https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources&we...
Look at the beginning of the week on 18.December and Wind+Solar are only 5% to electricity production. Over 50% now. 5% then.
What is the end game here? Duplicate the whole infrastructure and have backup coal/gas/nuclear plants for half the time? That is why Germanys electricity prices are so high.
France: 17 cent per kwh vs Germany: 29 cent per kwh
Getting off fossil fuels. Specifically, it's something called the "European Grid Vision" [1]
The short version is advances in long range power distribution using DC transmission lines mean we can transmit power further with less loss than traditional high voltage AC lines. ABB has done wonders in rolling out HVDC technology [2].
But what does this have to do with the variable duty problem you ask? Alternative energies are hard to grid precisely because they are so variable as you observed. But with efficient transmission you could, for instance, collect solar in North Africa to provide power to the continent as well as pump up water into dammed fjords in Scandinavia which can be drained at night to through hydro-electric supplies. Wind in Germany or Tarifa can supplement dams one week, which can be drained the next. And of course there is always geo-thermal and nuclear.
So yes, today one needs the backup coal/gas/nuclear plants but not by 2040 in the updated roll-out schedule.
The endgame for Germany is wind + Russian gas, see Nordstream2.
You can't really compare that. The 17 cent are not real prices in a competitive market. In France electricity production is mostly monopolistic & state owned - some kind of deregulation start last year. ;-) EDF is state owned. Increasing the electricity price to cover real costs is not an option, the population will vote against it. Guess who pays for keeping the old reactor fleet alive? Costs for maintenance are rising to an estimated 45 billion Euros in 2025. Guess who pays for the super-expensive new reactors like the EPR? Without government money the company which builds it would have been imploded long ago.
Germany OTOH makes electricity expensive: there are taxes, investments in renewable energy, investments in decentralized grid, research, etc.. This also keeps consumption low and creates incentives to invest in new and efficient infrastructure and electricity consuming devices.
Although they consume 70% of Germany's grid energy, they are exempt from (or receive rebates for) much of the green energy taxes/levies.
- distribute regenerative sources geographically to have a better average production; there's always wind somewhere in Europe
- increase storage capacity through various means; e.g. pumped storage, chemical batteries
- make electricity consumption match production through various means; e.g. have (industrial) cooling and heating work in excess if there is an excess of "free" energy, charge electrical car batteries
- reduce electrical capacity requirements through gains in efficiency; e.g. improve home insulation
It's also not just a matter of production capacities: we're throwing away huge amounts of regenerative energy because we don't have the technology to a) adjust other production sources fast enough, b) store excess production and c) we don't have the infrastructure to transport it.
I know it is due to historic energy markets and old metering technology, but the fact that a kWh costs the same no matter the time of day is a situation that cannot continue.
And once you have intermittent excess energy that is essentially free some opportunities to use it might spring up, e.g. run various electrochemical processes for free and store the products or smelt aluminium or something like that.
End game? Trying to produce as much wind and solar as possible.
Those numbers are only getting better and better with every year.
Public education about grid engineering and its challenges would be a good thing.
[1] https://partofthething.com/thoughts/a-medium-length-primer-o...
This means things like Nuclear power, ecologically disastrous in the long term, get a nice thumbs up (see France e.g.) because of their short term 'benefits'.
Nuclear power is a highly ideologised subject. In recent years in this area decisions have been made entirely based on fear and political opinion rather than scientific facts (like the relative safety of alternative reactor designs). 'nuclear' has become a hot-button word. Everything connected to it is perceived as negative. Probably some people nowadays would even argue against nuclear fusion because it's 'nuclear'.
In combating climate change by drastically reducing carbon emissions we're facing a huge task, which likely is an uphill battle we can't even really win in the short term. The best we can hope for is mitigating the consequences as much as possible.
Nuclear power is a stopgap measure that can help with that until better alternatives are available. We've been using nuclear fission for power generation for more than 50 years now. The waste generated during that time is there already, if we want it or not. It has to be dealt with anyway. Adding 20 or so more years of nuclear power generation on top of that doesn't exacerbate that problem all that much.
Trying to get rid of coal, oil, gas and nuclear power all at the same time seems like a pretty foolish endeavour.
> their short term 'benefits'.
Global warming is 1000x worse than a few radioactive waste we can store and no technology can match the CO2/Khw ratio of nuclear. Short term benefits is exactly what we need now.
- aging power plants, we haven't build any in a long time and many are now passed the initial lifetime expetency, but can't be shutdown as they should since there is no replacement ready
- price not taking plants destruction into account. None have been fully destructed yet, so we don't know how much it coat exactly but it's far from cheap since you have tons of midly radioactive material to treat
- still no proper way to dispose of the waste. There research etc, but right bow we're basically storing lots of materials that will be radioactive for millennias
- new generation plants project (EPR) is many years late and many times over budget because of critical defects in components.
