California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

Are metal/chemical batteries “clean” though?

In the atmospheric climate context, possibly. But if we optimize only for that, is there not a potentially serious trade off in the likelihood of irresponsible disposal?

The sooner it shuts down the better, given the design and risks of the plant[1]

1 - https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-power-accidents...

Okay, I like pumped hydro as much as the next guy but... one pumped hydro dam isn't enough for the entire state of California.

Assuming 1GW pumps, that means you can pump a GW-worth of power during the day, and tap ~800MW of power at night (assuming 80% efficiency due to evaporation and other conversion losses).

It seems like the Shasta Dam is currently ~700MW and plans to be ~2GW soon. To give you the scale of power demands.

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Its estimated that California's current Solar capacity is ~30GW btw. Soooo... you'll need like 8 to 15 dams the size of Shasta to absorb that power.

Well, you wouldn't need to absorb all of it. You'd need to absorb just enough to run California at night. But still, you can see the amount of electrical usage California already has, and how much storage it needs. Especially if solar continues to grow.

Solar + Wind is nifty, because Wind generates most power at night, while Solar generates most of its power during the day. But even with a team of different plants working together, the energy storage problem is serious.

That's just the day-night cycle. Weather cycles (ex: hot, but cloudy days) are probably harder to plan for.

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EDIT: Anyway, pumped-hydro HAS to be part of the plan. Its one of the few Giga-scale storage methodologies we have. But even then, Gigascale isn't enough.

Realistically, California (or really, the world in general) just needs to builds its economy around the concept of "negative cost energy". Sometimes, there will be energy out there that needs to be absorbed by someone.

IIRC: Germany has aluminum plants which spin up to absorb the cost. People can plan to charge their electric cars during negative-cost energy times, or run their AC-units on overdrive to store some extra cold air. That's the sort of thing that will be sustainable in the long term.

Pumped Hydro (and other energy storage tech) will capture what we can to use later. But building out a "smart grid" which can take advantage of negative-cost energy would be the most obvious way to take advantage of solar.

Peak Solar only lasts for an hour or two. But for those two hours, negative cost energy costs will become a thing.

For those who think data is beautiful, here is real-time information regarding the majority of California's grid: http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx

Nuclear waste is not an actual problem and the only reason there is no 'solution' is because it has turned into a political shit show.

Worrying about nuclear waste at the beginning of the nuclear age when most of that waste is actually valuable fuel is downright idiotic.