What people overlook that reliability doesn’t matter that much. What actually matters is availability exactly matching the demand. And guess what… constant nuclear production is as far off as fluctuating renewable power.
Everyone can seemingly grasp the concept of solar production peaking at noon while the demand peak is about 5 hours later and that it needs storage to shift the production to the demand peak. But they don’t understand that constant production of nuclear needs a similiar amount of storage to shift all that power produced at night and not needed to the day when there is demand.
And the exact same thing is true for seasonal changes. It would be insanely expensive to produce the amount of nuclear power you need in those few cold winter nights and then have moverproduction most ofthe time. So you need seasonal storage for a lot of it, so you can instead build capacities for your average demand over a year and shift the produced energy around.
The storage you need for renewables is again comparable. In fact the pure capacity you need is actually lower, but then you need the ability to unload much more in a short time frame should weather patterns be really bad for renewable power. Which evens out in regards to costs. Renewable storage need less capacity but has higher demands on the storage and grid.
What people overlook that reliability doesn’t matter that much. What actually matters is availability exactly matching the demand. And guess what… constant nuclear production is as far off as fluctuating renewable power.
Everyone can seemingly grasp the concept of solar production peaking at noon while the demand peak is about 5 hours later and that it needs storage to shift the production to the demand peak. But they don’t understand that constant production of nuclear needs a similiar amount of storage to shift all that power produced at night and not needed to the day when there is demand.
And the exact same thing is true for seasonal changes. It would be insanely expensive to produce the amount of nuclear power you need in those few cold winter nights and then have moverproduction most ofthe time. So you need seasonal storage for a lot of it, so you can instead build capacities for your average demand over a year and shift the produced energy around.
The storage you need for renewables is again comparable. In fact the pure capacity you need is actually lower, but then you need the ability to unload much more in a short time frame should weather patterns be really bad for renewable power. Which evens out in regards to costs. Renewable storage need less capacity but has higher demands on the storage and grid.
Thanks for the insight