[HN Gopher] In a First, Solar Was Europe's Biggest Source of Pow...
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In a First, Solar Was Europe's Biggest Source of Power Last Month
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 177 points
Date : 2025-07-11 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e360.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (e360.yale.edu)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Ember source: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-is-
| eus-bigges...
| slaw wrote:
| Ember is a better source.
|
| EU is ahead of China and US.
|
| EU June Solar power generated 22.1% of EU electricity (45.4
| TWh)
|
| China April solar power generated 12.4% of electricity (96 TWh)
|
| US March solar power generated 9.2% of electricity
|
| https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-gener...
|
| https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/fossil-fuels-fall-be...
| IshKebab wrote:
| It's crazy that the US generates so little from solar, given
| the vast sunny deserts they have available.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Still a cherry-picked result, unlike California:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44512968
|
| But it's a good step along the way to a headline like the above.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| The best part is that just a few years ago it was common
| knowledge that solar would only work in "sunny" parts of the
| world. Turns out everywhere is "sunny" when panels are cheap
| enough.
| chupasaurus wrote:
| The only thing that turns in this conversation is Earth and
| solar output in December would _slightly_ differ.
| Retric wrote:
| This is where energy mixes and economics come into play.
|
| Dams provide most parts of the globe a lot of seasonal
| storage. It takes the same water if they average 10% over
| the year or 5% over 9 months and 25% over 3. Similarly,
| locations for wind farms often vary in the season they
| provide the most power. So the economic maximum around high
| solar productivity ends up compensating for it's lower
| winter output.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| "Dams provide most parts of the globe a lot of seasonal
| storage"
|
| Is this true? I think it's the opposite, that dams and
| pumped hydrostorage of energy works in a few areas where
| the geography supports it, but (for example) in the
| plains of the USA it's not really possible.
|
| Why haven't we built a huge solar farm around the Hoover
| Dam to pump water back up to Lake Mead insted of letting
| it flow downstream.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Hydro generation is pretty geographically limited, but
| pumped storage only requires two reservoirs vertically
| separated. If you allow building one of the two
| reservoirs then there are millions of potential
| locations.
|
| https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/
| martinpw wrote:
| There are contracts around how much water needs to flow
| downstream, so they can't just hold it back like that.
| California and Arizona both have allocations that they
| pull from the river downstream of the dam. Mexico too in
| theory I think, although I don't know if they actually
| get their allocation any more.
|
| Given how oversubscribed the river water already is, how
| the river flow rate is steadily diminishing due to
| increasing temperatures, and the politics involved, even
| a small or temporary additional reduction in downstream
| flow would encounter huge opposition.
| Retric wrote:
| With multiple dams you can release water early at one
| point in the system and have zero impact on users below
| the second dam.
|
| The northeast and northwest has an abundance of water.
| Managing total water usage is a large problem for the
| southwest but there's many opportunities to do things
| like evaporation reduction.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Because the primary purpose of the Hoover Dam isn't power
| generation it's water management.
| Retric wrote:
| It's not universal, smaller dams don't have nearly as
| much storage as large ones but they also produce vastly
| less power. At the other end the Great Lakes are
| effectively storing years worth of electricity, and have
| significant flexibility in delivery.
|
| Looking at the US most of it is family close to large
| scale hydropower, except Florida, but it's a little under
| 7% of annual power nationwide. https://www.eia.gov/todayi
| nenergy/images/2011.06.10/hydro_pa...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 0.05% of the world's population live north of the arctic
| circle. Solar panels don't work for them, but their diesel
| generators are not a significant portion of the world's
| CO2.
| IshKebab wrote:
| In the summer, yes. Winter... I'm in the UK and my entire
| roof is solar panels (6.5 kW). I get about 35 kWh a day
| typically in the summer which is plenty (don't have an
| electric car or heat pump so usage is 10-15 kWh).
|
| In the winter though... In February there were 7 days where
| the average we produced was about 2 kWh/day, so I need about
| 5 times more roof areas and PS50k. And that's without a heat
| pump.
|
| Fortunately we have wind... But even so it's hard to see how
| we can get away from gas completely without either a lot of
| nuclear or some crazy changes to the market.
| Theodores wrote:
| Truth be told, Europe has no energy and it was only with the
| Ukraine crisis that I realised this. Germany has been turning
| cheap gas from Russia into expensive cars, glass and chemicals
| for decades without me noticing that was all the deal was.
|
| Europe just sucks in oil, gas, uranium and some coal from the
| rest of the world to give back what exactly?
