Comment on Can somebody please explain why the world hasn't gone nuclear yet?
Allero@lemmy.today 2 days agoYes, storage is complicated - but it can be done. Pumped hydro and other technologies exist to make storage cheaper than it would be in batteries, and sodium-ion options become cheaper and cheaper to serve as buffers.
As far as I know, the power outage in Portugal and Spain did not start with renewables, those were disconnected to protect the equipment later, when the voltage already dropped, along with other power stations. Moreover, they were the first to recover, and they handled some of the load during the blackout: euronews.com/…/did-renewable-energy-cause-spain-a…
iii@mander.xyz 2 days ago
It’s not like a set of bowling balls and pins, one being the initial mover and the others falling one by one.
Grids are better modelled as a system, jointly operating. Insufficient damping is the cause as per the grid operator (1).
Can be solved in multiple ways such as make it a france problem (stronger interconnects to a system with more turbines), storage, improved DC-AC transformers for small (<1MW) solar plants. (*)
Pumped storage is indeed the best known technology for grid stability, as it provides both storage, and turbines with inertia. Hard to build though, finding funding and appropriate locations.
(*) the report mentions an estimated 700MW of production auto-shutting down as grid frequency dropped. Most likely these are the inverters of small scale solar installations, which are frequency following (measure then adjust) rather than synchronizing.