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Another factor is the fact that they are working at night. And Europe is further to the north than California, nights has a tendency to get much longer in winter (up to 16 hours of night in Central Europe), so cheap energy from solar panels is instantly nullified by lack of sunshine during winter, when the energy is needed the most.


>(up to 16 hours of night in Central Europe)

Poland gets on average 1 hour of actual sunshine in December. I'll take nuclear power unless somebody really has reasonable strategy for getting 3-7 days of energy storage.


You need an energy storage solution for nuclear too, unless you want to heavily overbuild, which raises it from too expensive to stupid expensive.

And once you have that storage, a mix of renewables is cheaper.


> You need an energy storage solution for nuclear too, unless you want to heavily overbuild, which raises it from too expensive to stupid expensive.

Why do you energy storage for nuclear? As someone who lives in Ontario, Canada, where 8-9 GW of nuclear power chugs along continuously:

* https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data

I'm not sure what needs to be stored. We just bring online hydro and gas as needed (along with having fluctuating wind).


Hydro and gas both involve storage (of water and methane), and both can be, and are, used with renewables and/or nuclear to fill gaps between supply and demand.


> You need an energy storage solution for nuclear too, unless you want to heavily overbuild, which raises it from too expensive to stupid expensive.

No, nuclear lowers baseline you need. If 50% of your energy is produced by nuclear, you just need to build the rest like your country is 50% smaller.




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