- probably other arguments I forgot
I am personally undecided on the matter, but what is certain is that nuclear might be the best solution we have, but it certainly isn't without downsides.
Very much true. Nukes produce 60% of the carbon-free energy in the USA!
> Now we would only need to build next generation (Thorium) reactors.
There are lots of advanced next gen reactor designs with passive safety, advanced process heat, renewable fuel (replenished from erosion into seawater), etc. Only a handful of which use Thorium. The whole Thorium thing was a rebranding attempt by a guy named Kirk Sorensen who wanted to have a advanced nuclear rebirth. I don't like it because I want to see advanced nuclear of all fuels, not just Thorium! But that's a minor point.
The S. Koreans and Russians have standardized their reactor designs and built a bunch of them, and in doing so they learned how to fabricate the parts and put them together very cost effectively. The rest of the nuclear industry needs to learn from this to keep construction costs down. Options for this include:
1. Build nuclear reactors in shipyards. This is a controlled environment with high replicability. Then deliver the nukes on barges or even operate them a few km offshore with subsea cables.
2. Pick a design and stick to it. The entire industry goes around saying they have the latest and greatest design but none of them are great unless someone works the kinks out of constructing it. The best solution here in my mind is to develop national open source reactor designs.
If we had Fukushima every few years and nuclear storage accidents happen frequently, it's unlikely that it would be worse than delayed retreat from hydrocarbons caused by aversion to nuclear power.
Here an article about wildlife in Chernobyl - https://www.nature.com/articles/526166a
The long term consequences are very long term, hundreds thousands of years. The problem of storing nuclear waste material is still unsolved and extremely expensive. Radiation poisoning is ecologically extremely disastrous. E.g. the shield in Chernobyl has to be rebuilt every few decades because the radiation weakens every shielding material over time.
And the end of the story: Now the nuclear power plant operators do not even run their plants all the time because under certain conditions it is not even monetarily lucrative to run them anymore. The whole thing would probably run out in the near future just because its too expensive to run.
Meanwhile, Germany has half the carbon intensity of California, 1/4 that of Poland, and 1/7 Australia. With lower prices than France, and with no unsolved long-term storage problems.
Plus they arguably single-handedly subsidized solar power to where it is today, I. e. close to be competitive with natural gas.
And how they’re suffering! Unemployment at almost 4%, single most dynamic economy in Europe, taking in one million refugees with comparatively little brouhaha (10% voting for the xenophobes in this year’s election, vs. 8000 refugees and 49% for Trump in the US)
These Greens have surely been ruining Germany.
Don't get me wrong, stuff is happening[1], but not at the rate it should be in a country with the properties you've mentioned.
[1] - http://www.smh.com.au/business/energy/australia-s-largest-so...
FWIW here's a Wikipedia entry on the Dutch situation [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_Nether...
These record production peaks are sold as good things, but they are negative aspect of wind power. Only 20 percent or less of installed wind power capacity is available 90 percent of time.
In a decade, North Germany will have a surplus of electricity and storage will be more useful. For example a one GW dc powerline will then be operational to Norway for storage - with one or two more possible. Storage in old gas storage systems either as air, windgas or in large batteries will start to be common...
(And indeed my calcs don't quite match yours http://www.earth.org.uk/_gridCarbonIntensityGB.html anyway!)
Its very likely because they only use projected production and use.
46% biomass! More than hydro, wind or anything else. This should be a role model.
Anyone knows why?
https://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/london/fra...
According to S&P Global Platts calculations based on reactor availability, output is unlikely to reach 380 TWh this year.
Based on cumulative output of 361 TWh by December 17, output would need to average 56.5 GW over the final two weeks in 2017 to even reach 380 TWh, the TSO data-based calculations shows.
Nuclear output averaged just below 50 GW so far this December, up from 42 GW in November, the data shows.
...
EDF operates France's 58 nuclear reactors. But following record production years in 2014 and 2015 at 416 TWh, it has struggled with extended outages and lower nuclear production.
Gathering together power generation and CO2 emissions for the whole world, albeit those that are publishing the data.
Strange that the data for Netherlands, Italy, and Texas are missing. Is this charged for, confidential, or just not collected?
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/l... https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/l...
UK data (inc. solar) with CO2 emissions in app form: http://gridcarbon.uk/
All in all, the EEG is causing massive losses to germany and the environment (dont forget the outsourced damage to nature in china inflicted by solar panel production!).
Deutschland has the highest CO2 emissions of all times and the highest cost of electricity of all times now. This is a severe warning to the world! Never use a socialist approach!
