We are selling our "excess" natural gas to Germany like crazy since Russia cut off the gas pipeline. Natural gas is used to make electricity in Europe as well as for heating until all their windmills and solar panels are built. It may take 30 years to put up enough windmills in the North Sea and enough solar panels to supply their power. Same here. It won't happen overnight.
Texas has enough windmills installed in west Texas to power 1/3 of the state, but most people live in east Texas where the power is needed. There are only enough transmission lines to bring only 8% of the power produced east. They they need large battery installations to store the excess power when people aren't using it so it can be used during peek periods. This is the same problem Europe is having, transmission lines and power.
Germany is using excess wind power to make hydrogen gas from water and pushing it into the natural gas system. They can't get over 20% hydrogen without changing out all the burner tips, but it is part of the solution. They also are not going to shut down two nuke plants that were to be shut down this year.
France produces 80-85% of their power from nukes, but they had a drought this year and were worried they wouldn't have enough water to cool the reactors and might have to shut some down. Water levels are low in their rivers.
England is in the best shape. Scottland now produces 98% of their power from windmills. England just brought on a huge nuclear reactor + wind from the North Sea.
Europe's average cost of electricity is about $0.93/kwh, which is more than gasoline for charging electric cars. Wind and solar have been more expensive than they figured. They shut down many nuke plants prematurely, and they were dependent on Russian natural gas for heating and running power plants, which is now shut off. Russia claims they can't get parts and compressors from the west for their gas pipelines. Don't know how true this is.
This is what is going to happen in the US by building 100's of windmills and installing lots of solar panels without building the infrastructure that goes with them. Same with mandating electric cars without getting the charge times down, the range up, and the cost down, and the grid needs about 30 years of work to prepare for electric cars.
