International Energy Agency Predicts Wind Will Dominate Europe's Grid By 2027 (arstechnica.com)

AmiMoJo shares a report from Ars Technica: Today, roughly 25 percent of the European Union's power currently comes from nuclear sources, with coal and gas each delivering a little above 20 percent. Wind constitutes 10 percent of the European Union's energy mix. But by 2027, IEA's forecasts (PDF) put wind just beating all other electricity sources with a 23-percent share of the energy mix. "Other Renewables" like biomass plants contribute a little over 20 percent, gas adds 20 percent, nuclear contributes just a little below 20 percent, and coal declines to just over 10 percent. Solar energy contributes about six or seven percent in the IEA's 2027 scenario. The European Union has a wealth of wind energy, especially offshore wind energy, a sector in which the EU is the global leader. Offshore wind allows turbines to be built bigger, and coastal winds are often stronger and more consistent than onshore winds. [The IEA forecasts 200 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity by 2040.]

Comments

Re:You can't store wind

[whoever57]

1. Over a large enough area, the wind is always blowing somewhere. You just need enough capacity. Also: have you ever been near the North Sea? The weather is brutal there.

2. Negative pricing was seen in the UK long before intermittent renewable energy was a significant source of energy for electricity generation.

Re:Good no more trade problems with the EU

[aaarrrgggh]

Actually some heavy industries love wind power-- they get paid to use energy at times. Wind is a great component of a diversified energy grid, especially when the turbines are geographically dispersed. He challenge for wind is its low capacity factor, which means you need to cover ~35% of its rating with either more (geographically dispersed) wind turbines, or another source of dispatchable power.

When you do it with wind, you run the risk that you end up with over-capacity, and you make the other power sources more expensive because you artificially reduce their capacity factor from ~90% to ~10-20%.

Re:Baseload is king for manifacture

[dunkelfalke]

The whole base load thing only came to existence because of coal power plants that weren't able to follow the load. As soon as they (and the nukes) are closed, the base load concept will be retired.