Solar was the cheapest source of power YEARS ago. Solar plus storage was also the cheapest form of dispatchable power years ago, but for some reason these idiots are just reporting it now.
eleitl@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
It’s not the same, since it’s not dispatchable. So you need gas turbines or very large battery systems, which isn’t exactly helping with that upfront capital.
oyo@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
bitwize01@reddthat.com 1 week ago
The backup for turbines and coal plants failing is more turbines / older, less efficient turbines though, right? If our existing power infrastructure is spun up overnight only, that’s a huge improvement. Turbines for flexible capacity will always be a thing, but solar to provide baseline capacity is just good business.
There’s another strategic benefit: batteries have a fixed cost that doesn’t rely on a variable input cost. With current events in the strait, countries without abundant natural gas are advantaged because they’re less reliant on geopolitical conditions. This is why we’ve seen such growth of solar in china, which is not oil-rich, and was already importing a lot of coal.
antimongo@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Major issue with spinning up turbines over night is the actual gas turbine unit ramp rates. Meaning how quickly they can go from cold and offline to hot and full output. Some units take upwards of 8 hours to get to their full output.
And the peak load of an average grid is right when the sun is setting and everyone is getting home from work, around 5 in the afternoon.
At that time, solar is dropping fast, and you don’t have time to start up your slow units, they’d have to already be online.
So utilities are often forced to leave their gas units online, even when solar is pumping out power, just to have them ready for the peak demand (and also have them for night).