Traditional powerplants are big nation-scale projects measured in decades and cannot be moved mid-lifecycle - unlike solar panels. They are also strictly dependent on running water for cooling. In my country (Poland) there has been a week few years back where some powerplants had to shut down because nearby rivers were too low and the water temperature was too high to cool down the powerplants (you cannot heat the water to 60 C cause the river life will die, so the workable temperatures are surprisingly low).
If you care about mobility and adjusting to climate change - you should bet on solar more than on anything else.
There are problems with renewables, but there are also many solutions, and the criticism usually assumes we change nothing else in our energy grid.
For example it's true that renewables are less predictable than traditional powerplants. Which increases costs of energy because we need to keep some overcapacity in production, consumption and transfer capabilities for balancing purposes and that's expansive.
But - grid-scale batteries solve a lot of these problems, and they aren't just a cost - they are earning money even in traditional grids by outcompeting peak powerplants without any subsidies. In fact people are afraid of how fast they are "destroying the market" for peaker plants and there are propositions to regulate this against the grid-scale batteries :) Batteries do the equivalent of high frequency trading on energy market and peaker plants have like 15 minutes latency vs batteries sub-second latency - you can imagine how it works out in practice. The Tesla battery in Australia already paid off the investment costs.
Another way is to produce synthethic fuel with cheap solar power when it's not used and then run the generators on that. Basically make methane tanks our batteries. There are promising technologies doing that, for example Terraform Industries.
Supposedly they can produce natural gas that is cheaper than the peak prices EU paid at the start of the russian invasion of Ukraine.
Another way is to simply build a lot more and to use smart pricing to encourage people to use the energy during the peak production. For most people it's perfectly fine to charge their cars at parkings near their office, it's just an organizational problem. Heating houses in the winter can also be done during the day - most houses in Central Europe can stay comfortably hot for longer than a day during the winter.
There are a lot of things we could do, but people who don't want anything to change take 1 thing they don't like and assume everything else stays the same so that the change seem impossible.
sorry but your comment shows that you obviously haven't looked into this stuff and are just spewing whatever headlines you've read.
a week a few years back.. that doesn't sound too bad honestly and looks like something you can prepare for on future project. i know that Poland had just greenlit two huge nuclear power plants which i think it's a great idea, wish we would do the same in my country.
there's simply no such thing as a grid scale battery. it doesn't exist and never will work current technology. the batteries in Australia are not what you think they are, in reality they're there to fix another huge problem with renewables which is frequency leveling and NOT to provide power when there's no renewable energy for which it would be good for a whooping 8 minutes. So.. the only viable way is to go with what's called power2x where you can create hydrogen, ammonia or something else, this process however it's quite inefficient requiring you too install around 7 times the capacity you need, as well building new infrastructure and power plants to use these synthetic fuels, this might still be a bit cheaper than nuclear, but we actually don't know that yet.
it's also not a solution to just build insane overcapacity??? are you really suggesting we go several hours a day or even weeks without electricity?? i live in a country where we've give all in on wind and let me tell you.. it's freaking annoying to have to look up the current price to see if you should turn on the washing machine, charge your car etc. and it's simply not true that houses in central Europe can stay comfortably hot more than a day during winter.
to be honest you sound very out of touch, but i guess that's what happen when you make a good developer salary and live in a cheap country. if your house can really stay warm more than a day in winter and still have fresh air to breath you must live in a high tech mansion.
If you care about mobility and adjusting to climate change - you should bet on solar more than on anything else.
There are problems with renewables, but there are also many solutions, and the criticism usually assumes we change nothing else in our energy grid.
For example it's true that renewables are less predictable than traditional powerplants. Which increases costs of energy because we need to keep some overcapacity in production, consumption and transfer capabilities for balancing purposes and that's expansive.
But - grid-scale batteries solve a lot of these problems, and they aren't just a cost - they are earning money even in traditional grids by outcompeting peak powerplants without any subsidies. In fact people are afraid of how fast they are "destroying the market" for peaker plants and there are propositions to regulate this against the grid-scale batteries :) Batteries do the equivalent of high frequency trading on energy market and peaker plants have like 15 minutes latency vs batteries sub-second latency - you can imagine how it works out in practice. The Tesla battery in Australia already paid off the investment costs.
Another way is to produce synthethic fuel with cheap solar power when it's not used and then run the generators on that. Basically make methane tanks our batteries. There are promising technologies doing that, for example Terraform Industries.
Supposedly they can produce natural gas that is cheaper than the peak prices EU paid at the start of the russian invasion of Ukraine.
Another way is to simply build a lot more and to use smart pricing to encourage people to use the energy during the peak production. For most people it's perfectly fine to charge their cars at parkings near their office, it's just an organizational problem. Heating houses in the winter can also be done during the day - most houses in Central Europe can stay comfortably hot for longer than a day during the winter.
There are a lot of things we could do, but people who don't want anything to change take 1 thing they don't like and assume everything else stays the same so that the change seem impossible.