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this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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The premise of powering a complete city just from one singular facility is a false one. It's unnecessary to build such a facility. You can build multiple smaller ones to supply sectors of a city according to the needs of that sector. The answer also depends on how smart the usage of the power is. Are people using power when it's available? Are people trying to use a lot of power when it's not available but must come from storage? There are so many factors your scenario doesn't take into account. The answer has to be: it depends.
This also feels a lot like a gotcha question not posed in good faith. Because again: you won't need to power anything solely from storage. Wind and sun will always supply a base level of energy.
That is objectively false. The sun doesn't shine at night, and wind doesn't blow 100% of the time. So logically there is some amount of time that you do not get a base load provided only by sun and wind. Hence the need for storage at all. And yes it is a gotcha question, because it's something that anti-nuclear people hand-wave away as if the significant storage infrastructure to support a 100% renewable is just a rounding error, and not worth thinking about.
I did the calculation for you in a different answer, it isn't as unreasonable as you seem to think. Aside from that:
It's extremely uncommon for the whole powergrid to experience zero wind. That's not happening.
What pro-nuclear people are just waving away is so much more though. Space for storage is nothing in comparison.