Neither could French nuclear plants when they were turned off for weeks at a time for emergency maintenance.

So, France fired up the gas.

5x cheaper electricity, on the other hand, makes power-to-gas economic, which can smooth out seasonal variations in a carbon neutral way.

Isn't power to gas still ridiculously inneficient?

Last I checked it seemed like something pushed by gas companies since it upholds gas infrastructure and most of the intermittence is currently supported by gas.

It's very costly compared to normal gas but it's still marginally cheaper to use solar and roundtrip p2g to use on a cold, windless night than it is to use nuclear power produced on any day of the year.

There's just zero economic incentive while polluting gas is dirt cheap and maxxed out solar and wind rarely even covers 100% of current electricity demand.

How is it marginally cheaper? We don't even do it anywhere to a notable degree and it would make obvious sense to do so if it was cheap. Also I suspect this presumes that these gas plants and gas infrastructure cost nothing since they already exist.

>There's just zero economic incentive while polluting gas is dirt cheap and maxxed out solar and wind rarely even covers 100% of current electricity demand.

It requires that we go beyond that 100% and as we do the incentives for it drop and the economic case for polluting gas goes up.

It's windy and sunny in the winter too.

Ahhhhhhh . . . it's Australia.

Winters here have more sunshine than UK summers.