Yeah I mean expandable, especially at a national scale. Existing hydro will make the overall job much easier for areas like the PNW though

The success of just a few pilot projects happening now - Fervo's Cape Station, the nuclear demos by TerraPower and XEnergy, and NETPower's Project Permian - will determine whether clean firm power is actually part of our toolbox in the 2030s and beyond. If not, the problem becomes much harder.

This project has involved field tests of flexible operating strategies (under an ARPA-E grant that our group is partnered on), though I believe it will operate steady-state commercially for the time being

I'll also be participating in two side event panels while I'm there: one hosted by TransitionZero on open-source and transparent energy systems modeling (t.co/VSjeQmuWiawww.seforall.org/events/sdg7-...).

Geothermal's partially nuclear, but a chunk is also the release of gravitational potential energy from when the planet first coalesced. I think only tidal is 100% non-nuclear (unless any of that rotational momentum originally came from supernovae...)

The mechanism is ambiguous, but this is the first proposed CES to explicitly mention using clean resources to meet all reliability needs. So essentially the same goal as 24/7 matching. But it doesn't ban fossil fuel generation (e.g. for export)

Oh, and hello EnergySky I'm here now too