| > but never true Ehhhh, sorta? Wind power can be useful as a base load generator if you over provision by a large amount. But the problem is that during the summer months you will get ridiculously high generation and then in winter it drops like a rock. What's worse is that solar follows this same trend. Typically pricing per kwh is averaging across the year. But during the winter you will have terrible shortfalls. So you need to double or even triple that price because you will have to double or triple the wind turbines and solar panels to achieve the same stable load. Unfortunately, power storage for months worth of power is even more expensive than just over provisioning. Batteries are great for grid stability, but not for long term energy storage. You can get a good idea of what renewables look like over the year here: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=16851 So unless we want to keep running natural gas in the winter, or we want to pay 3x as much for renewables, geothermal and nuclear would make a lot of sense when paired with renewables. |
The appealing quality of synthetic fuel like ammonia is that there is always an eager market for as much as you can produce, so once your local tankage is full, excess power produces reliable revenue. Your synthesizers are idle only when you are drawing down banked energy, and not necessarily even then if you have plenty.