Tim Chang Dr. Shinya Nagasaki 3ES3 Due Dec 20th, 2021 3ES3 Final Exam Question 1 From the article, “Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind power worldwide”, the results suggest that “neglecting transmission constraints, major countries’ solar and wind resources could meet at least 72% of instantaneous electricity demand without excess annual generation or energy storage”. I believe this is not entirely accurate. For example, the assumed generating capacities increase of 50% (or 1.5x generation) is a little unrealistic in my opinion, as that is a little overly hopeful in our future technologies in wind and solar energy. In figure 2 specifically, regarding the “reliability of electricity supply by varying the solar and wind resource mix, generation, and energy storage”, I believe it is unrealistic to predict China’s energy demand to be met with 100% reliability as shown in the 12 hours of storage with 1.5x generation. I think the researchers assumed that just because China has lots of land, people will construct plenty of solar panels and wind turbines all throughout the country, which I do not think will happen. Not to mention, China has one of the largest populations in the world, so I do not believe the energy demand can be met, even with the supposed unrealistic 1.5x generation increase. In addition, in figure 1 regarding “temporal variability of solar and wind resources and electricity demand”, it is also unfeasible to analyze data as early as 1980, as how we use electricity in the past will be very different than how we us it today. For example, people may rely on fireplaces under their chimney to produce heat rather than turning on the heater, resulting in lower energy demands than the present day. Having lived in Taiwan myself, I know that the energy demand in Taiwan in the summers are very high due to the hot weather and everybody turning on the air conditioning, thus I was concerned why I did not see a higher spike in energy demand in the summers of certain countries with warmer weathers, leading me to think that this data is not very reliable in the present day.
