Canada needs a massive battery
Renewable energy power storage is successfully being added to the North American grid to keep the lights on, computers running and the electric vehicles charging. Photo by Pixabay/Pexels
By Rob Miller
The federal government is developing Clean Energy Regulations (CER) to help move the electrical grid to net-zero emissions. The regulations, among other measures, will encourage adding more renewable energy to the grid, which will eventually replace coal and natural gas electricity generation in Canada.
In light of the recent hydrogen deal Canada signed with Germany, investors are looking at renewable energy to produce green hydrogen in Canada. This is preferable to blue hydrogen, which requires costly and unproven carbon capture and storage, but is it more efficient to use renewable energy infrastructure to power the electrical grid, at least until net-zero power generation is reached?
One of the most common arguments against using the cheapest sources of clean energy (wind and solar) to power the electrical grid is that renewables are intermittent, and we will always need natural gas power plants to generate baseload power for the grid. Why even bother with these unpredictable energy sources?