| Wind is a pretty solid source of baseload actually, as long as you build enough. The supplementary materials from Caldeira's Geophysical Constraints paper (usually used to argue AGAINST renewable energy) show that with 50/50 wind/solar mixes (figure S4) you can achieve: * 1x capacity, 0 storage: 74% of electricity demand * 1.5x capacity, 0 storage: 86% of electricity demand * 1x capacity, 12h storage: 90% of electricity demand * 1.5x capacity, 12h storage: 99.6% of electricity demand Citation: http://www.rsc.org/suppdata/c7/ee/c7ee03029k/c7ee03029k1.pdf > ElectricityMap Nobody who follows the energy sector closely thinks ElectricityMap has any credibility for country-to-country comparisons. The datasets are extremely fragmentary and have huge yawning gaps with no data available, which should be the first red flag for anybody citing it. It might be useful for trends within a given country, but not the way you're citing it. Also: accounts popping up out of the woodwork to argue passionately for an out-of-favor technology reeks of a dying industry trying to revive itself with public relations. 3/4 of those accounts seem to cite ElectricityMap, oddly enough... |