|
| So it is no surprise that renewable energy is showing up as
| significant these days, particularly when so much manufacturing
| industry is closed down and exported overseas.
|
| The thing is that China and elsewhere in East Asia are burning
| those hydrocarbons now, so it is just globalization of the
| emissions.
|
| Regarding nuclear, the French have been kicked out of West Africa
| so no cheap uranium for them, paid for with the special Franc
| they can only print in Paris to obtain as much uranium as they
| need from Africa.
|
| The solar panels come from China so it is not as if Europe is
| leading the way in terms of tech.
|
| All Europe government bodies also want the bicycle these days,
| with dreams of livable neighbourhoods and cycling holidays for
| all.
|
| I doubt they care for solar panels or the bicycle, however, after
| the Ukraine crisis in 2022 it must be clear to some in Europe
| that there are no energy sources in Europe apart from a spot of
| Norwegian gas. When paying 4x for fracked LNG from Uncle Sam it
| must be an eye opener to them.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > Germany has been turning cheap gas from Russia into expensive
| cars, glass and chemicals for decades without me noticing that
| was all the deal was.
|
| You're overstating this a bit; there is a lot of coal in Europe
| (natural gas only got ahead of coal in Germany over the last
| years).
|
| > Europe just sucks in oil, gas, uranium and some coal from the
| rest of the world to give back what exactly?
|
| Finished products (like cars), some services, bit of tourism?
| What exactly is the problem here?
|
| Uranium mining in Europe would be perfectly viable, but no one
| wants to, because modern practices basically ruin groundwater
| quality for a long time (in-situ leeching). This applies to a
| bunch of other things, too; hard to justify mining cadmium in
| the Alps when you can just buy the finished product for cheaper
| while keeping your local environment intact.
|
| > The solar panels come from China so it is not as if Europe is
| leading the way in terms of tech.
|
| They used to produce lots of those in Germany-- it's just
| become way cheaper to buy them from China, especially after
| local subsidies ran out. You could make an argument that the
| germans shoulda tried to keep the industry somewhat alive for
| strategic reasons, though.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| > Europe just sucks in oil, gas, uranium and some coal from the
| rest of the world to give back what exactly?
|
| That's called manufacturing, the best skills in the world. Yeah
| it's tough work and pay is not brilliant, but when shit happens
| that's the thing that is going to save EU.
| tom_ wrote:
| > Europe just sucks in oil, gas, uranium and some coal from the
| rest of the world to give back what exactly?
|
| It's called "money". Numbers on a screen that you can exchange
| for goods and services. The people with the oil are typically
| quite happy to give Europeans that oil in exchange for some
| European money - and the Europeans don't have to give anything
| back at all. The exchange has been made.
| jopsen wrote:
| Absolutely, and buying fossil fuel has definitely been
| working, and it'll probably continue to work.
|
| But if in the future we don't have to buy as much fossil fuel
| as we do today, it'll probably have sizable effects on our
| economies.
| MadDemon wrote:
| Europe might not have much oil and gas, but the future is in
| renewables anyways. Western Europe has a lot of wind potential
| at the coastlines. Northern Europe and the alpine region
| already mostly run on hydro. Southern Europe has good solar
| potential. And the continent is very compact, so distributing
| the electricity can be done quite cheaply, since the distances
| are small. That seems like a pretty good setup for a clean
| energy future to me.
| dexterdog wrote:
| The title should say electrical grid power. I'm willing to bet
| diesel was still the number one generator of all power.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm very excited for solar. In Europe we don't have much fossil
| fuels, so our "hippiness" is not really a choice. I see some
| people campaigning against European green energy or the
| renewables and it doesn't make sense whatsoever unless you are
| aligned with Russia or USA.
|
| The coolest thing about solar is that the devices to capture the
| fusion energy in the skies are manufactured, unlike other options
| being built. I'm not anti-nuclear but I don't like its extremely
| long building phase.
|
| I sometimes fantasize about closed loop fully automatic solar PV
| panels factories that we can build on some remote area, just
| bring in the raw material and let it auto-expand using the energy
| it captures. As it grows geometrically at some point we can
| decide that we no longer want it to grow and start taking out the
| finished PV panels and installing them everywhere.
|
| Storage for the night probably wouldn't be that much of a
| problem, not everything needs to work 24/7 and for these things
| that need to work 24/7 we can use the already installed nuclear
| capacity and as the energy during the day becomes practically
| unlimited we can just stor it however we like even if its quite
| inefficient. With unlimited energy space wouldn't be a problem,
| we can dig holes and transfer materials into anything we need
| with the practically free daytime energy.
