iii

As long as you don't care when the electricity is produced

Who needs children when there's copilot.

I'm saying you can get to 90% yes.

But, as often happens, the last 10% is as hard or harder as the first 90%. The law of diminishing returns.

There are lots of answers to steady-state that are green and won't take 15 years

I'm aware of and have studied them. But general public seems to greatly underestimate the scale of storage that's needed. Germany, for example, consumes about 1.4TWh of electrical energy a day. That's more than the world's current yearly battery production. It does not suffice to power Germany, for one day.

Pumped storage, if geology allows for it, seems like the only possible technology for sufficient storage.

Demand side reduction is possible as well, but that's simply a controlled gray out. The implications for a society are huge. Ask any cuban or south african.

Others, like lithium ion batteries, green hydrogen, salt batteries, ammonium generation, ... have been promised for decades now. Whilst the principle is there, they do store power, it simply does not scale to grid scaled needs.

The sad part is that it sets a trap, like we in EU have fallen into. You get far along the way, pat yourself on the back with "this windmill powers a 1000 households" style faulty thinking. But as you can't bridge the last gap, your reliance on fossil fuels, and total emissions, increases.

Please forward this information to the pakistani religious body. They might've received a faulty copy of the document.

Yes, debt can chain a person to years of grind.

That means the battery array would charge in 7-8hrs of sun, and provide nearly 16hrs of output at 1Gwh

How many days a year does that occur? How much additional storage and production do you need add, to be able to bridge dunkelflautes, as is currently happening in germany, for example (1)?

That's why I mentioned the 90%, 99%, etc. If you want a balanced grid, you don't need to just build for the average day (in production and consumption), you need to build for the worst case in both production and consumption.

The worst case production in case for renewables, is close to zero for days on end. Meaning you need to size storage appropriatelly, in order to fairly compare to nuclear.

I look at the headway various countries in the eurozone have made on topics from socialized medicine, to universal basic income, to free postsecondary education, to the protection of personal data, and even to forcing Apple to change its charging cable

I think the socialized medicine and socialized postsecondary education are the biggest advantages indeed.

This comes at the cost of way lower wages, and smaller wage diffrrences. An educated engineer's take home pay is maybe 1.2 times that of a factory worker. Resulting in very little people actually persuing STEM.

Combine that with the deindustrialization that's going on in the EU, as it can't compete with Asia, we will have to see how long it lasts. Lots of uneducated (even as education costs are socialized, most don't persue it) are already without a job, and the number keeps growing.

It's a trade-off, on which I can understand your point of view, as to how it benefits individuals in the short and mid-long term.

Universal basic income does, to my knowledge, not exist in the EU.

from anti-vaxx and anti-mask movements

Those were/are popular here, too.

There's likely a "grass is greener" going on, for the both of us, indeed :)

I mainly look at the lack of innovation happening in EU. Missed the whole of tech, machine learning, no innovative industry, no fintech, little to no biotech as GMOs are outlawed. Only farma is doing well. It's a terrible restrictive place if you've an inquisitive mind.

But then you added the requirement of 90% uptime which is isn't how a grid works.

I'm referring to the uptime of the grid. Not an individual power source.

Assume we've successfully banned fossil fuels and nuclear, as is the goal of the green parties.

How much renewable production, and bess, does one need to achieve 90% grid uptime? Or 99% grid uptime?

If you want a balanced grid, you don't need to just build for the average day (in production and consumption), you need to build for the worst case in both production and consumption.

The worst case production in case for renewables, is close to zero for days (example). Meaning you need to size storage appropriatelly, in order to fairly compare to nuclear. And build sufficient production so that surplus is generated and able to be stored.

If we're fine with a blackout 10% of the time, I can see solar + bess beating nuclear, price wise. If the goal instead is a reliable grid, then not.

As an example: take Belgium. As a result of this same idea (solar/wind is cheap!) we ended up with both (1) higher greenhouse gas emissions and (2) costlier energy generation, as we now heavily rely on gas power generation (previously mainly russian, now mainly US LNG) to balance the grid. Previous winter we even had to use kerosene turbine generation to avoid a blackout.

Assuming that 12 hours of sun, you just need 2Gw solar production and 12Gw of battery to supply 1Gw during the day of solar, and 1Gw during the night of solar,

Again, I think you might not understand the difference between W and Wh. The SI unit for Wh is joules.

When describing a battery, you need to specify both W and Wh. It makes no sense, to build a 12GW battery, if you only ever need 1GW of output.

Ah that's politics.

I'm fine with talking polite politics. So far you seem to me like a polite and educated person.

My point of view is from EU, not US. To me US always looked like higher highs, and lower lows, in terms to a person's achievements.

To me, EU always seemed like: wear the uniform, don't stand out. No new ideas please.

I envy living in US.

In practice, you're usually using existing geography (historical or geographical) for height. So you're left with scaling m.

I honestly also hoped it would be a great idea. I donated to gravicity back in the day. You live and learn.

Transportation of electrical power is quite efficient. I think that colocation of generation amd storage are economically rarely a technical necessity.

I can see it work in terms of national security, but then again, regular li-ion have better economics.

The biggest problem with gravitational potential is P=mgh, that is, potential energy only grows linearly in mass and height.