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by eMSF 1379 days ago
Not as much as you'd think. While someone may always have wind or sun, at times that someone is unfeasibly far from Northern Europe. (Low wind conditions in all of Nordics, and to some extent even all over Europe are quite possible.)

PV produces absolutely nothing when electricity is most used and absolutely necessary (midwinter).

Hydro capacity in Finland is at its maximum potential and even now cannot make up for times when wind is producing close to nothing.

Also, all these workarounds cost money -- some of them, lots of it. For TVO, Olkiluoto 3 costs roughly 5B euros for 1.6GW of nuclear.

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Those midwinter spells where the sun is shining but it's minus 10 or 20 Celsius and there's no wind.