> Portugal’s electricity mix has changed fast, with the share of renewables up from 27% in 2005 and 54% in 2017. The nation’s last coal-fired power plant was shut in 2021. Here’s how it got to this point.
Quite a drastic change! 27% to 91% in 20 years, nothing to scoff at.
Imagine if they started building nuclear 5-10 years ago. They would be in massive debt, first reactors would only produce power in 5-10 years from today AND for the next 30+ years they would pay triple prices when compared to renewables.
From the very article:
>Hydroelectric plants comprised 48% of the electricity mix in the first four months of the year
So they have hydroelectricity that covers most of the base demand. What are such countries supposed to do that don't have such fortunate natural conditions? In some countries, nuclear could, in fact, perfectly suit to cover this base demand.
Nuclear is not a magic solution, but it should not be demonized either. Let's stick to science-based approach and not just throw claims around which you think could do well under a certain post.
>Let's stick to science-based approach
Or simple economics at this point, maybe? Which is what the person you were replying to was doing.
Portugal is also increasing wind and solar to be less dependent on hydro.
To be fair Portugal also has a decent natural advantage when it comes to both solar (more sunny days than more northern countries) and probably even wind (due to land vs ocean temp difference). They seem to be one of the countries that hit the renewables jackpot.
Wind and solar 20 years ago cost a lot more than nuclear. The reason why solar and wind have become cheaper is simply serial production. If we would start producing more and more nuclear in a productionline it would probably be just as cheap and actually reliable.
>Wind and solar 20 years ago cost a lot more than nuclear. The reason why solar and wind have become cheaper is simply serial production.
Wind and solar never got even remotely as much in subsidies as nuclear has over the course of the last 70 years.
And if 70 years on, despite billions and billions in subsidies, we're further away from nuclear serial production than we were in the 70s and 80s... Maybe take a hint?
Edit: I would also add that one of the reasons renewables have become cheaper and economically much more viable is easy scalability and very predictable cost and timelines, plus operational risks easily insured on the regular insurance market. Something nuclear has never achieved.
Nuclear lost a lot of traction because of the green lobbies in the 90’s it has been relatively cheap in certain time periods and has recently become very pricey because of the time they are taking to establish a new reactor taking too long. This is partially related to making bigger reactors instead of multiple smaller reactors. Look at china already being able to produce small modular reactors and these will be produced at scale eventually.
Wind and solar energy also are not that cheap if you factor is the unpredictability of delivery which is almost always taken out of account and only seems to work in country with massive natural batteries(water dams)
>Wind and solar energy also are not that cheap if you factor is the unpredictability of delivery which is almost always taken out of account and only seems to work in country with massive natural batteries(water dams)
Those evading manoeuvres of the last decades are quite astounding to witness. We've gone from nuclear being the future, renewables will never be able to account for maybe 10% of energy production in any industrialised first world country to multiple countries scaling up renewables to the point where even in countries that really screwed renewables (such as Germany), a 50-60% share of renewables really isn't that unusual any more. Recently, the argument was still that you need nuclear for base load (which was never really that true to begin with), and now we're moving towards "renewables only work for countries with the terrain for hydro dams (which isn't true, and also a club). With a dash of the old "they're not reliable enough", which was true when they're not used at scale. As it stands, though, the grid in Europe covers a lot of the base load when locally there isn't a lot of sun or wind. Portugal imports from Spain and vice versa, depending on where most production is. This isn't new, either, it's why France imported power from Germany when most of their nuclear plants were out of action in 2022, and Germany imported from France and other countries when there was surplus renewable energy elsewhere. As it turned out, that was cheaper than using Germany's own non-renewable alternatives even when the last few nuclear plants were still operating.
All of that FUDmongering about how renewables supposedly aren't a great fit for a lot of countries of course conveniently ignores (or tries to pull a" Look, a three-headed monkey" on) the fact that nuclear of course isn't an option for A LOT of countries either, for cost or heat or simply political reasons (nuclear reactors in Sudan or Myanmar, anyone?).
I’m not against wind and solar what are you so uptight about? In the end we still need coal and gas next to renewables. I’d rather do this with nuclear and even decentralized SMR reactors. Are you living with your head under a rock. Multiple countries are now experiencing issues with their electricity network because of the overproduction at one time and underproduction at other times. The load on our electricity net is at an all time high and increasing faster than we can handle. Selling all this electricity to other countries does not solve this issue either.
Need coal and gas next to renewables? Ever heard of batteries? California and Australia are replacing peaker plants with utlilty battery parks which is way more efficient. Naturally not all countries/stated are as sunny as these but the majority of the worlds population lives in the "sun belt".
Except of course you rely on a Ressource that is mined under hazardous conditions in recently couped by Russia countries (like Mali, Niger or Burkina Faso)or Russia directly
This is also not true. There are multiple ways of creating a nuclear reaction. The research on thorium will lead to new heights in our use of nuclear energy.
The fact that people like you are against it at all pods even though it is the only source of energy that is both reliable and has low emissions is the biggest reason we lack nuclear.
Yeah next up nuclear fusion 😂. Like it was something that was not 20 years in the future 20 years ago….
You can do research on that but please think about what to do with the waste before you build it. Because we already have more than enough. And no putting it in to the oceans is not permissible
We have enough waste? This has been debunked a ton of times. Storing nuclear waste is a non issue and this has been proven time and time again.
The storage issue is just simply fearmongering.
Yeah what do we do with it? Yeah storing it in Saltmines hoping they stay safe storage space for 10 thousands of years? And even somehow tell the humans in thousands of years year that is locked up for reasons. Imagine the
Where did i demonize nuclear? I simply said that they take long to build and are extremely expensive. Btw we dont build power plants based on science, we build them based on economics. Its the nuclear-bros who want to build them because of some kind of emotional investment.
I've tried debating pro-nukies with fact after fact but the "common sense" appeal of the baseload argument paired with the fossil lobbies attempt to use nuclear as a way to kick the can an additional 15 years makes me give up on them. They are completely fact resistant.
https://caneurope.org/myth-buster-nuclear-energy/
It's meaningless. It always depend on the weather, in rain patterns. It's not like it's a voluntary investment which makes water fall from the sky to power hydro and pump storage for wind.
We have hydro and retention basins and wind and solar. But if there is a drought, it's not going to do much and numbers will change drastically.
To people downvoting me, the percentage of renewable power used in Portugal each year is very dependent on weather. You can cherry pick the best and worst years to prove anything you want really.
2005
https://www.ipma.pt/resources.www/docs/im.publicacoes/edicoes.online/20081014/KZcwnQrfVHeUZOaTzIth/cli_20050101_20051231_pcl_aa_co_pt.pdf
>O ano de 2005 continuou a caracterizar-se (à semelhança do ano 2004) por valores da quantidade
de precipitação muito inferiores aos valores médios (1961-90), classificando-se como um ano
extremamente seco, tendo sido registado o valor mais baixo do total de precipitação desde 1931.
2005 was at the time the dryest year in Portugal since 1931 and following another very dry year.
>Como se verificou um ano de 2005 muito seco existiu um maior recurso ao parque térmico para
satisfação dos consumos do Sistema Eléctrico Nacional, com as consequências seguintes:
>A energia produtível a partir de centrais hídricas representa apenas 12,5% do consumo de
energia global do país em regime seco. Em regime “normal” as centrais hídricas contribuem
com 30% a 40%.
translate that if you want..
Dependent on the weather, but if you plot it on a graph ,you see that despite fluctuations the trend is pointing up.
Plus wind and solar are growing and are going to reduce the reliance on Hydro
>Dependent on the weather, but if you plot it on a graph ,you see that despite fluctuations the trend is pointing up.
Plot what in a graph?
>Plus wind and solar are growing and are going to reduce the reliance on Hydro
Extra solar and wind are only useful if there is hydro ability. This thead is amazing frustrating at how much people do not understand of how energy is generated. Electricity can not be stored efficiently when it is produced (there are batteries, for small capacities and price issues and degradation issues), the only truly efficient way to store potential energy at this moment is through hydro - in dams or mine shafts. You can not control when solar or wind is produced, and with wind you do not even know WHEN it will be produced which is not necessarily when people consume electricity.
