Portugal hit 80% renewable electricity in January, saving €703 million on bills, securing the grid and spurring green projects—benefiting residents nationwide.
renewables are cheap, solar don’t work at night. Portugal has 37% hydro, 35% wind, 4% solar. Not all the countries have access to that much wind and hydro capacity. Italy is a stark example of a country with zero wind potential in the most industrialized areas (the padana plain). Having a big hydro potential is also great as hydropower is dispatchable. That means you do not need to build batteries to address the instability of renewable like wind. Renewable is great, but is not the universal solution. Each country and each grid need to work with what is given by nature to optimize the best for the use-case and level of consumption. Not all countries are lucky as Norway, Denmark, Ireland or Portugal. Italy is great for solar, but you said it yourself: solar do not work at night. So you either need nuclear or tons of batteries to decarbonize the grid.
There is nothing wrong with solar + batteries, because battery prices (like solar) have been falling massively in the last few years. So solar + enough battery capacity is still dramatically cheaper that fossil fuels. Just look at what South Australian has been doing in the last few years.
solar + enough battery capacity is still dramatically cheaper that fossil fuels
This is not true everywhere. Solar + battery is dramatically cheaper if you only care about daily, 4h storage, to manage peaks. It is not cheaper if you need to manage multi-week lows with high reliability (like the one a gas power plant provide). To cover that use-case you need more investment in the grid, in solar overprovisioning (4x the usual capacity) and a lot of batteries. That makes the solar + battery solution costing around the same as nuclear and fossil fuel in most places. It is already cheaper in places like Australia, Texas, MENA region. It would be double the cost if done in places like Germany, or Scandinavia.
Nonetheless, battery + solar is the future for places like Spain, Italy (still not in the north plain as fog can stop solar production for weeks): the price will go further down, and hybrid storage solution and small nuclear reactors could optimize the battery + solar combo even further.
renewables are cheap, solar don’t work at night. Portugal has 37% hydro, 35% wind, 4% solar. Not all the countries have access to that much wind and hydro capacity. Italy is a stark example of a country with zero wind potential in the most industrialized areas (the padana plain). Having a big hydro potential is also great as hydropower is dispatchable. That means you do not need to build batteries to address the instability of renewable like wind. Renewable is great, but is not the universal solution. Each country and each grid need to work with what is given by nature to optimize the best for the use-case and level of consumption. Not all countries are lucky as Norway, Denmark, Ireland or Portugal. Italy is great for solar, but you said it yourself: solar do not work at night. So you either need nuclear or tons of batteries to decarbonize the grid.
There is nothing wrong with solar + batteries, because battery prices (like solar) have been falling massively in the last few years. So solar + enough battery capacity is still dramatically cheaper that fossil fuels. Just look at what South Australian has been doing in the last few years.
This is not true everywhere. Solar + battery is dramatically cheaper if you only care about daily, 4h storage, to manage peaks. It is not cheaper if you need to manage multi-week lows with high reliability (like the one a gas power plant provide). To cover that use-case you need more investment in the grid, in solar overprovisioning (4x the usual capacity) and a lot of batteries. That makes the solar + battery solution costing around the same as nuclear and fossil fuel in most places. It is already cheaper in places like Australia, Texas, MENA region. It would be double the cost if done in places like Germany, or Scandinavia.
Nonetheless, battery + solar is the future for places like Spain, Italy (still not in the north plain as fog can stop solar production for weeks): the price will go further down, and hybrid storage solution and small nuclear reactors could optimize the battery + solar combo even further.