Hi,
Australia seems to be making storage work big time. (40 mil in savings in the first year).
Nuclear 'spin up' time is far worse than coal. Both are in nimby land, now, and both are economic night mares. Spin up gas turbines would be a better choice than either nuke or coal.
If the grid were more proficient then power from renewables could be "shipped" to where the demand is.
agesilaus wrote:
Even if you got an economically functional storage system the energy sources are completely unreliable. Solar has something like a 15-20% availability factor and Wind has been as low as 5% during summer heat (in Texas for one place). So it doesn't matter how good your storage is, if you don't have anything to store. Availability factor is how much time the plant is operating at full capacity. Fossil plants are around 90+%
These 'renewable' plants (with the exception of hydro) require full time 100% spinning reserves. Meaning a fossil fired plant running 24 hours a day to backup the wonder energy producers. Meaning instead of replacing a fossil plant you just add a solar or wind unit on top, increasing the costs. Some customers of offshore wind are paying seven times higher prices for electricity.
There is only one, 100% reliable and non-polluting power source that we have and that is the reviled Nuclear. Orbital solar might work if you don't mind having an orbital death ray for terrorists to seize. Fusion as they say is "the power source of the future and always will be..."
