alt Hacker NewsTo scale battery storage to a level that is capable of bridging, say, 48 hours of "Dunkelflaute" (darkness and no wind) on a regional scale (e.g. the entire Scandinavia) is probably unrealistic. Just the amount of lithium needed would be insane. And there were longer Dunkelflautes in recent history.
New advances in nuclear is what I hope for. First experimental SMRs are being installed in several places of the world, others are in design stage. Looks like a hopeful technology.
> To scale battery storage to a level that is capable of bridging, say, 48 hours of "Dunkelflaute" (darkness and no wind) on a regional scale (e.g. the entire Scandinavia) is probably unrealistic. Just the amount of lithium needed would be insane. And there were longer Dunkelflautes in recent history.
48 hours in Scandinavia is roughly equivalent to turning all their road vehicles electric. And that's even with Norway using the second highest per-capita rate of electricity in the world let alone Scandinavia (second to Iceland, whose electricity is 100% renewables thanks to abundant geothermal): https://www.statista.com/statistics/383633/worldwide-consump...
Given nobody is suggesting an instantaneous transition, this is not at all unrealistic, and I don't know why anyone might consider it to be.
Good luck with new nuclear, but with all the politics in that domain, I don't expect that to work out even if e.g. Helion Energy supplies working shipping-container-sized aneutronic fusion.