Really glad I live in Illinois where it has the highest share of power generated via Nuclear power. The dirty overlooked secret is that Both Wind and Solar energy only work because they are backed up by natural gas power plants, and it will always be that way until nuclear power plants start being built.
That’s not really accurate.
Traditional generation relies primarily on huge “base load” generation plants: nuclear, coal, etc. These plants can only fulfill the “base load” - the minimum demand during the day. To make these plants more effective, generators incentivized off-peak consumption: raise the minimum, overnight load, and the base load plants can take on a much higher percentage of the total demand. Steel mills, aluminum smelters, and other heavy industries have been pushed to move their demand to overnight hours, to make base generation more efficient and effective.
As wind and solar take over larger shares of total production, the incentives reverse. Daytime power becomes extraordinarily easy to produce, and nighttime power becomes progressively more difficult. We stop encouraging heavy industry to operate overnight, and shift them to the day.
This sort of “Demand Shaping” is the real solution; grid-scale storage and natural gas generation are only for those essential overnight loads that we just can’t shed.
Further, hydrogen electrolysis offers a sustainable and scalable, long-term grid storage method. We can soak up every excess watt we can produce during long summer days to crack water, and use it for power during the winter. The availability of that additional load allows us to overbuild solar and wind, far in excess of our immediate needs.
Hydrogen production can make fossil fuel peaking plants obsolete if there’s enough capacity to soak up excess nuclear and reweable power during periods of low demand. Long term storage is a possibility, but we need hydrogen anyway for GHG-free ammonia (fertilizer), steel production, and vehicle fuel.
natural gas generation are only for those essential overnight loads that we just can’t shed.
And you literally just described what is happening. We are using more fossil fuels then ever before and naive environmentalists (encouraged by the fossil fuel industry) are calling it a victory for the environment.
It is a victory for the environment. A major victory.
You don’t seem to understand that demand is flexible. You probably understand that you can adjust demand simply by offering favorable terms, but you don’t seem to understand how much demand has been shifted with these incentives.
Now that renewables are exceeding traditional generation methods, we can expect those old incentives to be adjusted, and larger percentages of our total power will be provided by renewables. Night time demand is being pushed to the day time, just as fast as grid improvements accommodate the increased load.
Need more nuclear here in New Jersey!