An inexhaustible 24/7 production capable plant has many advantages over solar and maintaining large most types of battery banks.
replyCost is like 90-99% of what matters. Last year, China installed 300GW of new renewables and 0GW of geothermal, despite geothermal being "an inexhaustible 24/7 production capable".
replyGeothermal will compete with solar if they can get the cost low enough. I hope they succeed!
Night time? But batteries! Several cloudy days in a row? More batteries! Cost? -> a mix of sources becomes attractive
replyhttps://imgur.com/a/dV8gk3R
replycan you find curves like this for any other power source?
also batteries are getting exponentially cheap too
These are typically representative of cost performance per watt of one part of a more complex deployed energy system. Things like the aluminum / steal for the container / framing, copper / aluminum for the transmission and wiring, land and labor for installation decline at much less aggressive rates or increase over time.
replyIn almost all pareto optimal least cost energy system models that I've seen, high penetration of solar, wind, batteries plus some minority amount of (clean) baseload power is the most capital efficient energy system.