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I guess somewhat of a fun fact: Albania has rented(!) two floating(!) oil-powered power plants near the city of Vlöre that are there in case of emergency. The l
by input_sh 6mo ago
I guess somewhat of a fun fact: Albania has rented(!) two floating(!) oil-powered power plants near the city of Vlöre that are there in case of emergency. The last time they were really needed was in 2022 (if I remember correctly), but these days they're not turned on any more than they need to be to make sure they're operating properly. That very expensive backup system is basically the only non-renewable source in the whole country, and most of the time it's just sitting there doing nothing.
Being powered almost entirely by hydro means that the system is highly susceptible to droughts, so then they either have to spin up those oil plants from time to time or import electricity from abroad. I think it's also worth pointing out that nothing really changed because of climate change, the decision to rely on hydro was made in the 90s. The country used to have its own oil power plant that it heavily relied on before that decision, which slowly produced less and less until it was shut down for good in 2007. Some images of it from 2019: https://www.oneman-onemap.com/en/2019/06/26/the-abandoned-power-plant-in-fier/ https://www.oneman-onemap.com/en/2019/06/26/the-abandoned-po...
- direwolf20 6mo agoAnd this is an expected problem with renewables that can be engineered around. It's unlikely the whole world has a drought at once during a calm night, so developing ways to transmit power long distances will be important.
- pstuart 6mo agoWhich absolutely should be done, but having energy sovereignty is never a bad thing.
- izacus 6mo agoHaving a continent-wide draught (or cold winter or other weather effect) is rather common though. Just a few years back Europe had a massive issue where draught caused both drop of hydro production and cooling for French nukes, causing energy prices to spike.
- Moldoteck 6mo agoNo. Cooling french nukes was never a problem. In that period France was net exporting 14GW. Cooling in general isn't a problem - some modulation is done just to save fish. Maybe you are confusing with 2022 when half of french fleet was shut down to check for potential pipe cracks/corrosion esp in one of their reactor designs due to poor geometry. But that's unrelated to droughts
- psychoslave 6mo agoThat said, cooling does have an effect on ecosystems. Not the worst energy plant impact on that regard, but still not like it's all environmental friendly. And of course, there is the what to do with the waste dilemma. And at least with current French park, there is a dependence on the rarer kind of uranium.
- Moldoteck 6mo agoWaste dilemma? You either bury it (Onkalo, Cigeo, Fosmark, etc...) like any other waste that must be isolated forever (herfa neurode) or you do some recycling one way or another, or both. Impact on environment from nuclear is minimal per UNECE. And cooling impact is minimal too, esp with towers. Uranium can be sourced from a variety of countries and enriched locally. Nuclear in general needs least amount of mining and materials per kwh
- derriz 6mo agoHappens regularly. Last year’s heatwave caused a bunch of reactor shutdown across Switzerland and France - https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-switzerland-shut-down-nuclear-power-plants-amid-scorching-heatwave https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-switzerland-s...
- hunterpayne 6mo agoAll thermal plants have this same issue, not just nuclear. And if you lose the natural gas peakers (which are also thermal and thus has this issue), you lose your baseload renewables too. Not that it matters, renewables used for baseload make more CO2 than just using FFs. Variability is a terrible quality in an energy source.
- ambicapter 6mo agoOr just use nuclear as base load, and battery storage as much as you can.
- colechristensen 6mo agoYou don't need battery storage if you've got hydro. You need solar. Make hydro the backup, fill reservoirs as your reserve and sell extra energy when they're nearly full.
- tialaramex 6mo agoI can see this makes sense especially for medium term storage. A lot full of batteries is great for the next ten seconds, next ten minutes, even to some extent the next ten hours, but it surely doesn't make much sense to store ten days of electricity that way compared to just keeping the water behind a dam. We know that many of the world's large dams are capturing snow melt or other seasonal flows, running them only when solar or wind can't provide the power you need lets you make more effective use of the same resource.
- colechristensen 6mo agoExcept for very short term peaks (less than 15 minutes-ish) it doesn't make any sense at all to use hydro to charge batteries. You've got a dam, you might as well let water through later than incur the losses of a round trip to batteries and back to the grid.
- hvb2 6mo agoExcept that in many cases there's people living downstream doing agriculture using that water for irrigation. There's just this tiny dispute about that in the nile delta between Egypt and Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Da...
- znkynz 6mo agoThere are two types of hydro - run of river, and ones with large lake storage. You need the ones with large lake storage, rather that the ones with a lake to build a head.
- Shitty-kitty 6mo agoFunny, TAP runs straight-thru Albania. They could just build a gas power station. Of course rented rigs line the pockets much better.
- Tepix 6mo agoWhy would they want to do that?
- AnthonyMouse 6mo agoBuilding something is cheaper than renting it forever?
- graemep 6mo agoSri Lanka used to rely on hydro, with oil as a backup, and has added a lot of coal. I wonder how many other countries are increasing non-renewable output?
- bartvk 6mo agoNot increasing but cancelling plans on phasing out. Here in The Netherlands, an absolutely minuscule country of ~18 million people, two coal plants will remain online that previously would've been phased out.
- donkyrf 6mo agoSri Lanka has only one coal power plant (construction began 2006), and the later coal project was canceled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Sri_Lanka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Sri_...
- graemep 6mo agoYou are correct its only one but its gone from zero in 2010 to about half of what hydro produces now, and the proportion from renewables has gone down quite considerably: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Sri_Lanka#Power_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Sri_Lank...
- PaulDavisThe1st 6mo ago> I think it's also worth pointing out that nothing really changed because of climate change, the decision to rely on hydro was made in the 90s. Why do you think it is worth pointing this out?
- Supermancho 6mo agoTo assuage any implication that the conversion was based on that concern? It's helpful to know that there are economics and environmental concerns outside of an existential threat, to galvanize a country's momentum.
- input_sh 6mo agoMostly because when the title says "seven countries now generate...", it sure makes it look like there was some sort of a recent development made in response to climate change, and not something that would've been the case regardless.
- rob74 6mo agoCorrect for the others, but Ethiopia was only added to this list after GERD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Da...) came online, which is a fairly recent development.
- 1718627440 6mo ago> nothing really changed because of climate change, the decision to rely on hydro was made in the 90s. Climate change was known well in the 90s, so what is your assumption, that it can't be to help lessen climate change?