[Manuel_D]

Except where the part where the rabbit start saturating markets during peak production. Then further progress starts to crawl as less and less of the actual generation capacity is usable. At least not until a breakthrough makes energy storage feasible.

The only countries that have successfully moved all or nearly-all of their electricity to decarbonized sources have done so primarily with dispatchable sources: hydroelectricity (E.g. Norway, Brazil, Albania, Uruguay) and with a mix of nuclear power filling in where hydro isn't enough (France, Sweden, Switzerland). All of those countries generate a single digit percentage of their electricity from fossil fuels. Nobody has decarbonized primarily through a source of decarboinzed energy source besides hydroelectricity or nuclear power.* Unless there's a storage breakthrough on the horizon, we'll still need to derive a significant chunk of our electricity generation from dispatchable sources.

* One minor counterexample is geothermal power, but like hydro it's geographically dependent.

[AtlasBarfed]

Solar can be installed on roofs. Costs go up, but resiliency goes way up and less grid complexity and transport is needed, and it solves the "holy crap how will we charge all these consumer EVs".

The EV(s) can function as some of the battery backup, especially since most EVs will be about 80% overprovisioned for everyday driving. Tesla is already doing it in California.

Storage breakthrough: sodium ion goes into mass production at 140-160wh/kg by CATL next year. In addition to being usable for the 200-300 mile EV, that will mean cheap grid batteries.

But this obsession with dispatchability at scale shows that there is too much focus on grid-scale solar and storage and centralized control. Yes the upfront costs are cheaper, but grid solar should be hand in hand with a VERY aggressive home/business solar+storage subsidy.

It's dumb that a natural disaster knocks out power for the entire area because transmission lines go down. With distributed solar and storage, that wouldn't be nearly as bad. Old guard electric can't wrap their heads around a country where every roof has solar doing most / all / surplus power generation.

[Manuel_D]

> Solar can be installed on roofs. Costs go up, but resiliency goes way up and less grid complexity and transport is needed, and it solves the "holy crap how will we charge all these consumer EVs".

Resiliency how? It makes the grid more fragile since cloudy days make for big energy shortages. It also doesn't solve EV charging. Plenty of people charge their EVs at night because they drive during the day. They also want to charge their EVs regardless of weather.

> Storage breakthrough: sodium ion goes into mass production at 140-160wh/kg by CATL next year.

Define "mass" production. For context, the world uses 60 TWh of electricity per day, or about 2,500 GWh of electricity per hour.

The concern with dispatchability is entirely reasonable because energy needs to be supplied when it's in demand, and storage isn't anywhere near the required scale. You can't just hand-wave this away by encouraging homes and businesses to buy storage.

> It's dumb that a natural disaster knocks out power for the entire area because transmission lines go down. With distributed solar and storage, that wouldn't be nearly as bad. Old guard electric can't wrap their heads around a country where every roof has solar doing most / all / surplus power generation.

Quite the contrary. Decentralized power generation actually means more transmission lines to transport energy long distances from the places where it gets generated to the places where energy is in demand. https://www.vox.com/videos/22685707/climate-change-clean-ene...

[Schroedingersat]

> Then further progress starts to crawl as less and less of the actual generation capacity is usable. At least not until a breakthrough makes energy storage feasible.

That happened. It's called off river or blue field pumped hydro and sodium batteries.

[Manuel_D]

> It's called off river or blue field pumped hydro

This isn't built in sufficient quantities, and hasn't seen significant growth in decades.

> and sodium batteries.

This hasn't even been commercialized at all yet, let alone at grid scale.

[Schroedingersat]

Well, which technology passes this high-vault bar? Surely not one that is flat and possibly shrinking and is operating at a scale that is similar to that of grid storage and also needs storage to meet variable demand?

[Manuel_D]

None: there is no feasible method of grid storage at the moment. Hence why dispatch-able sources of clean energy are necessary

[Schroedingersat]

So which dispatchable sources can match the scale of energy generation at which renewables saturate the grid then?

[Manuel_D]

I explained this in the first comment to which you responded [1]. Hydroelectricity is by far the most effective source of energy generation, although it has the distinct disadvantage of being geographically limited. Nuclear power is the most effective dispatchable source after that. Every country that has decarbonized their electricity grid has done so primary through a combination of hydroelectricity and nuclear power. No developed country has deployed a majority wind and solar grid, ever.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33636418