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Keith Wilkinson's avatar

If you could wave a wand and have a optimum mix of generation, say one mix for east coast,one for west. What would it look like? Only mature tech.

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F. Ichiro Gifford's avatar

Solar where it's sunny, wind where it's windy, hydro where there are rivers, transmission lines away from places where it's windy AND sunny, nukes where not enough of whatever, storage and aeroderivative gas to fill in the gaps, and shale fuel for the plastics and high-heat applications where it's most needed

in short, only something that can be implemented with a magic wand

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Keith Wilkinson's avatar

So the key link is storage, right?

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F. Ichiro Gifford's avatar

With current technology, storage and 10min-response gas work best. But those are _capacity_ resources, and they cannot be relied on for bulk volumetric energy.

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