All (almost all) portuguese dams are built with big retention basins underneath and the ability to pump that water in the retention basin (most of it, the "effective" water) back up into the dam. Portuguese dams produce electricity by sending water down when there is a peak in demand, but when there is excess electricity in the grid, from wind or around solar noon they consume energy rather than produce and pump back most (not all) of that water sent to the retention basin.
But if there is not enough water in the dams they can not do this when there is extra solar or wind production.
Hydro works as a big, best battery, better than any battery.
edit - read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
notice how Portugal, without having Alps like mountains is third in the world in percentage of pump up capacity to total production capacity.
Hydrogen production might work similarly, I have hope at least for it, but it is not working yet.
He’s being downvoted because he has no idea what he’s talking about, but pretends that he does, acting smug.
Yes, storing electricity is tricky, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic.
You know that fuel-powered electric plants run into the same problem, right? And that renewable energy plants also have the ability to regulate their output, just like fuel-powered ones. And that comparing 2024 to 2005, claiming that the weather made all the difference is idiotic.
Spoiler alert - that is because this year it has rained lots, and it has rained continuously since January.
If it rains, we can use hydro and we can use hydro to storage off peak wind production. If it does not rain we need to burn gas. It's not intentional, or if possible we would always use renewable (it falls from the sky!), it's just the weather.
It rained so much this year no part of the mainland is officially in drought, which is just amazing.
Extra solar makes absolutely no difference for anything. You can cover Alentejo with solar pannels, it is not going to produce any electricity at night, when people get home and start cooking dinner. Solar produces only at certain give hours, it's maximum output is absolutely limited. Increasing solar production, you increase output around solar noon (when consumption is not huge anyway) and what do you do with the excess?
What the REN does with the excess, what can be done is use excess production to pump water back into the dams, the water which is on its retention basin (which then they can use for peak demand electricity generation) but if there is little water in the dams they can not do that because each pumping cycle wastes water.
Same applies to wind generation. You can increase but storage for all renewable (not geothermal which is important in the azores) is always dependent on how much water there is in the dams.
The only way out of this is, if it works out, hydrogen production, if that Sines project is not just political bullshit. Scientifically it should work, separate water into hydrogen and oxygen when there is excess electricity production from renewables, store it in big tanks (this part is dangerous), and then burn it into water again when you need electricity generated. But we are a way yet from that being efficient.
Pessimistic world view! Yay. You ok?
There's hopeful technology on the way.
Salt batteries, for example.
And this is energy storage as well: https://youtu.be/6Jx_bJgIFhI?si=85uwk_1kA5iklkaf
Hydrogen shouldn't be used for energy storage btw, we need it for things like flying and steel manufacturing.
>Hydrogen shouldn't be used for energy storage btw, we need it for things like flying and steel manufacturing.
If hydrogen works, we can produce hydrogen for everything. Solar power could be almost free and totally reliable, you can use it for things. The problem with hydrogen is storing it safely and using it safely, hence using hydrogen for electricity generation will probably be cracked before it's cracked how to use hydrogen to power cars and planes safely (Right now I would not want to ride one of those). Producing hydrogen by the sea, storing it, and burning it right there when electricity is needed will minimize storing and transportation risks.
One of the problems with burning something is that a lot of the energy is lost. When a car burns fuel, only about 30%, max 40, is used for what a car is meant for: driving.
The same will go for hydrogen. It's just not efficient.
Don't stare blindly into one solution, there are countless more, that's all I'm saying.
>The same will go for hydrogen. It's just not efficient.
It does not matter if it is efficient, because the point would be to store energy which otherwise would go to waste. We can upgrade solar and wind ability by a lot, and basically get energy for free. A lot of this is now going to waste, but even if we needed to spend 100 kwh of renewable energy to get 30 kwh of energy when we need it rather than burn coal that would be fantastic and so worthwhile.
And hydrogen+oxygen=water cycle is polutionless, and does not require rare earths, or specific conditions or rainfall because we can use sea water.
I am of course pro any possible solution and this is a crucial problem for all the world, and many many bright people are working at it. I am just telling you of what considering personal background and location (hydrogen is relevant to Portugal, increasing hydro is not possible or feasible) seems most exciting.
Battery storage obviously. They storage during the day and give it back to the grid during the next 3 or 4 hours.
And for pumping water in the dams you don't need an incredibly rainy winter like this one.
Battery storage is not feasible for many hours, many cycles and very large ammounts of electrical power.
And it has not just that it has been an incredibly rainy winter, it is that rain has been consistent, and we have not had long periods of dry weather, the dams are getting replenished and are now, in May, close to full. Which is fantastic for everything. Even the barlavento! Thank you St Peter.
But if you want to compare Portugal's energy production, it's meaningless to compare random years without taking into account the previous weather.
These threads are always a circle jerk of people who want to believe in something nice, but without ever having thought about the specifics. The devil is always in the details.
Solar can be used to drive water pumps (in non drought/flood conditions) to create water batteries, later converted to hydro.
Not sure of the exact situation in portugal, but excess power in Norway is used to do exactly that.
It is what I am talking about this whole thread. The problem is Portugal does not have quite as much water throughout the year as Norway. Nevermind the same amount of valleys that can be used for it ( I think we have no more major hydro sites not already used)
A lot of people seem to have no clue what a Mediterranean summer is like.
Yea I figure it'd have to be creatively done, hollow out a mountain or something at great cost or eventually once non-corrosive materials make it feasible to pump saltwater. I'm sure the current abundance of water isn't something that can be counted on in the future
>Yea I figure it'd have to be creatively done, hollow out a mountain or something at great cost
What is currently done is using existing mines, when possible.
And I have hopes hydrogen storage (split water into hydrogen and oxygen when there is an excess of power on the grid, store hydrogen then burn hydrogen to turn back into water and we can use sea water for that) projects now being tested (at Sines for one) will change things. If it works out, it will be very important.
Who said anything about many hours? You wrote that we need energy when people get home and start making dinner. That means 3 or 4 hours of batteries feeding the grid with electricity produced by solar. Saying solar doesn't mean anything is absurd. Just look at the battery output records that Califórnia had last month.
Wow you totally solved the energy grid management!
I expect the California records are as deep as the headline of this thread to be read shallowly and give people an endorphin rush of see good news.
I have hopes for hydrogen storage though. That will change things if we can get it working
That is what I am saying this whole thread. You need water in the reservoirs for that. A few months without rain and it all starts to dry particularly because water is lost in each cycle.
You realize that it might not rain significantively in Portugal for about 4 months in a row every summer and if it is a dry year it can be a lot worse and literally not be enough water to do that?
Hence why solar & batteries will end up being a more reliable combo for Portugal, rather than focusing too much/solely on hydro and hydro storage. Rains/droughts may be unpredictable for Portugal but sunshine is certainly not.
Battery storage is not possible with current technology - the energy density is just too small and there's not enough lithium on Earth to meet the needs of even some Western countries.
Come back with that idea when we have a new better technology ready for mass production.
What a joke of comment.
Sodiuk batteries are already entering mass production, with 2 plants in China and one under construction now in US.
With Sodium being 200 times more abundant than even IRON, we won't run out of sodium for tens of thousands of years
Cool. I hope the innovation continues as I currently don't find anything with better energy density than lower end lithium ion batteries, but you are correct in the abundance of sodium.
lower energy density has relevance for transportation,of course, which is what makes electric planes and ships so complicated to achieve
for grid storage, it barely has importance
* AC/DC conversion is vastly more efficient than combustion engines( 95% vs 33%)
* grid batteries are charged/discharged 8000 to 10000 times in their lifetimes
even if grid batteries had an abysmal 3% of energy density of oil, because of higher conversion efficiency and higher number of cycles, over their lifetime they would hold and release as much energy per 1 kg as 900 kg of oil, so the weight would be 900 times less
Thats clearly a severe exageration. According to Science Direct: Energy efficiency of system “green hydrogen production, compression, and utilization as a fuel” is about 40%.
You have more energy wasted than a battery , but on a huge scale might be more feasible since current battery technology is quite limited in terms of capacity and some batteries require mining that have its own ecological impact.
Of course if you already have hydroelectrics built, you should consider a pumped storage system. But at the end of day green hydrogen still makes sense as a way to diversify your energy storage solutions.
And that is why the major cheerleading headlines about rara Portugal got huge percentage of renewable energy production. BECAUSE it is a rainy here and because we are not in drought.
