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You abuse them until a younger alternative comes along?
Dang I hope so. Dyson sphere, here we come.
Nuclear is still the most optimal solution.
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Alternate title: Solar Industry Says Solar Industry Is The Best
The study is carried out by the University of Exeter and University College London, and funded by the British government. So its not the solar industry saying this.
Yes, and not a single one of the authors is an electrical engineer. They predict continued cost reductions in solar panel production based on nothing but previous trends, and while they do mention the uncertainties regarding this they pretty much gloss over them to make their conclusion.
So yeah, while I was being a little facetious in pursuit of an easy joke, this study is far from beyond criticism.
I don’t think assuming continued cost reductions based on previous trends in an emerging industry is very hard to believe. I’m not sure why you’re so critical about solar energy, and I’m more likely to believe this study than some random person online.
I’m not criticising solar energy, I’m criticisng their projection that solar will become the dominant power source. I say that as an HV electrical commissioning engineer who has worked extensively on a range of renewable sites.
In particular, they gloss over the grid stability aspects. Inverter driven generation like solar (and most wind) is inherently chasing, it measures the voltage and frequency at its output and uses that to form a feedback loop controlling the generation output. This means it is poor at handling load changes - especially compared to traditional rotating mass generation, which has inertia behind it. There are solutions for this, but they have drawbacks.
In general, their study seems to lack any real understanding of the nature of the electricity network.
Solar is very important, and we should be going hard on installing current renewable technology over all else to get to net zero as quickly as possible. But, to me, this reads as economists patting themselves on the back for creating a computer generated model. The saying goes, “all models are wrong, some models are useful” but economists are prone to making models without actually testing them thoroughly.
Wind turbines are also a rotating mass system, there is a significant amount of energy in the rotor that is used to stabilise the grid on short term by slowing down or speeding up the rotor.
The mass in a wind turbine is much less than conventional turbine generators. Also, wind turbines are mostly half or fully converted, where the raw AC is converted to DC and then back again to smooth out the waveform. Thus, wind turbines are generally inverter driven generation and have poor ride through capabilities.
They can control the generation manually somewhat, to provide VAr and frequency control, but when it comes to unexpected disruptions they can easily fall out and trip.
Yeah the rotating mass of a single turbine is relatively small but inertia is significant due to the size of the rotor (rotor diameters of 100 to 200 metres are not uncommon). On top of that we should compare the inertia of a entire windfarm to a convential turbine.
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