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In order to make storage economical viable in regions that depend on wind power it need to have its costs significant reduced, especially compared to nuclear wh
by belorn 5y ago
In order to make storage economical viable in regions that depend on wind power it need to have its costs significant reduced, especially compared to nuclear which is already deemed too expensive. Producing storable hydrogen from ocean wind farm was when I last checked 20-30 times more expensive than natural gas, and a few times more expensive than nuclear. Other storage techniques for wind do not fare much better and has other additional drawbacks, with lithium batteries being prohibitively costly in terms of long term capacity.
High energy intensive operations are already somewhat dynamic to changes in the energy grid, but there is a cross point where the cost of shutting down operation in order to wait for better weather is not viable. Large scale water desalination is not that big to my knowledge in EU/UK.
At the same time, over production is a hard sell for wind farms operators. It reduces profitability since you then have periods where competition makes the prices goes close or even beyond zero. When Denmark hit 100% capacity we saw a very distinct change in the market where the interest to invest into more wind went drastically down. Wind is still the cheapest way to produce energy but overproduction cuts into that cost advantage, making alternative energy production better investment in comparison.