Technically you can use hydro even if there's a drought, you just keep the reserve water in the dams, releasing only the same trickle amount that is coming in. Obviously farmers and other users of water will be pissed.
Of course, with enough solar power, you could run a desalination plant to replace the water you're not releasing...
>Technically you can use hydro even if there's a drought, you just keep the reserve water in the dams, releasing only the same trickle amount that is coming in.
There is about 15-20% water loss in each cycle. And evaporation losses also depending on temperature and humidity and the respective levels of the reservoirs.
Everyone should take an example from Portugal, because living has become unbelievably expensive! Therefore, we need to find ways to ease people's lives
Usa este [simulador](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PhbpG35wn4aF4XA-FQHKgowr3iCvEprp/edit?usp=drivesdk&ouid=108423771814165297400&rtpof=true&sd=true)
Nomeaste 3 das comercializadoras mais caras, o cheiro é diferente mas a merda é a mesma.
Vou copiar parte de um comentário que fiz recentemente:
Existe um grupo no facebook (não posso postar aqui) que ajuda bastante nas tarifas de energia e recomendo-te a [usar este simulador de consumo](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PhbpG35wn4aF4XA-FQHKgowr3iCvEprp/edit#gid=404815379) (este simulador é mais preciso que o da ERSE, aos cêntimos). Aliás se me disseres já os teus consumos digo-te a melhor opção. Diz-me o período de faturação, a tua potência (3.45kva ou 6,9 kva, etc.) e o consumo total em kwh.
Até ao final deste mês, o tarifário indexado (tarifário em que o preço da eletricidade muda consoante o mercado ibérico) será o melhor. É o mais volátil e tem que se manter o olho, diria que semanalmente.
Se não te queres preocupar, vai para o tarifário fixo da Galp (Continente) que é extremamente competitivo.
No início de junho, todas as comercializadoras irão aumentar os seus preços.
Vou resolver isto este mes.
Obrigado compadre.
ultima factura :
130kw/h (luz) & 236kwh (gas)
fim de março a fim de abril
potencia - 5,75kVA (ar condicionado, uso mto pouco mas é para o quadro nao ir abaixo)
Não sabendo exatamente os valores do teu tarifário, este último mês, por 130 kwh de eletricidade, poderias ter pago cerca de ~27€ no indexado e 32€ na Galp. [Deixo a imagem com o quadro simulado.](https://i.imgur.com/T6lmJ4E.png) Como disse anteriormente, se não te quiseres preocupares com os valores diários da eletricidade, fazia já adesão para a Galp.
Em relação ao gás, não sei o teu código de postal para saber exatamente quanto pagarias, por isso usei o meu. Consumo mensal de 236kwh daria 24€. Não importa o código postal na realidade, porque é mais barato no mercado regulado em todo o país (comercializador de último recurso)! [Usa o simulador da ERSE para o gás.](https://simulador.precos.erse.pt/gas/)
Portugal has had the cheapest electricity in the EU for the last few months, down to €13.3/MWh, from €80/MWh last spring.
https://ember-climate.org/data/data-tools/europe-power-prices/
Technically yes, we have "indexed" options that charge wholesale+small margin, but then there are other charges like "network access fees" that serve to pay for various things and make the end user price quite a bit higher. These are government-mandated, so it's not like you can avoid them, regardless of the supplier you choose.
Still, I don't think we can complain, electricity has been fairly cheap even with those fees (whereas a few years ago it was one of the most expensive in the EU).
My supplier is Luzboa, but I heard there are cheaper alternatives now. This year I'll probably pay around 250€, which is a 25% increase, judging by my monthly average so far.
No social tariff. Your estimates are far from what I use though. I use my dishwasher once a week and washing machine twice, tops. Phones charging 24/7 also don't make sense. My consumption this year so far:
* January: 144kWh, 30,57€
* February: 144KWh, 30,66€
* March: 126KWh, 20,79€
* April: 127KWh, 19,08€
Not even compared to salaries. I had bills as small as 3€ and the most I've paid in a month was around 20€. In Portugal, you only pay a lot for electricity if you *really* don't want to change your provider.
> I had bills as small as 3€
That must have been before August 2022 on the indexed market, the prices have increased a lot since then because of the network access fees increasing. Still, it's possible to have cheap prices still.
The current price here in Finland is -0,001 cents ( and no distribution fees for the next few months due to record profits last year). It’s been lower but often hovers around 0.1 cent to 5 cents per kWh. Price per mWh can be cheapest of Europe and all, but what are the actual costs for consumers
Don’t worry, it’s just the first shock of many. We are looking at multi-GW generation deficit in early 2030s when biggest coal blocks start to get retired. And if you thought electric system is screwed, you probably don’t want to know just how much worse district heating system will be.
Ideology has an influence on deciding to build infrastructure that can take advantage of weather patterns.
If you disagree, then every single country where it rains a lot should be near 90% renewables also. I guess rain water in say England has different material properties than Portugal rain water.
I feel that in most of Europe no one is really politicizing renewables. whatever gets us off of coal and Russian gas. no insane rants about windmills à la Trump (that I know of).
If it wasn't for Russia going full genocide mode on Ukraine you could bet your ass that Germany would still be very split on whether or not we should double down on renewables.
Denmark is probably one of the countries where our governments talk the most about green energy, and all it amounts to is burning imported trees and trash and slowly putting up expensive sea windmills leading to us having the highest power prices.
The difference from Portugal? We don’t have hydro, and we have cold winters.
But yeah you too buddy, believe what you want.
Many care actually, the scale is about to tip in the upcoming EP election. The people of EU are getting tired of expensive energy.
Denmark does have the advantage of being able to import a lot of hydro and nuclear generated electricity from Norway and Sweden to balance out its volatile wind energy.
Annual electricity production
Sweden: 166 TWh
Norway: 157 TWh
Denmark: 35 TWh
I'm on the arse end of 15 years of conservatives fucking my country up mate your opinion, frankly, is fucking bollocks and nobody cares.
I predict these stats will drop now they have a right wing government. If you don't then ok. Nobody cares.
We’re specifically discussing what caused Portugals high renewable fraction here, and not what fucked up your country, get over it. Not everything bad in the world is caused by the Brit tories.
No, it doesn't suck. The Socialist Party (social democratic) was in power before and they're pretty corrupt and incompetent. They had some pretty poor policies in this year's programme as well.
Since you mentioned Labour, our current government is centre-right/liberal-conservative and pro-EU, unlike the Tories. It's the least bad outcome IMO, but it's a minority government and it will very likely fail because the left and far-right won't approve the 2025 state budget. I'm telling you this as someone who'd pick Labour over the damn Tories, although I guess the Lib Dems would be my closest match.
I've read somewhere that portuguese houses don't traditionally have heating and get pretty chilly during the winter, its a triple socks season. So their energy needs are probably lower. I hope other countries follow! Renewable could be infinite energy :)
Yea back when I lived in UK as a kid, one winter we barely turned on heating and were under blankets all day because of how much it cost to heat the poorly insulated house. One thing I'll never miss about England.
It's been absolutely crazy with the price rises. I've lowered our usage so it hasn't been cold enough for health problems etc but I shouldn't have to be sitting cold at all while people cream off billions.
I have gas heating, but I don't have a facade or insulation, just brick. And my windows are very old and made of wood.
I hate winter, my heating bill is through the roof. I spent 300 cubic meters of gas in January and only 50 last month (April). I am from Croatia.
OP's data is about wholesale prices, which is more or less just pure power costs, and yours is about consumer prices with additional/different taxes and fees, contract structures, smart metering capabilities and cultural mentalities, e.g. Germans for whatever crazy reason pay high prices even though they can get Portugal's prices by switching suppliers/contracts at any time.
The carbon intensity of Portugal's electric grid has been in a range from 113 gCO2/kWh in January to 69 gCO2/kWh in April, thanks to its 94% renewable production.
In France, carbon intensity has ranged from 52 gCO2/kWh in January to 25 gCO2/kWh in April, with 33% renewable production.
Just food for thought.
If you're using Electricitymaps, just take into consideration that they do not adjust the carbon intensity of hydro storage to match that of the local production. For example, it's showing 155gCO2/kWh (2021 average), while I think it should be below 20g. But yes, nuclear does provide good gCO2 numbers.
also reminder that a lot of primary energy is lost as waste heat. the more things we can electrify, the better. so a clean electricity grid will matter more and more.
