Solar Leads EU Electricity Generation As Renewables Hit 54% (electrek.co) 146
Renewables generated 54% of the EU's net electricity in Q2 2025, with solar power emerging as the leading source at nearly 20% of the total mix. Electrek reports: According to new data from Eurostat, renewable energy sources generated 54% of the EU's net electricity in Q2 2025, up from 52.7% year-over-year. The growth came mainly from solar, which produced 122,317 gigawatt-hours (GWh) -- nearly 20% of the total electricity generation mix. June 2025 was a milestone month: Solar became the EU's single largest electricity source for the first time ever. It supplied 22% of all power that month, edging out nuclear (21.6%), wind (15.8%), hydro (14.1%), and natural gas (13.8%). [...]
In total, 15 EU countries saw their share of renewable generation rise year-over-year. Luxembourg (+13.5 percentage points) and Belgium (+9.1 pp) posted the most significant gains, driven largely by solar power growth. Across the EU, solar made up 36.8% of renewable generation, followed by wind at 29.5%, hydro at 26%, biomass at 7.3%, and geothermal at 0.4%.
In total, 15 EU countries saw their share of renewable generation rise year-over-year. Luxembourg (+13.5 percentage points) and Belgium (+9.1 pp) posted the most significant gains, driven largely by solar power growth. Across the EU, solar made up 36.8% of renewable generation, followed by wind at 29.5%, hydro at 26%, biomass at 7.3%, and geothermal at 0.4%.
Meanwhile here in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Meanwhile here in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
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I have seen a few of them panicking because Trump is taking away things that they need to live. But they never realize the mistake they made they are just confused because they can't comprehend why this great man would do these things to them.
They really do think of trump as a father who protects them not as a sleazy nepo baby and pedophile.
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The really stupid ones (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't get angry at that level of stupidity because whether it's nature or nurture it's definitely not her fault. She just doesn't have the capacity to process information to figure out the right course of action and who really is on her side.
Now the little fuckers who are just indulging in moral panics like the current trans panic or the drag queen thing or freaking out about violent video games or whatever the fuck excuses they come up with to vote for right wing politicians those guys could go fuck themselves. They know damn well what they're doing and they know the risks and they just do it anyway because they think they will personally get away with it and be able to stick it to whatever group of people whether it's gamers or queer people or whatever that they've decided they don't like.
Those people can absolutely take a long walk off a short pier. And there's a bunch of them on this website
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For a fascist, everyone else is extreme left. For obvious reasons.
Re:The really stupid ones (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I draw the line at being willing to apply violence to others. That is where you go from "mentally incapable but may be essentially a good person" to "evil" and I see people as fully responsible for their actions. Because that is when they leave what freedom for everybody means and try to oppress others.
Hence being MAGA but "live and let live" (something that likely exists even if I cannot wrap my head around it): Ok, I can accept that. Maybe dumb, but does not want to cause harm. At the very least I will give you "let live" back. That I also why I have no problem with conservatives that have honor and integrity. You can find common ground with them because they understand that that this is about the whole, not only their part in this and and that others may see things differently and that is ok.
But trans panic, anti video games, anti rock-music (historically), bathroom-panic, foreigner-panics, vaccine-panic, etc.: No. You are willing to violate, brutalize, torture, oppress and kill others. And then you go straight into the "evil" camp. Example: The ICE camps. Decent people do not do things like that to other people. A thing like that is only done by people that think of others they do not like as less than human.
Re:The really stupid ones (Score:4, Insightful)
If you actually gave the tiniest of shits about women's safety, you wouldn't have helped elect a rapist President who, we can all be sure, did foul things to under 18 girls on Epstein's island, and who has been leading a government that is actively seeking to harm women, with preventing them taking a safe, effective and commonplace painkiller during pregnancy being just one prominent recent example.
Get a fucking grip, you imbecile. Get a sense of fucking proportion. Rapists can now rape knowing their victims must carry their babies to term in multiple statess, but oh no, let's just ignore that and pretend you care about a tiny number of assaults in locker rooms.
