At present, we don’t even have the technical means to have enough storage to afford 100% wind + solar in a country,
I reject your premise.
I agree that we do not have the storage capacity to maintain the supply-shaping model we currently use.
However, we do have all the technological tools necessary to shift to demand-shaping as our primary model for matching supply and demand. Basically, we can move the times that we use most of our power to the times that power is easy to generate.
Basically, we can move the times that we use most of our power to the times that power is easy to generate.
How?
For example, the typical risk period for a power grid is during winter nights, when people come home and turn on the heat, cook and do their chores, or relax watching their TVs or playing videogames. How can we postpone such a power usage to another time?
How can we postpone such a power usage to another time?
We don’t.
The most efficient traditional generation comes when we can perfectly flatten out demand curve. When there is no variance, we can meet 100% of our demand with cheap, efficient, baseload generation. When we have some variance, we meet our minimum demand with baseload generators, and everything above that minimum is met with expensive peaker plants.
So, what we have done is provided extremely cheap power to heavy industry (steel production, aluminum smelting, etc) over night, when regular demand is low. This raises our minimum load, and lowers our maximum, but it increases night-time consumption. To meet that with solar requires storing power when it is produced, and releasing it overnight.
But the only reason why we need it overnight is because we drove them to those overnight hours. When we have them run during the day, we don’t need to store that power first.
We don’t have to shift all of our consumption to daytime hours. We have plenty of excess nuclear generation capacity available for residential needs after we shed those heavy, industrial loads.
