The first place on the list of the 15 countries with the largest share of solar and wind is occupied by Denmark, which is not really a surprise to me. What is a surprise is the second position, occupied by Uruguay with 44% of its electricity generated by solar and wind. When it comes to solar and wind, I heard a lot about for example Denmark, Germany and (South) Australia, but not yet about Uruguay.
That got me somewhat curious, wondering what the story of Uruguay is in order to cope with such a large share of intermittent power sources. I already wrote about the strategies of for example Denmark (having two big neighbors with a lot of dispatchable hydropower to balance out the intermittency on the Danish grid) and Germany (exporting its surplus to the neighboring countries at low to negative prices). Now what is the strategy of Uruguay?
First things first. I know Uruguay is a country somewhere in South America, but that is about it. I wouldn’t be able to point it out on a map, so let’s start there. Uruguay is a relatively small country on the East coast of South America. I colored it in red on this map and also named its two (big) neighbors: Brazil to the North-East and Argentina to the South-West.
Trust, yet verify 