| ljlolel wrote:
| Efficiency always matters. There's always capex, ROI, and
| alternative opportunity costs for capital
| mrtksn wrote:
| It's OK to be inefficient sometimes.
| mlyle wrote:
| Reducing carbon emissions means electrifying a lot of things
| that were not electric before. We are going to need a lot more
| base generation than we have now.
|
| Large grids, overbuilding renewables, diversity of renewables,
| short and medium term storage, and load shedding/dynamic
| pricing are all good starts but IMO won't be enough-- we should
| scale up nuclear too.
| tialaramex wrote:
| More, but not as much more as people often naively expect
| because it turns out converting liquid fuel into motion by
| burning/ exploding the fuel isn't very efficient on a small
| scale whereas electric motors are very efficient, so 1TW year
| of "People driving to work" in ICE cars does _not_ translate
| into needing 1TW year extra electricity generation if they
| have electric cars instead, let alone 1TW year of extra
| network capacity to deliver it.
|
| Where we're replacing fossil fuel heat with a heat pump we
| don't get that efficiency improvement from motors - burning
| fuel was 100% efficient per se, but the heat pump is > 100%
| efficient in those terms because it's not making heat just
| moving it.
|
| Nuclear is much less popular than almost any generation
| technology, so you're fighting a significant political battle
| to make that happen.
| mlyle wrote:
| We need a lot more. Right now only about 25 to 33 pc of our
| energy consumption is electric. Some of the rest will get
| significant efficiency benefit like you mention -- cars,
| building heating, etc. Others, much less so-- high
| temperature industrial heat, long distance transport, etc.
|
| Reaching current nighttime use with storage and wind and
| existing hydro looks infeasible, and we need a minimum of
| twice as much.
|
| Power to gas (and back to power or to mix with natural gas
| for existing uses) is probably a part of this, but nuclear
| improves this (allowing there to be less of it and allowing
| the electrolysis cells to be used for a greater fraction of
| the day.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| People have run the numbers. We need about 30% more.
| Which is a lot, but it's spread over 20-30 years, so it's
| not a lot each year.
| AngryData wrote:
| Does that also account for industrial chemical processes
| that don't have a simple power-energy exchange? Stuff
| like making fertilizer or solvents and the like do take a
| lot of electrical power currently, but will require even
| more rarely accounted for energy to create base reagents
| without fossil fuels. Like fertilizer already uses 1% of
| global electricity today, but if we want to create
| nitrogen fertilizers without fossil fuel sources, it
| takes up to a 10 times increase in energy requirements to
| synthesize from the air making it rise to near 10% of
| current electrical generation. Many oils are used in
| mechanical components are irreplaceable and have to be
| sourced, but to do it without fossil fuels and synthesize
| from organic materials also require a lot more energy
| than we use to purify or synthesize from fossil fuels.
| And the same is true of many solvents.
|
| Its usage is technically accounted for in fossil fuel
| extraction numbers, but generally ignored when people are
| accounting for total electrical generation and the usage
| of fuels as heat sources.
| ben_w wrote:
| Relevant question: fossil fuel dependency has two parts,
| the "peak oil" part, and the "global warming" part. As we
| don't have to solve these at the same time, are the
| things you raise more of a "peak oil" problem or a
| "global warming" problem?
| pydry wrote:
| >we should scale up nuclear too.
|
| With a 5x higher LCOE and lead times of 15-20 years instead
| of 1-2 for solar/wind deployments, allocating money to scale
| up nuclear as well will just make the transition happen
| slower and at higher cost.
| ben_w wrote:
| One of the bigger other sources of emissions is transport;
| transport requires some of the electricity is condensed into
| a portable form regardless of the specifics -- batteries,
| hydrogen, chunks of purified metal to burn, whatever -- and
| that condensation means it doesn't get any extra novel
| benefit from expensive-but-consistent nuclear over cheap-but-
| predictably-intermittent renewables.
|
| The scale is such that if we imagine a future with fully
| electrified cars, the batteries in those cars are more than
| enough to load-balance the current uses of the grid, and
| still are enough for the current uses of the grid when those
| batteries have been removed from the vehicles due to capacity
| wear making them no longer useful in a vehicle.
