[coryrc]

In winter cloudy conditions solar PV produces 10-15% power. Assuming some hydro storage, that's 4x overbuild. Not cost effective.

Europe all gets winter at the same time. If you've got a cold snap for three weeks with low wind, the only plan is reliance on massive fossil fuel backup. The cost of keeping that capacity for only using a week a year isn't priced into solar either.

The CO2-intensity of electricity generation in France stood at around 57 CO2/kWh in 2020 (source: Statista). In Germany, the electricity mix at the same time had a CO2-intensity of 366g CO2/kWh, which was more than six times higher

But yeah Germany's approach is really working!

[rbanffy]

> In winter cloudy conditions solar PV produces 10-15% power

Depends on the latitude and these numbers seem to be for very high ones close to the polar circles.

> Not cost effective.

Are we pricing in the societal collapse due to climate change? I’d suspect a 4x overbuild would be quite cheap against that.

OTOH, keeping some natgas capacity for when a freakish cold snap with no wind hits seems kind of OK.

[burmanm]

> Depends on the latitude and these numbers seem to be for very high ones close to the polar circles.

No, those values are far from polar circle. I'm guessing closer to central Europe, since for example in Finland the PV produces 0% during the winter months.

10-15% would be insane to get here, but there simply isn't any energy in the sun (and closer to the polar circle you get - there's no sun at all during winter) and the panels are often covered in snow in any case. And I'm not even talking about cloudy days now, but "sunny" ones.

March/October are already approaching those 10-15% levels. Nov-Feb is closer to 0% in most of the Finland.

[ben_w]

Finland (the south of it anyway) has about a gigawatt of HVDC lines connecting it to other countries, about 200W/capita.

[DennisP]

GP is clearly talking about cost-effectiveness compared to other solutions, such as France's approach and seasonal storage.

[laurencerowe]

> The cost of keeping that capacity for only using a week a year isn't priced into solar either.

Keeping gas power plants around for backup power isn’t all that expensive since fuel accounts for two thirds of their cost of generation.

Offshore wind is far more expensive than onshore wind and solar but even so costs about a third of new nuclear power, with strike prices in the UK of £37/MWh vs £106/MWh for Hinckley Point C. Maybe keeping gas backup adds another £15/MWh to that but it still works out at half the cost of nuclear.

By building more France will probably get nuclear costs down some, but even so will struggle to be competitive with renewables and backup.

> But yeah Germany's approach is really working!

Germany’s approach of keeping coal plants around while closing existing nuclear is extremely dumb.