Windless nights make net zero impossible

It is very simple. The cost of storing electricity is so huge it makes getting through a single windless night under a net zero wind, solar, and storage plan economically impossible.

This is especially true of cold nights where blackouts can be deadly. I recently made a legislative proposal to Pennsylvania along these lines so let’s use them as our example, keeping in mind that this is true everywhere.

Pennsylvania peaks at around 30,000 MW so let’s consider a windless night with a constant need of just 20,000 MW. There should be lots of these, especially in winter. Cold snaps are typically due to windless high pressure systems of arctic air with lots of overnight radiative cooling.

In the world of solar, “nights” are 16 hours or more long since solar systems just generate a lot of energy for 8 hours a day. It is likely less in a Pennsylvania winter where it is dark at 4 pm.

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