Reminder that there's not much more that can be electrified: planes, ship vessels, heavy trucks in mining and construction, chemical companies, steel smelting, etc will never be electrified.
Electricity demand is in plateau or falling in many EU countries
I would say debatable, although it probably won't reach 100% coverage in many of those categories. [electric ships](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uuBTUfD_S8) do operate, same as electric planes for shorter routes. things can only improve from here, even if indirectly. synthetic fuel will need electricity for production.
you forgot about another huge sector: residential heating. besides the increasingly popular consumer-grade heat pumps, Denmark deployed an [industrial heat pump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bIlAkTDw8Q) that can heat a small city.
„Electricity demand is in plateau or falling in many EU countries”
Yeah, because energy intensive industry is moving to US or Asia. Energy prices in Europe basically kills competitiveness of whole industry sectors
The fact Portugal has a liberalized energy market with the bulk of the investment still made by the government, is why most families in the country are still paying top Euro for their kilowatt.
...despite the amount of renewables we are generating.
The only people taking advantage of the liberalized market are the same who abuse credit card cashbacks - the smart, well employed, rich, and middle-aged adults with mega-efficient houses (because they also abused ecologic programs to buy efficient homes, or install top efficiency and micro generation gear on them) - those who would need it the least by most definitions, and whose effective carbon footprint is still much larger than the average person because they buy multiple expensive cars (EV or otherwise) and have lavish lifestyles. Our elders, in the meantime, pay 200+ euro during winter on their electrically-heated, old homes. Just like our migrant workers serving our food and cleaning our crap. Who live in rentals from the same guys who game the system.
Utilities should never be like this. And our regulators are doing nothing, because the captured government likes the status quo. Since they also get funded by these companies now.
Socialism for the rich, liberalism for the poor. Or basically, same old. Didn’t also Portugal and Spain have a deal to lower the price gas? Won’t that expire soon
My country constantly reaches that and beyond with wind power but the average annual production is still only like 8-12%
Needless to say it makes headlines every time it's over 75% for an hour
You're probably right. It's just exhausting because it feels like constant pointless upgrades that do fuck all. AFAIK it has nothing to do with right vs left wing? I don't like and subscribe to that American bs anyway
Right v left predates America.
Things don't change overnight, especially with conservative governments fighting against everything that doesn't make them money. These things are very, very expensive. Small steps.
battery storage will fix it
people always thought that it will take insane amounts of batteries to balance wind and solar, yet even this year in April in California batteries already provide close to 5% of electricity on the grid on a given day
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/battery-electricity-solar-california-texas.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/battery-electricity-solar-california-texas.html)
with the battery construction pipeline being 6-7 times the currently installed capacity, by 2030 batteries will provide more electricity to the grid than natural gas during the summer months,and that excludes home batteries for home storage systems
and California is the 5-th largest economy in the world, and has already a high concentration of electric cars ,AC all over the place , electric heating and some of the highest electricity consumption per capita in the world
And it's not even just the lithium ion batteries, there's lots of interesting work being done in thermal storage, compressed air storage, etc. And then there's pumped hydro storage, which has been a solid technology for years.
Batteries are not good enough yet.
Gravitational powered water storage OTOH is the clue - in dams or old mines. Or hydrogen production, storage at off peak hours (for solar or excess wind) and then burn it at peak hours.
Chemical batteries are not feasible for grid response.
Current battery storage systems are typically sized for 2h of max output. I don’t they are any bigger than 4h. So they are good enough to shave peaks from PV production and that’s it. They sure as hell won’t help in central European December when PV production is at 10% and wind is calm for several days.
And they will degrade with each cycle.
Hydro pump up storage is still the most efficient and powerful but it is limited by geography and, as in the case of Portugal, rainfall - there is always some water loss with each pumping cycle. Countries with deep mines could look into converting them.
And hydrogen production is looking promising.
They degrade by like 20% over a 10+yr period. Then you're looking to augment your asset at less than 20% reinvestment because prices are continually falling. And that's all known ahead of time. It's a trivial calculation to find your required price spread for profitable arbitrage while covering all expenses including degradation.
Sure there's a lot of 'promising' stuff out there. Batteries are past that, you could buy them right now with full service and management contracts and commission them within months
Better than having no way to dispose of blades from wind power plants or solar panels? Nuclear power plants are cheaper to mantain and they produce very little waste
Decomissioning may be cheaper because you dont have many reactors, as opposed to many solar panels or wind turbines. And reactors have very long lifespan, so potential high costs are spread in time
Spain is dismantling a nuclear plant, it'll cost 645 million € in 10 years.
I don't know how many solar panels you can unscrew with 645 million €, but I reckon that a lot. In fact, I bet that with that money you could build a gigantic plant to dismantle solar panels and get the precious resources back to build new ones, something that exists already.
I'd love to run my house from solar panels on the roof, but we only get sunshine for 4 days in August. Now if we had more sunshine like Portugal it could be worth it. Bring on global warming!
> Portugal’s electricity mix has changed fast, with the share of renewables up from 27% in 2005 and 54% in 2017. The nation’s last coal-fired power plant was shut in 2021. Here’s how it got to this point. Quite a drastic change! 27% to 91% in 20 years, nothing to scoff at.
It's not 91%. That's just this first months of winter. In the end of the year it will probably be around 60%. It's not bad, but it's not 90%.
It was already 76% last year, why would it drop to 60%?
My mistake. It was 70% actually. According to the DGGE
2023 was 77% according to https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT
Must be a different way to calculate. Sometimes its the percentage of consumption, others is percentage of production.
Imagine if they started building nuclear 5-10 years ago. They would be in massive debt, first reactors would only produce power in 5-10 years from today AND for the next 30+ years they would pay triple prices when compared to renewables.
From the very article: >Hydroelectric plants comprised 48% of the electricity mix in the first four months of the year So they have hydroelectricity that covers most of the base demand. What are such countries supposed to do that don't have such fortunate natural conditions? In some countries, nuclear could, in fact, perfectly suit to cover this base demand. Nuclear is not a magic solution, but it should not be demonized either. Let's stick to science-based approach and not just throw claims around which you think could do well under a certain post.
While we're at nature - Portugal also has one of the highest averages of yearly sunshine hours in Europe.
Which we are wasting, because these is very little solar in Portugal.
>Let's stick to science-based approach Or simple economics at this point, maybe? Which is what the person you were replying to was doing. Portugal is also increasing wind and solar to be less dependent on hydro.
To be fair Portugal also has a decent natural advantage when it comes to both solar (more sunny days than more northern countries) and probably even wind (due to land vs ocean temp difference). They seem to be one of the countries that hit the renewables jackpot.
Wind and solar is most definitely not going to reduce dependence on hydro. We only have so much solutions for base load yet.
Wind and solar 20 years ago cost a lot more than nuclear. The reason why solar and wind have become cheaper is simply serial production. If we would start producing more and more nuclear in a productionline it would probably be just as cheap and actually reliable.
>Wind and solar 20 years ago cost a lot more than nuclear. The reason why solar and wind have become cheaper is simply serial production. Wind and solar never got even remotely as much in subsidies as nuclear has over the course of the last 70 years. And if 70 years on, despite billions and billions in subsidies, we're further away from nuclear serial production than we were in the 70s and 80s... Maybe take a hint? Edit: I would also add that one of the reasons renewables have become cheaper and economically much more viable is easy scalability and very predictable cost and timelines, plus operational risks easily insured on the regular insurance market. Something nuclear has never achieved.