|
| The best time for more nuclear power was the 90s, the second
| best was 10 years ago; unless you have a cunning plan you've
| already shown to an investor about how to roll out reactors
| much much faster, I wouldn't hold your breath on them.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| According to this in many parts of the world solar + batteries
| is enough to provide 97-98% of all the electricity 24hr 365
| days a year
|
| https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Actually, that report is stronger than you're implying.
|
| It's saying solar + batteries is enough to supply 97% of
| power cheaper than any other way in sunny locales.
|
| It's possible to get 99.99% of your power with solar +
| batteries, you'd just need a _lot_ of batteries. The news is
| that batteries have got so cheap that you 're better
| installing enough batteries to hit 97% and leave your natgas
| peakers idle 97% of the time. That number used to be a lot
| lower, and that 97% number will be higher every year.
|
| The other cool thing about that report is that it gives a
| number of 90% for non-ideal places. Sure solar is cheap in
| sunny locales, but that solar is cheap in places that aren't
| sunny is far more exciting to me.
| gpm wrote:
| The other thing the report isn't saying is that those
| numbers improve a lot if you have power transmission or
| other forms of power generation (say wind). They're
| calculating things as if you're a datacenter in a single
| location trying to yourself without any grid connection.
|
| A small amount of other power generation whose output isn't
| correlated with the sun overhead should do a lot to make
| the last few percent (which come up when there's many
| cloudy days in a row) cheaper.
|
| Solar's just knocking it out of the park at this point.
| Building out anything else new (as in you haven't already
| started) doesn't really make sense.
| ryao wrote:
| It is possible to get >100% from solar + batteries. All
| energy needs can be handled using only a small fraction of
| solar radiation reaching the planet's surface.
|
| That said, using it in aircraft (and a number of
| boots/submersibles) economically is an unsolved problem,
| but many other places can use it.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _In Europe we don 't have much fossil fuels, so our
| "hippiness" is not really a choice_
|
| this argument relies on the false-but-widely-held idea that
| "natural resources" are commercial wealth and if you don't hold
| them you are poor. Look at Japan, has very limited natural
| resources and not hippies but has built a world-class economy
| on knowledge work. Look at resource rich 3rd world countries,
| why are they poor?
|
| If Europe needs oil, they can buy it, it's completely fungible
| and sold at auction in huge volumes every day. The reason for
| the switch to wind and solar is the global warming argument,
| not the "we don't have our own oil" fallacy.
| jasonsb wrote:
| > The reason for the switch to wind and solar is the global
| warming argument
|
| I hate this argument. Why should one care about global
| warming in order to switch to solar? It just makes sense
| economically. Even if you think that the world is flat, solar
| energy is still cheaper than anything else.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Because there are uses of fossil fuels where solar won't be
| cheaper to replace them, but that still must be eliminated
| to avoid eventual disaster.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Because it's a fact. When your interlocutor doesn't care
| about facts there's no particular reason they should care
| it's cheaper, that's just another fact.
|
| You say "OK, Joe thinks the Earth is flat but he should
| still use Solar" and Joe doesn't follow. Joe's number one
| news source is "Jenny Truth Sayer" on TikTok and Jenny just
| told him that the solar panels attract Venusian Space
| Clowns, and he has to smash them with a hammer or else his
| genitals will explode
|
| There are greedy assholes for whom it doesn't matter why
| the line is going up. But it turns out they don't like wind
| or solar because they're too democratic. Those assholes are
| - like most capitalist asshole, used to a system where you
| own stuff (a mine, a well, a pipeline, a ship) and you get
| infinite money, but newer systems aren't about owning
| stuff. You can't own the sunlight, or the wind, well then
| it's no good is it? The big oil companies stepped back from
| "We're part of the transition" and doubled down on fossil
| fuels, because that means more money for them, and if we
| all die well, too bad.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > If Europe needs oil, they can buy it, it's completely
| fungible and sold at auction in huge volumes every day
|
| That didn't end well when the oil and gas supplier decided to
| invade Europe. They even run clips showing how Europe will
| freeze in the winter and be poor if keep supporting the
| invaded ally.
|
| Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvdBzZVVovc
|
| If EU wasn't heavily invested in green tech and efficiency,
| the Russians film might have had become a reality.
|
| Just use the fusion in the skies.
| tuukkah wrote:
| We now see it's not sensible to depend on other countries be
| it for oil, ore, nuclear umbrella or cloud computing
| providers.
|
| I think we cannot buy oil and gas only from sane countries or
| we would already.
|
| How can you regain sovereignty? Installing solar and heat
| pumps is part of this process.
| dimal wrote:
| You chose oil for your example, but what about natural gas?
