In order for renewables like solar and wind energy to truly take the burden off a grid, we have to have large capacity energy storage solutions that balance the grid over a 8+ hour period. That way we can handle peak demand of the grid during high load which often happens when there's little light and on hot days when the wind doesn't generate nearly as much electricity.

▲

Retric 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Transmission lines can act like storage when there is PV to the east or west of you. This doesn’t remove the need for storage, but can dramatically reduce it.

The old model of cheap peaking power plants and cheaper base-load power is equivalent to cheap peaking power + cheap but inconsistent green energy. It’s a very complicated optimization problem to work out the optimal mix of locations and quantities to of each, but price signals can help assuming you haven’t completely distorted the market.

▲

braiamp an hour ago | parent [-]

That only work on large continuos mass of land that expand east-west. Small countries or Chile have problems

▲

Retric an hour ago | parent [-]

National borders don’t limit power transmission.

Chile still wants transmission north south because in the winter solar closer to the equator has longer days and in the winter solar near the poles does.

▲

braiamp an hour ago | parent [-]

> National borders don’t limit power transmission

Oh boy, you are very naive, ain't you? No country will put their energy stability in hands of their neighbors. Or do you see China, Korea, India and Russia interconnect their grids? What other supranational grids you know of?

	▲	Retric an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Russia, China, and most of the rest of the world has interconnected their grid with other countries. This is a map of where the grid is frequency matched across internal borders allowing easy exchange. DC connections don’t need this synchronization, but it reduces losses with AC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe_Synchronous... In war this might be a minor issue, but in war electrical infrastructure ends up a target so it doesn’t matter that much.

▲

chicken-stew an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This can be done in a distributed way using home batteries. This would increase demand for peak solar production for use outside this peak. At the moment solar production creates a large price disparity that can be corrected with home batteries.