Slashdot Mirror

30cent is greatly exaggerated.
And household power prices are dropping ...

Germany is a net exporter of power. They days we import more than we export are extremely rare.

Here you can play around: https://www.energy-charts.de/i...

The highest contribution to solar power btw. are cold sunny winter days, especially weekends when the industry is sleeping ... we had plenty of days were all our power was green.

And France was importing power from Germany almost all the time in January: https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

France's embarrassing large surplus causes them to import power from Germany almost continuously in the last weeks:

https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

But that is not important - get this: Germans pay other countries for taking over excess electricity that wind and solar produce. They pay others to take it. No wonder they pay the highest prices for electricity on the local market. I guess this should be no surprise - the bolsheviki that rule here have miserable success record in anything even remotely touching economy.

And this is also easily debunked. According to the data [1] renewables tend to produce power when demand is high and also price is high. Negative prices are rare.

[1] https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

According to several news article the situation on the 14th was caused by a technical fault ([1]). There was also easly enough wind power so that conventional plans were running on a low level and Germany continuously exported power during that day (source: https://www.energy-charts.de./ So your implied claim that there was not enough power generated by renewables during that time is obviously wrong. In fact, it seems that except for a couple of hours in the evening of the 24th power exports exceeded imports on all days in January. Heise blames France and remembers that there are regularly problems when demand in winter due to electrical heating is high [2]. In know, this does not fit the story of bad renewables and good reliable nuclear power.

[1] http://www.manager-magazin.de/...
[2] https://www.heise.de/tp/featur...

CO2 is on a downward trend in Germany (at a much smaller per capita level than the US):
https://knoema.com/atlas/Germa...

For 2017 to 2018 CO2 emissions decreased by 6%. https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...

Electricity prices also didn't really increase it seems:
https://www.energy-charts.de/t...

Of course, residential electricity price are rather high.
https://www.statista.com/stati...

But the renewable surchagre is onlyl part of this:
https://1-stromvergleich.com/p...

It will go down in the future as it is mainly for old installations whose garantueed feed-in tariff will run out sooner or later while the cost of new wind and solar is much lower now. It is also important to understand that is was an intentional political decision to support renewables by a feed-in tariff which is paid directly from electricity prices. Coal and nuclear also got (and still get) a substantial amount subsidies but those are hidden in general taxes. Still, the high electricity price is a problem because it hits the poor, but one has to keep in mind that German households also consume much less electricity (due to better efficiency) than US households, so the overall energy bill is not as high as one might expect. Also the percentage of households who have trouble paying their electricity bills is still smaller than most of the rest of europe and certainly much smaller than in the US.

Finally, the exit from nuclear power had wide support in the German population:
https://www.unendlich-viel-ene...

Having said all this, shutting down nuclear plants first instead of coal plans was clearly a mistake.

Actually, emissions from burning coal and gas to generate electricity in Germany are falling steadily since 2013.

Additionally Germany slashed its nuclear energy use causing a MASSIVE spike is greenhouse gas emissions.
There is no such spike. Like to show us a link?

jumping from one green fad to another without implementing the slow-untrendy-yet effective changes.
Interesting that we are more or less world leader in (new installed) renewables nevertheless. With close to 40% contribution by renewables in 2017 and probably even close to 50% in 2018.

You are simply an idiot.

Here, play around a bit, if you grasp how to use the tool, that is. http://energy-charts.de/

Strange that other reports simply contradict it: https://reneweconomy.com.au/ge...
However https://energy-charts.de/energ... confirms that Germany is still at 39% Coal in energy production.

while emissions in Germany, the blocâ(TM)s largest economy and still dependent on coal for 40 percent of its electricity, was little changed.
Actually it changed, the CO2 increase is due to the hard winter and house heating, transportation, not due to electricity, because even in 2017 coal got educed by another percent point.

As a follow-up: The second argument is often, that Germany buys the missing electrical energy from Poland's coal plants, which is also wrong. (It's a nice chart, you can also see the daily trends in energy production.)

Of course it bounces off.
E.g. for a dimple reason: there is no german news abiut this. Must be a huge conspiracy that they managed to nearly have a blackout in a grid that is interconnected with whole europe, and keep that a secret.

The people that are full of shit are those who write the fearmongering bullshit for yellow press newspapers.
And of course you, as you believe that nonsense and repost it here.