Re:The really stupid ones (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny how a moralistic person like you can put a convicted felon, rapist, serial-liar and fraudster into office. None of the issues you claim have any real relevance in practice, because they are rare. But a president who clearly is scum and dumb as bread? You seem to have no problem with that.
They haven't answer for that (Score:2)
One of the nice things about holy books from 2,000 years ago is they are a mishmash of thousands of different writings cobbled together by people who never intended for lay people to actually read.
So it doesn't matter what you believe you can be guaranteed you will find a reason to believe it in any of these ancient holy books.
I gather with the Quran the absolu
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but there's clearly been cases of girls facing sexual assault in restrooms and locker rooms because of Democrat policies
Really?
Can you cite a case? One single case?
There are an estimated 423,020 rape cases per year in the United States. Surely one of these must be what you're talking about, right?
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Have you been so disconnected from national news that you heard of none of these cases? Here's a couple... https://apnews.com/article/lou... [apnews.com] https://www.foxnews.com/media/... [foxnews.com]
Interesting. In the first one,
Not sure that really had much to do with trans kids using girls' bathrooms.
The second case was not a sexual assault, but an example of a fight breaking out.
Re:The really stupid ones (Score:4)
no issues from this change in polices (sic) on trans in schools but there's clearly been cases of girls facing sexual assault in restrooms and locker rooms
This claim should be easy enough to prove if it is true. So, prove it. The state of Utah, in open court, claimed that there were zero such instances ever documented, so you have a LOT of proving to do.
(I don't care about trans people; either for or against. They are just another person to me, even if they are fucked up in the head. (please don't look inside my head))
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but there's clearly been cases of girls facing sexual assault in restrooms
Yes we can stop sexual assault in restrooms by putting signs on the door that only certain people may enter...
I knew American education was in a bad state but I honestly did not believe any system could produce a moron like you.
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but there's clearly been cases of girls facing sexual assault in restrooms and locker rooms because of Democrat policies that fail to recognize the biological distinctions between male and female
Okay, I'll bite. Show me one.
And, you do know, right, that forcing people to use the bathroom that is based on their birth certificate doesn't solve this (made up) problem, either, right? Because, clearly a transman (female on birth certificate, transitioned to man and looks very much like a man), under laws that force use of bathrooms based on birth certificates, would be forced into a women's restroom. So you still have the problem of men being in a women's restroom.
If you look at the evidence, states
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'Cause he's a legend in his own mind - more and more, the less and less that remains.
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They do. Their problem is that they are so deep into the cult, that Stockholm Syndrome is massive and they cannot even see simple things and simple connections anymore. That is assuming they could do so before they joined the cult. I am more and more doubtful that was ever the case. It really seems most people cannot even see simple and obvious connections in many/most cases.
I mean, some of them think that tariffs are payed by the exporter and things like that where it takes a mentally capable person 1 minu
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We are about to hand out 600 million to coal companies. Those donations to Trump were money extremely well spent.
Yup, 'cause those renewables, generating 54%, are a scam; that's Trump told the U.N. anyway.
(Guess he would know. More seriously, if he actually believed that, he'd be all -in on them. /s)
Re:Meanwhile here in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Meanwhile here in the US (Score:5, Informative)
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Its partially a diversion
He also does this so his insiders can make a killing on trading.
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its all a diversion to stop you talking about things like the Epstein files and other grifting he's doing or about to do
Such prolific grifting; someone should nominate Trump for the Nobel Fleece Prize. :-)
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I hadn't heard of this before so I thought I'd look into it. Since the article being discussed is from electrek.co I thought I'd go back to electrek.co as a source on what this $600,000,000+ investment means:
https://electrek.co/2025/09/29... [electrek.co]
$350 million to restart or upgrade old coal plants, improving their capacity and reliability.
That's keeping existing coal power plants online to meet the immediate need for electrical generating capacity than waiting for new wind and solar capacity to be built. I'd hate to see the USA put in a place where there's something that causes a sudden loss of electri
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Re:Meanwhile here in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
That's keeping existing coal power plants online
No, it's "restarting and upgrading" existing coal plants. Some of those were already closed due to age, some are scheduled to close soon. In practically all cases they're closed or closing due to not being economically viable anymore, maintenance and running costs exceeded revenue - they simply couldn't compete.
