Re: Remember "Bit-Slice" Chips ?

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

On Sat, 7 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Windmills and solar panels are useless for the same reason.  - there
is no storage able to meet the intermittency problem.

 
Jesus christ...  don't get me started!  In the mainstream press
people _still_ write and say that 100% solar or 100% wind is the only
viable way.  I cannot bear to read it!  And when I ask how much a
battery storage system would cost that could store all the power for
a country, for x days, there is never an answer.

They are ignoring the "storage problem".

100% solar is possible, provided either:

1) you ignore the storage problem and are willing to accept no power
   when the sun is not shining (note, interpret broadly enough to
   encompass "14+ straight overcast days" as well)

2) are actually talking about "some day" far in the future when energy
   storage tech.  has advanced to the point that storing enough excess
   solar to continue running past those days when the sun isn't shining
   is feasable (and affordable)

But today, no, it is not feasable today, other than on a very small
scale (single household) to be 100% solar and have sufficient storage
to cover for some amount of "sun isn't shining" days.

Maybe, just maybe, it might be possible to have 100% solar in africa
somewhere, but it would still need storage capacity for the night.

Nighttime is the big one.  Until the world's electric grids are
sufficiently interconnected that power generated in the Saraha Desert
at noon can be shipped to the other side of the world where it is dark
to supply power to that location there *must* be some storage, somehow,
to account for night/twilight/a run of 14+ overcast days/etc.

And, even if the world's electric grid was interconnected sufficient to
ship solar power from Africa to the other side of the globe, we measly
humans would simply use those interconnnects to try to enforce
geopolitical rules on other locations we don't like by attempting to
deny them "night time power".

Yet the advance of photolithography and quantum theory made the
integrated circuit a possibility, the Cold War mandated the need for
small light electronics for missiles, and here we are.

Throughout history, a great many of human's technological advances have
came about because the "war machine" needed a more efficient way to
strike fear in their opponents.