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Disappointing DW didn't include hydropower in the price comparison graphic. Also would have been interesting to see where offshore wind stacks up, though tbh I'm not sure the math is even in yet for offshore wind
The issue with hydropower is that you can only build as much hydropower as your geography allows, and it can come with severe environmental repercussions if you go too hard.
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
Hydro is definitely highly geography dependant, and certainly the environmental impact can be severe. Though there's also been great advancements in smaller scale "low head" hydro where you don't need to submerge half a valley or block migratory paths. Hence curiosity where hydro stacks up.
I suppose it's so geography dependant you can't make a meaningful global average to compare with other forms.
Then again in my particular neck of the woods solar is limited at best, for half the year. While the local landscape is nothing but mountains, valleys , lakes and rivers. So many lakes and rivers.
Another neat thing about hydro is that it's a renewable base load. Geothermal is another, but that's also highly geography dependant
Gravitation water vortex power plants seem to be more flexible and have less environmental impact than traditional hydro power.
Though the tech still seems to be in its early stages.
I think it goes even further, you can even use it as a long-term energy store, entirely disconnected from any rivers, possibly entirely underground which also avoids the environmental repercussions of blocking off rivers and creating big artificial lakes. I feel like this is an underresearched/underfunded field, solar power is kinda desperate for energy storage technologies especially in countries closer to the poles.
It'd also complex, expensive, and takes many years to build.