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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)

#471

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #468
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please go ahead and tell me where I am wrong, give us some sources. Be my guest.

You're not going to read them, so why bother since you live in a parallel universe. But if you wanted, you could ask your chatbot so you don't have to put the efforts to read anything.

You do realize that it’s quite telling that you still haven’t been able to point out a single of these ”falsehoods” nor been able to provide any factual information of your own?

Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?

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

#472

Post by mpweiher »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #437
mpweiher wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why are the Swedes investing heavily in nuclear energy again, after nixing the nuclear exit they had on the books?

Sweden isn't investing in nuclear power. The current right wing government is creating a culture war issue while not wanting to accept the costs, nor creating a deal that will survive through elections by creating a more comprehensive coalition backing it. They've moved "We'll start building this electory cycle!!" to "large scale reactors" to "SMRs!!" to now targetting the final investment decision in 2029. The lates…

Reality does not seem to want to conform to your creative confabulations.

"Once committed to phasing out nuclear power, Sweden has reversed course, not only lifting the ban on new reactors but also introducing government frameworks to accelerate investments and deployment.

Today, Sweden’s nuclear roadmap includes commissioning two large-scale reactors to add 2.5GW of capacity by 2035 and the equivalent of 10 new reactors, with a push for smaller modular reactors (SMRs), by 2045. According to GlobalData, the country is on course to reach 8.2GW in nuclear capacity and 59.8TWh in annual generation by 2035." -- Inside Sweden’s policy U-turn: Q&A with the Government’s nuclear lead

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/inside-swe...

"Nuclear, onshore wind cheapest way to meet Sweden's electricity needs, OECD report says

If nuclear builds become more expensive or electricity imports cheaper, "there might be an opening for offshore wind to enter Sweden's optimal capacity mix", the report said. "For the time being, this is not the case."" -- https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/nuclear-onshore-wind-cheap...

"Nordic governments are pushing ahead with nuclear energy investments at a pace not seen in decades, driven by growing anxiety over energy security and the need to cut carbon emissions. " -- https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/nordic-countri...

"Sweden’s nuclear landscape has done a 180-turn in recent years, moving from plans for a phase-out now to ambitions for an expansion. The government has lifted the reactor cap, opened new sites and introduced measures to accelerate investments and deployments.

The country’s nuclear roadmap now includes adding at least 2.5GW of capacity by 2035 and the equivalent of 10 new reactors by 2045." -- https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/new-episode-q-a-with-s...

"Application submitted for Swedish SMR plant

Monday, 23 March 2026

Kärnfull Next has submitted an application to build a power plant based on small modular reactors in the municipality of Valdemarsvik in Östergötland county in southeastern Sweden. It is the first application under the country’s new Act on Government Approval of Nuclear Facilities." -- https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/application-subm...

"Sweden Reverses Nuclear Phase-Out, Plans Major Expansion by 2045

According to a report from Power Technology, Sweden has reversed its nuclear energy policy in recent years, abandoning previous phase-out plans in favor of expansion. The national government has removed a cap on the number of reactors, designated new locations for plants, and implemented policies to speed up related investment and construction. The current national strategy aims to increase nuclear power capacity by a minimum of 2.5 gigawatts by 2035. A further goal is to build new reactors with a combined capacity equal to ten standard units by 2045." -- https://www.indexbox.io/blog/sweden-reverses-nuclear-phase-o...

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

#473

Post by 1718627440 »

input_sh wrote: post #41
phtrivier wrote: post #27

> Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo produced more than 99.7 per cent of the electricity they consumed using geothermal, hydro, solar or wind power. Let's head to electricitymaps.com ! Albania ( https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/AL/live/fifteen_min... ) - On 2026-04-12 16:45 GMT+2, 22,67% of electricity consumed by Albania is imported from Greece, which gen…

I guess somewhat of a fun fact: Albania has rented(!) two floating(!) oil-powered power plants near the city of Vlöre that are there in case of emergency. The last time they were really needed was in 2022 (if I remember correctly), but these days they're not turned on any more than they need to be to make sure they're operating properly. That very expensive backup system is basically the only non-renewable source in…

> nothing really changed because of climate change, the decision to rely on hydro was made in the 90s.

Climate change was known well in the 90s, so what is your assumption, that it can't be to help lessen climate change?

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

#474

Post by 1718627440 »

ambicapter wrote: post #75
direwolf20 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is an expected problem with renewables that can be engineered around. It's unlikely the whole world has a drought at once during a calm night, so developing ways to transmit power long distances will be important.

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

Like you wrote you can use nuclear as a base load. It's not really useful as a short-term backup for when other plants don't work. If you need batteries and excess power for backup, you might as well create the excess power without nuclear if you can.

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

#475

Post by peterashford »

krupan wrote: post #466
hunterpayne wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you don't have to change any ecosystems to build a NPP. No idea why you would think that in the first place really.

