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Comment Here's an idea... (Score 1) 72

Instead of trying to get battery and hydrogen power to work, buses can collect electric current from wires strung above the road. This will make the buses lighter, more efficient, safer and enable them to run all day and night.

I've even come up with a name for them: "Trolleybuses".

I also thought of a more advanced concept where these electric buses run on rails set into the road but I don't want to start a revolution here.

Comment Re:Renewables supplying 15.2% of UK electricity no (Score 1) 63

More wind is not the answer as the intermittency and storage problem will never be resolved. Adding more will just lead to an over abundance on sunny and windy days, with a massive deficit on cold and still winter nights.

The UK and most of Western Europe experienced near nil wind from August-November 2021, the output would be the same if you had a thousand turbines or a hundred thousand.

Comment Re:And with good reason (Score 1) 95

Wind and solar do not behave like that

They absolutely do. Solar output drops to almost nothing in the UK winter, my own panels are testament to that. As for wind, the entire British Isles can suffer from becalment for weeks at a time. The Germans even have a word for it: Dunkelflaute. No amount of storage, whether battery, hydro or whatever is going to see the grid through such a period.

Comment And with good reason (Score 0) 95

Battery storage will never scale up to anything more than a few hours' storage to smooth out demand peaks. Even covering a few days of low renewable generation isn't feasible. Case in point, the UK already has Europe's largest grid battery storage facility. It cost £75 million and holds a 98 MWh, enough to power the UK for a few seconds.

The best way of managing a surplus or deficit of wind energy is via interconnection with other markets, and the UK has a number of those with more in the planning stages.

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