E.g. here you see the load and the rough production and the price for balancing power and imported power: https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

And, what do you notice? Nothing to see there, business as usuall ...

Why don't you quote what matter, CO2/KWH annually? You avoid it because you know that it hasn't been improving significantly.
Because Homunculus already quoted it to you.
CO2 per KWh dropped from 1980 till 2018 roughly from 100% - 2% renewables - 20% nukes -> ~78% CO2 to 100% - 38% renewables - 10% nukes -> ~52% CO2.
So the change is from 78% CO2 producing plants to 52% CO2 producing plants. In my eyes that is a significant improvement

Plain and simple, and for that you don't need a graph. Es you probably have noticed: https://www.energy-charts.de/i... only goes back till 2008.

And that we now produce 38% last year and probably much more this year: you see yourself on https://www.energy-charts.de/ why the funk should I search you the relevant page?

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

So, now find a 1980 study yourself, or a 2000 or a 2008 what ever you want.

I really don't get why you are such a nitpicking moron and most of the time completely wrong.

However I admit I was not aware that the import/export situation between France and Germany has changed.

Why don't you quote what matter, CO2/KWH annually? You avoid it because you know that it hasn't been improving significantly.
Because Homunculus already quoted it to you.
CO2 per KWh dropped from 1980 till 2018 roughly from 100% - 2% renewables - 20% nukes -> ~78% CO2 to 100% - 38% renewables - 10% nukes -> ~52% CO2.
So the change is from 78% CO2 producing plants to 52% CO2 producing plants. In my eyes that is a significant improvement

Plain and simple, and for that you don't need a graph. Es you probably have noticed: https://www.energy-charts.de/i... only goes back till 2008.

And that we now produce 38% last year and probably much more this year: you see yourself on https://www.energy-charts.de/ why the funk should I search you the relevant page?

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

So, now find a 1980 study yourself, or a 2000 or a 2008 what ever you want.

I really don't get why you are such a nitpicking moron and most of the time completely wrong.

However I admit I was not aware that the import/export situation between France and Germany has changed.

France is a net importer of power from Germany ... just in case you did not know.

I am so tired of you just saying stuff that is completely wrong. Once again, you prove you don't know anything.

Import/Export;

2017 Germany to France: 2.2 TWh
2017 France to Germany: 6.2 TWh

2018 Germany to France: 0.8 TWh
2018 France to Germany: 6.9 TWh

https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

Please stop responding to my posts with your ignorance.

Solar and Wind are not available always when needed, thus they aren't as reliable. Its not that hard a concept to figure out, nor is the importance of reliability a difficult concept to understand.

That you go to such great lengths to rationalize away the importance of reliability is very telling. Nobody is buying your BS. Germany's exports are irrelevant.. Germany depends on importing power intermittently from France to maintain their stability and exports. This is happening all the time.

https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

No idea why you cite a fake news site, when you can get the correct numbers by using google: https://energy-charts.de/power...

It is not a terrible deep insight that wind is intermittent power source. It is also not new that there is less wind in the summer. On the other hand, there is more solar and the total production from renewables is surprisingly stable: https://www.energy-charts.de/r... Always about 35% which in summary is much more than nuclear.

Your charts highlight another point: The renewables clearly cut into consumption of coal and lignite. This is very good.

And there is another thing to learn: Nuclear is always running at the same level. This is related to a disadvantage of nuclear: It can *only* be used for baseload.Technically, it might be possible to do load following, but that makes the economics of nuclear even worse as you have very high investments you need to recover. On the one hand, this makes it very unattractive to have a lof of nuclear in a modern grid with intermittent power sources. On the other hand, you cannot use only nuclear because of demand side changes. So there is no real long-term use case for nuclear anymore.

Where does it say that carbon is going up again in the power sector? The article you linked states that emissions from the power sector fell by 4.6m tonnes, which is a decrease of .5%. All while total emissions were up by 2.6m tonnes that comes down to a .28% increase.
Now how can both be true at the same time? Maybe the increase was due to something else? Are the informations in the article you base your assessment on false? How does it compare with other information?

For example there are rather extensive statistics about power generation in Germany maintained by Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy. There you can see what comprises power generation in Germany, how it develops over time and so forth.