| If Europe needs natural gas, they can just buy it... and give
| money directly to their enemy, Russia. Just buying what you
| need isn't without second order effects. The second order
| effects of solar and energy diversification are more
| palatable than directly funding an enemy.
|
| "Look at Japan". Ok, let's look. They attacked the US in 1941
| because of the US oil embargo. Their current situation is
| predicated on the US continuing to be the world's policeman,
| ensuring that shipments get from point A to B. There will
| come a time when that assumption will not hold.
|
| Things change.
| kaitai wrote:
| Energy independence. The US fought wars for oil before
| fracking. Supply chains are complex and disruptable.
| Dependence on Russia for fuel leads to... dependence on
| Russia. Or Iran. Or Saudi. Whatever country it may be, it's
| dependence, and dependence can always be weaponized. This is
| pure geopolitics. "You can just buy oil" is deeply foolish.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > I'm very excited for solar. In Europe we don't have much
| fossil fuels, so our "hippiness" is not really a choice. I see
| some people campaigning against European green energy or the
| renewables and it doesn't make sense whatsoever unless you are
| aligned with Russia or USA.
|
| > The coolest thing about solar is that the devices to capture
| the fusion energy in the skies are manufactured, unlike other
| options being built. I'm not anti-nuclear but I don't like its
| extremely long building phase.
|
| What do you do during a windless cloudy day or (any) night? No
| solar, no wind, no nothing. Small clouds, large power
| fluctuations, and you get grid failures.
|
| Yes, sure, nuclear takes 10 years to build, and 10 years ago,
| people like you were complaining about the same things, and
| same for 20 and 30 years ago. If we didn't listen to the "it'll
| take 10 years..." 10, 20, 30 years ago, we'd have a lot more
| nuclear power now, that also works at night.
| lukan wrote:
| I don't think you will find a day where there is no sun and
| no wind in all of europe. The costal areas usually gave
| constant wind and the south constant sun.
|
| And we do have and build much more high voltage transmission
| lines.
|
| And otherwise there is no technical limit to build lots of
| rare earth free batteries. Once they are common in allmost
| every household and once electric cars can be used for that,
| too, I don't see any technical problem.
|
| It takes time and investment of course. And pragmatism till
| we are there. I don't like coal plants, but I am not in favor
| of just shutting them down now.
| Animats wrote:
| > I don't think you will find a day where there is no sun
| and no wind in all of europe.
|
| For the US PJM (US east coast and midwest) and CAISO
| (California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada) grid areas, total
| wind power fluctuates over a 4:1 range on a daily basis.
| Both grids post dashboards where you can see this.
| Averaging out wind over a large area does not help all that
| much.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Solar fluctuates too; there's not much at night.
|
| This largely means we have to build a bit more of each,
| and store some.
|
| The chances of an entire continent being devoid of wind
| _and_ solar _for an extended period_ becomes vanishingly
| small pretty fast.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| There is a paper floating around showing that for both
| US+Canada and the continental EU there has never been a
| single hour where there has been no wind and no sun
| somewhere in a 30 year period.
| Animats wrote:
| > There is a paper floating around
|
| This needs a better cite.
| mrtksn wrote:
| We will take the day off I guess as we run the critical stuff
| on nuclear. I don't fancy nuclear because it's too involved,
| takes forever to build, its a big deal, needs long term
| planning. I also don't believe that there are enough smart
| and trustworthy people to take care of a nuclear
| infrastructure that powers the world for generations,
| disasters will happen. Let's use the quick, simple, safe and
| unlimited potential. Nuclear has its place for sure though.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Solar efficiency degrades over time. When these sites are
| no longer economical their owners will turn to bankruptcy,
| we'll have thousands of hectares of green fields covered in
| disarrayed broken blue panels, overgrown, unmaintained, a
| public nuisance of massive proportions in the making.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Everything degrades over time.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Those locations have a large grid connection, which is
| valuable enough to pay for the decomissioning / cleanup
| costs so something else can use the connection.
|
| Heck, there are companies cleaning up coal plants to use
| the connection for solar or wind, and that's a lot more
| expensive than cleaning up an old solar plant.
| ForestCritter wrote:
| Solar panels are not degradable and are piling up in
| toxic landfills as are windmill blades.
| ben_w wrote:
| Solar panels are made of exactly the stuff needed to make
| solar panels.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| Yeh, it's not as if they can't replace the solar panels
| or anything.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Just absolute nonsense. Modern panels are often
| guaranteed to produce 90% of their nameplate capacity for
| 25 years and then degrade at something like 0.35%/year
| afterwards. A panel installed today will likely be
| generating more than 60% of it's capacity by 2100 and
| will have done so for 75 years.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > What do you do during a windless cloudy day or (any) night?