Instead they're being propped up with a short-term cash handout, but when that's burned through they'll just close again. That $350 million could've been spent on new renewables & storage instead (staged build-out of those can be very fast, months not years), but instead we're stuck with expensive and polluting coal for another few years.
there's considerable value in maintaining reliable and low cost energy to rural areas
Certainly true! Which is another reason why we shouldn't be propping up uncompetitive generation. Building new solar is so much cheaper [canarymedia.com] than existing coal that the savings from early replacement of coal plants pays for significant amounts of battery storage as well - and that's before including $350m of coal upgrade costs.
It's not great to see natural gas power but it's better than coal, right?
Not necessarily [cornell.edu], it can be significantly higher. Methane leakage from processing, storage, and transport can have a vastly higher impact than CO2 (and it all ends up lingering as CO2 anyway).
If we oppose improvements because it is not the perfect solution then we get nowhere.
Like how you've been opposing solar all these years?
So, this is about keeping natural gas power online so there's no reversion to burning coal?
It means keeping coal boilers hot by burning gas - co-firing [fossilconsulting.com] is a common strategy for supplementing or transitioning coal plants with gas.
this is somehow expanding the use of coal when that is not the case
Of course it is expanding the use of coal. Your own post's quote says it's "restarting" plants that were closed - and it's certainly propping up plants that have been closing across the USA [ieefa.org] for years now. It's expanding coal use today, and expanding it compared to what it would be tomorrow.
What I'm seeing is an effort to keep the lights on over the next winter or three so that we don't see people freezing to death
Straw man. You'll find people are much more worried about their power bills than blackouts. We need cheaper energy, and this is not delivering that.
We need to consider reality in our energy options.
Something I've been suggesting to you for a long time now. In the real world, coal is just plain uncompetitive, even without considering external costs like pollution and climate impact, and gas is not much better. Firmed renewables are much cheaper [gasoutlook.com] across most of the US, and have the additional bonuses of not killing 91,000 people a year [earth.org] or
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we are seeing so much growth in energy demand that it would be impossible to meet that at lower cost with renewable energy alone.
Citation needed.
That is ignoring the time element involved. It takes time to install these solar PV panels and get battery storage on the grid
It takes time to upgrade aging coal plants too. Can you cite an actual lead-time comparison study, or is this just your opinion?
But I thought you were worried about shortages - and you're insisting no new coal plants are being built. If only existing plants are being upgraded, how is that going to address these potential energy shortages?
Meanwhile, build times for new solar plants are measured in months [energyaction.com.au], wind only a little more. New coal plants take years, and nuclear up to a decade (or more
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$350 million to restart or upgrade old coal plants, improving their capacity and reliability.
That's keeping existing coal power plants online
You apparently don't know the meaning of the word "restart".
If they are online, you don't restart them. You restart plants that are not online.
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that's the classic republican dodge around the point. they're slippery, you gotta watch them.
What point is being "dodged" here?
they've got $600 million for coal now but have fought tooth and nail against all those better options we could have implemented for years and decades at this point so we we wouldn't have had to spend 600 million on coal in 2025.
If you want to make this a Republican vs. Democrat issue then consider how Democrats have opposed building new nuclear power plants for something like 50 years. I've seen something of a reversal on this opposition develop about 5 years ago with Andrew Yang saying nice things about nuclear power during his campaign to become POTUS but little has come from it since. We'd likely not have had to invest $600,000,000+ in keeping coal power plants open if we'd had not seen Democ
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If this investment in extending the life of coal power is a bad idea then I'd like to see a plan that lays out a solution that could have been implemented at lower cost, in less time, and reduced CO2 emissions and air pollution.
that's the classic republican dodge around the point. they're slippery, you gotta watch them.
$600 million in batteries (or other power storage technologies) would go a long way.
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That... isn't a lot of money.
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It's the perfect amount of money.
It's not enough to do anything visibly useful, and not so much that it would be hard to account for it all... so when it all vanishes into private pockets with nothing to show for it, most people won't bother investigating too hard.
