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1 year agoHow do we deal with balancing the uneven load renewables produce in places where pumped hydro isn’t an option for power storage? I.e. lowland areas. Here in the southeastern US, night almost always means no wind as well as the obvious no sun. Chemical batteries, afaik, aren’t a sustainable solution ATM.
Destroys aquaculture. TVA has absolutely killed those rivers, and there is no way to sugar coat that.
Geothermal can’t be used in most places (but should absolutely be used where it can be)
Biomass is just burning shit all over again (thought that was the point of not burning coal).
I’m also skeptical of the pivot from using renewables as a decentralized solution and then touting a massive grid which requires lots of infrastructure. Unless your problem with centralization is targetability by bombing.
I’ve not heard much about compressed air as an energy storage medium, or thermal storage besides from using solar arrays to reflect light and melt a metal core (like Gemasolar which is another centralized solution), but I’ve heard nothing good about hydrogen except from breathless techbro types.
Meanwhile Nuclear is a mature technology now, absolutely a less dangerous solution than coal (even without looking a climate change knock-on effects, just looking at the effects coal dust has on populations near coal-fired plants), and can be used to meet the base-load of a local grid with various renewable solutions used to meet peak load demands.