logoalt Hacker News

graemepyesterday at 12:57 PM3 repliesview on HN

Renewables (especially wind) are mostly more variable.

I have lived in a country that was reliant on hydroelectricity and the consequences of a drought were severe (literally days of power cuts, water cuts because of the lack of power...). Part of the solution was to build coal and oil power. Surely nuclear is better than coal?


Replies

pjc50yesterday at 2:15 PM

One small problem, nuclear is also dependent on water: https://www.theenergymix.com/low-water-high-water-temps-forc...

namibjyesterday at 5:56 PM

Solar is REALLY CHEAP. And provided you keep existing central European gas heating infrastructure around for a while, you can basically just wait out the really good energy storage by using existing caverns you pre-fill with methane to keep your people from freezing. If you're not curtailing a substantial fraction of PV yield (yearly) in central Europe that's a sign there way not enough capacity yet.

Built facades and roofs out of glass-glass PV laminate. We have the technology from glass roofs/facades; you just add glass-catching-mesh/insulation below because you can't use the insulated multi-pane window glass construction with safety lamination and solar cells all three together.

Pay08yesterday at 1:12 PM

I'm no expert but I believe the problem there is that you can only vary the power output of a nuclear reactor by very little. Essentially, it's either on or off, and is therefore not able to provide the flexibility needed for power outages, since only some of the generators might be offline, not necessarily all of them. Whereas you can vary the output of a coal or gas plant by a lot, simply via using different amounts of fuel.

show 4 replies