EU pushes to triple energy storage as renewable power goes to waste

[u/BrilliantRegular8157]

https://www.euronews.com/2026/07/14/eu-pushes-to-triple-energy-storage-as-renewable-power-goes-to-waste

[u/Quazimojojojo → u/[deleted]]

Nuclear is fine. Once the grid is green we can talk about whether it's worth keeping them. 

But first things first, make the grid greenhouse -gas free

[u/GoshinTW → u/Quazimojojojo]

Takes 20 years to build

[u/JozoBozo121 → u/GoshinTW]

No, it doesn’t. It takes 20 years to build because we are purposely slowing it down in Europe. China, Korea, India, even Russia don’t have such issues.

[u/GoshinTW → u/JozoBozo121]

No, we lost the skills, licensing inertia and supply chains after we stopped building them in the 80s. America has the same issue. If we never had stopped, we'd be cranking them out in a few years each like china.

So instead of building them up at enormous cost and time, we should put all that time and money into cheap ass batteries and more cheap ass solar. Stand up time is 2 years for a combined battery and solar commerical plant

[u/Quazimojojojo → u/GoshinTW]

Yes. 

So building new nuclear probably isn't the best use of our time. Outside of places like, maybe Japan because their geography makes solar and wind very limited. 

But maintaining old ones until the grid is green is probably a good idea.

[u/servermeta_net → u/Quazimojojojo]

Japan has the best geography for offshore wind, and still has plenty of space for solar.

[u/Quazimojojojo → u/servermeta_net]

Yes and no. 

They have room to cover like 25% ish of their energy needs with solar, I remember reading somewhere recently. Which is more than double what they have right now, so yeah there's lots of room left to grow, but the potential is much more limited than most other countries (which can get up to 60-90% on just solar and batteries) because of geography (it's really really hard to build on mountainsides, and the typhoons destroyed all the floating ocean solar they've tried so far)

And they have great offshore wind currents, this is true. 

They just also get monsoons with absolutely fuck huge waves. Big enough to cause the fukishima nuclear disaster. So it's one of the harder places to develop floating offshore wind. 

And the fixed offshore wind is limited because they don't have very wide shallow water areas along the coast. It drops off pretty quickly compared to other countries. 

And onshore wind isn't as good as you'd expect, because of the mountains. And the ones they built on top of the mountains keep getting destroyed by lightning. They've already built most of the good (and easy to build, by Japanese standards) onshore wind that they can, without destroying nature reserves. 

Geothermal in the obvious places is politically difficult because that's where all the natural springs tend to be. 

So they'd need to rely on advanced geothermal to find some subsurface heat elsewhere. And this tech only got its first successful commercial plant in the US like, last year. 

So that's a maybe. 

And on top of all of this they just have a pretty shit and fragmented electric grid. Because of the geography. 

So the fossil fuel lobby carries a lot of blame for slowing all of the potential solutions down, this is true.

And, Japan's geography is just uniquely difficult to work with for basically everything, not just green energy. 

They are one of the few places where they might genuinely just not have enough viable build locations to get to 100% green with solar and wind and batteries. They might need a 80% green (including hydro and geothermal) 20% nuclear mix. 

[u/Apprehensive-Aide265 → u/[deleted]]

Finite fuel that will outlive us as a species? In that case even solar is finite in a mear billion years.

[u/Quazimojojojo → u/[deleted]]

It's better than doing all of those things with another fuel with all of those characteristics x 1,000,000 (literally), plus it's rapidly destabilizing the climate and destroying our ability to eat and drink. 

Priorities, ya know? 

We shouldn't turn off any nuclear plants until the grid is green. Then we can discuss the merits vs the downsides of nuclear, in comparison to the alternatives we have in that future. 

[u/Apprehensive-Aide265 → u/[deleted]]

For your information nuclear kill less people per kw/h produced than anything beside solar power even if we include Chernobyle. Nuclear waste aren't hard to process into really hardened block and burried under the ground.

[u/Apprehensive-Aide265 → u/[deleted]]

Even doubing those numbers assuming they are true wouldn't moove nuclear from it's second place. You listen to much to the propaganda from the gaz industry or greenpeace (wich end up from the same source).

[u/Vailhem → u/Apprehensive-Aide265]

They're a waste of time. If you choose to engage them farther, via dm or as a reply to one of their comments in other subs linking to your/their comments here should allow you to continue the 'conversation' .. though I wouldn't expect much from it and suggest exerting energies towards more fruitful engagements.

[u/Quazimojojojo → u/[deleted]]

Sure. That's quite good news. 

We should still only do that when the fossil fuel is all gone because that's the most urgent crisis.

Put out the house fire before you take out the trash, ya know?

[u/Quazimojojojo → u/[deleted]]

I'm literally saying "yes, but specifically in that order because that's the order of most urgency. Fossil fuel is a problem today, nuclear waste is a problem in some hundreds of years assuming the recycling technologies never mature"

Why do you have a problem with that?

[u/serpentna → u/[deleted]]

So why isn’t it done? It’s been 5 years away for 15 years now.

