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Environment & Energy
In reply to the discussion: Britain to build Europe's first nuclear plant since Fukushima [View all]caraher
(6,278 posts)20. 20% is at most a rough limit with no grid upgrades and no storage
It's remarkable how you have so much to say about what the NAS actually says without quoting anything from any of their reports. Does this sound like a claim of a hard limit? From page 23 of "Electricity from Renewable Resources: Status, Prospects, and Impediments"
In the period from 2020 to 2035, it is reasonable to envision that continued and even further accelerated deployment could potentially result in non-hydroelectric renewables providing, collectively, 20 percent or more of domestic electricity generation by 2035. In the third timeframe, beyond 2035, continued development of renewable electricity technologies could potentially provide lower costs and result in further increases in the percentage of renewable electricity generated from renewable resources. However, achieving a predominant (i.e., >50 percent) level of renewable electricity penetration will require new scientific advances (e.g., in solar photovoltaics, other renewable electricity technologies, and storage technologies) and dramatic changes in how we generate, transmit, and use electricity.
NREL has studied even higher levels of renewables, though they only look at hour-by-hour fluctuations. They think 80% renewables by 2050 is possible. But I don't suppose you believe anything from NREL.
Incidentally, your hectoring about the need for degrees in hard sciences is wasted on me. I know what degrees I hold. You don't, nor do I know what degrees you may hold, no matter what you may assert. Such is the internet. Incidentally, argument from authority is generally considered a logical fallacy, and has particularly bad reputation among those who know the history of science. I also know that my first-year undergraduate students who do not yet have college degrees are perfectly capable of reading and comprehending these reports.
Yes, conservation of energy applies, as always, but while there are certainly important load management issues to be faced for any electric power system (with or without renewables), the fanciful "1 watt over the limit" scenario you describe has nothing to do with real-world limitations. It's certainly true that an energy source can't magically produce more than some hard limit just because there is more demand. But this scarcely amounts to a physics-based rebuttal to the notion that some combination of an advanced grid, large-scale storage, and designing systems to take advantage of "geographic averaging" locally-fluctuating resources can manage this quite effectively. Yes, it's not your father's electric grid, but isn't that the whole point?
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