• Svante@mastodon.xyz
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      1 year ago

      @MattMastodon @Sodis Only about 40% of demand can be directly met from volatiles (wind and solar), i. e. no intermediate storage. The rest has to come from »backup« or »storage« or however you call it.

      Current storage tech is still almost 100% pumped hydro. Batteries have not made a real dent there yet. But pumped hydro is not enough by far, even potentially, and batteries have a long way to go to be even as scalable as pumped hydro.

      So, backup. The only clean, scalable backup is nuclear.

      • AbolishBorderControlsNow@mastodonapp.uk
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        1 year ago

        @Ardubal @Sodis

        We have to be careful. Different counties have very differnt energy make ups. I live in the UK where nuclear is

        I don’t understand where you got 40% from. This seems arbutrary.

        In the UK Nuclear is 15% and renewables about 40% (over the last year) we mainly burn gas for the rest.

        • Svante@mastodon.xyz
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          1 year ago

          @MattMastodon @Sodis Careful about labels. »Renewables« often includes biomass (which is just fast-track fossil tbh) and hydro (which is not so volatile). I’m talking about wind and solar specifically (volatiles).

          40% is roughly the mean capacity factor of a good mix of volatiles. This is what you can directly feed to the user from the windmill/panel, without storage. You can expand a bit by massive overbuilding, but you can’t overbuild your way out of no wind at night.

          • @Ardubal @Sodis

            Mostly we don’t use energy at night. In the UK there is a peak in the morning. In the UK we mainly use gas to fill this. We will have to find a storage solution as nuclear can’t be upscale that quickly. Gas was meant to be used just to fill the gaps but it’s quickly become a staple.

            We need to find a way of smoothing the graph. Energy storage is the best option in the short term.

            Or we can vary use.

            #nuclear #renewables

            • Svante@mastodon.xyz
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              1 year ago

              @MattMastodon @Sodis Again: that demand is lower at night is already factored in. Roughly 40% of demand can be directly met by volatile sources. You may think nuclear is slow to deploy, but it’s still much faster than anything that doesn’t exist.

              The gap is 60%. Gas is a fossil fuel. Varying use is mostly a euphemism. If you hurt industry, you won’t have the industry to build clean energy sources.

              • @Ardubal @Sodis

                Wind power is hardly new technology.

                And let’s say we treble wind power and solar and add battery and hydro storage we can upscale our energy mix to meet demand. And continue to reduce demand.

                The amazing thing about this is for most of the time we will have a superabundance of energy. So energy on most days will be crazy cheap.

                Our industries can use the energy at superlow cost. We could have free energy days where charging your car or washing is free.

                #renewables #nuclear

                  • Svante@mastodon.xyz
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                    1 year ago

                    @MattMastodon @Sodis If you include construction and disposal (and transport and so on…) it is called lifecycle costs. First image shows that per energy produced (sorry german, »AKW neu« is new-built nuclear).

                    Uranium comes from all over the world. Second image shows the situation a few years ago. Niger is place 5, Russia place 7.