It shows the importance of diversifying energy production. In Quebec it's all hydro, but sometimes the weather means the reservoirs can get low over the years. It affects production in a serious way and can take time to build up again.

Wind and solar are also affected by weather patterns in their own ways. Maybe less so or at least maybe different factors. Hedging and balancing grid production is going to be a new challenge.

Fossil fuels did have the advantage of being pretty easy to ramp up or down, whenever, for whatever reason. Some countries might want to keep around older but very efficient fossil fuel plants as backups for these kinds of events. That or waste incineration for example.

[–] Forester@pawb.social 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Or we could ramp up renewable production in addition to nuclear and continue to diversify

[–] TeaWithDani@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

All renewables are subject to some kind of weather impacts. A challenge with the grid is adapting to spikes in demand like if it's really cold or hot one day in particular. You cant turn up the sun or wind on demand.

We've been having brown outs in Canada for the first time ever in the last few years. Its crazy to imagine since our electricity is so abundant. Same with France struggling with this heat wave.

[–] Forester@pawb.social 3 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Modern Nuclear can load follow, its not as precise as peaker plants but its not too far off. Another cool thing with modern nuclear is you don't have to directly spin the turbines some modern plants are designed to shunt thermal production to thermal batteries (large pile of salt in a tube) which can be more finely throttled allowing the exact amount of power the grid needs at any given moment to be met. They just have to throttle the reactor to keep the Salt boiling. https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-reactor-demonstration-projects