Unfortunately we still need tunable baseline power in order to keep current, voltage, and frequency within the grid’s margin of error. Our options for that are: situationally available (and often environmentally problematic) hydro, fossil fuels, nuclear, and/or giant toxic/fire-prone battery banks.
You forgot hydrogen, saltwater batteries, proper grids, biogas, etc.
If you’d use nuclear power like that, you’d drive up the costs even more, because it’s just not very viable to compete with solar and wind during the day. Better to just invest in proper storage solutions.
Would geothermal work? I can’t think of any particular reason that the heat of the earth should vary much with time (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong in this assumption), and energy production should be more controllable because to my understanding it generally just makes steam for a turbine like more traditional power sources.
Unfortunately we still need tunable baseline power in order to keep current, voltage, and frequency within the grid’s margin of error. Our options for that are: situationally available (and often environmentally problematic) hydro, fossil fuels, nuclear, and/or giant toxic/fire-prone battery banks.
You forgot hydrogen, saltwater batteries, proper grids, biogas, etc.
If you’d use nuclear power like that, you’d drive up the costs even more, because it’s just not very viable to compete with solar and wind during the day. Better to just invest in proper storage solutions.
Would geothermal work? I can’t think of any particular reason that the heat of the earth should vary much with time (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong in this assumption), and energy production should be more controllable because to my understanding it generally just makes steam for a turbine like more traditional power sources.