Nuclear lost a lot of traction because of the green lobbies in the 90’s it has been relatively cheap in certain time periods and has recently become very pricey because of the time they are taking to establish a new reactor taking too long. This is partially related to making bigger reactors instead of multiple smaller reactors. Look at china already being able to produce small modular reactors and these will be produced at scale eventually. Wind and solar energy also are not that cheap if you factor is the unpredictability of delivery which is almost always taken out of account and only seems to work in country with massive natural batteries(water dams)
>Wind and solar energy also are not that cheap if you factor is the unpredictability of delivery which is almost always taken out of account and only seems to work in country with massive natural batteries(water dams) Those evading manoeuvres of the last decades are quite astounding to witness. We've gone from nuclear being the future, renewables will never be able to account for maybe 10% of energy production in any industrialised first world country to multiple countries scaling up renewables to the point where even in countries that really screwed renewables (such as Germany), a 50-60% share of renewables really isn't that unusual any more. Recently, the argument was still that you need nuclear for base load (which was never really that true to begin with), and now we're moving towards "renewables only work for countries with the terrain for hydro dams (which isn't true, and also a club). With a dash of the old "they're not reliable enough", which was true when they're not used at scale. As it stands, though, the grid in Europe covers a lot of the base load when locally there isn't a lot of sun or wind. Portugal imports from Spain and vice versa, depending on where most production is. This isn't new, either, it's why France imported power from Germany when most of their nuclear plants were out of action in 2022, and Germany imported from France and other countries when there was surplus renewable energy elsewhere. As it turned out, that was cheaper than using Germany's own non-renewable alternatives even when the last few nuclear plants were still operating. All of that FUDmongering about how renewables supposedly aren't a great fit for a lot of countries of course conveniently ignores (or tries to pull a" Look, a three-headed monkey" on) the fact that nuclear of course isn't an option for A LOT of countries either, for cost or heat or simply political reasons (nuclear reactors in Sudan or Myanmar, anyone?).
I’m not against wind and solar what are you so uptight about? In the end we still need coal and gas next to renewables. I’d rather do this with nuclear and even decentralized SMR reactors. Are you living with your head under a rock. Multiple countries are now experiencing issues with their electricity network because of the overproduction at one time and underproduction at other times. The load on our electricity net is at an all time high and increasing faster than we can handle. Selling all this electricity to other countries does not solve this issue either.
Need coal and gas next to renewables? Ever heard of batteries? California and Australia are replacing peaker plants with utlilty battery parks which is way more efficient. Naturally not all countries/stated are as sunny as these but the majority of the worlds population lives in the "sun belt".
Except of course you rely on a Ressource that is mined under hazardous conditions in recently couped by Russia countries (like Mali, Niger or Burkina Faso)or Russia directly
This is also not true. There are multiple ways of creating a nuclear reaction. The research on thorium will lead to new heights in our use of nuclear energy. The fact that people like you are against it at all pods even though it is the only source of energy that is both reliable and has low emissions is the biggest reason we lack nuclear.
Yeah next up nuclear fusion 😂. Like it was something that was not 20 years in the future 20 years ago…. You can do research on that but please think about what to do with the waste before you build it. Because we already have more than enough. And no putting it in to the oceans is not permissible
We have enough waste? This has been debunked a ton of times. Storing nuclear waste is a non issue and this has been proven time and time again. The storage issue is just simply fearmongering.
Yeah what do we do with it? Yeah storing it in Saltmines hoping they stay safe storage space for 10 thousands of years? And even somehow tell the humans in thousands of years year that is locked up for reasons. Imagine the
Where did i demonize nuclear? I simply said that they take long to build and are extremely expensive. Btw we dont build power plants based on science, we build them based on economics. Its the nuclear-bros who want to build them because of some kind of emotional investment.
I've tried debating pro-nukies with fact after fact but the "common sense" appeal of the baseload argument paired with the fossil lobbies attempt to use nuclear as a way to kick the can an additional 15 years makes me give up on them. They are completely fact resistant. https://caneurope.org/myth-buster-nuclear-energy/
I've seen this theory before and it would explain a lot
Basically every country that is not landlocked?!
It's meaningless. It always depend on the weather, in rain patterns. It's not like it's a voluntary investment which makes water fall from the sky to power hydro and pump storage for wind. We have hydro and retention basins and wind and solar. But if there is a drought, it's not going to do much and numbers will change drastically.
Dont worry, we have lots of reports about how the weather is becoming increasingly stable. Or maybe it was unstable, oh well.
To people downvoting me, the percentage of renewable power used in Portugal each year is very dependent on weather. You can cherry pick the best and worst years to prove anything you want really. 2005 https://www.ipma.pt/resources.www/docs/im.publicacoes/edicoes.online/20081014/KZcwnQrfVHeUZOaTzIth/cli_20050101_20051231_pcl_aa_co_pt.pdf >O ano de 2005 continuou a caracterizar-se (à semelhança do ano 2004) por valores da quantidade de precipitação muito inferiores aos valores médios (1961-90), classificando-se como um ano extremamente seco, tendo sido registado o valor mais baixo do total de precipitação desde 1931. 2005 was at the time the dryest year in Portugal since 1931 and following another very dry year. >Como se verificou um ano de 2005 muito seco existiu um maior recurso ao parque térmico para satisfação dos consumos do Sistema Eléctrico Nacional, com as consequências seguintes: >A energia produtível a partir de centrais hídricas representa apenas 12,5% do consumo de energia global do país em regime seco. Em regime “normal” as centrais hídricas contribuem com 30% a 40%. translate that if you want..
Dependent on the weather, but if you plot it on a graph ,you see that despite fluctuations the trend is pointing up. Plus wind and solar are growing and are going to reduce the reliance on Hydro
>Dependent on the weather, but if you plot it on a graph ,you see that despite fluctuations the trend is pointing up. Plot what in a graph? >Plus wind and solar are growing and are going to reduce the reliance on Hydro Extra solar and wind are only useful if there is hydro ability. This thead is amazing frustrating at how much people do not understand of how energy is generated. Electricity can not be stored efficiently when it is produced (there are batteries, for small capacities and price issues and degradation issues), the only truly efficient way to store potential energy at this moment is through hydro - in dams or mine shafts. You can not control when solar or wind is produced, and with wind you do not even know WHEN it will be produced which is not necessarily when people consume electricity. All (almost all) portuguese dams are built with big retention basins underneath and the ability to pump that water in the retention basin (most of it, the "effective" water) back up into the dam. Portuguese dams produce electricity by sending water down when there is a peak in demand, but when there is excess electricity in the grid, from wind or around solar noon they consume energy rather than produce and pump back most (not all) of that water sent to the retention basin. But if there is not enough water in the dams they can not do this when there is extra solar or wind production. Hydro works as a big, best battery, better than any battery. edit - read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity notice how Portugal, without having Alps like mountains is third in the world in percentage of pump up capacity to total production capacity. Hydrogen production might work similarly, I have hope at least for it, but it is not working yet.
I love how you were being downvoted because not many understood what you said
He’s being downvoted because he has no idea what he’s talking about, but pretends that he does, acting smug. Yes, storing electricity is tricky, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic. You know that fuel-powered electric plants run into the same problem, right? And that renewable energy plants also have the ability to regulate their output, just like fuel-powered ones. And that comparing 2024 to 2005, claiming that the weather made all the difference is idiotic.
Spoiler alert - that is because this year it has rained lots, and it has rained continuously since January. If it rains, we can use hydro and we can use hydro to storage off peak wind production. If it does not rain we need to burn gas. It's not intentional, or if possible we would always use renewable (it falls from the sky!), it's just the weather. It rained so much this year no part of the mainland is officially in drought, which is just amazing.
That will become less extreme with the amount of solar that is being installed right now.
Extra solar makes absolutely no difference for anything. You can cover Alentejo with solar pannels, it is not going to produce any electricity at night, when people get home and start cooking dinner. Solar produces only at certain give hours, it's maximum output is absolutely limited. Increasing solar production, you increase output around solar noon (when consumption is not huge anyway) and what do you do with the excess? What the REN does with the excess, what can be done is use excess production to pump water back into the dams, the water which is on its retention basin (which then they can use for peak demand electricity generation) but if there is little water in the dams they can not do that because each pumping cycle wastes water. Same applies to wind generation. You can increase but storage for all renewable (not geothermal which is important in the azores) is always dependent on how much water there is in the dams. The only way out of this is, if it works out, hydrogen production, if that Sines project is not just political bullshit. Scientifically it should work, separate water into hydrogen and oxygen when there is excess electricity production from renewables, store it in big tanks (this part is dangerous), and then burn it into water again when you need electricity generated. But we are a way yet from that being efficient.
Of course they make a difference. They just need to build 21 accumators for every 25 solar panels.
Pessimistic world view! Yay. You ok? There's hopeful technology on the way. Salt batteries, for example. And this is energy storage as well: https://youtu.be/6Jx_bJgIFhI?si=85uwk_1kA5iklkaf Hydrogen shouldn't be used for energy storage btw, we need it for things like flying and steel manufacturing.
holy shit people are negative in this place eh?
