Solar now being the cheapest energy source made its rounds on Lemmy some weeks ago, if I remember correctly. I just found this graphic and felt it was worth sharing independently.
Solar now being the cheapest energy source made its rounds on Lemmy some weeks ago, if I remember correctly. I just found this graphic and felt it was worth sharing independently.
No it doesn’t. Cheap solar is great but even if it was $0, you’d still need some other tech to provide electricity when the sun is down. So it’s either gas, batteries, nuclear, etc. but you can’t just use solar alone.
And until batteries get good enough, nuclear is the cleanest option we have.
How long will it take for us to get good enough batteries? If it’s less than 10 years, then it’s less than the time to build a nuclear power plant.
Oh, and the answer may very well be that we already have batteries that are good enough.
Including the time to manufacture and install them at utility scales (we are talking powering an entire nation out of batteries for hours), way more than a decade.
Batteries are already being installed on grids but they can only help so much smooth out power delivery. They are very very far from having the ability to completely take over an entire grid.
And you think the nuclear industry, riddled with a history of cost and schedule overruns, is going to get there faster?
Mass production is about all we need for some battery technologies. Their lab development stage has already been done. They also integrate well with solar deployments, because you can use the same inverter for both.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/14/1126523766/water-batteries-could-store-solar-and-wind-power-for-when-its-needed
They could. Someday.
Nuclear can, now.
shouldn’t we be working towards a better someday than settling for a worse today?
Time is running out on the climate, how many decades can we wait for the “perfect” solution to show up when we have a good enough one right now they can help?
Yes, like wind. Which is also much cheaper and cleaner than nuclear.
Germany has tons of solar and winds and yet it is pretty common to have neither (windless nights) at which point the entire grid needs to be powered by non renewables. That’s a lot of standby power.
Bro do you know how power storage works