Hydro is a good complement to solar and wind. I am customer of an utility company which delivers 100% renewables, with help of hydro - Elektrizitätswerke Schönau. And they are not more expensive than others - rather, they could keep prices stable during the Ukraine war gas crisis, which led to very high costs for electricity contracts. This is the mix they use. Extremely nice and competent company!
I still prefer to switch on large appliances like dishwasher and laundromat at the times with the highest proportion of renewables in the German grid. That’s usually at 2 pm (14:00) on halfways sunny days, and 2 am (2:00) in times with a bit of wind. There is even a web site, peakpick.de, where you can look up the time of the day which has the most green energy on the phone. No need to pay a single Euro more than absolutely needed to companies that steal our future. Fuck them.
I think the bigger point is that most places have built enough hydro infrastructure that any new hydro is neither cheap nor has a low impact on environment. The age of cheap and easy hydro is kinda gone.
Now we can still have partial upgrades and rebuilds to increase hydro capacity. Sadly, very few places are feasible with modern tech that weren’t possible ~30-50 years ago
Hydro is a good complement to solar and wind. I am customer of an utility company which delivers 100% renewables, with help of hydro - Elektrizitätswerke Schönau. And they are not more expensive than others - rather, they could keep prices stable during the Ukraine war gas crisis, which led to very high costs for electricity contracts. This is the mix they use. Extremely nice and competent company!
I still prefer to switch on large appliances like dishwasher and laundromat at the times with the highest proportion of renewables in the German grid. That’s usually at 2 pm (14:00) on halfways sunny days, and 2 am (2:00) in times with a bit of wind. There is even a web site, peakpick.de, where you can look up the time of the day which has the most green energy on the phone. No need to pay a single Euro more than absolutely needed to companies that steal our future. Fuck them.
BTW I hate fossil industry astroturfing.
I think the bigger point is that most places have built enough hydro infrastructure that any new hydro is neither cheap nor has a low impact on environment. The age of cheap and easy hydro is kinda gone.
Now we can still have partial upgrades and rebuilds to increase hydro capacity. Sadly, very few places are feasible with modern tech that weren’t possible ~30-50 years ago