On: Europe’s energy crisis hits science

[rr888]

48% of its electricity this summer I'd believe, the whole year is unlikely. The crunch is winter when there is near-zero sunlight. Solar Panels in Northern Europe is waste of money.

[ljf → rr888]

The lowest was 41 percent in march 2022. Jan and Feb were over 50%

[rr888 → ljf]

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE shows stats. Looks like Dec and Jan were windy, Feb, Mar not so much. Its higher than I expected, but not 50%. Biomass is high is that wood? I've also heard Germany fudges the numbers a lot, its coal stations take a long time to heat up and the emissions dont count if there is no electricity coming out.

[clarionbell → rr888]

Yep, that's wood. Some shipped from US even. Can't make this up.

[Brometheus → clarionbell]

Incorrect. While would is part of it, there's also grass, leaves, and agricultural waste as well as biomass collected from water treatment plants.

[Brometheus → rr888]

Incorrect. Solar panels in Northern Europe provide plenty of energy.

Additionally in the winter we have complementary wind production from our windfarms.

[doikor → Brometheus]

> Solar panels in Northern Europe provide plenty of energy.

For ~9 months of the year. For winter you need some other form of production that you can turn on at demand.

For example a panel in Helsinki produces less than 1% of its nominal output in the darkest months of winter.

edit: Just go and look at https://www.fingrid.fi/en/electricity-market-information/sol... if you check December of 2021 you can see that the avg output was ~2MWh/h with solar 395MW of capacity installed at the end of 2021.

[Brometheus → doikor]

That's why we have wind energy in Germany. The wind is mostly strong in the winter and the sun in summer. Soon we will have energy from storage (hydrogen, thermal, and some batteries), too.

[doikor → Brometheus]

That is why I took issue in you saying "northern europe". Solar might work in Germany but that does not help me living in Finland (more like actively hurt by taking government subsidies)