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Yesterday's electricity supply in California by type over the course of the day. See that big green bump during the middle of the day? That's solar. It only woks when the sun shines. The rest of the time, they have to bring the natural gas plants on line and import electricity from neighboring states. Nuclear output doesn't fluctuate at all.
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Keep thinking about this a lot. The graph gets more more interesting with other news.
One, I had heard CA was going to close down another nuclear plant; I didn't realize
it's the last one in the state, the one creating that black line of constant generation.
That happens in six years; nice work, hippies; hope you know what you're doing.
Two, there is a huge solar facility being constructed in Virginia. It will be the largest solar facility in the eastern US. It will use 6,000 acres, of which 3,500 will be panels, I think.
To build this, they are cutting down trees in an area about 40% the size of Manhattan. That's a lot of forest lost!
The largest solar facility in the east will only be rated at 500MW. I do not understand whether that is during sunlight hours, or an estimated average across time. It is sad that you only get 500MW out of losing that many trees.
For comparison,
VA currently has two nuclear plants and one of them is planning an expansion. Currently those plants produce 3568MW of power, they are hoping a future unit will raise that to 5103MW.
After considering all these numbers, it still seems to me like we need another round of nuclear while we wait for a few more rounds of innovation on solar and batteries and conservation. At least, insist that panels go on top of commercial and industrial buildings first.
Or shut down the remaining coal plants and replace with gas, as the interim measure.