=Smidge=
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If you insist on keeping obsolete industries alive, that does not go well if others move into the future.
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Mining of the fucking shit manages to survive because some people literally get off on the idea of puking that shit into the atmosphere if it pisses off the coasties.
What's the price? (Score:2)
Okay, what's the average residential and commercial grid power cost across the EU? How has that changed over the last 20 years?
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Well yeah, they shouldn't. The EU is an excellent opportunity to to monitor the effect on residential and commercial power rates of adopting wind and solar on a large scale. Buying natgas from Russia wasn't really the point.
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US and Russia both have a dick for a government. It's Dangerous Dick and Little Dick. Little Dick is orange
Aside from that antagonism. Perhaps its practical, US couldn't keep up the supply and its vulnerable floating across the Atlantic. There are already pipelines in place to EU.
Someone wants to keep the door open to Russia for a chance at peace when the current madness ends or at least for it not escalate to nukes.
I expect sneaky Ivan planned an EU dependence on gas from the start as leverage. EU has lea
Re:What's the price? (Score:4, Informative)
Here are official average numbers, with history, but not for 2025 yet. If you read the chart, the costs for the second half of 2024 are about 28 euros/100 kWh, and 22 without taxes.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/... [europa.eu]
And here is a website without averages but with current values, down to the last 15 minutes, for each country or region.
https://kwhprice.eu/en [kwhprice.eu]
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https://qery.no/consumer-energ... [qery.no] Evolution is flat 2014-2021, then a big jump with the war, then stable again.
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The residential price of electricity is often based on the most expensive source, which is usually gas.
For example, in the UK we have a bidding system where suppliers bid to sell energy a day in advanced, based on predictions of demand. Their offers are taken up starting with the cheapest and working up the list to the most expensive, until the predicted demand is met. Renewables typically bid zero and are the first to be used, followed by gas. Nuclear has a sweet deal where we have to buy their overpriced
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Okay, what's the average residential and commercial grid power cost across the EU? How has that changed over the last 20 years?
It's gone up because in the Europe the price for electricity is exclusively set via peak marginal pricing which means on the entire power grid regardless if you are nuclear France, wind Sweden, or coal Poland, the price you pay for electricity is almost exclusively determined by the price of gas since gas peakers generate the peak marginal price 97% of the time.
And the price is up because of the cutting off of Russia's gas.
How is that possible? (Score:2)
Here in Finland I was just checking my electricity bill. It tells me that 13% of my electrical energy came from renewables. The rest being from nukes and fossils. Perhaps that is a up a couple of % from a few years back but not much.
I pay the spot price for my electric. Notably when there is little wind and solar the spot prices go astronomical.
Just for giggles my electric company says I can sign up for electric 100% from renewable carbon free sources. BUT I have to pay more for that. You kidding me?
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Here in the UK, I checked mine, it says:
Carbon emissions: 0 g/kWh (uk average 171 g/kWh
Renewables: 84.8% (uk average 43.2%)
Nuclear: 15.2% (uk average 12.7%)
Gas: 0% (uk average 35%)
Coal: 0% (uk average 6.3%)
I probably do pay a bit more for my day time electricity than other suppliers, but no one beats my off peak (night time) rate, and I often get a few "bursts" of off-peak rate during the day, all my EV changing is at the off peak rate and sometimes they do a hour of free electricity (so it's not definite
Europe mostly uses fossil fuel for heating (Score:3)
Fortunately, the numbers pencil out (Score:2)
Fortunately, solar, wind (and battery storage) are cheaper than fossil and nuclear power. This keeps the greedy capitalists happy to invest in green energy.
Even the massive subsidies for fossil fuels can't overcome solar and wind cost advantage.
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I don't think you know what word salad means, I gather that's become sort of slang for "I don't like what you are saying". You are right, currently Australian electricity is about 50% coal, the intention (it won't happen) is to get it to 81% renewable by 2030, 90%+ by 2035, and 95%+ by 2050. I'm advocating for nuclear with a sensible amount of wind and solar and gas and storage. It doesn't make the slightest difference what we do in Australia, we could switch the entire country off and China's CO2 output wo
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Single country's CO2 output does matter. If big, developed economies can demonstrate that net zero is not just not harmful to their prosperity, but actually improves their lives and their wealth, others will follow.
