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Swedish site klimatsans.com posted a chart presented by Rolf Schuster showing Germany’s and much of Europe’s total wind power generation over the first 6 months of this year:

Wind power production Germany and Europe. Chart by Rolf Schuster, from klimatsans.com.

The first thing one notices is wind power’s extreme supply volatility. In February wind production peaked at 75 gigawatts – enough to power all of Germany (for a few hours). Relying only on wind power, most of Germany would have been completely dark since late March.

Every month wind power fell multiple times close to zero, meaning that it would not even be possible to even power little Luxembourg.

And even if the technology existed to store the energy for a couple of days, the best all the installed wind power capacity in Europe could hope to consistently provide is some 15 gigawatts – which would be enough to power something on the order of Belgium only.

If power could be stored for an entire week, it would only be possible to supply only about half of Germany – the rest of the continent, France, Spain, Portugal, Benelux, United Kingdom, Ireland, Scandinavia, Greece, Austria, Switzerland, all of eastern Europe and the Balkan countries would have to go without.

This gives us an idea of how ridiculous the pursuit of 100% renewable energy supply really is.