Re:France approves 720MW of solar as price falls another 5%
by mariushn on Monday August 13, 2018 @12:33PM
(#17751349)
One use case would be Air conditioning, most needed when it's sunny/hot.
Re:France approves 720MW of solar as price falls another 5%
by sdunwoody on Monday August 13, 2018 @12:35PM
(#17751365)
I'm not sure about France, but it's rare to have air con in the UK because the summers aren't hot enough :) I think a lot of Europe is similar in this regard (with the exception being the south).
Even if France does have a reasonable number of air con units installed, I would expect energy consumption to be higher in the winter due to shorter days etc. It would be good to see statistics though.
Energy demand is highest in the Winter, when mean monthly sunshine hours are at the lowest.
Even in Nice (the very south of France) where I assume this difference would be smaller, there's still a big gap between 347.5 mean hours in July and 139.3 mean hours in December (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice#Climate).
Surely we'd need to heavily invest in backup generation capacity that would be dormant for the vast majority of the summer then heavily in use over the winter?
Admittedly I have a very limited amount of knowledge in this area - but wouldn't wind or tidal power generation be a better bet here (well, Europe anyway)?