Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame
I get that solar doesn't regenerate or provide enough in a micro-usage situation, but what is wrong with having batteries powered through continuous, 24/7 charging year-round, and have them utilized only when increased demand during cold snaps? The intention wouldn't be for the batteries to be continuously used (unless we have solar and battery technology one day that can do that). Instead, we have solar-charged batteries ready to go for days such as these (and probably hot snaps in the summer).
I feel like it's still an option when we have AESO energy alerts at level 2 and/or 3, especially when temporary power loss to customers is looming.
Anyways, I feel like nuclear fusion could be our best renewable, non carbon-output energy source in the future.
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But like I mentioned, there has been several days of drawing more than we generate, and to have batteries for that, well 1000MW for 24 hours is a 24 000MWh battery. Note that the big one installed in Australia is 129MWh.
That costed about $80 million, so 24GWh would cost about $15 billion. Shepard Energy plant cost $1.4 billion and produces 860MW, all day, every day. So for ~1/10 the cost you get something that produces energy, not just stores it. And probably has twice the lifespan. And again, that gets you one 24 hour period like we have had.
Now sure, you can do smaller scale, but you get smaller benefits. This is just to illustrate the scale of the challenge.
I'm mostly suggesting we need to be cautious about how we transition, and not getting fooled into thinking building solar+battery at the same capacity of a gas plant that it plans to replace is a smart thing to do. Because once the battery is dead, it's dead, and it doesn't care that David Philips said it would warm up in a week, even if it doesn't. So we need to maintain old fashioned(or nuclear) generating capacity to cover that worst case scenario when the sun isn't shining, the wind isn't blowing, and the batteries are empty.