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Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

the-independent.com

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Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#281

Post by AnthonyMouse »

gpm wrote: post #280
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sweden is just about the worst case, there's very few countries/people that far north. Sweden is worse but it's still a significant issue in e.g. New York or Paris or Auckland. > There's genius invention called "wires". HVDC has transmission losses on the order of 3.5% per 1,000km. You don't have to colocate the solar. It's more than 1000km from the places that get cold to a part of the world where it isn't winter.…

> it's still a significant issue in e.g. New York or Paris or Auckland. No it isn't. Wires still might be worth it, but these are all close enough to the equator that you can just over provision locally without issue if you prefer. > It's more than 1000km from the places that get cold Solar panels work better in the cold. The issue is with how far from the equator Sweden is, not how cold it is.

> No it isn't.

In the US Northeast solar generates around four times as much in July as December. This is sufficiently bad when what you need is more power in the winter. Paris is a little worse. Sweden is significantly worse.

> Wires still might be worth it, but these are all close enough to the equator that you can just over provision locally without issue if you prefer.

If I need 25% more output in the month when solar has 75% less output, how much do I have to over-provision?

> Solar panels work better in the cold.

Places that need more electricity in the winter because they're cold are cold in the winter because they're further away from the equator.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#282

Post by [deleted] »

ilitirit wrote: post #35

Probably at least slightly misleading, just reading the names of some of the countries in the list (I am from South Africa). Just because a country generates 100% of its energy from renewables, it doesn't mean that its enough to power the entire or even majority of the country. Case in point: DRC. I believe only half of the population has access to electricity. It's been a while since I've looked into continental sta…

[deleted]

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#283

Post by Dylan16807 »

mrroper wrote: post #227
mpweiher wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most expensive electricity in the contiguous United States. By quite a margin. By contrast, Georgia, which has to pay for the "disastrous" Vogtle 3/4 nuclear construction project, pays less than half that. Remember: disastrous nuclear projects are significantly better than renewable successes.

12 Billion in loan guarantees doesn't get paid in bills and isn't an accounting trick that costs nothing: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60682

That's a really big and generic article.

What are you saying this loan guarantee cost?

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#284

Post by runako »

mpweiher wrote: post #192
dalyons wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California is a huge success story at a massive scale. Looking at Casio right now it’s 92% clean energy. For a state of 39 million people! And batteries keep getting deployed faster and faster 2022 - 48% gas power on grid 2025 - 25% gas power on grid What insane progress.

Most expensive electricity in the contiguous United States. By quite a margin. By contrast, Georgia, which has to pay for the "disastrous" Vogtle 3/4 nuclear construction project, pays less than half that. Remember: disastrous nuclear projects are significantly better than renewable successes.

GA resident here. Let's not close the books on Vogtle yet, as our electricity rates are also moving up quite significantly. Let's get to a steady state before we declare a cost win.

IIRC our rates are up ~30% since 2024, and our electricity prices are 5th highest in the nation. I need to underline that this is in one of the lower-wage states in the country, with few state-level labor protections.

Also: the finances on Vogtle were sufficiently bad that they led to a rapid run-up in consumer electricity rates that generated political fallout. First: two members of the Public Service Commission lost their seats to Democrats, who do not generally win statewide races here. Second: the Federal government has had to specifically loan money to the operator to subsidize consumer rates. The Federal government could equally subsidize California rates down to the average or below if it so desired.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#285

Post by gpm »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #281
gpm wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's still a significant issue in e.g. New York or Paris or Auckland. No it isn't. Wires still might be worth it, but these are all close enough to the equator that you can just over provision locally without issue if you prefer. > It's more than 1000km from the places that get cold Solar panels work better in the cold. The issue is with how far from the equator Sweden is, not how cold it is.

> No it isn't. In the US Northeast solar generates around four times as much in July as December. This is sufficiently bad when what you need is more power in the winter. Paris is a little worse. Sweden is significantly worse. > Wires still might be worth it, but these are all close enough to the equator that you can just over provision locally without issue if you prefer. If I need 25% more output in the month when…

> This is sufficiently bad when what you need is more power in the winter.

Nope, it isn't. Solar is cheap and the costs are continuing to fall quickly. Generating 5x more power in the summer than needed is perfectly fine and just a nice added bonus.

Wires are probably a good idea to reduce that number, but with how solar panels are dropping in price traditional forms of electricity generation (nuclear, fossil fuels, etc) just won't be competitive at that multiplier even without them.

> Places that need more electricity in the winter because they're cold are cold in the winter because they're further away from the equator.

Temperature has a lot to do with ocean currents. NY and Sweden overlap in how cold they are (taking the right parts of both). The southernmost point of Sweden is at 55.3 degrees north, the northermost point of NY is at 45.0 degrees north. They aren't even close to overlapping in how far north they are.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#286

Post by ekianjo »

jdlshore wrote: post #108
ambicapter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just use nuclear as base load, and battery storage as much as you can.