They also offer charts like this one which can show you annual numbers. For example where we have 133.98TWh from lignite in 2017 (down 0.67% compared to 2016). 134.89TWh in 2016 (down 3.2% from 2015). 139.37TWh in 2015 (1% down from 2014). 140.79 TWh in 2014 (2.98% down from 2013). 145.12THw in 2013. And so forth.

Where is your source that you base your statements on? Let's examine that data as well.

Where does it say that carbon is going up again in the power sector? The article you linked states that emissions from the power sector fell by 4.6m tonnes, which is a decrease of .5%. All while total emissions were up by 2.6m tonnes that comes down to a .28% increase.
Now how can both be true at the same time? Maybe the increase was due to something else? Are the informations in the article you base your assessment on false? How does it compare with other information?

For example there are rather extensive statistics about power generation in Germany maintained by Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy. There you can see what comprises power generation in Germany, how it develops over time and so forth.

They also offer charts like this one which can show you annual numbers. For example where we have 133.98TWh from lignite in 2017 (down 0.67% compared to 2016). 134.89TWh in 2016 (down 3.2% from 2015). 139.37TWh in 2015 (1% down from 2014). 140.79 TWh in 2014 (2.98% down from 2013). 145.12THw in 2013. And so forth.

Where is your source that you base your statements on? Let's examine that data as well.

Germany produces 3 times more power from wind than from nuclear. Moron ... Which is pretty clearly visible on your cherry picked graph.

Also, your statement is false. Wind only produced about 1.5 times nuclear last year and so far this year. But don't let facts get in the way of your complaint.
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

Germany produces 3 times more power from wind than from nuclear. Moron ... Which is pretty clearly visible on your cherry picked graph.

You miss the point. Germany has stupidly shut down nuclear plants, but nuclear is still available when needed, unlike wind. One chooses charts to illustrate points, I chose one illustrating what is happening during a heat wave. Sorry you don't like that.

For the heat wave weeks, nuclear generated more than wind. Even with 58 GW installed wind vs 9.5 GW installed nuclear.

https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

Germany produces 3 times more power from wind than from nuclear. Moron ... Which is pretty clearly visible on your cherry picked graph.

You miss the point. Germany has stupidly shut down nuclear plants, but nuclear is still available when needed, unlike wind. One chooses charts to illustrate points, I chose one illustrating what is happening during a heat wave. Sorry you don't like that.

For the heat wave weeks, nuclear generated more than wind. Even with 58 GW installed wind vs 9.5 GW installed nuclear.

https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

Germany produces 3 times more power from wind than from nuclear. Moron ... Which is pretty clearly visible on your cherry picked graph.

You miss the point. Germany has stupidly shut down nuclear plants, but nuclear is still available when needed, unlike wind. One chooses charts to illustrate points, I chose one illustrating what is happening during a heat wave. Sorry you don't like that.

For the heat wave weeks, nuclear generated more than wind. Even with 58 GW installed wind vs 9.5 GW installed nuclear.

https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

Germany produces 3 times more power from wind than from nuclear. Moron ... Which is pretty clearly visible on your cherry picked graph.

You miss the point. Germany has stupidly shut down nuclear plants, but nuclear is still available when needed, unlike wind. One chooses charts to illustrate points, I chose one illustrating what is happening during a heat wave. Sorry you don't like that.

For the heat wave weeks, nuclear generated more than wind. Even with 58 GW installed wind vs 9.5 GW installed nuclear.

https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

The problem with climate change isn't so much as our planet breaking but everything we depend on breaking. Somewhat wacky that nuclear reactors aren't designed to handle this heat but then again I would have never imagined the crazy kind of temperatures Europe has skyrocketed up to. So one has to wonder, what other stuff is going to break?

Nuclear reactors can handle high temps just fine. Only in places where there is limited cooling water and cooling releases rise above local environmental limits are they cut back.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

In Germany, recently, nuclear was a steady producer while wind was barely producing.

https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

That's the price chart of Germany of last week. The red and blue curve and the right scale. It doesn't go much over 50€/MWh: https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

Nonsense. Germany imported 28,5 TWh and exported 82,4 TWh in 2017. At no time, Germany has to import power to keep the lights on. There are plenty of plants on stand-by. Also for comparison, ten years ago in 2007 (so long before Fukushima and will all nuclear plants still running) imports were rvrn higher at 44,3 TWh and exports lower at 63,4 TWh. Most of the imported power is actually transit as GP pointed out.

https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...
https://www.energy-charts.de/

Looking at 2017 (expand the timeline to the year) - it sure does look like they export most of the time - with a few blips of import. Looking over other graphs I saw them import from France but on the *same* day they were exporting 10 times that amount to other countries - so end result.... a power grid working as designed to move power from one spot to another - that sometimes results in imports that wouldn't be needed if the country was in isolation?

