this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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Hell yeah
I can't wait to see this headline again but about a bigger battery somewhere else
Nice. This seems to be the future that solves a lot of problems. Right now in Australia, we’re seriously entertaining building nuclear power plants for the first time ever, to provide base load power that renewables allegedly can’t. Large sodium batteries could help us avoid that.
It's not just base load, turbines also provide grid stability. All the quick fluctuations as people turn things on and off are hard to load balance with solar, wind, or battery. A big spinning turbine has a lot of inertia. That helps keep thr grid at a constant frequency. As solar gets bigger and bigger we might need big solar powdered flywheel generators just to stabilize the grid.
Inverters could also provide "virtual inertia" which help to stabilize the grid frequency. However most of today's inverters don't have it, or it's disabled.
This means we don't need solar powered flywheels, which are inherently inefficient, we just need software (edit: and batteries of course) more or less.
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/7/7/654
Partially. Inverters providing virtual inertia is good but has the problem of still being active and reactive. It helps and is cheaper and more efficient than flywheels.
Flywheels and turbines however provide a very sticky frequency. They help out a lot with stability and give inverters time to respond.
Think balancing a stick on your hand vs anchoring it in clay.
If we take enough turbines off line we are still probably going to need some mechanical power stabilization no matter how inefficient.
But yeah I think we are going to see a blend using as much electrical and as little mechanical as possible.