Re: Bet
> Calling wind ineffective is disingenuous.
It is inneffectual as compared with its capacity and raw materials. We need to use the amount of copper that would be needed for a 100MW gas/steam turbine, in order to to build a wind turbine that only produces 10MW on average. As per TFA, this a huge waste of resources given the twin problem of an energy crisis and a copper shortage.
It certainly is PROFITABLE though, as you say, even without subsidies. So why the F@@k are we still subsidising it??
Trust me, I work for a company that makes battery storage systems and BMSs. My assumptions about battery storage are not off.
Storage is NOT anathema to price spikes because we can NEVER do bulk storage of the kind that could replace gas for even a day. Not even with "all the batteries in the world". The energy-cost ratio is orders of magnitude off, and the world doesn't have the manufacturing capacity nor the resources to do storage on that scale.
Repeating myself here: Batteries are useful ONLY to stabilise the grid for the few seconds/minutes that it takes to spin up or slow down a big GAS turbine, that is why wind and batteries benefit fossil fuels by adding volatility, they don't ease volatility and they will never replace fossil fuels. That is the sad reality.
And no, other storage technologies such as gravity, fuel cells, flow batteries, heat batteries, solid-oxide etc are not even close to matching lithium batteries - they are hopeless for bulk storage. The only thing that comes close is pumped hydro, but unfortunately we don't have the resources to build artificial mountains.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
