this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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No to storing joules in environmentally questionable batteries. Use the energy immediately to produce useful, necessary stuff like fresh water and hydrogen.
That's only a solution for when energy demand won't spike or increase.
The issue is that currently energy demand does spike and increase.
The solution is to make sure the electricity supply always exceeds demand even during spikes.
Yes, except that takes a long time, and in the meantime electricity usage fluctuates with spikes and continued growth. That's without counting other possible issues, like dropped outputs due to weather (hurricanes, lightning strikes, winter in a northern latitude, etc). Tell me, how do we build enough energy production to cover usage when both lines go up? And what about while water creation plants are constructed?
Ideally, we end up in the situation you describe, yes, but even then we would need back up storage because things can and do go wrong, and output won't always be consistent and neither will use. And then there's the whole issue with using solar at night.
Play something like Factorio or Satisfactory with certain mods, and you'll get a small idea of how difficult it is to keep load balance even with machines running to use extra energy.