Thread by @Sustainable2050

A week with two faces, in German electricity production:
Hardly any wind in the first half, with quite some coal and gas running. Then a sudden change on Wednesday followed by days with lots of wind, completely squeezing out fossil electricity.

energy-charts.info/charts/power/c…

Yesterday morning, 20 GW of solar PV and 44 GW of wind power covered 90% of Germany’s electricity load (71 GW). Together with nuclear, bio(gas) and remaining fossil electricity, 15 GW was left over for electricity exports.

The blue line shows the share of all renewables in Germany electricity production over the course of the week (right axis), reaching up to 81% yesterday morning.
As a percentage of electricity *consumption*, renewable came very close to 100% both then and in the preceding night.

It’s these kind of prolonged (days/weeks) periods with a lot resp. little wind and solar in which green hydrogen can play a useful role in future.
It can be produced in the former, stored in salt caverns, and used through gas turbines or fuel cells in the latter.

Sure, the overall efficiency for that part of the equation isn’t great: Electrolysis typically has an efficiency of 67%, and taking the hydrogen back to electricity can be done with 60%. Two-way efficiency: .67*.60 = 40% or so.

But as renewables (have) become cheap and electrolysis seems to be following the same path, this can still build an affordable zero-emission power system. Of course batteries, interconnections, and demand response play their parts too, especially for shorter-term fluctuations.

Pretty extreme this afternoon again: wind and solar producing as much as 90% of German electricity demand, and 73% of production!

In the Netherlands, renewables made it to 9.6 GW, in early afternoon:
5.9 GW wind
3.2 GW solar
0.5 GW biogas
(energieopwek.nl)

Probably around 2/3 of national electricity demand at that moment.