The economics of new nuclear plants don't make sense. They take too long to build and cost too much. By the time a new plant is ready, alternate sources (likely solar + battery and long-distance HVDC) will have eaten its lunch.

> They take too long to build and cost too much

Not in China apparently

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#287

Post by runako »

offmycloud wrote: post #158
runako wrote: post #57

Pushback against the outliers of small + blessed with hydro and geothermal is overshadowing real wins: - California: 83% renewable, dominated by solar - Spain: 73%, dominated by solar & wind - Portugal: 90%, dominated by wind & solar - The Netherlands: 86%, dominated by solar & wind - Great Britain: 71%, dominated by wind & solar There's real momentum happening.

California is not anywhere near 83% renewable for total electricity generation. [1] Are you just adding up nameplace capacities without capacity factors? 1. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=66704

One thing about power generation stats like these is they are incredibly sensitive to examination dates given the rapid growth of (especially) solar.

That EIA site cuts off in August. The same EIA report shows solar grew 17% from 2024-2025. You can plug in your own assumptions to the solar growth curve since then, as well as your assumptions about the natural gas curve given the ride natgas has been on since August.

EIA also produces live status on the daily generation mix[1]. 69% today was wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro. 12% nuclear, so some of this is whether you consider nuclear renewable or not.

CA's power generation may cost more, but the pricing (for raw power at least) should be a lot more predictable than those of us dependent on fossil fuels. Natural gas, for example, has undergone a ~100% price round-trip in the last 12 months.

1 - https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/daily_...

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#288

Post by runako »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #283
mrroper wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12 Billion in loan guarantees doesn't get paid in bills and isn't an accounting trick that costs nothing: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60682

That's a really big and generic article. What are you saying this loan guarantee cost?

https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-...

Basically -- Vogtle drove our power rates up so quickly that the federal government had to step in and subsidize rates.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#289

Post by jdlshore »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #242
jdlshore wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't let you generate power with solar in July and then use it in January. That’s not necessary. Solar panels are so cheap that you can massively overprovision for winter and still come out ahead of nuclear.

> Solar panels are so cheap that you can massively overprovision for winter and still come out ahead of nuclear. Only you don't. In latitudes that get winter, solar output is only about a quarter as much in the winter as in the summer. You often hear things like "twice as much in the warmer half of the year" to try and stuff October and March into the "colder half" and disguise how screwed you are in December and Jan…

Okay, let’s say that we use solar + battery to cover everything but Nov, Dec, Jan, when the days are too short. Solar is cheaper than nuclear the rest of the time, so (due to the way energy markets work) we pay solar producers the cost of nuclear generation, creating strong incentive to build out more solar + battery.

So we end up using nuclear 1/4 of the time. But unfortunately, nuclear’s cost is in the capital expense, not the operating expense. We pay about the same amount for it regardless of whether we’re using it or not. So if we’re only using 1/4 the energy, the cost per watt of nuclear energy is effectively 4x larger.

This incentivizes further build-out of solar, catching those sweet winter profits (now 4x larger!), further squeezing nuclear’s usage, driving up its prices, and incentivizing even more solar.

Eventually nuclear gets squeezed out and solar’s profit margins go from “astronomical” (naturally, it’s power from the sun, nyuck nyuck) to “low margin.” But they’re still making money. Whoever built the nuclear plant is left with a very expensive stranded asset.

At least, that’s my understanding. I’m not a power company accountant. What I observe, though, is that power companies who do employ accountants aren’t building nuclear. They’re building shit-tons of solar. And I’m pretty sure it’s not because they’re hippies who hate nuclear.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#290

Post by runako »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #92
runako wrote: post #57

Pushback against the outliers of small + blessed with hydro and geothermal is overshadowing real wins: - California: 83% renewable, dominated by solar - Spain: 73%, dominated by solar & wind - Portugal: 90%, dominated by wind & solar - The Netherlands: 86%, dominated by solar & wind - Great Britain: 71%, dominated by wind & solar There's real momentum happening.

> California: 83% renewable, dominated by solar California's grid is pretty decently balanced. Solar isn't even close to 50% - so saying that it "dominates" is pretty misleading. It's like ~30% solar, ~12% hydro, ~10% wind, ~10% nuclear, all other renewables ~8% (~70% renewable, including nuclear) -> ~30% fossil fuels. Are you maybe only counting domestic production and not total consumption? Or are you looking at th…

EIA puts this out daily:

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/daily_...

Today was 31% solar, 16% wind, 16% hydro, 6% geothermal, etc.

Some of the difference to your numbers will be seasonal/weather-related, but the pace of solar and wind installation is such that data that's even a year or two old can be wildly out of date.

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