When the Pandemic first hit, one analogy I liked was the 1980 supply shock when Carter imposed credit controls, which sent the US economy into a tail spin. The similarity was a government imposed slowdown/recession for those that understood this and the quick rebound, as in 1980, was less of a surprise. Today, I like an analogy from WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath who says the Pandemic is like dropping a large rock into an aquarium--the still waters of equilibrium are chaotically disturbed which are still oscillating today...However as in Physics, these oscillations, the peaks and troughs ought to be reverberating into lower amplitude cycles...So far, I am not sure that is obvious...
Interesting read. I believe the perception gap is of outsized importance in our systems. Humans are slow in responding to change.
Thinking errors like: X GWH of renewables could replace X GWH of fossil fuel base generation, without properly considering that renewables are semi-randomly interruptible.
One cannot replace completely fossil fuels with renewables, unless demand also is semi-randomly interruptible. Or the system can get as close as possible to instant on and instant off of those FF generation units, to provide maximum benefit from renewables without demand interruption.
However, this means the backup fossil fuel capacity needs to equal to the highest delta in renewables. That is expensive today.
When the Pandemic first hit, one analogy I liked was the 1980 supply shock when Carter imposed credit controls, which sent the US economy into a tail spin. The similarity was a government imposed slowdown/recession for those that understood this and the quick rebound, as in 1980, was less of a surprise. Today, I like an analogy from WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath who says the Pandemic is like dropping a large rock into an aquarium--the still waters of equilibrium are chaotically disturbed which are still oscillating today...However as in Physics, these oscillations, the peaks and troughs ought to be reverberating into lower amplitude cycles...So far, I am not sure that is obvious...
Interesting read. I believe the perception gap is of outsized importance in our systems. Humans are slow in responding to change.
Thinking errors like: X GWH of renewables could replace X GWH of fossil fuel base generation, without properly considering that renewables are semi-randomly interruptible.
One cannot replace completely fossil fuels with renewables, unless demand also is semi-randomly interruptible. Or the system can get as close as possible to instant on and instant off of those FF generation units, to provide maximum benefit from renewables without demand interruption.
However, this means the backup fossil fuel capacity needs to equal to the highest delta in renewables. That is expensive today.