Fascinating new EIA data
South Dakota produced 110% of its electricity demand with just Wind-Water-Solar for the full year Oct 1 '23-Sep 30 '24
77.5% Wind 30.1% Water 2.2% Solar
Also produced 16.8% gas, 11.7% coal
So SD produced 138% of demand, exporting 38%
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSBook/Countries100Pct.pdf
But were those renewables able to meet demand 100% of the time with sufficient battery backups?
Well it doesn’t matter if it exports the surplus to other states and cuts their fossil fuel usage. It means that 100% of that renewable energy was cut from fossil fuels.
There is always a need to smooth out troughs. That can be through, selling, shifting demand (cheaper tarrifs during surplus), storage or as a last resort bridging gaps with other fuels.
Let’s not let perfect get in the way of good. Every tonne of CO2 out the air gives us more time and a little more chance for at risk countries to stay above water.
It does matter because you have to cover a lacune of 6-8 weeks from fossil sources. Typically these are gas turbine peaker plants at low duty cycle which need to be subsidized.
It’s certainly good, but I think it’d be better if we had some additional clean way of covering our base load. Like nuclear.