Hungary had the highest share of produced solar electricity of all the countries in the world 27.3%.
And even with this results nuclear energy is usefull for them and plan to build new reactors. (with help from Russia, so there may be same changes in this plan)
Starting this year, in Romania you cannot put new PV capacity online without the storage for it, is mandatory. Possibly for existing ones, but I am not sure.
Yes, absolutely colossal amounts of batteries though - what if it’s quite hot but also cloudy for 5 days in a row?
You either have to significantly oversize the PV (easier said than done, when its energy density is already not that high per m2), or have enough batteries to last for multiple days of full load. If you do the maths that’s a lot of batteries
>what if it’s quite hot but also cloudy for 5 days in a row?
The main idea is to then import power from somewhere sunny and/or windy or mountainous, using money you saved when they had the rain and you had the sun.
Batteries and other storage mechanisms will gradually reduce the need for doing so, but aiming to entirely eliminate all need for cooperation with others seems a bit paranoid.
AFAIK the mountains are about as high as Wales? It looks like there's a 600MW storage scheme in the planning stages. That's about a third of the capacity of Wales's largest system (which is the biggest in Europe) and about twice the capacity of the second system.
It's a meaningful contribution I would have thought.
Can't speak for Hungary specifically, but the problem with flat terrain wrt hydro storage isn't just elevation difference - which can be offset with flowrate - it's the large surface area to storage and to depth ratios.
Large lake means more losses, mainly due to evaporation, but seepage is also to be expected. Now put this fact in the thread's context: water shortage/stress...
"Most of the country has an elevation of less than 200 m. Although Hungary has several moderately high ranges of mountains, those reaching heights of 300 m or more cover less than 2% of the country."
"Hydroelectricity is not prevalent in Hungary due to unsuitable geographical conditions and civil resentment. The country's capacity of hydroelectricity was 57 MWs in 2015."
I'm fairly sure that when it's dark where I am (because I'm in the shadow cast by Earth), it's also dark in orbit above me (because it's in the shadow cast by Earth).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country
Hungary had the highest share of produced solar electricity of all the countries in the world 27.3%. And even with this results nuclear energy is usefull for them and plan to build new reactors. (with help from Russia, so there may be same changes in this plan)