Global Warming on Free Republic here, here and here
Posted on 02/07/2016 8:37:18 AM PST by Lorianne
The United States could lower carbon emissions from electricity generation by as much as 78 percent without having to develop any new technologies or use costly batteries, a new study suggests. There’s a catch, though. The country would have to build a new national transmission network so that states could share energy.
“Our idea was if we had a national ‘interstate highway for electrons’ we could move the power around as it was needed, and we could put the wind and solar plants in the very best places,†says study co-author Alexander MacDonald.
Several years ago, MacDonald was curious about claims that there was no technology available that could mitigate carbon dioxide emissions without doubling or tripling the cost of electricity. When he investigated the issue, he discovered that the studies behind the claims did not incorporate the country’s variable weather very well.
One of the big issues with wind and solar power is that their availability is dependent upon the weather. Solar is only available on sunny days, not during storms or at night. Wind turbines don’t work when the wind doesn’t blow enough—or when it blows too much. Because of this, some studies have argued that these technologies are only viable if large-capacity batteries are available to store energy from these sources to use when they aren’t working. That would raise the cost of electricity well beyond today’s prices.
(snip)
The key to this future would be the development of a system for transferring electricity across the country, so that a windy day in North Dakota could power a cloudy, calm day in New York. This would not only require new agreements between states—Texas, for instance, has its own separate power grid—but also an upgrade to the transmission lines that move electrons from one place to another.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
Yes, it might be best if we developed room-temperature superconducting wire first.
Global Warming on Free Republic here, here and here
Yep, just have 32x the generating capacity in renewables and a supergrid, and it will work./sarcasm
I got another idea, just kill off everyone on the planet, its cheaper!
Being retired-SI myself, you do not know the half of it.
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