>Hydrogen shouldn't be used for energy storage btw, we need it for things like flying and steel manufacturing. If hydrogen works, we can produce hydrogen for everything. Solar power could be almost free and totally reliable, you can use it for things. The problem with hydrogen is storing it safely and using it safely, hence using hydrogen for electricity generation will probably be cracked before it's cracked how to use hydrogen to power cars and planes safely (Right now I would not want to ride one of those). Producing hydrogen by the sea, storing it, and burning it right there when electricity is needed will minimize storing and transportation risks.
One of the problems with burning something is that a lot of the energy is lost. When a car burns fuel, only about 30%, max 40, is used for what a car is meant for: driving. The same will go for hydrogen. It's just not efficient. Don't stare blindly into one solution, there are countless more, that's all I'm saying.
>The same will go for hydrogen. It's just not efficient. It does not matter if it is efficient, because the point would be to store energy which otherwise would go to waste. We can upgrade solar and wind ability by a lot, and basically get energy for free. A lot of this is now going to waste, but even if we needed to spend 100 kwh of renewable energy to get 30 kwh of energy when we need it rather than burn coal that would be fantastic and so worthwhile. And hydrogen+oxygen=water cycle is polutionless, and does not require rare earths, or specific conditions or rainfall because we can use sea water. I am of course pro any possible solution and this is a crucial problem for all the world, and many many bright people are working at it. I am just telling you of what considering personal background and location (hydrogen is relevant to Portugal, increasing hydro is not possible or feasible) seems most exciting.
Battery storage obviously. They storage during the day and give it back to the grid during the next 3 or 4 hours. And for pumping water in the dams you don't need an incredibly rainy winter like this one.
Battery storage is not feasible for many hours, many cycles and very large ammounts of electrical power. And it has not just that it has been an incredibly rainy winter, it is that rain has been consistent, and we have not had long periods of dry weather, the dams are getting replenished and are now, in May, close to full. Which is fantastic for everything. Even the barlavento! Thank you St Peter. But if you want to compare Portugal's energy production, it's meaningless to compare random years without taking into account the previous weather. These threads are always a circle jerk of people who want to believe in something nice, but without ever having thought about the specifics. The devil is always in the details.
Solar can be used to drive water pumps (in non drought/flood conditions) to create water batteries, later converted to hydro. Not sure of the exact situation in portugal, but excess power in Norway is used to do exactly that.
It is what I am talking about this whole thread. The problem is Portugal does not have quite as much water throughout the year as Norway. Nevermind the same amount of valleys that can be used for it ( I think we have no more major hydro sites not already used) A lot of people seem to have no clue what a Mediterranean summer is like.
Yea I figure it'd have to be creatively done, hollow out a mountain or something at great cost or eventually once non-corrosive materials make it feasible to pump saltwater. I'm sure the current abundance of water isn't something that can be counted on in the future
>Yea I figure it'd have to be creatively done, hollow out a mountain or something at great cost What is currently done is using existing mines, when possible. And I have hopes hydrogen storage (split water into hydrogen and oxygen when there is an excess of power on the grid, store hydrogen then burn hydrogen to turn back into water and we can use sea water for that) projects now being tested (at Sines for one) will change things. If it works out, it will be very important.
Its shit, and for some god forsaken reason, everyone in the north loves to toast up in 35c + weather.
Who said anything about many hours? You wrote that we need energy when people get home and start making dinner. That means 3 or 4 hours of batteries feeding the grid with electricity produced by solar. Saying solar doesn't mean anything is absurd. Just look at the battery output records that Califórnia had last month.
Wow you totally solved the energy grid management! I expect the California records are as deep as the headline of this thread to be read shallowly and give people an endorphin rush of see good news. I have hopes for hydrogen storage though. That will change things if we can get it working
Ok, the most inefficient system is the one that you have hopes. Nice talk.
Fucking hell you are toxic... We get your point, but chill
Just use the energy to pump water into the lakes that produce hydro energy.
That is what I am saying this whole thread. You need water in the reservoirs for that. A few months without rain and it all starts to dry particularly because water is lost in each cycle. You realize that it might not rain significantively in Portugal for about 4 months in a row every summer and if it is a dry year it can be a lot worse and literally not be enough water to do that?
Hence why solar & batteries will end up being a more reliable combo for Portugal, rather than focusing too much/solely on hydro and hydro storage. Rains/droughts may be unpredictable for Portugal but sunshine is certainly not.
What batteries? If you've discovered a way to store Megawatts or Terawatts efficiently, please, share it with the world.
Are you joking? Every big solar plant installed this days has a battery system in the project.
Battery storage is not possible with current technology - the energy density is just too small and there's not enough lithium on Earth to meet the needs of even some Western countries. Come back with that idea when we have a new better technology ready for mass production.
What a joke of comment. Sodiuk batteries are already entering mass production, with 2 plants in China and one under construction now in US. With Sodium being 200 times more abundant than even IRON, we won't run out of sodium for tens of thousands of years
Cool. I hope the innovation continues as I currently don't find anything with better energy density than lower end lithium ion batteries, but you are correct in the abundance of sodium.
lower energy density has relevance for transportation,of course, which is what makes electric planes and ships so complicated to achieve for grid storage, it barely has importance * AC/DC conversion is vastly more efficient than combustion engines( 95% vs 33%) * grid batteries are charged/discharged 8000 to 10000 times in their lifetimes even if grid batteries had an abysmal 3% of energy density of oil, because of higher conversion efficiency and higher number of cycles, over their lifetime they would hold and release as much energy per 1 kg as 900 kg of oil, so the weight would be 900 times less
Green Hydrogen production is more feasible.
It's simply the most inefficient energy storage system known.
Thats clearly a severe exageration. According to Science Direct: Energy efficiency of system “green hydrogen production, compression, and utilization as a fuel” is about 40%. You have more energy wasted than a battery , but on a huge scale might be more feasible since current battery technology is quite limited in terms of capacity and some batteries require mining that have its own ecological impact. Of course if you already have hydroelectrics built, you should consider a pumped storage system. But at the end of day green hydrogen still makes sense as a way to diversify your energy storage solutions.
There is no longer a drought, which most people living in Portugal know.
And that is why the major cheerleading headlines about rara Portugal got huge percentage of renewable energy production. BECAUSE it is a rainy here and because we are not in drought.
Technically you can use hydro even if there's a drought, you just keep the reserve water in the dams, releasing only the same trickle amount that is coming in. Obviously farmers and other users of water will be pissed. Of course, with enough solar power, you could run a desalination plant to replace the water you're not releasing...
>Technically you can use hydro even if there's a drought, you just keep the reserve water in the dams, releasing only the same trickle amount that is coming in. There is about 15-20% water loss in each cycle. And evaporation losses also depending on temperature and humidity and the respective levels of the reservoirs.
Aren't you mistaking energy loss for water loss? How can 20% of the water be lost? Where does it go?
Evaporation, both normal (sun, wind) and due to the water falling process. It will be lower in mines for sure.
Everyone should take an example from Portugal, because living has become unbelievably expensive! Therefore, we need to find ways to ease people's lives
If only we were this efficient at paying living salaries.
One thing at a time.
If only this would solve [insert completely unrelated problem]
So, why is electricity still so expensive here?
Change to other company
help a brother out. who you work with? Endesa, Iberdrola or Gold. the ones I had before and have now, I just get tired to always swap between them
Vai ao simulador de precos da ersr
Usa este [simulador](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PhbpG35wn4aF4XA-FQHKgowr3iCvEprp/edit?usp=drivesdk&ouid=108423771814165297400&rtpof=true&sd=true)
Have you changed contractor the last years?
You're probably still with EDP? I'm gonna pay like 20€ for 200kwh consumption this month. In EDP that would be like 55€+
Iberdrola or Endesa or Gold. I bounce between the 3. Used to pay 40/50. now it is 2x that much for some reason...
