As wind and solar power provide a growing share of Europe’s electricity¹, understanding and accommodating their variability on multiple timescales remains a critical problem. On weekly timescales, variability is related to long-lasting weather conditions, called weather regimes^2,3,4,5, which can cause lulls with a loss of wind power across neighbouring countries⁶. Here we show that weather regimes provide a meteorological explanation for multi-day fluctuations in Europe’s wind power and can help guide new deployment pathways that minimize this variability. Mean generation during different regimes currently ranges from 22 GW to 44 GW and is expected to triple by 2030 with current planning strategies. However, balancing future wind capacity across regions with contrasting inter-regime behaviour—specifically deploying in the Balkans instead of the North Sea—would almost eliminate these output variations, maintain mean generation, and increase fleet-wide minimum output. Solar photovoltaics could balance low-wind regimes locally, but only by expanding current capacity tenfold. New deployment strategies based on an understanding of continent-scale wind patterns and pan-European collaboration could enable a high share of wind energy whilst minimizing the negative impacts of output variability.

随着风能和太阳能在欧洲电力中的份额越来越大¹，了解和适应它们在多个时间尺度上的变化仍然是一个关键问题。在每周的时间尺度上，可变性与长期的天气状况有关，称为天气状况^2,3,4,5，这可能会导致邻国失去风能而导致停顿⁶. 在这里，我们展示了天气状况为欧洲风力发电的多日波动提供了气象解释，并可以帮助指导新的部署路径，以最大限度地减少这种变化。目前不同制度下的平均发电量从 22 吉瓦到 44 吉瓦不等，按照目前的规划策略，预计到 2030 年将增加两倍。然而，平衡未来跨地区的风能与不同地区间的行为——特别是部署在巴尔干半岛而不是北海——几乎可以消除这些输出变化，保持平均发电量，并增加整个船队的最低输出量。太阳能光伏发电可以在当地平衡低风区，但只能通过将当前容量扩大十倍。