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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

A near 100% renewable grid doesnt require as much storage as you'd think:

https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g...

This model projects that a 98% solar/wind/hydro grid is possible for Australia by building an additional 450GWh of storage. 1.3x snowy 2 (which is 350GWh).

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Unfortunately, Snow 2's storage figures are rather misleading. That 350 GWh cannot be used daily, that's its total storage capacity which takes a month and a half to refill. The cyclic capacity of Snowy 2 - as in, the storage capacity that I can pump back into the facility using excess renewable power - is only ~40 GWh.

And again, this is geographically limited storage system: pumped hydro requires just the right geography of an upper and lower reservoir spaced not too far apart. Not too bad if you're a sparsely populated country with huge amounts of land per capita. But it isn't a solution for most countries.

It will be used where it is a good solution. Where it is not, others will be used. Use of other methods elsewhere does not detract from its usefulness in places suited to it.

>Not too bad if you're a sparsely populated country with huge amounts of land per capita.

Even a pretty skeptical assessment of Snowy 2 believes it's 240 GWh:

https://majorprojects.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/prweb/PRRest...

"If based on the active storage volume of the ‘lesser reservoir’, Talbingo, the theoretical energy storage capacity is about 240 GWh"

Once again this is just JUST ONE project, already under construction and it already will cover somewhere between 30-40% of the energy storage requirements to get the entire country to reach a 98% solar/wind powered grid.

Dismissing the possibility of this order of magnitude of storage as simply impossible as the OP did when it is already under construction is asinine.

>And again, this is geographically limited storage system: pumped hydro requires just the right geography of an upper and lower reservoir spaced not too far apart.

There have been multiple studies on this. Unlike hydro, the geography for pumped storage is not rare throughout most of the world.

This is the most perplexing talking point against pumped storage, and frankly, reminds me of when people used to pick up on pro nuclear/carbon lobbies sneering at solar/wind for being infeasible because it was < 1% of the grid back in 2014.

Australia is 1 - Huge, low density, lots of choice where to place renewables, 3 - has some of the best places for solar in the world, 4 - good solar production in winter.

Try Austria, and find that solar production falls 5-10x in winter, there is almost no good location for wind, and the problem is much harder.

Indeed, central and eastern Europe are some of the worst places on Earth for renewable energy. They are "nuclear's last stand". What this means, though, is that in a post-fossil world energy intensive industries will simply move elsewhere. Why build your aluminum smelter in an energy ghetto?

I would add Canada and Alaska, but I think you are right, only Europe has high population and poor conditions for renewables - a terrible combination.

This is not about industry, they need to run their economy, residential heating, etc.

Canada isn't great for many renewables, but hydro supplies most of its power. There's only a couple outlier provinces using coal.

Most of Ontario's power comes from nuclear energy. And Ontario is the biggest economic zone in Canada.

That's wrong. 34% of Ontario's power comes from nuclear energy.

58% as per https://www.ieso.ca//en/Learn/Ontario-Electricity-Grid/Suppl...

> Most of the electricity produced in Ontario is generated at nuclear and hydro plants...

Nuclear: 58%

Hydro: 24%

Like I said, most of Ontario's power comes from nuclear.

You're right. My mistake was reading the capacity numbers.

Austria has just the right geography for pumped storage and is connected to a Europe-wide grid generating plenty of excess solar and wind.

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