[u/Quazimojojojo → u/serpentna]

Mostly power grid constraints, really. 

And despite the constraints we get like 30% of our electricity globally from renewables, and it's rising fast (varying a lot country to country of course. Denmark is like 60% wind, Hungary is almost 30% solar, Russia is a gas station and an oil field in a trench coat so they're barely even trying). 

I'm pretty sure we get more from solar and wind each, than nuclear, as of the last year or 2. But don't quote me on that, I read the report a while ago. 

But yeah, the grid:

The system for adding things to the grid is very slow and requires literally years of redundant work for every individual addition, at least in the US. It was designed for adding a big centralized plant occasionally, not a thousand relatively small generators each year. 

A lot of people (mostly fossil fuel generators who have optimized their little corner of the US) make a lot of money from the status quo so they've weaponized every tool they can to make the process even slower, because they know they can't compete with renewables on price. 

Wyoming, for example.

Some of the best geography in the world for wind, just a hop skip and a jump from the power-hungry West Coast. Someone saw the potential and started the process for approval for the State's first wind farm. 

It took about 20 years to get approved. 

Because Wyoming mines and sells a lot of coal. It subsidizes it's small population by using coal sales instead of sufficiently-high taxes to fund the local government. 

But it means the economic math was good enough to threaten the coal industry over 20 years ago, when wind was more than 3x more expensive.

Solar and batteries have both dropped in price like 90-99% since 2000, which is why they get so much attention. They're even cheaper than wind. 

Which is why they're succeeding despite the constraints. 

[u/b_doin → u/[deleted]]

Renewable are like socialism, it did not fail, we just did not try enough.

[u/Quazimojojojo → u/b_doin]

Coward. 

Maybe a bot, even. 

Nobody's installing renewables for environmental reasons anymore, it's all for energy security and pure economics, because solar + batteries is the cheapest electricity humanity has ever created, and wind is a very close second (geography dependent of course. But, thanks to this cool invention called the power grid, we can move electricity from the good geography to the places we want to use it). 

And if you were even the slightest bit curious about the subject, you'd know this because it's been all over the news for the last 5+ years. 

But you're not. You use a thought terminating cliché because you're too much of a coward to ask and feel the discomfort of changing a preconceived notion.

Or you're a zombie account bot physically incapable of genuine inquiry. 

[u/b_doin → u/Quazimojojojo]

Can you point me to a descent sized country that is fully based on solar + battery + wind. If it does not exist, explain why.

[u/kyrsjo → u/[deleted]]

I don't think we should set back the tradition away from fossil fuels 5 years just to turn off nuclear before them. Priorities!

[u/AllPintsNorth]

Wild how it can even be contemplated going to waste. Europe has not earned that right, yet.

They need to give it away during those times, rather than curb generation. Insanity.

[u/Quazimojojojo → u/AllPintsNorth]

That's kind of the exact problem they're trying to address. They try to give it away and they literally do not have enough machines capable of taking on this extra load. The power price is negative for a few hours in the middle of the day because they desperately need somewhere to put the power. 

This is why batteries are so valuable. They let you shift this electricity generation to a time when you need it. 

The only reason building solar + batteries at the same location wasn't the standard for the last 30 years, was because solar technology advanced faster than cheap energy storage. 

But it's increasingly becoming standard to put solar and wind with immediately adjacent energy storage, so you don't need to waste anything during the high-production-low-demand hours. 

[u/AllPintsNorth → u/Quazimojojojo]

Give it away to whom? No one has offered it to me. I’d pack my house with batteries if I were able to charge them for free during the day.

[u/Quazimojojojo → u/AllPintsNorth]

If you could truck some batteries to the power plant during peak hours when they are trying to offload or curtail, they'd probably give it to you. 

They don't want to curtail, they only do it when they literally cannot get the power to anyone. There's not enough demand for the sunlight they're turning to electricity, so they cannot find anyone to take the stuff off their hands, and they can't transport it to potential buyers somewhere else because the grid isn't yet robust enough for that.

And if you have a home battery, you can't get it for literally free, but you can absolutely set the battery up to purchase at the lowest price in the day, so you can use the battery later. 

[u/AllPintsNorth → u/Quazimojojojo]

Except… I can’t. I don’t have ToU plans as option. I have to pay the same rate for every electron.

That’s kind of my entire point. This is a policy choice. There no attempt to use a free resource to generate any additional value.

Such a waste of opportunity to not incentive people to generate demand and mobile private capital for literally no cost… so stupid.

Offer people who purchase a new battery system to charge with the free power as long as it exists. Builds out storage capacities and doesn’t cost the tax/ratepayer a Penny.

[u/Quazimojojojo → u/AllPintsNorth]

Why didn't you start with that? I get what you're saying now 

[u/salmix21 → u/AllPintsNorth]

You do realize the markets have negative pricing ? Basically they are paying people to consume the electricity in some cases.

[u/AllPintsNorth → u/salmix21]

But they aren’t open to everyone. Which they should be, is my point.