This figure depicts the contribution of renewable energies to the entire final electricity consumption. As we may see, renewable energies are a very important component of the total, specifically, it accounts for around 45% on average every day in Spain. Considering the figure shown above for the 4th March 2020, renewable energies account for 55% of the total figure, from which around 70% comes from wind power (green figure), with a pretty constant supply, and 20% from hydraulic power (blue figure). We may notice a significant orange figure as well between 8 am and 7 pm that is solar power yet accounting for less than 5% of the total electricity consumption.

Hydraulic power plays an essential role since we can control it to some degree, working as an energy producer when it is needed, and also as an energy consumer when required, although, of course, we need water to use this system, and shortages of water are becoming more and more common nowadays in many places. This hydraulic energy is used as a controller to adapt energy consumption to energy demand in peak hours, as we may see in the chart above in the blue color.

However, unfortunately, we cannot ask the sun for overtime to get more sunlight and keep producing energy, neither we can ask the wind to keep blowing to move the blades of a wind turbine. Summing up, we mainly cannot control the production of electricity from these sources. Even when we have sunlight, photovoltaic plants may not be able to produce energy if the conditions are not good enough, like it happens in summer when the temperatures are too high. Besides, when the wind blows pretty fast, wind turbines must be stopped to avoid being damaged. Moreover, we neither have suitable electricity storage systems to take advantage of those moments of electricity surpluses thanks to this kind of renewable energies. The graph below shows the data from 12th March 2020, when there was much less wind than in the day shown above, so the proportion of electricity coming from wind power (green figure) dropped to 25%.