anusthrasher96 t1_ir5c8l2 wrote on October 5, 2022 at 1:33 PM

Reply to comment by Foosnaggle in Renewables met 100% of the rise in global electricity demand in the first half of 2022 by Straight_Ad2258

Why would it be worse later? The more clean energy we install, the more decentralized it all is, making the grid resilient against local natural disasters. It's going to get better. AND if we hold the companies responsible, they'll start doing their damn jobs

Narethii t1_ir642io wrote on October 5, 2022 at 4:42 PM

Building a bunch of small power generation stations using renewables is way way more efficient as local power generation suffers fewer transmission losses, and way more resilient than 1 mega facility supplied by a single fuel line.

I really hope that future generations don't continue to suffer the same brain damage so many pro-fossil fuels people do now and simply look at this time of brain rot with derision.

matt7810 t1_ir8nxjv wrote on October 6, 2022 at 3:49 AM

I have to disagree. Of course it depends on many factors, but you have to remember that power schedules are created by a separate entity than the utilities and cover a large area. Adding complexity to their job doesn't necessarily increase resilience. Also replacing plants that can provide spinning reserves (frequency stability) and ramping of generation with renewables doesn't necessarily provide resilience. Finally, transmission losses are relatively small compared to other efficiency losses. Rooftop solar is less efficient economically than utility scale, even though rooftop solar is attached to the house using most of the electricity.

Renewables and distributed grids are great for many other reasons, but there are many factors and I disagree with both your efficiency and resilience statements.

matt7810 t1_ir8ojh4 wrote on October 6, 2022 at 3:55 AM

Honest question, how does a decentralized grid make the grid more resilient?

IMO It's more resilient if a single power source is knocked offline, but I would think that clean energy usually comes with unpredictability and a lack of spinning reserves. Also, even distributed resources have correlated outages if an area is hit with a natural disaster that would knock out a larger power source.