Saturday, December 28, 2024

Why Europe never has blackouts

 A most interesting analysis.  He shows that without wind and solar, even with maximum demand in mid-winter, the electrical grid in Europe can still cope.  He discusses storage (pumped hydro, with batteries growing fast) and the trans-Europe grid.

He makes two points.  The first is that solar is never zero during daytime, but wind can be zero for a prolonged period.  This means that Europe will still have to "burn things" to make sure it always has enough power.  This implies long-duration storage, if they are not to use gas. He mentions synthetic gas, but doesn't go into detail.  He may mean green hydrogen, or synthetic "natural" gas (green methane) made from green hydrogen via the Sabatier process.   

It seems to me that Europe needs to add more solar from sites in Southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece, etc), as solar's winter lows can be compensated for by excess capacity and its nighttime absence by storage.  




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