Germany's new Economy Minister Katherina Reiche on Friday called for the rapid construction of new gas-fired power plants in the country to support the country's energy supply when renewable sources are unavailable
She said it was important to "quickly move to tender at least 20 gigawatts of gas-fired power plants to maintain energy security."
Reiche ruled out a return to nuclear energy
"This means we need to conclude the relevant free trade agreements with Chile, Mercosur, India, Australia and Mexico. And I explicitly say, we also need the United States of America," Reiche said.
When do I need 50GW? I do have the already built methane, hydro and biomass power plants to give me a sort of baseload. Then I modulate on that using batteries to meet peak demand. So I only need enough to meet the difference between that baseload and the actual load. In the case of no wind and solar I charge at night, when load is low and power the grid at day, when the load is high.
Doing that a grid can use less flexible power plants, like biomass power plants converted from coal power plants and it means I only need enough power plants to meet average daily demand and not peak demand. It is also possible to predict, when those plants are needed using a weather forecast.
Batteries are incredibly useful anyway for say summer nights without wind. Just store some solar electricity from the day, for the night. That is actually the more likely situation.