It is highly relevant, because renewables are not presently capable of replacing fossil fuels. And they won't be until massive energy storage systems, literally thousands of times better than what we have now, is developed. California, Hawaii, and other places are already hitting saturated electricity markets during the daytime. Companies aren't starting to install storage, as renewable evangelists promised.
Th fact that California only has 1.5 GWh of storage is precisely the reason why wind and solar cannot form the primary source of energy. Who cares if the state met it's storage goals if the storage goals were tiny?
That's not 1.5GWh energy stored, it's 1.5GW output from storage systems (output is the key metric because the storage systems aren't very rapid discharge, and the key factor in adequacy isn't how much energy is stored but how much power can be delivered from storage when other systems aren't delivering. And it's not just about meeting current targets but the rapid pace of new storage coming online.
That's not actually the key figure of merit, the problem isn't how long stored sources can be used but peak output.
> 1.5GW for 10 minutes? 15 minutes?
All of it for longer than that (none of the various utility-scale sources have a discharge that quickly), which is why power and not energy is the thing that is targeted. But it varies (utility-scale battery systems have a different profile [and differing within that by specific battery tech] than thermal storage which has a different profile than pumped hydro, etc.)
> Watts isn't a unit of storage
No, it's a unit of power, and the main problem right now is being able to meet needed output levels when other sources are offline. The concern is the depth of the trough that storage can handle, you need breadth too, so a substantial level of that comes inherently with depth, and the main concern is short-term variation.
Absolutely none of this changes the undeniable fact that "storage" is incapable of meeting the demands of baseload power generation currently provided by Nuclear and fossil fuels.
We aren't anywhere close and won't be for many years which is why it's so absolutely ridiculous how green activists implicitly endorse using coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels which kill tens of thousands of people every year and are cooking the planet, when we have nuclear, which kills no one, and does not contribute substantively to climate change.
It's almost like the activists care more about posturing and magical thinking than they do "saving the planet"...
it is literally impossible for renewables to replace fossil fuels given current technology and anything on the horizon for at least the next decade, probably much longer.
So that leaves...Nuclear.
So again, why are you fear-mongering about how "dangerous" nuclear is when it's a tiny tiny fraction of the real danger of fossil fuels?
I thought climate change was like an urgent crisis or something....?
I think the question is whether renewables should replace nuclear or fossil fuels first. The top level comment isn't talking about replacing fossil fuels with nuclear.
Renewables CANNOT replace nuclear OR fossil fuels. It's literally impossible based on current or any near-term technology.
We are being told on the one hand that climate change is an existential threat to tens (hundreds?) of millions of people. Oh but actually we can just refuse to decarbonize our energy production because maybe someday 10, 20, 50 or 100 years from now there's a true "green" renewable energy I guess.
About 1/5th of US energy usage is renewable. That means we can shutdown 1/5th of nonrenewable plants or shutdown all nonrenewables 1/5th of the time, real answer somewhere in between. The top level post recommends doing this only to carbon sources and leaving nuclear alone.
There are good arguments for and against pivoting to nuclear right now. But there is an (I think) unquestionable position presented here that we shouldn't be pivoting away from nuclear and shutting down plants.
> although it's more than just using Li-ion batteries.
It'd probably be helpful to elaborate, rather than just insist that the above commenter is wrong and loosely suggest at other solutions.
Things like hydrogen storage, synthetic methane, and thermal storage remain in the prototyping phase. I think it's not correct to say that they can, seeing as there isn't even a commercial market for these technologies let alone one that we know will scale. By comparison countries have already powered >80% of their electricity with nuclear.
It's clear than nuclear power can completely replace fossil fuels. Renewables might be able to replace it, but that's a gamble based on assuming a new storage solution will work excellent. Not just better, but truly blows-everything-else-out-of-the-water phenomenal. When the stakes at play are stopping climate change, this is a very risky assumption to make.
Really? What company can I call up and buy 50 GWh of storage from? That's only 6 minutes worth of storage for the USA.
I'd say if we could provision 1 hour's worth of storage over the span of a decade, that'd amount to a demonstration of economic feasibility. But few of these upcoming technologies are making it out of the prototyping stage, let alone commerical success on this scale.
I'm glad you can google "energy storage" and click on one of the first links but literally none of these are currently capable of replacing baseload nuclear and fossil fuel energy generation.
You can listen to the people who work in this industry and have studied it deeply or you can keep googling furiously for webpages that support your magical thinking.
No sir, YOU have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Note that you are not claiming that they could be competitive, but that they could not do it at all, regardless of price. This is clearly nonsense.
Please feel free to point me to any developed country that has successfully replaced fossil fuel and nuclear baseload generation with renewables and energy storage.
I'll save you the time. No one has done it. And no, not because evil mustachio-twirling Koch brothers are pulling the strings. Because the technology does not exist at scale to do this.
Or do you want to continue with your speculative science fiction daydreams?