Hear hear! Let's not test this theory out! Also, I'm reconsidering what I thought I 'knew'. My youtube source above is not what I thought it was, and the peer-reviewed debate is still in a back and forth between various climate models from experts on both sides. If peer-review have not sorted this out yet, who am I to take a side?
Now back to the thread topic.What is the critical limit or challenge for an all renewable grid? (Of course meaning wind and solar - geothermal, hydro and others are already fairly maxed out.) Do you guys use the term VRE for "Variable Renewable Energy"?
I'm not saying I'm completely sold that solar and wind can do a 100% renewable grid - but I'm more open to it. (I'm still a fan of nukes.)
What is changing my mind is the the fact that wind and solar are now SO cheap you can overbuild them for winter. If you're good for winter with all that overbuild, then storage is less of an issue. Vox discusses a study which says storage costs could go as high as $150 / kwh installed capacity cost and still be economic because you're using so little of it. ($150 also requires a few smart-grid tricks like demand-shifting flexible stuff like industrial cooling processes etc.)
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environm ... lectricityThe summer excess can desalinate water in desert countries or be stored as heat for colder climates that might need local heat. Heat? What could store heat that long? Now we're getting into what blew my mind.
Imagine a giant warehouse - bigger than your local hardwarehouse - full of hot graphite-blocks heated by 2000 degree molten metal tin pumped through the system. The heat is trapped in argon gas. Apparently these can store heat for months.
Half the genius of this system was inventing pumps that wouldn't melt at 2000 degrees! See:-
"Liquid Metal Research Paper - Royal Chemistry Society"
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/article ... c8ee02341gNot only that, they could hypothetically pump the heat out to run a turbine to get the electricity back. BUT THEY DON'T! Instead they dip something like a photovoltaic cell in, but it's a Thermo-Photovoltaic units. Yeah, I'm with you. I also thought it would just melt! But these things come with cooling systems.
The whole thing is covered in this next youtube video - but what's better is that MIT estimate it could come in at $10 / kwh capacity capital cost. This is so cheap it might allow a relatively 'normal' grid even with intermittent renewables!
https://youtu.be/Gn7pfYKB7DAThermophotovoltaic efficiency of 40%
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04473-y.pdf"Near-perfect photon utilization in an air-bridge thermophotovoltaic cell"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2717-7.epdf