Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
You can't prepare for storage technology that doesn't exist. Seasonal storage is a great idea, until you actually have to do it. Then it becomes an unsolved problem. And I don't really see any tech that can solve it. So we should be building more gas plants, tie them into the CCS system.
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Alberta is definitely an outlier when it comes to season variability. In a centrally planned economy you could just build gas plants. It's not just a physics/electrical problem though.
As I mentioned elsewhere, the Netherlands has a reality high penetration of rooftop solar to the point that power prices are very routinely negative. What happens to the gas generators when their profitability gets destroyed? No one is building a gas generation facility that runs maybe 30% capacity. PPAs will not slow down with more and more companies wanting to buy renewable generation even if they're nowhere near Alberta, so the solar plants are profitable without even really needing high energy prices.
This problem isn't unique to Alberta in terms of the transition requiring bigger market changes. At some point either regulation or price will force things a bit. It seems everyone wants to walk into it blindfolded and wait until it's a crisis.