Europeans have squandered untold $billions on chaotically intermittent wind and solar. The only evident results being routine power rationing, blackouts and power prices doubling every 12 months, or so.
The article below from Bloomberg lays it out fairly clearly: those countries obsessed with wind and solar are literally reaping the whirlwind, as power prices spiral out of control.
Bloomberg is, of course, a propaganda outlet for renewable energy rent-seekers, so don’t expect to see it ever name the culprits for Europe’s self-inflicted renewable energy disaster. In the piece below, the closest Bloomberg gets is when it points out that the “crisis was also aggravated by lower than normal wind speeds”. No joke!
Because the likes of Germany, Spain and the UK heavily depend upon wind and solar, output collapses triggered by, you guessed it, sunset and/or calm weather are driving demand for power from reliable sources, such as coal, gas, nuclear and hydro. The owners of those generation systems, who have suffered at the hands of subsidised wind and solar, are bound to cash in when opportunity knocks.
The total collapse in wind power output across Western Europe that started in late September and ran into early November, forced the UK and Germany to bring their coal-fired power plants back online, in an embarrassing hurry.
In response, Europe’s grid managers pulled the plug on energy-hungry industries, unable to provide them with the power essential to their operations.
With freezing, dead calm weather biting across the Continent, Europeans can expect wind and solar’s contributions to power demand to remain somewhere between trifling and risible.
So much for the ‘inevitable transition’.
Unless, of course, what they meant was a transition to an energy-starved world, where power prices are so obscene that only the super-rich can afford them.
Power costs in Europe soar to record high in 2021
The National News
Bloomberg
31 December 2021
Europe has never paid so much for electricity as in 2021.
The average cost of power for delivery in the short term soared to record levels this year, rising over 200 per cent in Germany, France, Spain and the UK. In the Nordic region – where vast supplies of hydro power tend to cap prices – costs surged 470 per cent from a year earlier.
The crunch is leaving consumers and heavy industrial users with rising bills heading into 2022. Metals smelters from France to Spain have already been forced to curb output, while some fertilizer producers were forced to halt output altogether. Norsk Hydro’s majority-owned plant in Slovakia was the latest casualty, announcing on Thursday that it would further curb production.
And there is little relief in sight. Even as the year ends with mild weather – easing demand for heat and power – households are set to face eye-watering price increases next year when wholesale costs get passed on. Industries will also need to grapple with even tighter supplies in January, when about 30 per cent of the French nuclear fleet will be offline.
Day-ahead power prices in Germany averaged €96.85 a megawatt-hour this year, while costs in France were €109.17, according to Bloomberg calculations based on daily auctions. Spanish users paid €111.93, prices in the UK averaged £117.82, while costs in Nordic region came to €62.31.
Europe’s energy crunch was a result of shortages of natural gas just as demand rebounded following 2020’s Covid-19 lockdowns. The crisis was also aggravated by lower than normal wind speeds and nuclear power outages that have strained power grids, forcing the region’s energy companies to burn polluting fossil fuels.
As companies burned coal, lignite and even oil to keep the lights on, the cost of buying permits to pollute surged. Carbon futures – already facing price increases because of the Brussels climate agenda – more than doubled this year to about £80 per metric ton ($90.5), boosting the cost of electricity.
The National News
STOP THESE THINGS 
I suppose here in Australia we will need to be doing things differently, and perhaps more seriously as our coal power production is running out as closures creep closer and we have to buy back our own gas and well oil is something we cannot store in large quantities.
Yes we can have plenty of sun – but to store solar energy is limited and to meet future demands (when the sun shines) we will need to massively increase the batteries to store any excess.
Of course the climate damaging production and operation of these batteries is something no one seems to want to explore, let alone that they require replacement after what amounts to a few years when compared to how long current coalfired power stations have lasted before major upgrading is required.
Also lets face it the sun as elsewhere in the world goes to ‘sleep’ for many hours each 24 hours. Also, even in daylight hours we do not always have clear days as cloud cover can cover vast areas both in summer and winter.
Wind, well sometimes both winter and summer it can be absent for long periods across large areas.
While vast areas of Australia are connected to a single Grid, that cannot save individual States or areas, if there are weather conditions or system and turbine failures, causing failures and energy in small quantities in one or more States at a time.
Industry, well over a number of years Australia has lost its manufacturing industry and even though the recent health issues has shown this to have been a failure to our security, to start up manufacturing again you first require a secure energy source – this is called an impasse.
Unless a Federal Government accepts what has happened and stops any closure of secure energy production and take the step to allow nuclear energy production we will be sinking further and further into the mire of destitution.
Nowhere is energy production from the sun and wind able to maintain a reliable secure energy source at a level required by all users.
This is insanity on steroids.
Technology surrounding wind and solar are not fit for purpose.
It never will be. It needs reliable backup available 24/7 or massive storage which again with current technology is unfeasible.