I'm still a bit fond of fluorescent light bulbs that whole less electricity used thing also saved money on electrical bills and the life expectancy of incandescent bulbs was always dogshit.
Also helped that next to no heat output made them easier to be around on a sweltering summer night.
Screemonster wrote:
with current technology, assuming we were to run on 100% renewables, storing excess power when we're producing more than we're using and then putting it back into the grid when there's a renewable shortfall, assuming renewable output continues to produce the same patterns of peaks and troughs on average as it did over the last five years, the power storage needed to cover periods of low supply would entail a hydro dam the size of the cairngorms.
Curious as to where you got that figure from I have heard of non battery physical methods of storing power but a cairngorms dam sounds a bit of a hyperbolic extension of that.
Screemonster wrote:Oh, and the variable nature of renewable generation means your fossil plants can't just run at a constant rate, which has a similar impact on their efficiency as highway versus city miles in a car. (again, different types of generation have different tolerances for this sort of thing. Nukes, for instance, have a very long ramp time compared to, say, gas turbines)
As for the supply variation yeah businesses are looking to start up gas plants and not planing to set up new coal plants at least in Australia for that very reason.
Might be different in US with trump slobbering all over the mining industry's cock.
I mean there have been enormous tax incentives for fossil fuel extraction in the US while in Australia 60% of royalty revenue from miners including coal is estimated to be paid back to miners in subsidies, tax exemptions and infrastructure for their direct benefit.
Long and short the heart of the fossil fuel supply is a bunch of old parasites cosy with the government and it's not the economic one way it's played up to be.
On the renewable side though I have no idea why South Australia accepted that battery farm deal from tesla. Key fact about current batteries they shave off capacity as a percentage over time meaning their high energy density is mostly just good for saving space and mass where it matters like say on a moving vehicle, makes no fucking sense to have a big battery array sitting around wasting away.