[nothercastle]

The more renewables on the grid the more gas you need. Gas is required to balance out solar and wind until battery technology matures. Renewable eliminate the need for costly coal and nuclear but they need gas to deal with times of low solar and wind.

[ta1243]

So if you have a demand for say 100Twh a year and generation 1Twh from renewable, you need very little gas. On the other hand if you generate 60Twh renewable, you need more gas?

Is that what you're saying?

[wang_li]

They are saying that if 50% of your generating capacity drops to 1% of you need a lot of gas powered plants to make up that difference. If your renewables represent 1% of the generating capacity you need very little gas to make up that difference.

[ta1243]

So I have a grid with Gas and Renewables connected.

100% Gas will use 100TWh of gas to generate power

50% renewable will use 50TWh of gas to generate power

[nothercastle]

You missed the fact that the mix shifted. Coal and nuclear are too expensive where solar is available so you go from: 35% coal 30% nuclear 35% gas

You go to 60% solar 40% gas.

Obviously the numbers are made up but that’s the point I’m trying to make.

[ta1243]

Or you go to 70% solar and 30% gas?

If your example you've reduced generation from fossil fuels from 70% to 40% so still a win.

I assume you're still going on about nuclear. The problem with nuclear is that it doesn't make financial sense even if it can run at 100% of capacity for 100% of the time, it certainly can't cope with variable load - you can't scale nuclear to provide your peak amount, so you need to be able to top up with gas or battery, just like renewables need top up

[adrianN]

No, you need more gas turbines, you don’t need more gas.

[simfoo]

This is a lie that has been disproven repeatedly and is part of the disinformation that is spread all over the internet. What _is_ required is flexible power distribution and storage infrastructure

[nothercastle]

How ever you do it you need to time shift. Either though batteries or usage or ideally both. The interim solution is gas. Because solar is so cheap it makes sense to take other more expensive and slow power sources offline but that does increase how much gas you use even if the total fossil fuel consumption goes down.

[flir]

Timeshifting the load helps too.