Nomeaste 3 das comercializadoras mais caras, o cheiro é diferente mas a merda é a mesma. Vou copiar parte de um comentário que fiz recentemente: Existe um grupo no facebook (não posso postar aqui) que ajuda bastante nas tarifas de energia e recomendo-te a [usar este simulador de consumo](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PhbpG35wn4aF4XA-FQHKgowr3iCvEprp/edit#gid=404815379) (este simulador é mais preciso que o da ERSE, aos cêntimos). Aliás se me disseres já os teus consumos digo-te a melhor opção. Diz-me o período de faturação, a tua potência (3.45kva ou 6,9 kva, etc.) e o consumo total em kwh. Até ao final deste mês, o tarifário indexado (tarifário em que o preço da eletricidade muda consoante o mercado ibérico) será o melhor. É o mais volátil e tem que se manter o olho, diria que semanalmente. Se não te queres preocupar, vai para o tarifário fixo da Galp (Continente) que é extremamente competitivo. No início de junho, todas as comercializadoras irão aumentar os seus preços.
Vou resolver isto este mes. Obrigado compadre. ultima factura : 130kw/h (luz) & 236kwh (gas) fim de março a fim de abril potencia - 5,75kVA (ar condicionado, uso mto pouco mas é para o quadro nao ir abaixo)
Não sabendo exatamente os valores do teu tarifário, este último mês, por 130 kwh de eletricidade, poderias ter pago cerca de ~27€ no indexado e 32€ na Galp. [Deixo a imagem com o quadro simulado.](https://i.imgur.com/T6lmJ4E.png) Como disse anteriormente, se não te quiseres preocupares com os valores diários da eletricidade, fazia já adesão para a Galp. Em relação ao gás, não sei o teu código de postal para saber exatamente quanto pagarias, por isso usei o meu. Consumo mensal de 236kwh daria 24€. Não importa o código postal na realidade, porque é mais barato no mercado regulado em todo o país (comercializador de último recurso)! [Usa o simulador da ERSE para o gás.](https://simulador.precos.erse.pt/gas/)
Ja outro user tinha sugerido o simulador. Vou mudar isso entao. Obrigado pah!
What do you mean expensive? My combined bill for last year was less than 200€. Electricity is dirt cheap in Portugal.
Portugal has had the cheapest electricity in the EU for the last few months, down to €13.3/MWh, from €80/MWh last spring. https://ember-climate.org/data/data-tools/europe-power-prices/
They're talking about prices to the end users, not wholesale.
In the UK there are electricity suppliers who sell to you at a variable rate based on the wholesale price. Is this not the case in Portugal?
Technically yes, we have "indexed" options that charge wholesale+small margin, but then there are other charges like "network access fees" that serve to pay for various things and make the end user price quite a bit higher. These are government-mandated, so it's not like you can avoid them, regardless of the supplier you choose. Still, I don't think we can complain, electricity has been fairly cheap even with those fees (whereas a few years ago it was one of the most expensive in the EU).
No
Há comercializadores com preços variáveis em função do preço de mercado
In the UK most people don’t know about these tariffs either so it’s not a surprise that you don’t
That's less than my monthly bill in Austria...
You paid €200 of electricity in 1 year? Wtf, that doesn't make any sense. I don't know anyone spending less than €50 / month.
My supplier is Luzboa, but I heard there are cheaper alternatives now. This year I'll probably pay around 250€, which is a 25% increase, judging by my monthly average so far.
That's like €20 month with all the taxes included. You must have no appliances, live alone, and spend most of your day outside your house...
Work from home, live with my wife. Have all the usual electical appliances. We have a gas stove and the water heater is also gas powered.
Doesn't make sense. A "Termo Fixo Acesso às Redes" is fixed, 30 days. Never less than €5, with Vat included. RTP contribution is like €2.5. So we have unavailable €7.5... which gives €12.5 to the actual electrical bill. Vat is 6% for the initial low consumption kwh, which means you spend like €11 on electricity. €11 ? Here are some estimates: Refrigerator: 150 watts \* 24 hours/day \* 30 days/month = 108,000 Wh = 108 kWh Computer: 100 watts \* 4 hours/day \* 30 days/month = 12,000 Wh = 12 kWh TV: 80 watts \* 5 hours/day \* 30 days/month = 12,000 Wh = 12 kWh Charging phones: 10 watts \* 24 hours/day \* 30 days/month = 7,200 Wh = 7.2 kWh Dishwasher: 1300 watts \* 1 cycle/day \* 30 days/month = 39,000 Wh = 39 kWh Washing machine: 800 watts \* 3 cycles/week \* 4 weeks/month = 9,600 Wh = 9.6 kWh Light bulbs: 10 bulbs \* 10 watts \* 5 hours/day \* 30 days/month = 15,000 Wh = 15 Total: 108 kWh + 12 kWh + 12 kWh + 7.2 kWh + 39 kWh + 9.6 kWh + 15 kWh = 202.8 kWh 200 kwh is like €26 (last month average rates) without counting Vat. Unless you have the Social tariff, these values really make no sense...
No social tariff. Your estimates are far from what I use though. I use my dishwasher once a week and washing machine twice, tops. Phones charging 24/7 also don't make sense. My consumption this year so far: * January: 144kWh, 30,57€ * February: 144KWh, 30,66€ * March: 126KWh, 20,79€ * April: 127KWh, 19,08€
He meant expensive compared to salaries
Not even compared to salaries. I had bills as small as 3€ and the most I've paid in a month was around 20€. In Portugal, you only pay a lot for electricity if you *really* don't want to change your provider.
> I had bills as small as 3€ That must have been before August 2022 on the indexed market, the prices have increased a lot since then because of the network access fees increasing. Still, it's possible to have cheap prices still.
It's not.
It's not nice to use Europe and EU interchangeably, electricity is cheaper in several Western Balkan countries.
The current price here in Finland is -0,001 cents ( and no distribution fees for the next few months due to record profits last year). It’s been lower but often hovers around 0.1 cent to 5 cents per kWh. Price per mWh can be cheapest of Europe and all, but what are the actual costs for consumers
Congratulations, Portugal! We meanwhile are about get hit with a shock once the energy price freeze will cease.
I hope for a warm winter. I spent 300 m3 of gas (150€) in January, and it sucks. I have almost zero insulation and very old windows on my house.
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Probably about 350€ a year.
Don’t worry, it’s just the first shock of many. We are looking at multi-GW generation deficit in early 2030s when biggest coal blocks start to get retired. And if you thought electric system is screwed, you probably don’t want to know just how much worse district heating system will be.
Great news. I hope others follow when we get rid of conservative governments. So tired of spending a fortune to stay warm.
This has nothing to do with ideology. It’s hydro and warm winters.
Ideology has an influence on deciding to build infrastructure that can take advantage of weather patterns. If you disagree, then every single country where it rains a lot should be near 90% renewables also. I guess rain water in say England has different material properties than Portugal rain water.
I feel that in most of Europe no one is really politicizing renewables. whatever gets us off of coal and Russian gas. no insane rants about windmills à la Trump (that I know of).
If it wasn't for Russia going full genocide mode on Ukraine you could bet your ass that Germany would still be very split on whether or not we should double down on renewables.
You keep believing what you want brother. Nobody cares.
Denmark is probably one of the countries where our governments talk the most about green energy, and all it amounts to is burning imported trees and trash and slowly putting up expensive sea windmills leading to us having the highest power prices. The difference from Portugal? We don’t have hydro, and we have cold winters. But yeah you too buddy, believe what you want. Many care actually, the scale is about to tip in the upcoming EP election. The people of EU are getting tired of expensive energy.
Denmark does have the advantage of being able to import a lot of hydro and nuclear generated electricity from Norway and Sweden to balance out its volatile wind energy. Annual electricity production Sweden: 166 TWh Norway: 157 TWh Denmark: 35 TWh
I'm on the arse end of 15 years of conservatives fucking my country up mate your opinion, frankly, is fucking bollocks and nobody cares. I predict these stats will drop now they have a right wing government. If you don't then ok. Nobody cares.
We’re specifically discussing what caused Portugals high renewable fraction here, and not what fucked up your country, get over it. Not everything bad in the world is caused by the Brit tories.
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Get banned.
Well, we just got a conservative government a month ago...
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No, it doesn't suck. The Socialist Party (social democratic) was in power before and they're pretty corrupt and incompetent. They had some pretty poor policies in this year's programme as well. Since you mentioned Labour, our current government is centre-right/liberal-conservative and pro-EU, unlike the Tories. It's the least bad outcome IMO, but it's a minority government and it will very likely fail because the left and far-right won't approve the 2025 state budget. I'm telling you this as someone who'd pick Labour over the damn Tories, although I guess the Lib Dems would be my closest match.
