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Renewables are great while in combination with peaker plants as the renewables produce a good amount of the base load when the sun shines wind blows etc, That energy generation is dirt cheap no arguments there. The Issue is those Peaker Plants are OIL COAL and GAS fired in most cases. The ideal solution IMHO would be to phase out the peakers and replace them with grid scale power storage augmented with nuclear base stations to manage load and reduce the need for new construction of grid scale power storage. The issue only using renewables is these grid scale batteries are projected to cost billions of dollars per project and if we forgo nuclear base stations to provide base load we would need a massive amount of these grid scale power storage stations in addition to also then having to generating roughly 90% more power than we do now from renewables alone to replace fossil fuels and to make up for inefficiencies in a storage dependent grid due to the fact that there would be constant losses of energy every time its transferred from generation to storage to use potential. Its simpler and more efficient make power on demand so I think we should take the current infrastructure and modify it. A turbine cares not what turns it. We can rip out coal fired oil fired and gas fired infrastructure and replace it with a modern generation of Small Modular Reactors ( it is proven technology ask the US NAVY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_naval_reactors ) With Peaker plants being transitioned to base stations this would make it so that the excess energy stored during the day can be tapped but we would not have to depend on it. Instead we can dynamically as needed (as the day ends in solar heavy locations or on calm days in wind heavy locations) start up the nuclear base stations to keep the grid energized using the batteries as a buffer on both ends as the Nuclear plants can not be cycled as quickly as fossil plants but can provide steady power on demand.
"Other" being solar?
Solar, wind, geothermal and biofuels
Aka renewables
So while the progress of the last few decades in renewables is great progress, I'm certain you can see why we need to divest from oil and invest in nuclear tech to take up the base load
I'm surprised that solar isn't yet big enough to be broken out on its own.
I'm also surprised that natural gas is outgrowing everything else.
Natural gas is just Methane and is being pushed by big oil, since it needs all of the infrastructure they already have.
I'm surprised that solar isn't yet big enough to be broken out on its own.
and that's the problem. It's not even enough of our power generation to be its own separate entity on the graph, but these people expect it to just magically power the planet in the next 5 years.
I'm not knocking solar. It's a great technology. It's just not feasible to scale to the point that we would need to scale it to sufficiently power our societies . We only recently developed the technology to make burning methane more feasible. They used to just light it off and burn it at the wells when they would tap it.
It’s just not feasible to scale to the point that we would need to scale it to sufficiently power our societies
Anything to back that up?
It's a logistical problem basically most people don't live at the equator and that's the good spot for solar where it's three times as effective. We could plaster a quarter of all the land with solar panels and then yeah you have enough. Except you still wouldn't have a dependable energy inputs because sometimes the weather is shitty for a week. So you would still need the massive transition cables to pipe it in from somewhere else that the sun currently is shining. So basically you are going to need to cover massive amounts of land with solar panels. We would need to invest in massive transfer cables. I honestly think that would be a great idea to implement full coverage of solar panels in our cities and cover all things with them. However, do not think that's a viable solution to meet our total energy needs. I do think solar is a viable way to help meet those goals. But it needs to be part of a team, not a solo. Lone Wolf . https://youtu.be/7OpM_zKGE4o?si=2_TW0JeYeA2htQm1
I asked you if you had anything to back that up. The answer is no.
Fuck it! Here's a hypothetical a magic genie. Just granted My wish and gave us enough solar to actually power everything we need. Now one six of every country on Earth is covered in solar panels. Here's the catch though you need to Learn more about how electrical grids work then come back to me once you realized we would have to rebuild an even bigger worldwide connected grid to make solar and a battery powered society actually functional and that we currently have no way to make battery storage equitable and affordable enough to store the amount of energy we would need to store everyday to power our societies through the night.
You're still doing it. Your run on paragraphs aren't worth much, if you want me to take you seriously, please provide links to valid sources to back up your argument.
Here comes the airplane say aaah
Solar gets cheaper everyday. Battery storage is not nearly equitable enough at this point in time. Small modular reactors are much more cost effective at the current price point than battery will be for the next 15 to 20 years.
We could use solar (or other renewables/nuclear) to power hydrogen fuel cells, then take the energy where it's needed.
Hydrogen transport is also a mass of pain in the ass because hydrogen being the noblest of gases and only a single hydrogen molecule likes to seep out of every container we've ever made and there's no way to permanently contain it.
Yeah agreed, but still it seems better than what we're doing now.
Most hydrogen tech is going to be generated from fossil fuels....
Greenwashing
Hydrogen transport is also a mass of pain in the ass because hydrogen being the noblest of gases and only a single hydrogen molecule likes to seep out of every container we’ve ever made and there’s no way to permanently contain it.
This statement you've made here is mostly accurate and informative. Hydrogen isn't a noble gas, its brother Helium is. Hydrogen is highly reactive. However, your points about Hydrogen storage and transport are spot on. You're not insulting nor condescending in this post. Nearly every other response you've made in this whole post is the opposite.
You are clearly capable of civil and informative responses, but because you have so few you've lost the audience you want to inform/persuade a long time ago. Are you aware of that?
This is /c/shitpost im not debating civilly as the arguments I get aren't in good faith 9 times out of 10. I'm not here to be a school teacher. More of a doomsday preacher
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/7OpM_zKGE4o?si=2_TW0JeYeA2htQm1
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Can you provide the source of graph?
Specifically that one is from Wikipedia and is sited back to https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac55b6/meta From the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption
tho other one is from https://ourworldindata.org/
Thank you for providing that source. I appreciate it.
No problem, it's funny how many people down voted it.