Nuclear Monitor #939
Jan van Evert
A new study of the so called dunkelflaute problem, a period in winter when there’s a combined lack of solar and wind power, shows that this is a minor problem. Scientists of the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands studied multi-year meteorological and power production data of eleven countries surrounding the North and Baltic Sea areas. Previous studies only investigated single countries such as The Netherlands and Belgium. It was found that almost all periods tagged as Dunkelflaute events (with a length of more than 24 hours) are in November, December, and January. On average, there are fifty to a hundred hours of dunkelflaute happening in each of these three months per year. Even though the possibility of simultaneous dunkelflaute events in neighbouring countries can be as high as thirty to forty percent, such events hardly occur simultaneously in all the eleven countries. Through an interconnected European power system, the mean frequency of dunkelflaute drops from three to nine percent for the individual countries to about 3.5 percent for the combined region.
This interconnectivity was discussed on 24th April 2023, when nine countries gathered in Ostend – on invitation of the Belgian government – for what is known as the North Sea Summit. The nine countries agreed to produce 300 GW of wind power by 2050. The ‘Ostend declaration’ also mentions: “We will further endeavour to accelerate deployment of offshore renewables and connectivity within the maritime area…”.
To perform their study the scientists investigated meteorological circumstances in all Scandinavian countries, The UK, Ireland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Poland and Lithuania
Sources:
A Brief Climatology of Dunkelflaute Events over and Surrounding the North and Baltic Sea Areas. Energies, 14(20), Article 6508. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14206508
Ostend declaration: https://northseasummit23.be/en/ostend-declaration/
