"All anyone cares about is reliability followed by affordability."
While some opposition to solar+wind is ideological, much of it has to do with the issue of reliability and cost shifting. This is in the context of a developed country with a reliable 24/7/365 energy grid. A renewable installation that has rapid shifts between zero output and full output and a capacity factor of 30% during one part of the year and 10% during a different part of the year and only provides power at certain hours of the day is a problem for reliability and shifts costs to other power providers and makes overall power more expensive and less reliable for rate payers. Germany is a perfect example of this.
In order to be allowed to sell power to the grid in a first world country there should minimum 24/7/365 uptime requirements, say 75% uptime, with a requirement to provide stable power output within a fairly narrow range. Traditional base load plants range between 80-95% uptime when looking at hydro, NG, coal and nuclear.
You can love Texas as I do and still acknowledge that summers in Texas are awful. But that is why jet planes were invented. I believe you live in New Jersey. As a born and raised New Jersey resident, I look at the news: 1) EWR a disaster; 2) NJ Transit on strike, demanding $170,000+ salaries; and utility prices up 17%. Plus no state income tax and no state capital gains tax. It is fun to return to homeland, but living here is so much easier.
I enjoyed this, Arjun, but cannot for the life of me figure out what relevance solar plus (current-technology) batteries has to the 24/7/365 needs of power markets and especially data centers.
"All anyone cares about is reliability followed by affordability."
While some opposition to solar+wind is ideological, much of it has to do with the issue of reliability and cost shifting. This is in the context of a developed country with a reliable 24/7/365 energy grid. A renewable installation that has rapid shifts between zero output and full output and a capacity factor of 30% during one part of the year and 10% during a different part of the year and only provides power at certain hours of the day is a problem for reliability and shifts costs to other power providers and makes overall power more expensive and less reliable for rate payers. Germany is a perfect example of this.
In order to be allowed to sell power to the grid in a first world country there should minimum 24/7/365 uptime requirements, say 75% uptime, with a requirement to provide stable power output within a fairly narrow range. Traditional base load plants range between 80-95% uptime when looking at hydro, NG, coal and nuclear.
A correction: A former New Jersey and New York resident.
You can love Texas as I do and still acknowledge that summers in Texas are awful. But that is why jet planes were invented. I believe you live in New Jersey. As a born and raised New Jersey resident, I look at the news: 1) EWR a disaster; 2) NJ Transit on strike, demanding $170,000+ salaries; and utility prices up 17%. Plus no state income tax and no state capital gains tax. It is fun to return to homeland, but living here is so much easier.
Welcome to Texas Arjun. We’re both better with you here.
Thank you NTX!
I enjoyed this, Arjun, but cannot for the life of me figure out what relevance solar plus (current-technology) batteries has to the 24/7/365 needs of power markets and especially data centers.
It's irrelevant to them, that's why all the big cloud providers are going all in on nuclear.