It is not like grid is free. Grid costs a lot. Cables cost a lot. Transformers cost a lot. Transferring power incur in loss. Furthermore, if it is windy in Denmark, probably is windy also in Germany. While grid connections are indeed important, diversification of energy sources and storage are even better.
encelado748
joined 2 weeks ago
renewables are cheap, solar don't work at night. Portugal has 37% hydro, 35% wind, 4% solar. Not all the countries have access to that much wind and hydro capacity. Italy is a stark example of a country with zero wind potential in the most industrialized areas (the padana plain). Having a big hydro potential is also great as hydropower is dispatchable. That means you do not need to build batteries to address the instability of renewable like wind. Renewable is great, but is not the universal solution. Each country and each grid need to work with what is given by nature to optimize the best for the use-case and level of consumption. Not all countries are lucky as Norway, Denmark, Ireland or Portugal. Italy is great for solar, but you said it yourself: solar do not work at night. So you either need nuclear or tons of batteries to decarbonize the grid.
With current and near future technology, it is cheaper to have that 20% being nuclear and the rest renewable and battery than to have only renewable and batteries. Not only cheaper, but also more environmentally friendly. Using fossil fuel is not really an alternative.
Nuclear can do grid load following (not peak due to thermal inertia but you will have batteries for that): nuclear power plant in France are required to be able to cycle to 30% power when needed.
If the target is to get to 80% renewable + batteries and 20% nuclear, then why do you think nuclear investments is removing money from renewable? Those are complementary technologies and we need both. By sabotaging nuclear we are just making it more expensive forcing polluting fossil fuels as the only alternative. Fighting nuclear is just delaying decarbonization.
Nuclear is the only technology that enabled a decarbonized electric grid in countries without natural low carbon source of energy such as hydroelectric.
The fact that solar is cheaper is inconsequential if you produce electricity when it is not needed and you do not when it is needed.
Nuclear costs more to produce, but lower the prices due to how the electricity market works.
False.
Renewable is better for fossil fuels company, as of now solar and wind require high subsidies for fossil fuel power plant to operate. You cannot go 100% renewable as the sun does not produce at night and sometimes there is no wind. You can go 100% nuclear instead, as nuclear works all the time and can be adjusted with demand.
This is changing rapidly, as battery technology improves and cost goes down, but we are not still there yet. Nuclear cost goes down as you build more nuclear. China is on the forefront of renewable energy but also builds the most nuclear power plant in the world for very cheap.
France will need to keep the know-how and improve the technology if they want to keep up with aging power plants.
To abandon nuclear in favor of renewable means building more batteries then we can produce in a cost effective way. France nuclear stabilize the European grid. Without it energy would cost much more.
Not a mystery that country with low energy price in Europe have nuclear and country with high energy price lack nuclear.
This is not true everywhere. Solar + battery is dramatically cheaper if you only care about daily, 4h storage, to manage peaks. It is not cheaper if you need to manage multi-week lows with high reliability (like the one a gas power plant provide). To cover that use-case you need more investment in the grid, in solar overprovisioning (4x the usual capacity) and a lot of batteries. That makes the solar + battery solution costing around the same as nuclear and fossil fuel in most places. It is already cheaper in places like Australia, Texas, MENA region. It would be double the cost if done in places like Germany, or Scandinavia.
Nonetheless, battery + solar is the future for places like Spain, Italy (still not in the north plain as fog can stop solar production for weeks): the price will go further down, and hybrid storage solution and small nuclear reactors could optimize the battery + solar combo even further.