Comment by pydry
5 years ago
Intermittency and the unsuitability of grid storage batteries to compensate is heavily played up by the carbon industry.
The future of low emissions energy production will be largely driven by overproduction and demand shifting, not banks of grid level batteries.
This likely won't happen as soon in America, however, the economy is too tied in to fossil fuels and the appetite to upgrade the electric grid by utility companies heavily invested in gas isnt really there.
It would be nice if you can have your appliances charging per day, and using a built in battery suited to run at night.
But the solution isn't batteries, it stored hydroelectric. Only works where you have mountains though.
Batteries are a bit uneconomical now but may well fall in price like solar has. See for example:
>A startup run by a Tesla veteran and backed by Bill Gates is promising to build a long-duration battery that's 50 to 100 times cheaper than lithium-ion https://www.businessinsider.com/form-energy-battery-startup-...
Europe is already using something like 90% of our hydro electricity potential. So far, countries either: - added renewable energies on top of existing fossil fuel based power generation (gas, coal) - added renewable energies and replaced coal with gas (US for instance)
How is that a solution when it's difficult to build more of it?
Its only the only economical solution currently. Orders of magnitude cheaper than other solutions.
then by your own logic it would happen other places, it doesent.
It is "played up" because that is how the physics/science works right now. Grid-scale storage is required to smooth out grid-scale intermittent generation.