| No solar, no wind, no nothing. Small clouds, large power
| fluctuations, and you get grid failures.
|
| Even when it's cloudy there's still light, it's not as if
| it's pitch black when there's clouds, what do you think is
| illuminating everything still?
|
| But efficiency in solar panels needs to increase, which is
| happening.
| mnahkies wrote:
| > we can dig holes and transfer materials into anything we need
| with the practically free daytime energy.
|
| I guess you mean stuff like this https://gravitricity.com/ - I
| believe there's a few old coals mines in Scotland that have
| (/in progress) been retrofitted as gravity batteries to store
| renewables which is pretty cool
| (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yd18q248jo)
| nine_k wrote:
| Currently not even the battery capacity is the limiting factor;
| transmission lines are. The average lead tine to connect your
| generator to an existing high-voltage transmission line in 12
| to 18 months in most of the EU. Building a new line takes
| years.
|
| Due to that, much of the solar generation can't but be highly
| local.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| I see transmission lines mentioned a lot, but surely keeping
| the lines we have loaded 100% of the time is part of the
| equation and batteries can help with that too.
|
| I'd love to know how well loaded the lines are and a cost
| analysis of batteries at every sensible junction. Things like
| charging batteries close to solar and discharging them at
| night and having residential batteries to cope with peak
| demand.
| vimy wrote:
| Batteries can't cover a dunkelflaute that lasts weeks. Like
| what happened last year (or the year before, not really sure).
| ben_w wrote:
| If you have enough battery manufacturing capacity to make all
| your vehicles electric, you have enough battery manufacturing
| capacity to cover a week or two of not just dunkelflaute but
| even "why is the moon hovering directly between us and the
| sun, isn't it supposed to be moving?", which is darker than
| that.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| One of the benefits of nuclear, it turns out, is it's less
| likely to be bomber than panels, batteries, transformers and
| HVDC cables. I have no doubt that Europe will monoculture its
| energy balance again. But that also makes it uniquely easy to
| bully by military threat, overt or covert.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Solar plants are fairly resilient to bomb damage:
| https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/06/02/ukrainian-solar-
| plant...
| toxic72 wrote:
| That is true, but I'd rather deal with a busted solar farm
| than a busted nuclear reactor
| pornel wrote:
| Why would they be less likely to be bombed? Zaporizhzhia
| Nuclear Power Plant got bombed in 2022.
|
| There's no strong deterrent there. These plants don't blow up
| like nukes, or even Chernobyl. _Nuclear_ disasters require
| very precise conditions to sustain the chain reaction.
| Blowing up a reactor with conventional weapons will spread
| the fuel around, which is a nasty pollution, but localized
| enough that it 's the victim's problem not the aggressor's
| problem.
|
| Why do you even mention transformers and cables as an implied
| _alternative_ to nuclear power plants? Power plants
| absolutely require power distribution infrastructure, which
| is vulnerable to attacks.
|
| From the perspective of resiliency against military attacks,
| solar + batteries seem the best - you can have them
| distributed without any central point of failure, you can
| move them, and the deployments can be as large or small as
| you want.
|
| (BTW, this isn't argument against nuclear energy in general.
| It's safe, and we should build more of it, and build as much
| solar as we can, too).
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Bombing solar infrastructure works about as well as bombing a
| farm. Solar is way too cheap to be worth bombing.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I'm more concerned with what happened in Spain recently when
| solar was peak and they couldn't correct for a voltage
| oscillation. Power companies keep building solar and wind with
| grid following inverters so there's very little frequency and
| voltage inertia if steam turbines aren't running. We need to
| start legislatively mandating grid forming inverters or
| flywheels or something that maintains stability or blackouts
| will be get more and more common as we switch over.
| jamescrowley wrote:
| The investigation has shown it was in fact nothing to do with
| renewable energy sources despite the noise made at the time -
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/what-caused-
| iberian-...
| vvillena wrote:
| The Spain blackout was caused by a multitude of reasons. Lack
| of stability was one of the factors, but there were other
| causes, such as energy generation facilities disconnecting
| while the oscillations were still under a nominal range, or a
| generator ordered to become online to induce stability, that
| started driving the load in the wrong direction. All this was
| compounded by a distribution network unable to redistribute
| or at least isolate the problems to individual regions,
| resulting in a complete blackout.
