What Grids are 90% or More Green

What grids can Colorado look to to emulate?

Column by me in The Daily Sentinel
If we want reliable, carbon-free energy, nuclear must be in the mix

Colorado is officially trying to make our grid 95% green. And at present to do so primarily with wind and solar plus batteries and interconnections. So I figured, let’s look at who has accomplished this so far.¹

hydro power

We have countries that have done so primarily with hydro power:

• Iceland (with a significant geothermal component)

• Norway

• Paraguay²

• Quebec, Canada

• Sweden (heavy nuclear component)

• Switzerland (heavy nuclear component)

And countries that have done so primarily with nuclear:

• Finland (heavy hydro component)

• France

• Ontario, Canada

• Slovakia

Finally countries that have done so primarily with wind and solar

• Denmark

There are some very small countries (Luxemburg) and very poor countries (Ethiopia) that are 90% green. But they’re essentially one power plant for the entire country so not a useful example.

So we have Denmark. They are very dependent on pulling power from their neighbors when the wind dies and the sky is overcast. They’re small and their neighbors are large. And two of those neighbors are Norway & Sweden producing green power they can purchase.

A lot of countries are trying to get to this point using wind & solar. Germany & the UK are the best examples. They’re stuck at about 60%, are using coal plants as backup, and have their neighbors threating to disconnect from the grid because of how they spike the wholesale price of power when the wind stops blowing.

So if we look at what has worked historically, it’s hydro and nuclear. We’ve dammed pretty much everything we can in the U.S. So that leaves nuclear.

Maybe Colorado could be the first largish state to be primarily wind & solar without neighbors that produce significant amount of excess green energy. But it’s a risky bet to say we can accomplish something no one else has succeeded at.

A safer bet is be like France³ while watching Germany⁴ to see if they can succeed. Although with the voter pushback in Germany and the U.K., they may both switch from wind & solar to N2N.⁵ In which case going nuclear will be the clear choice.

1. Great discussion on reddit on this issue.

2. One dam produces 1000% of the power they need - wow.

3. Build nukes.

4. Attempting primarily wind & solar.

5. Natural Gas to Nuclear.