Energy infrastructure

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How realistic is the €0/MWh?

Have not seen this in a long time.

Portugal/Spain are at it frequently also Hungary sometimes.

Yes, it does seem counter-intuitive to spend heaps of money on power plant types that will be useless when they're needed the most - during winter blocking anti-cyclones. And it's not going to be cheap either - wind mills tend to need to be built far from where the energy is needed so there is a need to massively expand the power grid to accommodate them.

Indeed, I've been getting ads on Youtube from a crowd called buildourgrid.ie which as you can imagine calls for large scale spending on new power lines, substations and energy storage systems for (you guessed it) weather-dependent renewables.

Which is interesting because a lot of the things that have been discussed as complimentary technologies for renewables (batteries, hydrogen, sunlight-to-fuels etc) have not exactly been proven on a large scale, and that's being generous.

More to the point, for the time and money all this will take, we will still not quite have accomplished what the French, Swedes and Swiss inter alia achieved in terms of decarbonisation half a century ago back when, for reference, Brezhnev was running the Soviet Union.

It would be interesting to see how much wind power output there was on the 24th through the 29th of December 2010. I looked but couldn't find any such data. More broadly though, you can't deny that wind output during bad winters in the best case amounts to sod-all.

And it's not going to be cheap either - wind mills tend to need

Difficult to take an opinion about renewables seriously when the simplest, most basic, terms are misused:

Mill - noun (1) ; a · a machine or apparatus for grinding grain ; b · a device or machine for reducing something (as by crushing or grinding) to small pieces or particles.

Yes, I've come to realise that science and engineering aren't the strongpoints of those who strongly oppose renewable energy. Windfarms use turbines, just like every kind of electricity generation except PV solar.

Germany needs to start storing some of that solar.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/solar-panel-supply-german-electricity-prices-negative-renewable-demand-green-2024-5

Unfortunately in terms of your last paragraph there is little evidence for that happening anywhere in Europe.

Indeed - in a situation where you're relying on the private sector to create your renewable generation, the private sector will not invest if it is going to lose money on the proposition.

However, the article is more optimistic in the longer term:

focus is likely to move onto improvements that will make more use of the energy produced, such as investments in batteries and grid infrastructure.

"This will over time exhaust the availability of 'free power' and drive solar-hour-power-prices back up," Schieldrop wrote. "This again will then eventually open for renewed growth in solar power capacity growth."

So, investment will switch to storage in the short term, and then switch back when the storage can act a customer for the solar.

The storage centres will be like the turf sheds of yore - a place where your potential energy is stored in Summer to be used in Winter.

New data from the EPA on greenhouse gas emissions: the Director General of the Environmental Protection Agency has said [that] "Right across society, we're seeing very, very significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, now at their lowest in 30 years". This is the most positive message the agency has been able to deliver in all her time at the helm since her appointment in 2011.

The star performer … was the energy industry, where emissions went down by 21.6%. This was the result of … an increase in imported electricity combined with an enormous renewable electricity contribution from wind and solar, as well as a reduction in the use of non-renewable energy sources such as coal, oil and peat.

The actual figures are: Reductions in coal (-44%), oil (-78%), peat (-33%), and natural gas (-7%) in electricity generation. Renewable share increased from 39% to 41%. Imported electricity now 9.5%.