To be clear, I'm in favor of nuclear, but people attack it saying it does change the local ecosystem (heating up water for cooling and pumping the warm water into rivers, and of course the nuclear waste). Here we just had someone say that hydro is fine because it only changes the local ecosystem so I jumped on that line of reasoning. I would argue with you that nuclear changes the local ecosystem way, way less than a…

I wasn't saying its fine, I was saying it was a tradeoff. And I wasn't making an argument about Nuclear, either.

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

#476

Post by peterashford »

XorNot wrote: post #424
tialaramex wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nowhere close to 50%. Round-trip (so that's after both ways) efficiency is about 70-80% for a pumped storage scheme. Buy 10MW to pump the water, and get back 7-8MW when you release it. Contrast that with a reality here in the UK where the gas dominated spot price this morning when I woke up was about £180 per MWh, yet yesterday afternoon solar and wind had it down to £25 per MWh, so you could buy 100MWh of energ…

For the cost and expense of building a pumped hydro plant though, you could just deploy batteries which will do the same thing for a much lower capital and management investment and vastly simplified engineering. And a higher round-trip efficiency. LiFePO4 works to demand shift on a daily cycle just fine and scales better to solar input (where you need much higher power handling so you can charge it on limited sunlig…

I think that's the point about the lake Onslow project - its MASSIVE. So yes, expensive, but months of backup for the whole country would not be cheap even with batteries

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

#477

Post by peterashford »

aitchnyu wrote: post #317
peterashford wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And sun isn't uncommon. I was chatting with a person in Auckland, NZ. He said it was a cloudly day and he was producing much more solar power than he needed. His take: the panels are the cheapest part of the system so they just over-provisioned. We can all do that - it aint hard

Our rainy day production is still a fifth * of our peak in Kerala, India. Wish all inverters support 5x overprovisioning, current ones support 1.5x and suffer lower life. Seems 1.1x is the recommended provisioning guideline. * UK internet stranger said he gets negligible output when it rains

Thanks for the feedback about inverters - I was unaware.

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

#478

Post by direwolf20 »

mpweiher wrote: post #425
DrScientist wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because that distribution does not actually buy you decorellation It does it if your interconnects make the grid scale large enough, and it does if you consider distributed generation and storage as part of the overall system. Sure if you take a grid designed for centralised on-demand generation, and apply that to renewable generation then you'll have problems. However I'm not suggesting that. I'm also not suggesti…

> grid infrastructure that has reach across timezones, "Night" reaches across more time-zones than you can build your grid across. Never mind "winter". > nuclear powerstations are not as reliable as you might think - they often go offline. Define "often". They are actually a lot more reliably than you seem to think: the capacity factor of the US fleet, for example, was >90% for the last decade(s). And that Nuclear po…

I'm really not impressed with this reoccurring argument: "Solar power is good." "But night!"

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

#479

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

mpweiher wrote: post #472
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden isn't investing in nuclear power. The current right wing government is creating a culture war issue while not wanting to accept the costs, nor creating a deal that will survive through elections by creating a more comprehensive coalition backing it. They've moved "We'll start building this electory cycle!!" to "large scale reactors" to "SMRs!!" to now targetting the final investment decision in 2029. The lates…

Reality does not seem to want to conform to your creative confabulations. "Once committed to phasing out nuclear power, Sweden has reversed course, not only lifting the ban on new reactors but also introducing government frameworks to accelerate investments and deployment. Today, Sweden’s nuclear roadmap includes commissioning two large-scale reactors to add 2.5GW of capacity by 2035 and the equivalent of 10 new reac…

Like I told you. A culture war issue without broader political backing, with the company putting final investment decision at such a timing in terms of election cycles as to ensure that broad political backing is there, or it won’t happen.

The social democrats opened up to negotiate a broader energy agreement covering both nuclear power and off-shore wind.

The right and hard right shut down that effort because only tens of billions in handouts per new built large scale reactor in capacity is the only solution. Even mentioning off-shore wind is a red like for them.

It is truly interesting when the right becomes the socialists. But that’s were we are in 2026.

Also, go ahead and please explain how Sweden can have 2.5 GW online by 2035 when investment decision is set to 2029 and projects like the Canadian SMF, French EPR2 and Polish AP1000 have similar dates as their ”perfectly executed project target date”, likely ending up being late 2030s or early 2040s?

It’s always funny when you proclaim imaginary new built nuclear power as the solution, rather than staying grounded in reality.

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

#480

Post by mpweiher »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #479
mpweiher wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality does not seem to want to conform to your creative confabulations. "Once committed to phasing out nuclear power, Sweden has reversed course, not only lifting the ban on new reactors but also introducing government frameworks to accelerate investments and deployment. Today, Sweden’s nuclear roadmap includes commissioning two large-scale reactors to add 2.5GW of capacity by 2035 and the equivalent of 10 new reac…

Like I told you. A culture war issue without broader political backing, with the company putting final investment decision at such a timing in terms of election cycles as to ensure that broad political backing is there, or it won’t happen. The social democrats opened up to negotiate a broader energy agreement covering both nuclear power and off-shore wind. The right and hard right shut down that effort because only t…

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