As it happens it looks like China is going to be the one to prove that, and to reap the biggest gains from it. Massive amounts of cheap, clean energy, and a huge export market for the technology and know-how.
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Sure, but to put that in perspective, they added [climateenergyfinance.org] 54 GW of coal in 2024 - and 80 GW of wind, and 277 GW of solar. Nuclear was just 4 GW.
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China's CO2 output has peaked and is now falling.
Australia has massive renewable energy resources, much of which could be exploited as it far exceeds what is needed domestically. But it has failed to exploit them and is being left behind. The next big economic boom is passing Australia by as other countries take full advantage, e.g. China.
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I'm advocating for nuclear
To be clear you're advocating for nuclear in a country with no nuclear power, no finance industry that supports nuclear, no construction industry with nuclear capabilities, an inability to store nuclear waste from even the 20MW reactor they have, and with an existing nuclear industry who say they lack the expertise to manage nuclear power plants, all the while every single state has actual laws on their books outlawing nuclear power?
You have political opposition, industry opposition, and local opposition.
I'
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Our east coast grid is transitioning away from coal power stations build in the 1970s through state governments subsidizing private industry via "auctions" to invest in wind and solar farms etc.
The Liberal-National opposition proposed overturning a moratorium on nuclear power. Our 2025 federal election was held and with their nuclear policy they ended up with fewer seats in parliament.
Voters were unconvinced.
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By the sound of it, he’s arguing that in a 100% renewable electric grid, to keep outages from rare production lulls—like multi-day periods that are both overcast (cutting solar) and calm (cutting wind)—to less than once per decade, you’d need about 3 days’ worth of energy storage. That’s plausible. Even a 30-day stretch producing only 90% of demand could be buffered with that reserve.
Australia’s annual electricity use is around 200 TWh, so 2 TWh is roughly 1%—
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Sodium would be cheaper still, and last longer.
Mentioned Sodium Ion. (Score:2)
I mentioned Sodium though? $400B AUD for LFP, $100B AUD for sodium.
And right now LFP cells are tested to last longer than Sodium Ion. But they are supposed to theoretically be able to last longer than LFP, which is why I said there's room for R&D to extend that.
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I think you're being massively pessimistic on battery life. We already see that EVs routinely degrade much less quickly than was expected, with states of health better than 85% after a decade. I fully expect many EVs to have plenty of serviceable range at 20 or 30 years of age. And of course, an EV battery is stressed much more than a power grid reserve battery: smaller enclosure, deeper discharges, greater range of temperatures, less effective active cooling, etc. I would expect it to be possible to get 30
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I might be being pessimistic, but I'm not being massively so like the original poster, who was assuming replacement every 15 years. I was pushing that out to 20-30 and suggesting even longer. But, well, I wanted to stick to tested information. And most of that information is with EVs at this point, not grid reserve. We shall have to see.
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We don't see $100 USD/kWh in Australia, although admittedly I don't know how much of the build cost is the battery itself - the following is our newest BESS, Liddell.
Australian energy major AGL has seen its 1,000MWh Liddell battery energy storage system (BESS) in New South Wales (NSW) enter AEMO’s Market Management System.
The 500MW/1,000MWh grid-scale battery system registered with AEMO on 30 September and is now ready for commissioning and testing phases. AEMO’s Market Management System is the
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Please stop with the word salad. Say something short and simple and then let me talk.
First, it's difficult to be "short and simple" on such a complicated topic. Second, it's not like my posting comments on Slashdot is somehow interfering with your ability to also post comments.
It should not be difficult to understand how a large storm system can leave an area the size of Australia lacking in wind and solar power for a day and therefore requiring enough backup energy storage to ride that storm out and have enough energy left over for a safe recovery. I gave only three short paragraphs to e
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It is the military advantage that nuclear fission provides that has caused Australia to invest in nuclear powered submarines.
FFS do you need someone to explain to you why wind and solar don't work underwater on a submarine?
