[epups]

I cannot reply to your other post. The answer is simple: France's grid was not designed for its base load needs to be supplied solely with nuclear energy. You could, barring political will, redesign Europe's energy grid to switch from coal/gas/oil to nuclear entirely. On the other hand, you can never design a grid that relies solely on renewables.

I am not moving any goalposts here. You have failed to answer my direct question, however: how do you propose a distributed grid would work without nuclear energy?

[joak]

Actually coal and nuclear can only do base load: thermal power plants need hours to shutdown or to ramp up. That's why hydroelectric or gas peakers are needed for daily variations (peak hours). So 100% nuclear is not doable.

Renewables plus batteries have no such issues. Imagine you want to equip your house: batteries for 24h and enough PV to handle the worst day of the year (a cloudy winter day). Done, you have 100% renewable 24/7. Super reliable. Want more reliability? Add more PV, more batteries.

Since nuclear had lost the battle of the costs, they invent nonsense rationale to try to save their industry.

[epups]

Hey sounds great! Except that if you take every battery put together in the world right now, it probably doesn't have enough capacity to store even 10% of Europe's energy needs for a day. Oops!

[bryanlarsen]

> you can never design a grid that relies solely on renewables.

If the wind is always blowing somewhere within the grid, yes you can.

Adding storage makes it cheaper, but it's not a necessary part of the design.

[epups]

I cannot make this issue any simpler, I'm afraid, but here is a try: it's not about the binary existence of "wind" "somewhere within the grid", it is about having enough wind AND wind turbines to power your entire grid from that corner alone. Again, no grid has ever or will ever operate like that, as you acknowledge by not pointing out any counter examples.