Renewable energies are all supposed to be used together to support one another. When its night or cloudy, wind and hydro picks up the slack. When there is no wind, solar and hydro pick it up. When there is a surplus of energy (its sunny and windy out) use it to pump water uphill into a reservoir so that it can be used in hydro another time. Add batteries for more storage to help stabilize the grid when there is high demand until other sources can be activated.
Edit: i was just talking about renewables with this comment. I mention nuclear elsewhere and fully agree we need more of that all working together.
Are these batteries super easy to make and produce? Accounting for the production and mining of all these minerals for the batteries and the solar, is it still better than nuclear?
Here is a neat video to watch about why nuclear is the solution, not renewables, and why one side is preventing it from happening. https://youtu.be/diHish6yC1g?si=_BQNfgBl8fAyTMuL
One of the big issues with nuclear is that it’s only really good for baseline load. It’s both extremely expensive to construct and has a very slow ramp speed, both of which make it unsuitable for peak load generation.
Solar has the nighttime limitation, but is reasonably viable to cut off if peak generation exceeds load and storage capacity.
Wind tends to be unpredictable, but, again, can be cut off easily when too much is being generated.
Pumped hydro can make a pretty solid battery solution, when suitable land exists. It can be fairly quickly ramped to meet peak demand. Overall, it’s a good addition to solar and wind systems. It is expensive to construct, however.
Sodium batteries may solve a lot of the issues with lithium batteries, but the tech isn’t quite developed enough yet to know.
Do you think the government overregulates? In the capitalist hellhole of today? Truth is that every single regulation we have is written in blood and removing them only allows companies to skimp out and endanger more people. Asking for loosening regulations around nuclear energy is the greatest reason for why humanity hasn't yet grown up enough for nuclear energy to begin with
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u/TastingTheKoolaid Sep 13 '26
“But what about when it’s nighttime????”
/s