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FFS do you need someone to explain to you why wind and solar don't work underwater on a submarine?
Do you need someone to explain the current arguments against civil nuclear power in Australia? Apparently that is the case.
I'll take this article as an example on opposition to nuclear power, which raises six points to opposing nuclear power in the future: https://www.acf.org.au/news/si... [acf.org.au]
When it comes to the claim that nuclear power plants take "too long" to build there's the matter of longevity once that plant is built. There will be a growing need for energy in Australia, or most any nation, so startin
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1. Too long -argument has two variations.
A) Too long for the climate change. We need clean energy 7 years ago, not after 10 years. This is something new nuclear can not do. But at the same time it mandates that we keep all old nuclear plants running.
B) Too long to be profitable. Energy markets are changing rapidly. It is a huge risk to make big investments now where you see results only after 10 years. (more about this in 3. point)
2. I agree, nuclear is extremely safe. Even the waste is safe. I have no pro
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Oh but that's his thing. Long rambling posts few have the energy to wade through and debunk.
It's kind of brilliant really, I know I have no interest in wading through his stupid long posts to debunk his nonsense. I get tired just looking at his posts and skip them.
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To be fair Slashdot has a regular that has been harassing the user rsilvergun for years (as in pre COVID) complete with supposed personal details like where he lives and even what are supposed to be pictures of him. It's pretty disappointing it's still going on. You'll often see AC posts on here meant to impersonate rsilvergun complete with the his user signature at the bottom of the post which is funny because AC posting doesn't apply sigs.
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Because I have links on the standby just for this occasion.
If you haven't seen this happening you're completely oblivious though. It's slowed down some but this person was posting daily with this stuff for years. My hope is that my reporting of the posts has made a difference as I've been reporting them as spam (because that's what they are) for the last few months.
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"Word salad" is an indicator for somebody that actually does not have rational thoughts on the matter. Rational thoughts would have structure.
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Source? Those are wildly overblown costs - did you get them from a study, or Sky News? Even the pro-nuclear Coalition's favoured modelling showed a fraction of that.
More realistically, CSIRO puts it at $500 billion [csiro.au]. AEMO themselves say $122 billion [cpb.com.au]. And even these costs will be easily repaid in the long run, with cheaper energy and slashed pollution - not to mention reducing the GDP hit from climate change, which could be trillions [igcc.org.au].
Your weather link states that the risk of renewable "droughts" is overstate
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the time for a storm system to move through an area reliant on wind and solar
That's why grids are widely distributed, far wider than any storm system. In Australia's case, the NEM includes connected generation sites many thousands of kilometres apart. Mainland US is even more widely connected. No storm covers more than a fraction of that, and the rest of the grid is producing normally.
[Battery] costs get very large very quickly when scaled up to cover the needs of the electrical grid.
Good thing they never need [sciencedirect.com] to cover the entire grid then (thanks to ishmaelflood for the link!). Historically, production would have never dropped more than 30% over any two week period, and even this
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That's based on historical data. https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
Yes, we often get calm cloudy conditions for days at a time across the entire east half of the continent.
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You should actually read the conclusions of that article. It does not bolster your case.
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From the linked paper:
A historically wor
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I also seriously doubt your 15 years figure. Current tec
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Utterly dumb whataboutism.
In this case, yes, energy costs more than all health-care combined. That is quite normal and standard. It is in no way a problem, because an energy grid is used by everybody 24/7. A healthcare system is not. Foe example, in Germany, healthcare is around 13% of GDP, energy is around 48% of GDP. These numbers are normal.
There is only one word for what you are doing here: Evil. Yes, I get that you are likely to stupid to see that.
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Spain, for unknown reasons, decided to fix the power factor of their inverters, meaning they could not respond to grid instability.
The word inertia is loaded in this instance. A grid doesn't need inertia. It needs the ability to buffer.
You get that for free with rotating mass, but you also get it for cheap in supplies without rotating mass.
This kind of problem can take down even sm
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Ireland has converted some old fossil generators to large spinning mass to help provide buffering and storage. Seems like a decent use for those old plants, and cheap to operate.
