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by ZeroGravitas 1792 days ago
The cheapest way to generate power on cloudy winter days is wind power, not overbuilt solar. Though, yes, overbuilding wind and solar is generally more cost effective than most other alternatives and the overbuilt wind and solar will both contribute power even when not working at their seasonal peak and provide abundant cheap power for storage when overproducing near their peaks.

I had assumed we were both taking that as the baseline alternative, since every country in the world is basically building that out right now, hence my suggestion that demand response would be a better choice than any plausible nuclear option to cover any gaps in that provision due to unseasonal weather which is both less windy and more cloudy than predicted.

But we appear to be starting from radically different assumptions about what power grids will look like (and already look like today)

1 comments

Yes, we have a lot of wind power, but that also is backed by fossil.