We have coal and gas to power the market in the interim as renewables and storage are rolled out . The generation won't be the issue . The storage of that generation is the challenge .
You seem to ignore that fossil will still be part of the power system for a long time , particularly for those overnight periods as you suggest . It will be more likely that those coal plants will be true baseload operating at the same output rather than swinging with the load . The increase in load during the day will be dealt with by a combination of solar , wind , storage and demand response technologies . As those technologies get better they will eventually smoothly replace the fossil fueled stations as they reach retirement age .
Investment . At the moment it is easy to borrow money for renewables . Try and borrow money for coal or nuclear .
The video I posted previously lays it out . Did you watch it ?
As to solar's footprint . That's easy . All those existing rooftops in Australia that face east , north and west . As panels continue to get cheaper and start to be incorporated into roofing and other cladding materials we will end up with a truly massive resource spread right across the country . See through solar cells are being developed to be used as windows on large buildings . Paint that includes solar cells is being developed .
As this large renewable resource is developed so will all forms of storage . Pumped hydro , gravity , solar thermal , flow batteries etc . All technology that is available or being developed as we speak .
Also , just on the storage thing . A Tesla S has an 85kwh battery . We sell around one million cars in Australian annually . Do the numbers on the embedded storage that we will build up over a couple of years if we had a totally electric car fleet that is idle 90% of the time .
85kwh X 1,000,000 X 3 years = ??? . That is a shipload of storage that will be available to be used to support the grid . For the first time ever we will be able to time shift power generation . Instead of having to use the power as it is generated we will be able to use the power as it is needed . This , apart from being more efficient , opens up all sorts of opportunities for making power usage cheaper and more reliable .
The nuclear alternative ? I'll use the Hinkley Point station in the UK as an example . Similar country in terms of saftey standards and regulation to Australia .
3200 mw at already agreed price of 92 pounds per kwh indexed . So it's probably already more expensive than renewable puls storage . Cost ? Over 20 billion pounds . Build time ? About seventeen years .
Compared to your example of the Californian solar farm ? You'll get more than ten of those solar farms ( 5500mw ) for that money based on today's solar panels . You will have that power progressively available to the grid as the farms are rolled out rather than waiting all that time for the nuke to be built . What are you going to boil the kettle with for the seventeen years while you are waiting for power station to get built ?
As those farms are being built , evs are being rolled out progressively as well . So , in much less time than it is taking to build Hinkley you will have a number of large solar farms built , strategically located and the storage to match . Rather than have all your eggs in one basket you will have a very large distributed power supply so that in the event of breakdowns ( or accidents ) you will still have plenty of available power .
Then of course there is the issue of the location of that Nuclear power station . Hands up who would like to have a nuclear power station in their suburb ?
Anyone ?