Just look at a chart of wind output; Scroll through and see just how often then entire wind production of Germany falls to very low levels. It is quite commonplace.

https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

France does not import 10% of its power from Germany. Yes it does: https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

But is easy to just check CO2 output and see that France is much lower. Not difficult with 25% less population :D

My god you are ignorant. That chart just shows total German imports and exports, it doesn't even have the total power used in France at all, that is a German export chart.

As for CO2 output, there is the thing called 'per capita'. Have you ever heard of it? Germany is almost twice as high as France in per capita CO2 emissions. https://www.google.com/search?...

And if you want to just look at electrical generation, you can do it 'per TWH';

"In 2016, Germany generated 545 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity at an average rate of approximately 560 grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kWh. By contrast, France generated 530 TWh of electricity at an average rate of approximately 58 grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kWh. In terms of carbon emissions from electricity, this means that Germany emitted almost exactly ten times as much as France -- over 300 million metric tonnes."

http://environmentalprogress.o...

Your problem is you just say stuff you want to be true without even checking to see if it is true. Why did you know now this about Germany and France?. It is common knowledge. Are you still going to ignore this well established fact and make your false claims?

France does not import 10% of its power from Germany.
Yes it does: https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

But is easy to just check CO2 output and see that France is much lower.
Not difficult with 25% less population :D

That is wrong and easy to google ...
https://www.google.de/search?q...

https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/p...
https://www.energy-charts.de/t...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

That is wrong and easy to google ...
https://www.google.de/search?q...

https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/p...
https://www.energy-charts.de/t...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

That is wrong and easy to google ...
https://www.google.de/search?q...

https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/p...
https://www.energy-charts.de/t...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

That is wrong and easy to google ...
https://www.google.de/search?q...

https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/p...
https://www.energy-charts.de/t...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

Another greenie BS. Some old plants were decommissioned but new plants were also built and existing plants were expanded. In 2011 the brown coal was at 19.85GWt and now it's at 20.90GWt, hard coal was at 25.72GWt and now it's at 28.32GWt, natgas was at 27.25GWt and now it's at 29.89GWt (source: https://www.energy-charts.de/p...). Victory for the environment!

Several new coal power plants are planned and are being constructed: https://www.bdew.de/internet.n...

Inside the Energiewende
German Emissions Increase in 2016
Electricity Production in Germany

I'm also curious about the breakdown of the conventional sources as well. What percentages are imports, how much of that is coal, how much natural gas, nuclear, hydro(?), etc.

https://www.energy-charts.de/i...

Luckily we have the exact numbers ready, so we don't need to speculate. Germany generated in 2015 a total of 630.1 TWh of electric energy, and in the same time imported 12.1 TWh from France, while exporting 83.1 TWh to other countries. Just to put the numbers in perspective.

Germany is a net exporter of electrical energy. Only in times of high demand and low local production, it imports electrical power, mainly from France (12 TWh in 2015) and Czechia (6 TWh in 2015). There is always the claim floating around that Germany imports power from Poland's coal plants, but in 2015, the whole energy import from Poland was just 16 GWh, while Germany in the same time exported 10 TWh (or about the 600fold) to Poland. You can read the whole here at Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. They have very nice graphs about Germany's electrical power installations. You can also see that Germany's coal plants mainly replace each other as in some years, plants get decommissioned and the next year, new plants start production.

" because its unlikely you'll lose more that one unexpectedly"
When something happens that's bad enough to trip a nuke plant offline, it usually affects a sizable chunk of the grid.
And getting your nuke plant back online isn't trivial.

Here's an example full of irony - in late Feb 2008, a sudden decline in wind production required the Texas grid operators to cut power to several large interruptible industrial customers, dropping over 1.1 GW of demand within 10 minutes.
So a near crisis was averted and a big pile of fodder was grown for the anti-wind crowd who still bring this near-miss event as a testament to the dangers of reliance on intermittent power.

http://www.reuters.com/article...

