Charge point is installed this week so will drop out to a very rare user of public charging, at which point I will massively favour rock up and contactless banks of rapids, because convenience rules, and I'm happy to pay for it 🤷
As a newly minted EV driver, and still awaiting a home charge point installation, I'm in the honeymoon period of even thinking DC charging is cheap compared to petrol as you're charging £15/£20 per time rather than a £60-70 fill up. I know factually, this is not true on a $/km basis but it's nice.
That is obviously fantastic, and what makes it better is the way the presenter is dressed, and the set, makes it look like it might be going out on children's TV. A lot of bemused five year olds in Germany.
While that is true, what is actually also key to show, and I forgot to mention, is cooling demand. Soaks up masses of the peak PV especially.
Of course means Spain will be hitting the renewables integration problems harder than most (negative pricing, peaky times during cold weather etc), but watch out for it becoming a hot bed for things like e-methanol production and the like - a whole new industry to power GDP.
It's the model the UK went/is going for, but unfortunately gas is just too central to the economic model currently (will slowly change). Spain doesn't have the millstone of wide spread gas residential heating for example which means cheap electricity hits home harder and faster.
Welcome to Cardiff. The land of endless blue skies and a free fake bird for every building owner. What brings you to South Wales?
So back to the central question, are we reliant? Structurally no, we could ban all imports. Would be bad, bad news for electricity costs though as it means burning a hell of a lot more very expensive gas (spot prices of 91p/therm, about 100% higher than historic average)
In English, this means half the time the ESO doesn't expect the French ICs to be available at times of system stress. Doesn't sound like the ESO is planning big reliance on them, does it?