I mentioned I'm skeptical, but I'm genuinely asking, because I've never seen anyone ask about it.
I mentioned I'm skeptical, but I'm genuinely asking, because I've never seen anyone ask about it.
Using 2030 projections, nuclear loses.
(and that model doesn't take into account addressing intermittency with transmission or dispatchable demand, such as end-user thermal storage.)
Large scale electricity storage other than hydro power doesn’t exist and is extremely unlikely to materialize anytime in the near future.
Some advocates of renewables argue that “Power2Gas” is an option but they completely underestimate the amount of energy large countries need to store.
In Germany, for example, the daily electricity consumption is 1600 GWh. Converting that into methane would require to produce 3.5 million gas trucks filled with methane - for just a day.
And Germany’s current total hydro capacity is about 40 GWh, so only 1/40 of what we need of storage for a single day.
I don’t see a future for 100% renewables other than for small countries like Norway, Austria or Iceland who have lots of mountains for hydro power but only a fraction of the population of Germany or even the US.