Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo… then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something?
Installed Wind Capacty - Germany
Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo… then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something?
Installed Wind Capacty - Germany
Thanks for the question. Firstly, most places have a power grid which is far larger than their locality. For example, the southeastern United States is connected to a single big grid which connects every smaller sub-grid east of the Rocky Mountains. This means that a home in Florida can be powered all the way from the Bath County pumped-storage facility in Virginia, the second largest such facility in the US.
Hydroelectricity can also be generated by rivers, which are commonly used in lowland areas, and geothermal is also viable at any time of the day. Biomass is also an option, though it’s the last resort really, although as long as it’s responsibly managed, it can be nearly carbon neutral.
There are also alternatives to pumped storage, lots of them. Compressed air, thermal storage, and hydrogen are a few examples just off the top of my head, though I’m sure there are many more. Pumped storage is just very efficient and cheap, so if we can plausibly do it, it should be the first choice. And if it can’t be done somewhere, then we should connect that place to somewhere which can!
Destroys aquaculture. TVA has absolutely killed those rivers, and there is no way to sugar coat that.
Geothermal can’t be used in most places (but should absolutely be used where it can be)
Biomass is just burning shit all over again (thought that was the point of not burning coal).
I’m also skeptical of the pivot from using renewables as a decentralized solution and then touting a massive grid which requires lots of infrastructure. Unless your problem with centralization is targetability by bombing.
I’ve not heard much about compressed air as an energy storage medium, or thermal storage besides from using solar arrays to reflect light and melt a metal core (like Gemasolar which is another centralized solution), but I’ve heard nothing good about hydrogen except from breathless techbro types.
Meanwhile Nuclear is a mature technology now, absolutely a less dangerous solution than coal (even without looking a climate change knock-on effects, just looking at the effects coal dust has on populations near coal-fired plants), and can be used to meet the base-load of a local grid with various renewable solutions used to meet peak load demands.