The no brain solution is to electrify everything and switch legacy infrastructure to renewables, just like China does. Gas usage is down in the EU anyway.

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c0l0 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Long-term, that's the smart and also necessary move. But it can't be done overnight, and the transition has its significant challenges. I hope they don't mess it up it and will address these problems rationally - but given how most EU leaders have acted over these past few years, I remain painfully unconvinced that they will.

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tapoxi 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Isn't solar the fastest energy source to spin up? Just take them out of the crate, put them on racks, tie them to the grid.

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c0l0 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I guess it is, but solar can only be part of the answer: You need a solid plan (and all the infrastructure that implementing this plan involves) for when the sun does not shine, because in the more northern parts of Europe especially, energy consumption is highest during seasons in which sunlight is (relatively) scarce.

Also, "the grid" cannot absorb any amount of solar energy - so if you choose to address (at least parts) of the above challenge with a photovoltaic build-out that results in massive excess capacity during summer, there needs to be a plan (and again, its implementation) to handle that.

	▲	mrguyorama 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Excess capacity (literally free power) is only a problem because we mandate that electricity generation can only be done as a business that has to earn profit margins. Because of economics, this means it makes sense as a business to sell power that requires a purchased input commodity, and doesn't make as much sense as a business to build enough solar to sell power during darker months. This is absurd, backwards, and is hampering our ability to deploy clean and affordable power. National Governments should be massively overbuilding solar and just handing out the resulting power. It's really difficult to mismanage a solar farm. Maybe instead of a deregulated generation market, we should focus on a barely regulated power storage market.

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toasty228 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not to sound like an ass but that's your typical HNer hot take on a topic they don't know anything about (which is 99% of topics outside of tech).

I know that I don't know jack shit about the topic, but I can already tell you that if you do what you describe you'll quickly learn about why grids have frequencies, what generate these frequencies, and what happens when they drift.

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Saline9515 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

China still uses a massive amount of coal, and has a lot of southern idle land. Germany has been doing what you say for the last 15 years, it didn't seem to work out so well.

	▲	inigyou 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		China's really big. Australia is advancing faster per capita due to having less capita. Can we be Australia?