What is the long term solution for "the last few weeks have been cloudy"?
Long distance (1000 km) transmission, wind AND solar, short term storage, load shedding agreements, and long duration storage.
Iron-air looks economically viable already for timescales of two days to two weeks. Hot rock storage, the same.
It's rare to get cloudy calm periods lasting longer than two weeks over 1000 km distances, but there are readily available seasonal storage choices.
Electrolysed hydrogen, either stored directly or as ammonia. Just need PV prices to fall a bit, which is expected, and the cost of electrolysis to fall, which is happening.
I have only hit the universals here. Depending on geography and mining history, there are a bunch of other storage options available in many places. Mechanical (gravity) storag other than pumped hydro is another possible technology. So is methane synthesised from CO2.
Edit. I'm in favour of nuclear, if the numbers work. The LNT theory should be exposed as the bull** that it is and ALARA abandoned in favour of specified limits. Then let nuclear compete with renewables.
Australian - ASEAN Power Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link
Edit: oops, now it's called Australia - Asia Power Link.
If actually cared about efficiently transferring to fight climate change, and not build a utopia. We would simply create a list of all coal power stations, order them by age and then start building a nuclear plant right next to one after the other as fast as possible.
If you did it that way, you could in less then 20 years basically make your grid green. Most people wouldn't notice anything what so ever. No new infrastructure would need to be build. It would be reliable in basically all situations. And it would give you a very large base of highly educated engineers and technicians.
Compare that to just importing tons of PV from China and putting up tons of new transition lines.
> but there are readily available seasonal storage choices
Are there? Non have been deployed and if you look at modeling these need to be essentially free to actually happen.
> Iron-air looks economically viable
One startup claims this, they have not shown a prototype or given specs, it will not be commercially deployed for a few years. Its a bit early to claim its viable.
Fact is, storage beyond 2h is totally unproven. Most companies that have worked in this direction have failed.
> Electrolysed hydrogen, either stored directly or as ammonia. Just need PV prices to fall a bit, which is expected, and the cost of electrolysis to fall, which is happening.
Using direct heat is simply a better option then electrolysis on large scale. With advanced nuclear you can use nuclear heat to crack steam. Far better option.
It sounds like the market. Hayek was right: we don't need to plan this, we just need to let lots of people try to seize opportunities, and we'll get fairly close to an optimum.
And as I have said elsewhere, the costs are inevitable. Existing plant is wearing out and has to be replaced, one way or another.
What we're arguing about is who gets the money: fossil fuel miners, or entrepreneurs. Let the market sort it out.
The polluting energy sources are more expensive. How fucking lucky is that!
But I don't think nuclear deregulation will motivate the rapid change we require to avoid climate disaster. Carbon tax would help, I think, but there is zero chance it will be implemented on the global scale. (Fuck our lives, right?)
There is a serious chance you can power most of the global population by building reactors and putting them on ships. Most people live on the coast.
The most scary place is actually Indonesia, they literally have 100s of coal plants in development. Gigantic population and nothing other then coal. Thankfully the government there is actually aware of the problem and they are working with a nuclear reactor company called Thorcon.
https://thorconpower.com/project/
This is a bit fishy because Indonesia doesn't actually have a regulator that is internationally accepted, but they are trying to build that at the same time. I am skeptical but its a great effort.
In Canada you have Terrestrial Energy and Moltex Energy doing amazing things. Terrestrial Energy is furthest along.
In the US you Kairos Power that seems active, and thankfully the regulator is starting to open up.
You have government guided utilities and fake markets with fake pricing plus lots of intensives.
There are externalizes all over the place and there is strange mix between public and private that is hard to understand. Solar still gets incentives when they produce energy at negative prices for example. Fossil fuel has a huge negative externalize, and while I believe free market often produces good solutions for externalizes, it doesn't work on a global scale.
So you have issues on the traditional prices, you have the subsidies renewables that are pushed by mandates (ie you have to deploy 30% renewables) and in addition to that, renewable just use the grid as storage and let the grid provider worry about the problem and you have nuclear that is essentially blocked from developing.
Dispatch-able power is vastly under-priced in most markets.
Markets work if price intensifies carry real information, and in electricity markets have to many structural problems.
What should be done is what NASA did for space station supply. Select 5-10 competitors for next generation nuclear let them develop different concepts and go threw a multi round process where the company and the regulator learn, you end up building 3 and then promise at that you are gone order min. 3 more reactors from two of them. That would actually get nuclear in the market in a real way.
The crazy thing is that the government actually HAS the money to run this competition. Nuclear reactor providers have paying into an account for a long, long time. There are billions and billions available but its just a political issue that its not happening.
For better or for worse, energy is something government has been deeply and fundamentally involved with, 'the market' will not converge on the right solution in this situation.