How did china manage to get hit by power issues :sadness:

  • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    You can't have grid stability exclusively off of wind and solar. That's the dirty little secret, they always end up cheating with natural gas. It's not about "more power". It's about "power is made exactly when it's needed".

    • FidelCashflow [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      I we have the tech if we had the money. We ajmy aren't willing to put the money into it. Plenty of environmentally friendly battery systems, they just aren't as dense or efficent as lithium but if we thought of not drowning in a boiling sea as an investment we cluld manage it.

      • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        It's a lot more complicated than just building a bunch of safe, extremely reliable, zero-carbon nuclear plants. We have the tech to decarbonize the grid. France got it done ffs.

        Nuclear is heavily regulated and therefore extremely unprofitable, which is why Greens hate it (they're all neolibs). That's basically it. Wind and Solar require massive amounts of rare earth medals to build a battery system, but that means lots of easy money for Elon Musk level grifters to "disrupt". Can't do that with a EPR

          • medium_adult_son [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Or pump water uphill, then release that slowly to spin a turbine.

            Some other, more gimmicky, options that don't use batteries include giant flywheels or moving a weight up a tower (or down a mineshaft) and dropping it slowly to run a generator.

            • CptKrkIsClmbngThMntn [any]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I've heard the flywheels are pretty okay. It really seems we need some more low-tech solutions to round out how we do energy tbh.

            • CopsDyingIsGood [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Wait how would this work? I'm a dumbass but it seems to me like you'd need to expend the same amount of energy pumping the water uphill that you would get back from it flowing downhill. Pls explain

              • medium_adult_son [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Right, and there is probably even some loss from the water potential energy conversion to electricity via the generator.

                But it is a great way to store huge amounts of energy, instead of a huge number of lithium batteries. That way it can be used when solar/wind aren't producing energy

          • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Yes, some more mad-scientist shit that tech grifters can get in on vs a mature, safe technology that just happens to be highly regulated and not open for the type of "innovation" America does!

        • FidelCashflow [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          I honesty feel like just brute forcing it with browns gass would end up being easier. You get clean water and enough explody bits to keep us happy.

          We would have a coup here in ameriva if they made a bunch of nuclear power plants that you couldn't secretly make bombs at. Just the vibes of doing something efficent would destroy us as a country