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by PaulHoule
355 days ago
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Solar + storage has to buffer three kinds of variation: (1) Diurnal. You need to store maybe 12 hours of production to get through the night. It's believable that this could be affordable with batteries. (2) Seasonal. In a place like Minnesota you either need to overbuild solar panels by a factor of 3 or so, or you need a lot of storage, probably not batteries, but maybe some kind of chemical or thermal storage. Casey Handmer would point out that you could use excess energy in the summer for industrial activities but that could be easier said than done because the capital cost of a factory that runs 1/3 of the time is 3x that of one that runs all the time. (3) Dunkelflaut. Sometimes you have a rough patch of cloudy weather and little wind, so the requirements are worse than (1). It's rare to see credible analysis of the grid-scale cost of a solar + storage system because of (3) -- you can quote a reasonable price for batteries that will supply power "almost" all the time, but costs rise explosively as you increase "almost". With different requirements for reliability the cost of a storage-based system could be "a bit less" than "nuclear power plants built without bungling" or it could be much more. It also has to vary with your location though people talking about the subject don't seem to talk about that which contributes to people talking past each other. (In upstate NY I could care less about Arizona) |
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https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...
The cheapest grid is 90-97% renewable (depending on location) in 2025. As battery prices go down, that number gets higher.