- Batteries don't work at the scale of a grid. There are a few 'natural' batteries, like the water level of a hydro dam, but none for renewables.
- Sometimes it's cloudy
- Sometimes there's no wind
- The renewable grid isn't, you know, BUILT yet.
So, despite handwaving these issues away, the "baseload" capacity remains a problem which has to be addressed by something with storable energy - eg. nuclear, hydro or coal.
https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication...
They do. This is from 2019, there are probably better and more recent sources.
> Sometimes it's cloudy > Sometimes there's no wind
Yes, so you always use a mix. The biggest problem is when there is no sun and no wind and this happens for an extended period. At those times power will likely become a lot more expensive. And as long as we don't have seasonal storage there will always be periods in the year like that, no matter where you live unless it is close to the equator.
> The renewable grid isn't, you know, BUILT yet.
You don't need a 'renewable grid', the one we have will serve just fine.
Gamechanger: HVDC to offset day/night and seasonal cycles because it allows the transport of electricity over far larger distances. This + a relatively modest amount of storage may well be the ticket.
Last I checked 4 years ago they didn't at all in terms of costs or pollution to produce/dispose of.
Natural stores energy like nuclear or hydro remain best.
There is no engineering reason why a grid cannot have very large amounts of batteries attached to it. If they're at the moment too expensive, that's no inherent obstacle, since battery prices have been falling rapidly, much faster than nuclear's price ever did.
> Sources on "they work fine at scale"?
Hitchen's Razor. I can dismiss your original claim without evidence, since it was presented without evidence. In other words: sources? You go first.
I suspect you are parroting studies that assume batteries are used to get to 100% renewables, then clutch their pearls at how many batteries are needed. Using batteries for that last 10% or so is just bad engineering, so those studies are strawmen.
There's no silver bullet, and pointing problems on one side only may help win arguments (maybe?) but is not so helpful when trying to find the "best" option. Which, in real life, usually means the less bad option. Warts everywhere...
Disposing nuclear waste effectively means putting it under ~3m of water in a place where people won't mess with it.
As of 2016, France has produced 14,000 tons of nuclear waste *in its entire history*. That's about 7 normal olympic swimming pools in total volume.
We have much bigger issues with other forms of waste, nuclear waste has always just been a scaremongering tactic for the anti-nuclear crowd.