8 ms·

What is the point of building energy outside of solar farms? I'm sincerely asking

• applied_heat 5mo ago
  Night time? But batteries! Several cloudy days in a row? More batteries! Cost? -> a mix of sources becomes attractive
  • jgoewert 5mo ago
    Batteries? You mean like digging a hole/making a wall and pumping water? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taum_Sauk_Hydroelectric_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taum_Sauk_Hydroelectric_Power_... Or we could just spin some rocks around. https://www.torus.co/torus-flywheel https://www.torus.co/torus-flywheel Rather have solar/wind and this than shipping depleting goop from foreign nations.
  • typon 5mo ago
    https://imgur.com/a/dV8gk3R https://imgur.com/a/dV8gk3R can you find curves like this for any other power source? also batteries are getting exponentially cheap too
    • micro2588 5mo ago
      These are typically representative of cost performance per watt of one part of a more complex deployed energy system. Things like the aluminum / steal for the container / framing, copper / aluminum for the transmission and wiring, land and labor for installation decline at much less aggressive rates or increase over time. In almost all pareto optimal least cost energy system models that I've seen, high penetration of solar, wind, batteries plus some minority amount of (clean) baseload power is the most capital efficient energy system.
• AngryData 5mo ago
  An inexhaustible 24/7 production capable plant has many advantages over solar and maintaining large most types of battery banks.
  • energy123 5mo ago
    Cost is like 90-99% of what matters. Last year, China installed 300GW of new renewables and 0GW of geothermal, despite geothermal being "an inexhaustible 24/7 production capable". Geothermal will compete with solar if they can get the cost low enough. I hope they succeed!
• paulnpace 5mo ago
  Some people don't really want the planet covered in solar panels. Others are cool with it so long as they don't have to see it.