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In principle battery storage can do inertia on the side with just a change in the control algorithm. So if you are building lots of battery storage, there might not be much use for the retrofit synchronous condenssrs eventually. More of a stop gap.
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The core thing is that this is a management and engineering failure issue, not a lack of tech that can do it.
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I sincerely doubt it was engineering that made the following decisions:
We only need 18MW of inertia in our system, and no ability to condition inverter-based power, meaning it's fucking useless once the spinners come to a stop.
Fucking asinine. Real grids are not made this way. Their failures are not representative of renewables as a whole.
The cynic in me says someone with decision making power wanted that to fail.
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The cynic in me says someone with decision making power wanted that to fail.
Probably not. My take is somebody did bad management and/or embezzlement and did not understand where "cheaper than possible" engineering starts. They did get a lot of attention for that abysmal fail though and a repetition is not very likely. I would say that in a way these are normal growing pains when you go to a new technology. Stupid? Yes. Avoidable? Yes. Human standard MO? Yes, for some humans and you always have some of those. Regular house-cleaning is needed to keep them under control.
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System inertia is indeed important for a resilient grid - but that no longer requires "spinning mass". For example, see grid-forming inverters [siemens-energy.com].
they remove energy from the grid than add to it like thermal power plants.
And they can add it back again - they're storage systems, not sinks. Turns out, on-demand load is just as valuable for a balanced grid as on-demand supply - even more so when the grid includes non-load-following power plants like coal or nuclear.
trying to maximize renewable energy use on the grid as a kind of "bragging rights"
"Bragging rights" has nothing to do with it, they were maximising renewables because they're so damned inexpensive - just l
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Inertia is pretty much synonymous with grid forming. Small and medium solar generation is not grid forming because that's how it has been regulated. It's not an inherent property.
With the right control algorithm any PV inverter can be as grid forming as a steam turbine with a flywheel and generator. If it has no spare power it can not add voltage support, but it can always carry energy across a cycle through its capacitors to force phase and frequency to change only slowly (ie. have inertia).
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What brought the Iberian electrical grid down wasn't I2R losses but unconstrained variations in frequency. Once the Iberian and French grids got too far out of sync that connection was dropped and failures kind of cascaded from there. Or something to that effect.
Those interconnects are HVDC. There is no "sync".
Frequency change is a symptom, not a cause. The cause was a lack of control over reactive power which then caused voltage instability.
Try reading - https://aelec.es/wp-content/up... [aelec.es], https://www.lamoncloa.gob.es/c... [lamoncloa.gob.es] (try google translate if your spanish isn't up to scratch), and https://d1n1o4zeyfu21r.cloudfr... [cloudfront.net]
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I can agree that there's issues with load following with large thermal power plans like coal and nuclear but that's a separate issue of loss of inertia from inverter based production like wind and solar. We could see battery energy storage to address the matter of load following but with this we'd need to see something on the grid providing inertia to maintain stability in voltage and frequency.
Where are you getting this?
Any inverter can condition power and form a "grid" with "system inertia".
The fact that not all do doesn't mean they don't exist.
A power grid does not need spinning mass.
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Inertia can be electronic (grid forming statcoms).
That can be combined with battery storage, which can be combined with (not so) rotating reserve, such that the batteries remove the need of running it at minimal power all the time.
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Bla, bla, blubb. You do not understand the analyses you read. This was not an engineering issue, it was a management issue. The only real problem the European grid has is France. with is unreliable nuclear power. They are slowly fixing that, but it takes time.
The problems with pumped hydro storage, battery energy storage systems, and flywheels is that they remove energy from the grid than add to it like thermal power plants.
That statement is so wrong and utterly dumb, I do not even know where to start. Do you know anything at all about power grid engineering? Apparently not.
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and the inertia the grid needs as something of a "free" service
There's nothing "free" about inertial services. They are billed at insane costs in a submarket of the electricity grid to the point that there's whole companies who make profit just by providing inertia.
You know the best inertial source we have from a technical point of view right now? One that is orders of magnitude better at keeping a grid stable than coal plants? Batteries. - Something which the EU is building a lot of.
Please get yourself a clue.