|
| All in all, it's several things that need to be reinforced.
| The distribution network needs to be smarter. The energy
| generation facilities need to be tested through their entire
| voltage range, so they can be counted upon. And there has to
| be more voltage inertia available in the network.
| tomp wrote:
| > I see some people campaigning against European green energy
| or the renewables and it doesn't make sense whatsoever unless
| you are aligned with Russia or USA.
|
| No, you got this exactly the wrong way.
|
| In fact, it was Russia who initially funded European (German)
| "green" movement, their main purpose was opposing _nuclear_ (by
| far the greenest elective source of energy, as evidenced by
| France 's carbon footprint), so that Europe (Germany) would get
| hooked on Russian gas.
|
| The plan worked brilliantly!
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Nuclear power is great if you have it. Not even the French
| seem capable of building new ones at a timescale or cost that
| is relevant in todays world dominated by renewables together
| with storage recently kicking into overdrive.
| lysace wrote:
| "The west is weak. Not capable of building like the
| motherland."
| exiguus wrote:
| It's great for the companies that run the plants because
| they are highly funded by subsidies from the society in
| which they are built. Nuclear power simply does not work
| from a capitalist point of view. Former Governments just
| swallowed this pill, because they had no natural resources
| that produce enough energy and they tried to stay
| independent. Now you can do this with renewable energy.
| closewith wrote:
| > Nuclear power simply does not work from a capitalist
| point of view.
|
| So what? Capitalism doesn't work from any point of view.
| bawolff wrote:
| Some of that is because people are so skeptical of it, it
| never got to economies of scale. You could say the same
| thing about pretty much any energy source prior to it
| being scaled up.
|
| Tbf, perhaps that is still an instrinsic problem with
| nuclear, that it isn't easily ammenable to economies of
| scale the way solar pannels or fossil fuels are.
| lysace wrote:
| My spidery senses after engaging with online anti-nuclear
| power propagandists in Sweden: they are still at it.
| exiguus wrote:
| Thats actually not that wrong, because there were contracts
| between Russia and germany for over then years, where Russia
| offered very cheap gas for the German industry (Nord-Stream I
| and II was build for that).
|
| But beside this, Germany was leading in the anti-nuclear
| movement, and finally shut down there last nuclear power
| plant two years ago. Currently, in Germany, renewable energy
| sources [1] are around 75% in the summer and and 55% in the
| winter month. Renewable are growing fast [2].
|
| [1] https://www.energy-
| charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart....
|
| [2] https://www.energy-
| charts.info/charts/remod_installed_power_...
| ForestCritter wrote:
| Don't forget that they have power shortages and strict
| rationing in that equation. So at the end of the day they
| have 75% solar but it is not adequate for the population.
| exiguus wrote:
| Thats not true. It's 75% renewable. Means, biomass, wind,
| solar etc.. And in Winter it is 55% renewable. Shortages
| are compensate mostly with fast booting Gas, Coal and
| Hydrogen plants. Also trading[1] in Germany is relatively
| even (in/out).
|
| [1] https://www.energy-
| charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.ht...
| bawolff wrote:
| Whether or not this was true historically, its not really
| relavent now, where the primary green thing is solar which
| competes with russian gas.
| vimy wrote:
| > In Europe we don't have much fossil fuels, so our "hippiness"
| is not really a choice.
|
| We have plenty of oil and gas (normal and fracking). We have
| just convinced ourselves its better to leave it in the ground
| and pay foreign countries instead. -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| The energy crisis in Europe is a self-inflicted wound.
| Havoc wrote:
| Just needs more storage. Europe benefits a lot from
| diversification and transfers but there are still some pretty
| wild swings happening.
|
| e.g. The UK grid fluctuates between 25% and 75% renewable. That
| only works because there is significant gas capacity on hand plus
| France nuclear and Norway hydro can cover about 15% with
| interconnects.
|
| Only way to get this even more renewable is with plenty storage
| (or nuclear if you're of that persuasion)
| lysace wrote:
| > Just needs more storage.
|
| It "just" needs to be a magnitude or maybe two more economical.
|
| Context: Nordics, generally electric residential heating via
| heat pumps, week-long periods of very little sun + wind,
| typically when it's the coldest.
|
| In the meanwhile we are rebuilding nuclear.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Rebuilding nuclear?
|
| You mean like OL3 or the political noise with hundreds of
| billions in subsidies needed to get the projects started?
