It can be solved at continental-level. Germany already sells part of its overproduction (wind, solar...) to Austria and Switzerland, to have it stored by their dams.
Whatever happened to the notion of local/decentralised energy?
Plus it relies on countries at both ends wanting the interconnection. Sweden and Norway are not so happy about other countries taking their hydro energy when it suits the market.
> relies on countries at both ends wanting the interconnection
Exactly as, right now, each and every country in the continental grid sometimes starts a production unit in order to help a neighbor in need. Everyone gains by playing according to this rule.
> taking their hydro energy
Because, right now, the system is far from being complete: not enough production units deployed on the continent, interconnections, lines, storage... This transition, a huge ordeal, is in progress.
> help a neighbor in need. Everyone gains by playing according to this rule.
Not so for Norway, where electrical prices have gone up as a result of all of these inter-connectors and a drought. Norwegian people and businesses have lost out. Politicians have taken note.
> The larger the interconnection the bigger the failure domain
True, however we have to consider the chances of a given proportion of the grid to fail: a more spread-out and heterogeneous (wind, solar...) fleet of production units is way more robust.
> power is political
True, however such incidents are rare (this one dates back from 2018) and their extent more and more reduced as grid-control devices and backup plants are continually enhanced.
As already shown there is no way for nearly all nations to ever hope to obtain an autonomous grid, and even those able to plan on this will obtain a less-robust and more expensive grid. Team play is becomes more and more mandatory and efficient, on all accounts, and bad players may lose the support of the biggest group.
> electrical prices have gone up
Yes, because there now are not enough ways to store, causing some over-pressure on existing ones. Storing in order to sustain the grid when production isn't sufficient only makes sense if we store overproduction, and overproduction remains rare (esp. at continental-level) because way too few renewable are producing. We reached the very first step: more and more overproduced renewable electricity, which triggers investments towards the next step: massive storage. V2G is a major contender.
You need more than that. My memory is that solar needs something like 16 hours of storage assuming perfect weather. And it gets much worse if you don't have perfect weather.
No you don't need more than that because electricity grids do not consist entirely of a single form of generation. Have you considered learning something about this topic before commenting?
Judging from their other comment I think they seem to be some kind of nuclear/anti-environmentalist zealot. In this comment they assumed wind power didn't exist. In the other comment they said that my current electricity tariff (3) would get people lynched and crater the economy rather than getting me to put my laundry, dishwasher and car charger on at a different time of day.
This kind of abject extremism is sadly par for the course on topics like this due to the kind of propaganda that the nuclear industry spews out. It generates zealots.
Yes, obviously I did because you responded to it below.
I find it amusing that when I cited a study that modeled exactly this scenario you poured scorn on it because it was modeled around a specific country. You didn't respond with actual figures demonstrating that this altered the results significantly, you just said "AUSTRALIA EASY MODE".
Seriously?
Yet the guy that presumed that the wind doesnt blow... ever? You didnt respond to that.
It's an interesting insight into the mind of a nuclear activist.
I'm certainly not anti-environment. It's just I recognize that the only path forward that is both possible and not horribly destructive is nuclear. The technology to make renewables practical simply does not exist even on the horizon. The storage problem is always handwaved away with "batteries" or "hydrogen"--the greens never do the numbers because that will expose the fact it doesn't work.
Renewables reduce oil and gas use. Period. You still need just as much generating capacity and you still release a lot of CO2.
And in that other comment what I said is that going pure renewable would get people lynched for how badly they wrecked the economy. The "green" approach is basically "pay no attention to the fact that the storage tech does not exist." In the real world we see it *increasing* emissions. (Shut down nuke, the load falls onto gas because it actually exists.) What would happen to our economy if power was dollars per kWh?? Because that's what it would take to ensure the lights always stay on in a pure renewable environment.
>With that in mind, exactly one year ago I started running a simple simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with approximately five hours of storage
Worst case scenarios can be provisioned for by storing and burning hydrogen.
The roundtrip cost of electricity generated this way is expensive (it's ~50% efficient) but even then it is still cheaper than the cost of baseload nuclear power electricity.
Massive? Where in Germany would you store 1,000 GWh of energy, to run the country for half a day or so?