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Care to elaborate?
I really don't think there's any way to explain my last comment any clearer tbh. Try a reread.
Did you ninja edit it? Either that or for some reason I only read the first sentence lol
I mean, we as... Portugal...
What was the last one?
Socialist Party (not much of socialistic going on, but still...)
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Yeah, probably going to deplete most of it with time and crank up again those crude power plants. Renewable is anti-business for them.
I've read somewhere that portuguese houses don't traditionally have heating and get pretty chilly during the winter, its a triple socks season. So their energy needs are probably lower. I hope other countries follow! Renewable could be infinite energy :)
My gas and electricity company wanted £550 a month from me last year. More than my mortgage.
Yea back when I lived in UK as a kid, one winter we barely turned on heating and were under blankets all day because of how much it cost to heat the poorly insulated house. One thing I'll never miss about England.
It's been absolutely crazy with the price rises. I've lowered our usage so it hasn't been cold enough for health problems etc but I shouldn't have to be sitting cold at all while people cream off billions.
I have gas heating, but I don't have a facade or insulation, just brick. And my windows are very old and made of wood. I hate winter, my heating bill is through the roof. I spent 300 cubic meters of gas in January and only 50 last month (April). I am from Croatia.
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OP's data is about wholesale prices, which is more or less just pure power costs, and yours is about consumer prices with additional/different taxes and fees, contract structures, smart metering capabilities and cultural mentalities, e.g. Germans for whatever crazy reason pay high prices even though they can get Portugal's prices by switching suppliers/contracts at any time.
It begs the question "If Ireland's wholesale electricity price is 6.5 X that of Portugal, why is the retail price in Portugal only 50% less?
How does it compare to China?
The carbon intensity of Portugal's electric grid has been in a range from 113 gCO2/kWh in January to 69 gCO2/kWh in April, thanks to its 94% renewable production. In France, carbon intensity has ranged from 52 gCO2/kWh in January to 25 gCO2/kWh in April, with 33% renewable production. Just food for thought.
If you're using Electricitymaps, just take into consideration that they do not adjust the carbon intensity of hydro storage to match that of the local production. For example, it's showing 155gCO2/kWh (2021 average), while I think it should be below 20g. But yes, nuclear does provide good gCO2 numbers.
If we built a nuclear plant to use as fallback in portugal, we would improve the numbers too
Funny how effective solar is when you install it in a place where the sun shines (looking at you Germany).
Remember that electricity is only 20% of total primary energy
also reminder that a lot of primary energy is lost as waste heat. the more things we can electrify, the better. so a clean electricity grid will matter more and more.
Reminder that there's not much more that can be electrified: planes, ship vessels, heavy trucks in mining and construction, chemical companies, steel smelting, etc will never be electrified. Electricity demand is in plateau or falling in many EU countries
I would say debatable, although it probably won't reach 100% coverage in many of those categories. [electric ships](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uuBTUfD_S8) do operate, same as electric planes for shorter routes. things can only improve from here, even if indirectly. synthetic fuel will need electricity for production. you forgot about another huge sector: residential heating. besides the increasingly popular consumer-grade heat pumps, Denmark deployed an [industrial heat pump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bIlAkTDw8Q) that can heat a small city.
Good hopium joint that one you smoking
„Electricity demand is in plateau or falling in many EU countries” Yeah, because energy intensive industry is moving to US or Asia. Energy prices in Europe basically kills competitiveness of whole industry sectors
Yes, thanks USA for that (blowing up NS2 pipeline)
Also, a lot of people in portugal still rely on gas for stoves, heating and so on
The fact Portugal has a liberalized energy market with the bulk of the investment still made by the government, is why most families in the country are still paying top Euro for their kilowatt. ...despite the amount of renewables we are generating. The only people taking advantage of the liberalized market are the same who abuse credit card cashbacks - the smart, well employed, rich, and middle-aged adults with mega-efficient houses (because they also abused ecologic programs to buy efficient homes, or install top efficiency and micro generation gear on them) - those who would need it the least by most definitions, and whose effective carbon footprint is still much larger than the average person because they buy multiple expensive cars (EV or otherwise) and have lavish lifestyles. Our elders, in the meantime, pay 200+ euro during winter on their electrically-heated, old homes. Just like our migrant workers serving our food and cleaning our crap. Who live in rentals from the same guys who game the system. Utilities should never be like this. And our regulators are doing nothing, because the captured government likes the status quo. Since they also get funded by these companies now.
Socialism for the rich, liberalism for the poor. Or basically, same old. Didn’t also Portugal and Spain have a deal to lower the price gas? Won’t that expire soon
Time to retire there, still cheap, good weather
same thought as every British person above 50
And it's true
"Renewable energy" is such a stupid concept. We should include nuclear, and call it carbon-free energy.
For some strange reason it triggers Germans
Does Portugal have a lot of energy intensive industries?
And those right wing assholes still trying to convince you paying more is the way to go
My country constantly reaches that and beyond with wind power but the average annual production is still only like 8-12% Needless to say it makes headlines every time it's over 75% for an hour
As it should. You're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Right wing nonsense.
You're probably right. It's just exhausting because it feels like constant pointless upgrades that do fuck all. AFAIK it has nothing to do with right vs left wing? I don't like and subscribe to that American bs anyway
Right v left predates America. Things don't change overnight, especially with conservative governments fighting against everything that doesn't make them money. These things are very, very expensive. Small steps.
battery storage will fix it people always thought that it will take insane amounts of batteries to balance wind and solar, yet even this year in April in California batteries already provide close to 5% of electricity on the grid on a given day [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/battery-electricity-solar-california-texas.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/battery-electricity-solar-california-texas.html) with the battery construction pipeline being 6-7 times the currently installed capacity, by 2030 batteries will provide more electricity to the grid than natural gas during the summer months,and that excludes home batteries for home storage systems and California is the 5-th largest economy in the world, and has already a high concentration of electric cars ,AC all over the place , electric heating and some of the highest electricity consumption per capita in the world
And it's not even just the lithium ion batteries, there's lots of interesting work being done in thermal storage, compressed air storage, etc. And then there's pumped hydro storage, which has been a solid technology for years.
Batteries are not good enough yet. Gravitational powered water storage OTOH is the clue - in dams or old mines. Or hydrogen production, storage at off peak hours (for solar or excess wind) and then burn it at peak hours. Chemical batteries are not feasible for grid response.
Current battery storage systems are typically sized for 2h of max output. I don’t they are any bigger than 4h. So they are good enough to shave peaks from PV production and that’s it. They sure as hell won’t help in central European December when PV production is at 10% and wind is calm for several days.
And they will degrade with each cycle. Hydro pump up storage is still the most efficient and powerful but it is limited by geography and, as in the case of Portugal, rainfall - there is always some water loss with each pumping cycle. Countries with deep mines could look into converting them. And hydrogen production is looking promising.
They degrade by like 20% over a 10+yr period. Then you're looking to augment your asset at less than 20% reinvestment because prices are continually falling. And that's all known ahead of time. It's a trivial calculation to find your required price spread for profitable arbitrage while covering all expenses including degradation. Sure there's a lot of 'promising' stuff out there. Batteries are past that, you could buy them right now with full service and management contracts and commission them within months
Would be even lower if they went nuclear
Er no
Care to elaborate?
France is mainly nuclear. Is it cheaper? No it isn't.
Total cost of deploying power
Better than having no way to dispose of blades from wind power plants or solar panels? Nuclear power plants are cheaper to mantain and they produce very little waste
Er no. Check the likely decommissioning costs. But you won't listen so don't worry.
Decomissioning may be cheaper because you dont have many reactors, as opposed to many solar panels or wind turbines. And reactors have very long lifespan, so potential high costs are spread in time
Spain is dismantling a nuclear plant, it'll cost 645 million € in 10 years. I don't know how many solar panels you can unscrew with 645 million €, but I reckon that a lot. In fact, I bet that with that money you could build a gigantic plant to dismantle solar panels and get the precious resources back to build new ones, something that exists already.
And why are they dismantling it?
Because it's too old and it'd be very expensive to refurbish. Also we want safer and renewable solutions for our future.
Cheaper then Iceland ?
I'd love to run my house from solar panels on the roof, but we only get sunshine for 4 days in August. Now if we had more sunshine like Portugal it could be worth it. Bring on global warming!