Most of that is negated by the rest of the sentence you cut off.
If you build enough generators for the weakest season, then you don't need to store energy for seasonal variations.
It's an option that exists as a worst case, and it's not that bad. If you're extremely worried that all your renewable generation might fail for over a week then you can have backup fossil power plants that run an average of a couple days per year.
It's not cheap but it's not outrageously expensive either. It's entirely possible to afford if it was a priority. I might even argue that it's easy for the US to afford it, if we increased electricity prices to match Australia's...
But as for long term storage, there are a few options. Other kinds of batteries exist, and are in development. Producing hydrogen or other fuels is possible, and would be carbon neutral. Even if it has bad efficiency, we'd have tons of extra electricity during the good seasons.
> all I said is that there is no battery technology that scales to economy-size and therefore you need fossil fuel backup
Well that's not the post I was arguing with. The post I was arguing with was calling it impractical to store energy for a few hours!
If we can't store for a few hours, then we need a base load backup half the time.
If we can store for a few days but not more, then we need a base load backup 1% of the time.
Huge difference. We can do the former. We can maybe do seasonal storage, but it's the former that matters.
If you build enough generators for the weakest season, then you don't need to store energy for seasonal variations.
It's an option that exists as a worst case, and it's not that bad. If you're extremely worried that all your renewable generation might fail for over a week then you can have backup fossil power plants that run an average of a couple days per year.
It's not cheap but it's not outrageously expensive either. It's entirely possible to afford if it was a priority. I might even argue that it's easy for the US to afford it, if we increased electricity prices to match Australia's...
But as for long term storage, there are a few options. Other kinds of batteries exist, and are in development. Producing hydrogen or other fuels is possible, and would be carbon neutral. Even if it has bad efficiency, we'd have tons of extra electricity during the good seasons.
> all I said is that there is no battery technology that scales to economy-size and therefore you need fossil fuel backup
Well that's not the post I was arguing with. The post I was arguing with was calling it impractical to store energy for a few hours!
If we can't store for a few hours, then we need a base load backup half the time.
If we can store for a few days but not more, then we need a base load backup 1% of the time.
Huge difference. We can do the former. We can maybe do seasonal storage, but it's the former that matters.