Quote:
Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker
It may be sunny in the winter, but the amount of energy making it to the ground is low. Our demand profile in Alberta is very baseload heavy, we don't swing nearly as much as lets say Ontario and California. And our highest demand days are in the winter, and the highest demand hours are after the sun goes down.
Even after the price per kilowatt hour for solar reaches grid parity it isn't worth installing, because you need to pay for the capital cost of the backup power supply to meet the same demand, but producing power over less of the year. Solar with storage to have grid parity you need to reduce generation costs by a fair bit again.
|
I’m no expert in the area, but it seems to me that if we’re tied into the grid the seasonal impacts can be managed. For example, we can export power to the southern US in the summer when their air conditioners are blazing, and they can export power to us in the winter when we have less sunshine.