Hi Chris, Excellent discussion regarding how we can reach net zero (If indeed we can?) Without nuclear it feels impossible without enduring selective black or brown outs. (France should be ok though!) It's clear from GRIDWATCH that (In UK at least) we can have 40% wind capacity one day or 3% wind the next! With a high pressure weather front over Europe during winter, having even more turbines will do very little to solve the lack of renewable power. Although you didn't mention this I wondered if you were concerned that a prolonged lull in wind/solar might soon exhaust any long term storage facilities regardless of how much we build and we're left with almost zero power for days? FF might be bad for the environment but they're pretty good for generating reliable electrical energy.
Hi Chris, Excellent discussion regarding how we can reach net zero (If indeed we can?) Without nuclear it feels impossible without enduring selective black or brown outs. (France should be ok though!) It's clear from GRIDWATCH that (In UK at least) we can have 40% wind capacity one day or 3% wind the next! With a high pressure weather front over Europe during winter, having even more turbines will do very little to solve the lack of renewable power. Although you didn't mention this I wondered if you were concerned that a prolonged lull in wind/solar might soon exhaust any long term storage facilities regardless of how much we build and we're left with almost zero power for days? FF might be bad for the environment but they're pretty good for generating reliable electrical energy.
Thank you, David.
We were limited by time as to the topics we could cover: about 40 minutes of Qs and As were edited down to the finished ~22 minutes of the podcast.
But Ravi and JAM had both had a chance to read some of my posts and so were familiar with the background as I see it / have analysed it.
Re: your comments on '40% wind capacity one day or 3% wind the next ... during winter', yes absolutely. Please see my posts:
https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisbond/p/intermittency-aka-diminishing-returns?r=om40y&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
and
https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisbond/p/dunkelflaute-dunkelcobblers?r=om40y&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web