> Consider a system intended to cover occasional shortages, happing 10% of the time.
Which means, in turn, that renewable has to be engineered to be sufficient for 90th percentile circumstances.
And that GTP has to have turbines sufficient for 99.99th percentile - 90th percentile circumstances. This may be a rather long tail-- in the 99.99th percentile circumstance, renewables may be making very little and demand high.
And that PTG has to have electrolyzers that have enough capacity on, say, 0-60th percentile circumstances (because you don't want to tap some things, like reservoir hydroelectric, to run PTG) to make enough gas for those outcomes.
If you have 20% of your power coming from a reliable, constant source, every step in the above chain can be much more than 20% smaller, because you absorb a lot more of the long tail and because load shedding, etc, is more effective against the remaining unreliable power.
As an aside, there's a bit of an analogy to investing. Having a bit of a low-return, reliable instrument in your portfolio is helpful. Yes, it "costs a lot" compared to investing in the market-- that 2% interest bond costs 5x as much as investing in the market to 10% average returns-- but it is a stable source of value and reduces the volatility of the cost of spending money a whole lot.
Which means, in turn, that renewable has to be engineered to be sufficient for 90th percentile circumstances.
And that GTP has to have turbines sufficient for 99.99th percentile - 90th percentile circumstances. This may be a rather long tail-- in the 99.99th percentile circumstance, renewables may be making very little and demand high.
And that PTG has to have electrolyzers that have enough capacity on, say, 0-60th percentile circumstances (because you don't want to tap some things, like reservoir hydroelectric, to run PTG) to make enough gas for those outcomes.
If you have 20% of your power coming from a reliable, constant source, every step in the above chain can be much more than 20% smaller, because you absorb a lot more of the long tail and because load shedding, etc, is more effective against the remaining unreliable power.
As an aside, there's a bit of an analogy to investing. Having a bit of a low-return, reliable instrument in your portfolio is helpful. Yes, it "costs a lot" compared to investing in the market-- that 2% interest bond costs 5x as much as investing in the market to 10% average returns-- but it is a stable source of value and reduces the volatility of the cost of spending money a whole lot.