Ireland: Wind generation exceeds demand for electricity for the first time ever
July and August this year set new records for wind power generation in Ireland.
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So increase it further and once exceeding demand is the default in summer days allow companies to build storage right next to wind generation. The fact that they are only getting cheap renewable power for it's actual price instead of prices of that broken energy market makes commercial investment into storage worthwhile. So free storage infrastructure for the public, paid by private money making a profit.
In recent years I’ve been following the development of the energy storage industry. The latest video by Just Have a Think made me realize that an energy storage facility should use a variety of different technologies. Some would store energy for a few hours, some for days and some technologies would be used for seasonal energy storage.
I really think we need to start building these facilities. Not just pilot plants, but actual production scale facilities.
What almost everyone seems to miss is it's absolutely optimal situation to overbuild and waste electricity. Sometimes it's just not worth storing, until demand exceeds a lot it's not really worth storing large amounts.
Also HVDC currents.
to overbuild and waste electricity
Rather than waste the electricity, could we not put the excess towards energy-intensive but time-insensitive projects like direct-air carbon capture, green hydrogen production, or desalination of seawater?
At some point it has to be wasted. No one is going to built something that will use the last 1 hour of energy in a year that isn't assigned to anything.
Most factories have a stable running value. I.e. when they run they run at 100%. Capital is wasted when that investment isn't making money. So to have something that can absorb all excess is very difficult.
There will be some projects that ramp up and down. But it would be low capital cost high energy cost and I'm not sure what they would be. There might be some projects that also run for 6 months of the year. But even then I still see some waste happening
