boshomi
Joined 9 years ago
Joined 9 years ago
https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&...
https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&...
In Europe, the average weekly electricity generation in 2025 was 14.0 TWh, and no week fell below 10.2 TWh. In 2026, the average output was about 15.5 TWh, and so far, no week has fallen below 12.5 TWh.
Of course, batteries are needed for short-term storage, but with the creation of excess capacity in wind and solar power, the troughs below the load curve become narrower and shallower, drastically reducing the need for storage.
The market for baseload electricity has disappeared in Germany, as renewables push the residual load to zero or below for almost the entire year:
https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?c=DE&l...
The base load is an imaginary line passing through the troughs of the residual load curve.
https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/price_scatter/chart.ht...
Since price elasticity for electricity is very high, the market cap decreases by approximately €150,000 for every additional GWh of renewable energy production. A single additional offshore wind turbine with an annual output of 60 GWh reduces the combined revenue of all electricity producers by about €9 million per year that it is in operation.
Blocking wind power and solar projects only serves to secure the profits of monopolists and oligopolists in the electricity market, but causes massive harm to the economy.
Modern grids do not require high-risk investments in ultra-inert baseload power that ultimately fails to find a market; instead, they require low-risk investments in highly flexible power sources, such as batteries or pumped-storage facilities and transmission upgrades, that can capture surplus electricity at low cost (sometimes negativ) and sell it hours later at favorable prices.
The 2036 electricity futures price for Germany is €70/MWh. The break-even point for France’s EDF for old nuclear power plants that had long since been written off financially was at roughly the same level in 2020. Due to rising labor costs, their break-even point is now significantly higher. There were solid economic reasons why EDF was recently nationalized 100%. New nuclear power plant construction in France is a foreseeable economic disaster. Private investors would have fled long ago.
Weather fronts move across the continent on a very regular basis; when the wind dies down, the sun shines more.