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

I think HVDC is a more important component in smoothing out demand/supply than you give it credit for, especially if you add wind into the mix.

In terms of security - one of the reasons nuclear power stations are so expensive is they have to survive a targeted plane crash etc - they are expensive high profile targets.

In the end the renewables model is a much more distributed model of generation, storage and consumption ( rather than a few massive power stations ) - so with a proper grid you could argue you would have fewer single points of failure, and increased resilence.

They're more than thinking about it, it's already going ahead :) https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-i...

British Gas, Octopus, etc are all prepping kits right now, Ecoflow has already got a certified product line sitting in UK warehouses ready to go. We're talking within a couple of months and it'll be running.

I found this info... https://www.nationalgrid.com/national-grid-powers-worlds-lon...

UK generation is 30GW right now, so this is ~ 5%

By enabling the trade of renewable energy between the two countries, North Sea Link will help reduce the burning of fossil fuels in the UK and avoid 23 million tonnes of carbon emissions by 2030.

The 450-mile cable, which connects Blyth in Northumberland with the Norwegian village of Kvilldal, near Stavanger, will start with a maximum capacity of 700 megawatts (MW) and gradually increase to the link’s full capacity of 1400MW over a three-month period. The gradual increase in capacity follows the Norwegian system operator’s standard approach for integrating new interconnectors. Once at full capacity, NSL will provide enough clean electricity to power 1.4 million homes.

North Sea Link will be the fifth interconnector for National Grid, which also operates links to Belgium, France and the Netherlands. By 2030, 90% of electricity imported via National Grid’s interconnectors will be from zero carbon sources saving 100 million tonnes of carbon – equivalent to taking two million cars off the road.

NSL has taken six years to build. Laying of the undersea cables began in 2018 and more than four million working hours have been spent on the project, including 5,880 working days at sea.

Norwegian power generation is sourced from hydropower plants connected to large reservoirs, which can respond faster to fluctuations in demand compared to other major generation technologies. However, as the water level in reservoirs is subject to weather conditions, production varies throughout seasons and years.

When wind generation is high and electricity demand low in Britain, NSL will enable renewable power to be exported from the UK, conserving water in Norway’s reservoirs. When demand is high in Britain and there is low wind generation, hydro power can be imported from Norway, helping to ensure secure, affordable and sustainable electricity supplies for UK consumers.

well yeah. my point is that when you have a small population and massive reserves then you can print money - but rather like we in the UK gloat that we do not burn coal any more (we just buy stuff from China and they do that on our behalf with Aussie coal), its not really a good thing to ship oil & gas abroad where dirtier countries can burn it ... there is a massive argument in the UK right now about whether to reopen the North Sea in the wake of Trumps Iranian "victory" ... but I guess we (all) need to back the case for leaving fossil fuels in the ground

the alternative is the Jeremy Clarkson philisophy that mankind is so greedy that we will burn evey gramme of fossil fuel on planet earth and nothing can stop that (so I may as well burn some in a Ferrari F48)

> Heat pumps are geothermal masquerading as electric

Air-to-air heat pumps are quite common 1-4 family homes. Even in Nordic countries such as Finland: https://www.sulpu.fi/heat-pump-sales-returned-to-a-growth-pa...

> And the highest number I ever heard for a heat pump was 135% [...] Truth is that electricity is great for kinetic energy but terrible at making heat. Most forms of energy can be transformed into another form of energy at about 50%. Electricity is the weird one where its 90% to motion but only 10% to heat.

Sorry but absolutely not, that's wrong on several levels. First off, in its most basic form of resistive heating, electric heating is already close to 100%. Heat pumps are even better, and I'll just quote Wikipedia

> At a cost of 1 kWh of electricity, they can transfer 1 to 4.5 kWh of thermal energy into a building.