Originally Posted by
Hotel Kilo
LoL. Here we go with California - again. They are NOT the place to benchmark any energy grid off of, they've absolutely totaled theirs. You are obviously not an electrical engineer or do you understand the capacity required to store megawatts of energy. The battery tech doesn't exist yet and if and when it does it will come at a huge cost. Much easier to build a few nat gas plants or one nuke plant. Boom. Done. Bob's your uncle.
Near where I live they just converted a coal plant to a nat gas one. It took them about 2 years to complete it. It produces more energy than the old coal plant (nat gas is tremendously more efficient) and it's much "cleaner" as well.
Again, the experiment is over. It failed. I'm fine with augmenting the grid with some solar and some wind. However, it should not be the primary provider for the grid. It just doesn't work.
What country is getting >50% of their power generation from wind or solar? Switzerland is an interesting case because of how much they get from hydro but they are unique.
Also no nuke plant just gets built quickly. How long did it take for the new one in Georgia to be built? I’ll say it again, we should be leaning into nuclear but it’s not going to happen fast.
If we want to talk about states with a messed up power infrastructure look no further than Texas. They have plenty of wind farms but when they were having all their power issues it wasn’t due to renewables, their nat gas plants kept going offline due to extreme temperatures.