this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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[–] Womble@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Austrailia is one of the best places in the world to do that, but it should be pointed out that the article you linked wants 120GWh of batteries (costing ~12 billion USD at current Li-ion prices) as well as building more than 38GW of wind power and 30GW of solar power in order to meet ~25GW of average demand and that still needs pumped hydro on top and more than 9GW of fossil fuel power to make up the gaps.

It's just about feasible in Australia with excess sun and wind, plenty of empy space, low population density and terrain amenable to hydro storage. But it isnt realy generalisable to most other places.

[–] DaBPunkt@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

30GW of solar is not much. Germany built 13GW this year.

[–] Womble@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Germany has more than 3 times the population of Australia, and the article linked needed to be able to generate 30GW peak so likely required more installed capacity, and solar is only 1 element out of 5 required in that scenario.

Again it does seem to be feasible to get renewable only in Australia (or close to) but I dont think that tells you much about elsewhere