What? The sun isn't always shining?!
In this episode, Princeton professor and energy modeler Jesse Jenkins tackles the question of how we can build a decarbonized energy system that relies on inherently variable wind and solar power.
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Text transcript:
David Roberts
If you’ve spent much time discussing clean energy on the internet, you’ve probably come across a disturbing piece of information: the sun, it seems, is not always shining. What’s worse, the wind is not always blowing!
It’s crazy, I know.
Unlike coal or natural gas or nuclear — “dispatchable” power plants that we can turn on or off at will, when we need them — we do not control solar power and wind power. They come and go with the weather and the rotation of heavenly bodies. They are, to use the term of art, “variable.”
Many people, bringing to bear varying levels of good faith, conclude from this fact that we shouldn’t or can’t shift to an electricity system that is based around wind and solar, at least not without occasionally shivering in the cold.
Is that true? Do we know how to balance out the variability of wind and solar enough that we can fully decarbonize the grid with them? This is probably the number one question I hear about renewable energy, the number one reservation people have about it, so I decided it’s time to tackle it head on.
To help, I called on longtime Friend of Volts, Princeton professor and energy modeler extraordinaire Jesse Jenkins. We walked through the basic shape of the problem, the different time scales on which variability operates, and the solutions that we either have or anticipate having to deal with it.
This one is long and occasionally gets a bit complex, but if you’ve ever wondered how we’re going to build an energy system around wind and solar, this is the pod you’ve been waiting for.
All right, I am here with Princeton professor and longtime friend of Volts, Jesse Jenkins. Jesse, welcome back to Volts. Thanks for coming back.
Jesse Jenkins
Hey, Dave. It's always good to chat with you.
David Roberts
Jesse, the reason we're doing this is that in the course of my research, I have come across some extremely disturbing information which I felt like I needed to share with you and the world as soon as possible. Apparently, the sun is not always shining and the wind is not always blowing.
Jesse Jenkins
Wait, what?
David Roberts
I know this changes everything, so we're going to have to talk through this.
Jesse Jenkins
Oh, man.
David Roberts
But seriously, I don't mean to make too much light of this. This is a subject about which people say lots of dumb things, but it is at its heart, I think, a perfectly valid question, a perfectly valid area of concern. In fact, it is the central area of concern about renewable energy. It is the central question to answer, which is the term that used to be used is intermittent. Renewable energy, wind and solar are intermittent, I think. Now the preferred term of art is variable, but I think probably the most accurate terminology for our purposes is non-dispatchable.
It just means we don't control it; we don't turn it on and off. It comes and goes with the weather.
Jesse Jenkins
Yeah, I prefer just weather dependent. Right. I think it makes more intuitive sense to people. Like you said, it's solar and wind power, so it depends on the weather. That is not shocking, but also defining of what the resource is.
David Roberts
Also dependent on the turning of the planets and the solar system.
Jesse Jenkins
That's true.
David Roberts
But anyway, people know what we mean. We don't control them. A lot of people, I think, especially people who are coming, who haven't given a lot of thought to the clean energy transition and are starting to grapple with it fo
