Europe is worse in carbon-free transition.
The grid itself is fine, but it's backed by fossil fuels with no way out.
The grid itself is fine, but it's backed by fossil fuels with no way out.
Than whom? The parent comment referred to Texas, let's extend that to an US/EU comparison in electricity production
The latest numbers I could find for either:
EU: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
US: https://www.epa.gov/power-sector/electric-power-sector-basic...
Nuclear + wind + solar + hydro in the EU was 57.8% vs 36.9% in the US, doesn't seem that much worse
Cheap electricity is going to be important for national economies and there are no countries that couldn't build cheap wind and solar (and/or cables to import neighbours' excess renewables production).
Yes, the ones that have classic hydro.
> Cheap electricity is going to be important for national economies and there are no countries that couldn't build cheap wind and solar (and/or cables to import neighbours' excess renewables production).
Solar and wind ARE NOT cheap if you actually want them to be reliable. They are about 5x-10x more expensive than nuclear power in this case.
The problem is called Dunkelflaute. Here's an actual example: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&... - renewable generation mostly disappeared for a week from 18-th to 25-th. These kinds of events happen almost every year, and often more than once.
Worst-case modelling shows that Germany can get about a _month_ of sustained Dunkelflaute about once in a century.
I don't believe they are solvable with the existing approaches. Transition to natural gas from coal is possible, but there's nothing on the horizon after that.
The existing plans (if you can call them that) mostly depend on asterisks pointing to a footnote saying "magic happens here": cheap hydrogen, power-to-gas, radically cheaper batteries, etc.
> For example, a simple thing where Germany could try to follow the Nordic countries is heat pump installations to keep houses warm without fossil fuels.
They are trying. But they are already having problems with very expensive electricity. Which will only get worse, as demand climbs with more heat pumps.
We can build more of what we have, such as pumped hydro and EU-wide interconnections.
You mentioned the fear that the solutions will cost 5 times more than nuclear. That's not a horrible worst case scenario (as nuclear is so cheap ;-) and we can be sure that costs go down as the markets scale and technologies mature.
It may look bleak in Germany at the moment, but it certainly doesn't look bleak everywhere or for long.
Because now your inflexible base-load has increased. And while spreading generation over a wider area helps, it rapidly reaches limits (unless your power grid extends close to the equator).
In a country where heating isn't yet electrified, it's a way to reduce fossil fuel use and carbon emissions (the ultimate goal) without necessarily reducing the fossil electricity production. So even if it doesn't solve Dunkelflaute alone, it's a part of solving the climate and energy crises.
This is not _too_ bad in itself, using gas for generation and then powering heat pumps is more efficient than burning gas for heating. But the capital requirements for new power plants will cement Germany's dependence on fossil fuels for at least another 2 decades.
It's a mess.
The reason storage hasn't been yet been addressed much is simply that the demand is not there yet. But as one example, you can produce biogas and use the existing gas infrastructure.
Well? Where's the plan then? The ones I've seen require taking a very stiff dose of crack and meth to make them believable.
> The reason storage hasn't been yet been addressed much is simply that the demand is not there yet.
Well, yeah. Europe has no capacity market, so cheap low-quality solar/wind is a good way to get return on investments. And wintertime generation is supported by fossil fuels that are still too cheap.
> But as one example, you can produce biogas and use the existing gas infrastructure.
"Biogas" can support only a tiny amount of consumption. Power-to-gas (methane produced from water and captured CO2) is an option, but the round-trip efficiency is poor and costs are too high.