You mean in the far-from-norm situation you mentioned, is solar "useless" without storage. And even in that context, you're wrong. Many off-the-grid electricity consumers use diesel or fuel-oil based generators, there are already many solar systems that feed into such systems, backing off fuel usage when solar resources are available, then getting out of the way when it's not. No storage necessary.
In the "real-world", solar is connected to the grid, and the grid acts like the storage.
Storage becomes an actual concern when solar becomes a large fraction of the grid usage. Or in somewhat contrived situations such as an off-the-grid home using solar as the sole source of power.
Actually the grid has the same storage problem. On a small scale you can dump power into it and it is just a drop in the bucket. But on a large scale, you can't store power easily.
The most efficient alternative is to pump water up, then drop it through a turbine later. But world wide the total storage is only 3% of instantaneous generation capacity. So you can absorb/produce less than an hour's worth of electricity. Good for evening out a little fluctuation, but not a big one.
This is why natural gas is catching on. You can spin it up and down quickly, to accommodate the fact that wind and solar fluctuate quickly. By comparison both coal and nuclear require boiling a big tank of water. That's slow to heat up, and slow to cool down, so it doesn't adjust very fast as external power changes.
Fracking might have more to do with its sudden resurgence it than peaker plants, although granted it is probably the easiest power source to scale up and down.
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You mean in the far-from-norm situation you mentioned, is solar "useless" without storage. And even in that context, you're wrong. Many off-the-grid electricity consumers use diesel or fuel-oil based generators, there are already many solar systems that feed into such systems, backing off fuel usage when solar resources are available, then getting out of the way when it's not. No storage necessary.
In the "real-world", solar is connected to the grid, and the grid acts like the storage.
Storage becomes an actual concern when solar becomes a large fraction of the grid usage. Or in somewhat contrived situations such as an off-the-grid home using solar as the sole source of power.
Actually the grid has the same storage problem. On a small scale you can dump power into it and it is just a drop in the bucket. But on a large scale, you can't store power easily.
The most efficient alternative is to pump water up, then drop it through a turbine later. But world wide the total storage is only 3% of instantaneous generation capacity. So you can absorb/produce less than an hour's worth of electricity. Good for evening out a little fluctuation, but not a big one.
This is why natural gas is catching on. You can spin it up and down quickly, to accommodate the fact that wind and solar fluctuate quickly. By comparison both coal and nuclear require boiling a big tank of water. That's slow to heat up, and slow to cool down, so it doesn't adjust very fast as external power changes.
Fracking might have more to do with its sudden resurgence it than peaker plants, although granted it is probably the easiest power source to scale up and down.
Fracking makes it economical. But its ability to be a counterbalance to renewable is one of the reasons that environmentalists get behind it.