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.
Comments
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.