Credit: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA)
Around the world, national power grids have evolved to distribute power from sources such as coal, oil & nuclear fired generation. Such sources have come to be known as, “base load”. With ~100 years of development, these systems have become very good at balancing load & supply.
More recently, new understandings, have forced a rethink. Most obvious of these is climate change, but also important has been a growing understanding of the other costs & dangers of base load.
Renewable sources of energy avoid the dangers of fossil & nuclear, but present a new set of problems which have to be overcome.
“All of our research has shown that being part of a large integrated power system makes renewable integration easier.”
“Denmark & Germany have been very successful at balancing the variability of their renewable resources because they are strongly interconnected with other countries in Europe & imports & exports minute by minute, hour by hour & day by day can balance the variability of the renewables.”
“Renewables are variable – there are clouds & the wind goes up & down, but renewables are actually very predictable. We can predict renewables a day ahead. We know what the weather will be like tomorrow & so we can actually predict the output of wind & solar tomorrow with a high degree of accuracy … California, Germany, Denmark, Spain have all evolved very advanced day-ahead weather forecasting to predict accurately, the output of the wind & solar, so that they can be accommodated & scheduled properly.”
Stream or podcast all of the above & more at:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/renewable-energy-and-the-national-grid/7987134 / renewable sustainable energy electricity power generation renewables solar wind turbine photovoltaic photo-voltaic PV solar hydro electricity hydro-electricity storage battery pumped hydro /
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