Belgium is constructing the world's first artificial island to harness offshore wind

[mbk34]

I can totally believe the politicians will increase wind power with little care for the consequences, all they care about are those annual reports. To me it sounds like things are only getting worse. Maybe we will have rolling blackouts in future.

Sorry, I'm obviously not explaining it well. A country doesn't rely on one intermittent power source for all it's electricity. Here in the UK we sometimes get 100% of our energy from wind, other times it drops below 10%. We don't have rolling blackouts. Instead we combine gas (expensive and not very green), UK nuclear, grid scales batteries or importing energy from other countries. We're even looking at setting up huge wind and solar farms in northern Africa and using HVDC links to move the energy to the UK. I can't remember the last time we had a black out - it must of been 40 years ago during the UK coal strikes.

 

[passingposeidon]

I have this power price tracking app. Right now consumption is 11 300 MW and just yesterday peak wind production was 6200 MW. Nuclear produces around 4000 MW 24/7 and the rest is covered with a mixture of other sources. Hydro never goes past 2500MW or so. If it doesn’t wind we import up to 30% and prices go trough the roof.

I dont want to be overly critical but you are cherry picking statistics, the average is completely different to what you represented. That made your comment misinformed and misleading.

 

[passingposeidon]

Sorry, I'm obviously not explaining it well. A country doesn't rely on one intermittent power source for all it's electricity. Here in the UK we sometimes get 100% of our energy from wind, other times it drops below 10%. We don't have rolling blackouts. Instead we combine gas (expensive and not very green), UK nuclear, grid scales batteries or importing energy from other countries. We're even looking at setting up huge wind and solar farms in northern Africa and using HVDC links to move the energy to the UK. I can't remember the last time we had a black out - it must of been 40 years ago during the UK coal strikes.

Well put. A healthy grid has a combination of energy sources. What that combination looks like is not really something for general debate by us lay people, but I would expect it to combine a strong dosage of renewables with nuclear, some gas (for the medium term), hydro where appropriate (geography), pumped hydro storage, LFP batteries (and new battery tech as its developed). The proportion which is wind/solar will probably be more than 50%.

 

[RudyBob]

Drill Baby Drill