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Ask HN: will we see headlines “X needed fossils for electricity for a week”?
There fairly frequently are headlines saying that Germany/the UK/Spain/… managed to produce 100% of their electricity from renewable sources for a few hours or days.
We get those headlines because that’s newsworthy. Given the conflicting forces of increasing demand for electricity, increasing supply of renewables and increasing storage capacity of renewable energy, will we ever get at a point where it is newsworthy that a country did NOT manage to produce 100% of their electricity from renewable sources for a while?
If so, what’s your estimate for when we will see that?
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoWe already saw that kind of headline for coal in the UK. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64879044 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64879044 And Costa Rica gets about 300 days a year without fossil fuel electricity, about 98% total for the year: https://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/costa-rica-exceeds-98-renewable-electricity-generation-for-the-eighth-consecutive-year https://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/costa-rica-exceeds-98-ren...
- Someone 3y agoI don’t think that UK one applies. They weren’t fully on renewables when they had to switch on coal (FTA: “Gas and wind power have been replacing coal in powering the UK's electricity supply over recent years”). I think they also use nuclear. And yes, Costa Rica probably applies. I guess I should have asked for this happen in larger industrialised countries.
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoThe UK Coal one is significant because it had been burning coal continuously since 1882: https://twitter.com/UK_Coal https://twitter.com/UK_Coal This keeps a running total of coal free days, currently at 33 days without coal.