> Near the arctic circle Wind fill the same niche.

What do you mean? Long periods of calm weather during cold temperatures is not unheard of in Finland and does cause issues at times due to amount of wind energy that has been built in recent times.

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Retric a day ago | parent [-]

Long periods of low output isn’t 0 energy output over a ~3 month long winter.

Beyond that wind for each location is somewhat seasonal so if you’re doing this for winter energy you pick areas with better wind in winter.

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buzer a day ago | parent [-]

Not 3 month period, but looking at e.g. capacity factor over 5 day period can be under 3% and even 10 day period can be under 5%. Capacity factor for whole year is around 30% (22TWh produced with 9433MW in 2025, rounded it up since some capacity came online during 2025). That's a lot of extra power or storage.

	▲	Retric 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We’re optimizing for cost here, nothing else matters. You can always turn off a wind turbine. If you’re proposing seasonal storage as a viable option then cutting total storage needs by 90% (to handle a 10 day lull vs 90 day gap) is inherently cheaper. Hell traditional hydro is well suited for such situations as annual output and storage is limited but nontrivial. Doubling output for 10 days isn’t nearly as problematic as trying to cover a 90 day shortfall.