| lysace wrote:
| I recognize your username from Reddit. I have read
| literally hundreds of comments from you there.
|
| I get it, you really dislike the Nordics' nuclear power
| production increasing. Since we run a net export this
| reduces gas imports from Russia. I do admit that I have
| wondered if the reason you are so obsessed with this topic
| has something to do with that country.
|
| I have witnessed far more patient people than myself deal
| with your insistence over and over.
|
| I have also noticed what I would think of as almost a
| religious zeal on your part. In these long and painful
| arguments you refuse to learn when people try really hard
| to impart relevant knowledge.
|
| Thus I will not engage any further.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| I just dislike lavish handouts to an industry that has
| spent the past 70 years living on them experiencing
| negative learning by doing and still expects the public
| to pay for their insurance.
|
| The plan is essentially locking in energy poverty for
| generations due to the costs.
|
| Are you not worried about pissing away one of the largest
| advantages Scandinavia has in cheap electricity? And
| instead of investing in the future we're going all in on
| a dead end industry.
| layer8 wrote:
| It also was the hottest June on record for Western Europe:
| https://climate.copernicus.eu/heatwaves-contribute-warmest-j...
| ethan_smith wrote:
| Important to note that solar achieved this despite having lower
| capacity factors (~15-25% in Europe) compared to other sources,
| meaning the installed capacity is likely 3-4x what the headline
| number suggests.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| The LCOE of solar/wind is the cheapest but it does not seem to be
| common knowledge. The lack of common knowledge often is some kind
| of polarised political beliefs, from what I've seen
|
| Marginal pricing seems to be a large part of the problem when the
| general public do not see the benefit of this green revolution
| that's been going a long time.
|
| In the UK part of the payment is for social/environmental
| factors. It's about time the state awarded people that have
| already done that instead of paying marginal prices.
| phtrivier wrote:
| LCOE is only fair with storage taken into account, which is
| hard because storage does not necessarily exist in capacities
| to make a comparison with non intermittent sources relevant.
|
| The joke is that the LCOE of solar is "Infinity / kWh" at night
| if the battery is empty, "-Infinity / kWh" at noon if the
| reservoir is full, and "NaN / kWh" when there is not enough
| cables.
|
| That being said, the answer to "which carbon -light electricity
| source should we build ?" is "YES".
|
| I, too, long for the days where we have batteries massive
| enough to not even care any more.
| gpm wrote:
| This was true a couple of years ago.
|
| This is no longer true.
|
| Storage has become a lot cheaper very rapidly. The LCOE of
| solar with storage covering the night is now competitive.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Night, sure. Doesn't work in winter though. (Not that that
| means we should stop building solar - we're still far from
| the point where it wouldn't make sense to build any more
| solar because we can't store the energy.)
| gpm wrote:
| If you're bordering on the article circle, yes. Otherwise
| you just have to overbuild a bit more.
| Someone wrote:
| As is usual in this kind of articles, the headline says "power"
| where it means "electricity". FTA:
|
| _"For the first time, solar was the largest source of
| electricity in the EU last month, supplying a record 22 percent
| of the bloc's power."_
|
| Great result, but not "biggest source of power" yet.
| kraftman wrote:
| I must be missing something, what other type of power would
| they be referring to when talking about solar?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Power used to drive the wheels of cars & trucks, energy used
| to heat houses.
| diggan wrote:
| I'm not sure this makes sense? If you have a solar system
| setup at home, with a battery, electric heating and also ev
| charger, then it's all the same thing. Or am I
| misunderstanding something?
| bdcravens wrote:
| Electricity is a type of energy, but all energy isn't
| electricity. The total amount of energy is electricity +
| non-electricity energy, and solar doesn't yet equal to
| greater than 50% of that total.
| athenot wrote:
| June and July have the most amount of sunlight so that makes
| sense. The numbers look a bit different in December.
|
| Still, diversity of energy production is a good thing. There's no
| one silver bullet. Solar + Wind + Nuclear + Fossil + Hydro all
| have their pros and cons.
|
| In particular, during hot and dry months, Solar will shine while
| Hydro will be a trickle of power (no pun intended), also
| affecting Nuclear and Fossil power plants near rivers.
| exiguus wrote:
| The transformation paths for Germany show, that they want to
| dismiss fossil energy sources until 2035. In Germany renewable
| energy share is around 70%. Last nuclear-power plant was shut
| down 2023.
|
| [1] https://www.energy-
| charts.info/charts/remod_installed_power_...
|
| [2] https://www.energy-
| charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart....
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