When you go to turn on your solar panels and wind turbine in Texas in February.
(media.patriots.win)
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The share of renewable energy used in Sweden keeps growing. Already in 2012 the country reached the government's 2020 target of 50 per cent. For the power sector, the target is 100 per cent renewable electricity production by 2040.
Last updated: 14 April 2020 -- https://sweden.se/nature/energy-use-in-sweden/
Sweden is big on hydro and biofuels, about 12% wind. Still a lot of nuclear. Too far north for much solar.
Hydro makes excellent sense, though only available and viable in certain geographical areas. I continue being skeptical reg. wind and solar due to the issues reg. energy storage, at least the larger a proportion of the energy consumption they are meant to fill. I know that there are very many "creative" attempts at circumventing the issues of energy storage, but they seem to have multiple different issues (for instance "smart energy grids" where you attempt to change energy consumption to whenever the sun shines or the wind blows well...).
There are also some more meaningful solutions such as using existing energy storage facilities (which you typically have with hydropower), but those are very much case-by-case, and in some cases, if one country uses and depends on another country's energy storage facilities, that country becomes beholden to the other country, which is not exactly brilliant.
Hydro can be pretty destructive too. Look at China 3 Gorges Dam. US nearly dammed off the Yosemite Valley for power.
High voltage DC power lines could carry energy long distances for emergencies like the current. Large scale battery backup, like flow batteries and others could level loads too.
New technologies are on the way, ie:
BP and Chevron have led a US$40 million investment round for a Canadian startup that claims to have developed a unique way to extract energy from geothermal heat on demand, using an unpowered looping fluid design that's already prototyped in Alberta.
a single loop can generate "industrial-scale electricity or produce enough heat for the equivalent of 16,000 homes with a single installation." The target cost of energy production is $50 per megawatt-hour. [same price as large-scale solar]
https://newatlas.com/energy/bp-chevron-eavor-geothermal-loop/
But aren't such solutions currently still very expensive and/or immature and/or have other issues? If there are improvements in such technologies, I believe wind and solar would become much more viable, and I do very much believe that energy storage is an excellent target for more research funding, but as far as I know, it is still at least a ways off.
Geothermal also sounds interesting, though if it is viable, efficient, robust, etc., and how far off it is, I don't know.
Flow batteries are already starting to enter the marketplace. They can be made of inexpensive materials because they don't need to be light and compact like car batteries. There are literally hundreds of startup companies all over the world working the tech.
One recent report from business intelligence firm IDTechEx, cited by Energy Storage News, noted there was about 70 MW/250 MWh in redox flow battery storage capacity deployed to date, all in medium to large-scale projects. Deployments, however, are set to increase thanks to the batteries' fast response time, scalability, and not least, their much easier recyclability than lithium-ion batteries.
Gates, Bezos bet on flow battery technology