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The future of electricity is wind and solar, new report says. Canada is lagging behind (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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Renewable energy met all new demand for electricity in 2025, according to a new review of global power generation, halting the growth of fossil fuel-powered generation and highlighting the promise of clean sources like wind and solar.

The authoritative Global Electricity Review released annually by Ember, an international energy research organization, says clean sources — especially solar — are growing fast enough and are cheap enough that they are stopping new fossil fuel-powered electricity generation. Electricity from solar and wind increased while there was no change to the amount of electricity produced from burning fossil fuels.

“We're really talking about a large-scale change in how the energy system works. And solar is among the most scalable technologies that can deliver fast change,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember.

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[–] 6 points 5 months ago (10 children)

Canada also has a lot of hydro power. In theory we could use excess solar from the day to pump water up into the reservoir to be used for hydro generation at night or during peak use. It may not be the most energy effecient, but it could be effective at scale and cheap enough to implement before building and investing in physical batteries. I may be wrong but i think there are some places that already do this.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Even without pumping, hydroelectricity is great to complement intermittent storage. A dam is storing a lot of potential energy that can be released or not at the right time.

    There is a big dam close to where I live. In winter the level goes down progressively and as soon as spring comes back, the solar panels are producing again and the electrical demands goes down so the lake level goes back up progressively.

    In summer the lake is full so all the tourists can enjoy the activities on the water.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (7 children)

    Micro hydro this is feasible. Many tall buildings already have water tanks near the top.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Sorry i wasn't speaking micro, I'm talking like lake and river scaled hydro. Some places even build reservoirs specifically for pumped solar storage.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    A 4” pipe with 400’ of head altitude feeds a 3/4” nozzle pelton wheel with around 7000w @ 120v in a basic bush install. I am sure a well engineered system could provide double that or more, but a rooftop tank might run out at night unless it was quite big, and that is definitely micro hydro.

    calculations based on living with such a system

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