Quote:
Originally Posted by aberdeen5698
Germany's not suffering brownouts because they invested in solar and wind, they're suffering brownouts because they shut down all their nuclear generation. In the light of the Ukraine war that's turned out to be a very unfortunate decision. But then it was also stupid of them to become so dependent on Russia for their energy in the first place.
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Kind of what I was getting at - if we try renewables without enough baseload (e.g. Germany's reactors) in place, we're going to have problems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chowhou
The nice thing about hydroelectric dams is that water can be banked up like a battery and released on demand to match electricity needs. The great thing about solar and onshore wind is that at least sometimes they increase the electricity supply meaning the dams can reduce generation and hold back water during those times. Then when solar and onshore wind aren't generating as much, we can pass more water through the dam than we otherwise would have. Solar and onshore wind actually do increase our baseload capacity because of this, specifically due to our hydroelectricity dominant system.
Hooray for hydroelectricity!
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To a certain extent - Alex M. pointed out a while ago (think it was in one of the politics threads?) how there's only so much water that pumped storage can move back upstream before the
downstream flow is visibly affected.
Also, most of our solar energy is in the southern Interior, nowhere near the dams... and the wind potential around WAC, Peace Canyon and Site C is a little dismal.