more.
Nuclear is a poor complement to solar. To compensate for solar's fluctuations, you need anti-corelated and throttable power sources as well as storage.
You need a mix. Solar is great during the day in nice weather. It's useless at night, it's significantly reduced in bad weather, and it's completely inelastic to demand. If the population of a large metropolitan area turns on their air conditioner for an unexpectedly hot (but cloudy) day, you can't just generate more solar power. Pumped storage reservoirs can alleviate that demand to some degree, but we would need to flood significant new chunks of land and invest in relocation of humans/wildlife and construction of new dams and hydro plants. Combining solar with wind power, geothermal, and biomass can help to mitigate the issues of each solution alone. It's also just a good idea to have multiple systems in place as it makes the entire thing less prone to catastrophic failure.
I basically agree, but it’s the current cost of storage (or, equivalently, global high-tension interconnects) that’s keeping it from being a no-brainer. I’m confident solar will take over in the next decade.
Comments
I can't see why solar isn't now the leading candidate. Nuclear is cool and all, but the simplicity of a butt-tonne of solar in a field can't be overlooked. It's not likely to fail catastrophically, maintenance is modular and low-impact. The skills needed are trades not degrees and if we can get the power output/battery/backup balance right, as a society we have clean, reliable energy indefinitely.
I say that knowing we are barreling toward fantastic solar participation in the grid in many countries, and I feel it's just a matter of time before it becomes the dominant source of our energy, especially as battery solutions come into play. It's also not the end of the world to have some backup gas generators that fire up once in a blue moon. Compared to 100% fossil fuels, the occasional gas turbine firing up on a stormy week would be negligible. Alternatively, novel storage methods such as hydro storage could make even backup energy green.
There are probably cities where it wouldn't work right now, but I can't imagine there being many places where it couldn't work at all.
Solar and nuclear are complementary technologies. Nuclear produces power at night when solar doesn't, solar produces power during the day when the demand is higher. It significantly reduces the amount of storage batteries you need, which is the primary impediment to using solar exclusively.
Solar is also problematic during winter. We need to replace fossil fuels as a heat source, but when heating with electricity at scale during winter, the demand rises at night meanwhile the days are shorter and solar generates less. Heating New York and Chicago in winter using solar and batteries doesn't have promising economics.
Storage is easy for renewables, regardless of local geology, using already existing tech.
In many places, the winds blows powerfully at night. With a capable grid like the one China has build in the last 10 years, that energy can be efficiently moved a thousand miles.
By the time you generate power from some actual generation source, pay the conversion losses both ways and then pay the equipment, land and maintenance costs of the storage technology, it isn't cost-competitive. And then people keep burning carbon.
Wind is regionally intermittent. If it's a still night in one place there is a significant probability that it will also be a few miles from there. But transmitting power over a thousand miles isn't cost-competitive. Both the infrastructure cost and the transmission losses scale with the distance, making the cost quadratic with the transmission distance. On top of that, it multiplies your costs for the generation, because if you're not going to use storage you need enough generation in Region A to power both Region A and Region B when it's a still night in Region B, but you also need that much in Region B for when it's still in Region A. Even if that only happens one night out of five.
There are also national security implications. For all but a small handful of countries "1000 miles away" is in another country. Who does Israel connect its grid to? Or Japan? Does Germany enjoy buying power from France? What do you do when your neighbor raises the price?
Then everyone, including the bigger countries, takes on a large-scale dependency. Lose the long-distance transmission lines and the brownouts aren't just regional, it's the whole continent. There are ways to harden against that but then we're raising the cost even more.
Nuclear is a poor complement to solar. To compensate for solar's fluctuations, you need anti-corelated and throttable power sources as well as storage.
You need a mix. Solar is great during the day in nice weather. It's useless at night, it's significantly reduced in bad weather, and it's completely inelastic to demand. If the population of a large metropolitan area turns on their air conditioner for an unexpectedly hot (but cloudy) day, you can't just generate more solar power. Pumped storage reservoirs can alleviate that demand to some degree, but we would need to flood significant new chunks of land and invest in relocation of humans/wildlife and construction of new dams and hydro plants. Combining solar with wind power, geothermal, and biomass can help to mitigate the issues of each solution alone. It's also just a good idea to have multiple systems in place as it makes the entire thing less prone to catastrophic failure.
I basically agree, but it’s the current cost of storage (or, equivalently, global high-tension interconnects) that’s keeping it from being a no-brainer. I’m confident solar will take over in the next decade.