Comment by plantain
6 hours ago
Why can't we predict how big or how often those events would be? We have clear understandings of the distribution of probabilities for all kinds of weather scenarios - see for example 1-50/100/1000 year flood/droughts.
We can and do, and there are detailed plans based on those weather scenarios (eg for the Australian east coast grid; there is AEMO’s Integrated System Plan).
Things in the US are a bit more of a mixed bag, for better or worse, but there have been studies done that suggest that you can get very high renewables levels cost effectively, but not to 100% without new technology (eg “clean firm” power like geothermal, new nuclear being something other than a clusterfumble, long-term storage like iron-air batteries, etc etc etc).