Energy infrastructure

I get that - and with any system you'd need to pay for spinning reserve for at least the biggest single point of failure on the system ,

One of the giant north sea wind farms ( over a GW) went offline in Britain about 2 years ago , when lightning hit it's Grid connection on land (Wouldn't have been a problem but one of their big thermal stations went down at the same time - causing blackouts in the south east ..

But for wind ( at the moment) you need to also have a "parallel " generating capacity , for when the wind isn't blowing - ( it doesn't need to be spinning all the time , it just needs to be able to be brought on as the wind predictably dips ..

Aren't they moving away from coal fueled electricity generation ?

I think their plan is more gas ( they have loads ) and more renewables ,

And to open as many new coal mines as quick as possible to sell it to the Indians and Chinese ...

Electricity can be transported literally at the speed of light, can be converted directly and efficiently into any other sort of energy without creating waste, can be generated cleanly and cheaply and is directly accessible to 87% of the the planet.

Bring on this "dystopia" where 95% of humankind's energy needs are met by renewable locally-generated electricity instead of a planet being cooked by a huge filthy heavy industry that props up some of the most despotic and corrupt autocrats.

In Ireland - unobstructed direct sunlight happens for only 15% of the hours in a year. This is why you hear so much noise from prospective solar power provider grifters urging the government to give them guaranteed subsidies so they can build these stupid things and then go live in the Caymen Islands and enjoy their early retirement while the tax payer keeps their pockets and glasses full.

Interesting article recently noting that the majority of UK wind farms are owned by interests headquartered in the Caymen Islands and other tax havens. Mammy, mammy, why is our power bill so high?

And gas prices are high because renewables are not living up to the promise and they are needing to use vast quantities of it to meet the shortfall all across Europe.

Remember, 100% renewables by 2050....

The Germans shut down their nuclear reactors because a single person died as a result of Fukashima and are trying to shut down on coal, but they can't use wind to replace those as it's not blowing enough and solar at these lattitudes and climate are a sick joke, leaving gas.

I'd agree that Germany shutting it's nuclear industry so quickly was a bit surprising - especially when most of the cost ( and carbon in the concrete) had already been spent ,

but current gas prices are likely to turn out to be a blip- and to blame current high gas prices on the renewable infrastructure is a bit weird ...

There is a very significant cost to co2 reduction ... But the alternative isn't to burn more coal and gas -

And it seems it's going to be too expensive at the moment to go nuclear - as well as being at least 15 years of develoment for a first station even if the contract was signed in the morning ... feic it even natural gas power stations take 4 or 5 years to plan , build and commission.. and that's using pretty much off the shelf engineering..

Yeah, nobody gives a fiddlers about how sunny it is Ireland. The only thing that matters is price - cost per kWh. In the 2020 RESS auctions, the solar PV bids averaged about 70 euro/mWh - actually (slightly) less than the average price for on-shore wind.

Only a matter of time now before the Tu-95s are above Foynes.

As solar gets better in the future i wonder could we see europe doing a deal with north african countrys to build giant solar farms in there deserts with the power generatered supplying europe via an interconector through southern spain?