> The 50% solution with CCGT making up for variability seems to be working just fine. Wind is a lot more consistent than you think, especially offshore. Does mean we're dependent on gas for the medium term.

It does not work fine at all. Germany is one of the dirtiest electricity producers in Europe.

France emits 50 grams of CO2 per produced kilowatthour while Germany produces 400 grams on average:

> https://www.electricitymap.org

Germany also has the highest electrity prices in Europe:

> https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

NASA also disagrees that gas plants are a good solution:

> https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/kharecha_02/

That's because Germany still uses a lot of coal.

It seems to work, but this is about at the limit of what it can achieve - the UK is having to switch off renewable power sources increasingly aggressively to stop them from going any higher for grid stability reasons, and pay them quite a bit to do so.

The ability of utilities to incorporate renewables seems to have improved over the years. I'm sure it will only get better. In particular the approach of handling excess production by producing "green" hydrogen and storing it in the natural gas distribution network seems promising.

Germany needs 1.6 TWh of electricty per day. If you know the caloric value of methane for example, you will be able to calculate the amount of methane you need to synthesize to just store the electricity of one day which will be roughly 3.2 million gas trucks (45.000 liters each).

There is a reason why the UK is building or planning new nuclear power plants in Hinkley Point, Sizewell and Bredwell.

The German gas network can store 200TWh. I believe that power to gas has a bright future. Check out what Hydrogenics is doing. Also, storage doesn’t have to be day scale to be useful.