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It very much depends on which location you are talking about. Different locations favor different forms of energy creation. Solar very much depends on the clima
by _ph_ 5y ago
It very much depends on which location you are talking about. Different locations favor different forms of energy creation. Solar very much depends on the climate and laltitude. Even across Germany there are significant local differences.
Yes, wind, like solar, is intermittent. But you can combine it with batteries like you could do with solar. The great thing is, wind follows a different weather pattern than solar. It is available at night or when there is cloudy weather. Usually it is strongest at times, when solar doesn't deliver much. A fully renewable grid requires a combination of solar and wind.
In Germany, on-shore wind is cheaper than solar and delivering a larger fraction of the total energy consumed than solar, but as said, there is a clear separation by region, what is the prominent form of energy.
And I personally think that most of them do look good. I am fond of technology and wind turbines are especially elegant and spectacular looking. I can see that too many of them can be seen negatively. Solar cells can be hidden better.
- tralarpa 5y ago> wind follows a different weather pattern than solar Some data to explore: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/generation/r2/actualGenerationPerProductionType/show https://transparency.entsoe.eu/generation/r2/actualGeneratio... Unfortunately, some interesting countries (e.g. Sweden, Germany,...) are missing. I am wondering how electricitymap.org gets their data from there for those countries? But there are also other sources, e.g.: https://www.windjournal.de/erneuerbare-energie/aktuelle_einspeiseleistung_wind_und_solar_energie https://www.windjournal.de/erneuerbare-energie/aktuelle_eins...
- _ph_ 5y agoI am using electricitymap for the daily distribution in Germany and energy-charts.info for longer term statistics. While they are not perfectly aligned, it is nice to see how wind often is strong when there is no sun and vice versa, both in the daily and the yearly run. Unfortunately I haven't seen many statistics how large an European grid would have to be to achieve a perfect wind distribution as weather systems pass over europe. But just connecting France and Germany for wind power would reduce the weather influence a lot (requires France to build more wind power first, of course).
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoSolar has 10x lower output in UK during winter, when energy is needed most. It's almost completely unfeasable here.