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Comment Re:great (Score 1) 80

"just for funsies I bought a $300 hip-hop shirt that makes me look like a drunken generalissimo's white cousin for about $20 in the basement of a department store in Panama City."

This may be the greatest line I have ever seen on Slashdot.
I don't always agree with your posts, but thank you for everything that you do!

Comment Re:Interesting how little storage is needed (Score 1) 160

Actually, it's not impossible at all. The UK grid needs about 3 times the amount of wind and much more solar and 2 terawatts of underground hydrogen storage.

There's enough salt caverns around the UK that can give it that storage, and the hydrogen can be manufactured via electrolysis when the wind and solar is producing too much. It's not very efficient, but renewables are cheap.

It CAN be done.

Comment Re:Not supported by subsidy (Score 1) 160

FYI as of 2021 the UK had 1.3 GW(h) of battery storage on the grid:

https://www.solarpowerportal.c...

I'm not sure what the total storage is now, it's going to be over 1.5 GW(h) with this installation, and probably a lot more. Note that large batteries aren't needed, it's the total battery storage that's important.

The UK grid operator was particularly keen on getting batteries on it, because the HVDC interconnectors to the continent have been unreliable, and they tend to suddenly break with no warning. That has meant that the grid needs to have a couple of gigawatt of spinning reserve instead, particularly spinning overnight, but with enough batteries they can shut most of that down into hot standby.

The last outage the grid had, due to a lightning strike, they didn't quite have enough battery, and that meant they had to do load shedding and that caused chaos. They should have enough battery now to keep it up long enough if there's a repeat to get backup power running and avoid any load shedding.

The other thing these batteries can do is help smooth out the production curve. If we had enough batteries to smooth out the evening power demand, the CCGT gas turbines would be much more efficient. When they first start up they use about twice as much fuel per kWh until the second cycle kicks in. If they start up less, costs should go down. But we'd need a lot more batteries to make that work.

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