Comment on 7 reasons why nuclear energy is not the answer to solve climate change
MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 5 days agoYou massivly underestimate what hydro can do today. The reservoirs can be used as storage and those are massive. Norways hydro storage is 87TWh. That is about 11 days of electricity consumption of the entire EU in itself. Obviously there are issues with that, but it is a lot of storage.
Solar and wind are weather dependent. So a large enough grid will have times with lower production, but it is never really nothing. With strong connections that massivly reduces storage needs. For the EU:
www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=…
So overcapacity is another great option. Add a bit of battery storage to balance the grid and high renewable grids are entirly possible. Even with limited hydro.
That is not to mention geothermal, biomass, hydrogen, adapting electricity consumption and a bunch of other more niche technologies.
Mihies@programming.dev 5 days ago
You are citing Norway which has very favorable geography. But that’s hardly true in general. About grid - think about long winter nights where people are running heat pumps and worse means of heating tech. Will this grid be able to, let’s say, provide energy for a week? I doubt you could, assuming Norway provides their storage, distribute it all over EU. Biomass outputs CO2 and is only possible at small scale. Where are these hydrogen storages?
Anyway, I’m all for renewables and non-nuclear if somebody draws a plan that is well defined and realistic. But AFAIK we have no such plan, do we?
MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 4 days ago
It obviously depends on the location and somewhat how the different technologies develop, but most of the year, you end up with a strong mix of wind and solar, as well as base load renewables. A bit of battery storage to allow one to cover a summer night or so. For longer cloudy periods with no wind you need either biomass or hydrogen.
Obviously it depends on the location and how different technologies develop in the future, but it is certainly possible.