Author Topic: Addressing climate change  (Read 10020 times)

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Offline Omni

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Re: Addressing climate change
« Reply #15 on: May 25, 2019, 08:43:39 pm »
Solar/wind do not provide reliable 24x7 power nor do they produce power on demand. This means the grid needs to have compensators that can handle the solar/wind coming online and disappearing. In small quantities the grid already deals with such variability but as the quantity of renewables increases the grid has to provide dedicated power sources that only exist to provide backup for renewables. The capital cost of building and running these additional power sources has to be included in any calculation of costs. If these backups are gas then these renewables also emit CO2 that should be included in the costs of wind/solar.

You don't have to build additional power sources to backup renewables. You just throttle back the existing ones when renewables are producing.