But the last 2 lines of the Reuters link above mentions an actual outage that the renewable energy detractors *never* bring up - the *very same day* in Florida an electrical fire at a substation in Miami triggered a cascading failure that knocked Turkey Point Nuclear Station offline and caused a blackout affecting 3 million across all the way to Tampa & Daytona and it was at least 4 hours before power was restored.

http://content.time.com/time/n...

"Just like in Germany, when sometimes they can't even supply 2% of demand"

Looking at Fraunhofer's charts of electricity production for the past 6 years, those times are quite rare or coincide with high solar output.
But, yes, intermittency is a concern. That said, Germany has had pretty darn good forecasting in place since about 2009.
And, more importantly they have a modern grid with good interlinks to other markets, something the USA could improve domestically.
https://www.energy-charts.de/p...
The Tres Amigas Superstation, if it ever gets built, will be of tremendous benefit to ERCOT and the southern grids.

To understand Germany's energy use, just look at this graph. 75% of it is fossil fuel based. The idea that it had so much renewable it had to pay people to use it is ridiculous and simply a function of the bureaucracy, not the reality.

You might find this interesting; On Jan 1, 2016 at 10:00 am Total German Wind Output was at 0.49 GW, only about 1% of demand at that time. There are many other times like this during the year. (and solar was only at 0.14GW, so it didn't help much)

https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

No, it doesn't. The global wind average is not a constant.

You are right, and furthermore not all wind is useful for wind power. Gusty winds or multi-directional winds are pretty much useless. "the wind is always blowing somewhere' is a statement of ignorance of all the other factors that matter. Even in Germany, when averaging all their wind across the country, they have times when almost no wind energy is generated.

On Jan 1, 2016 at 10:00 am Wind Output was at 0.49 GW, only about 1% of demand at that time. There are many other times like this during the year. (and solar was only at 0.14GW, so it didn't help much)

https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

The electricity prices on the electricity stock exchange (https://www.eex.com/de/) often went into the negative, as there is an excess of energy production in Germany. The problem is RWE, E.ON, Vattenfall, and EnBW, are not in favor of renewables for two reasons. They do not have many plants/generators in that market segment and they have many coal plants (especially the first three). The only thing they can do is let them run to collect money. Electricity prises are so low that they still that they made deficit in 2015. As explained certain regions and towns in Germany rely on the profit from RWE. Therefore, the central government in Berlin is not very eager to fix the issue. Actually, the present behavior of the German government sucks big time, as their doing creates higher electricity prices for private non commercial end users. This is cause by a law giving fixed minimum prices for renewables which can be higher than the lowest stock market price. This difference must be paid by private non commercial end users. Large consumers in industry do not have to pay this extra. Therefore, the private users have to pay more. This results in the strange situation that private households have to pay more when there is more electricity available and less when the production shrinks. in addition Poland is frustrated over the overproduction in Germany, as it ruins prices for their plants as well.

So I would like the French to tell Sigmar Gabriel (German minister for economics) to close these lignite coal plants in exchange for terminating Fessenheim.

One note on base load generation. You can use the minimum wind generation also as base load and you can extend with storage capacity (water and gas). Presently, not for all coal plant, but at least for three lignite coal plants which are the most dirty power plants. Yes, I know gas is also CO2, but it is much more efficient than lignite coal and they do not have to run every day. They are also better to control, while coal and nuclear plants cannot be regulated very quickly.
There are presently, gas power plants offline in Germany because of the continuous overproduction.

An interesting interactive chart for electricity export/import and production can be found at https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
It shows that France and Germany are mainly exporter of electricity.

Anyway, in summer Germany most likely requires less power from coal plants as we additionally will have more energy from solar power. Energy consumption is higher in winter.

Check out https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm

In July 2016 Germany was generating around 15-17GW from brown coal almost continuously (except for 25/7 to 26/7 where it fell to 11GW). Pretty much the same story for August and September. (With one windy day in September where wind shot up to 20GW).

Basically Germany burns brown coal constantly, only reducing it if there happens to be a lot of wind on the week end, which seems to happen about once a month.

I don't think Germany can afford to shut down its coal plants -- it relies on them for up to 50% of its base load generation.

I have seen values for Germany up to 13 t CO2 per capita. While this sucks big time, one third is produced by traffic, another third is from heating

So what? France doesn't have road traffic and heating?

Furthermore, we have many lignite coal power plants which are actually obsolete and could be shutdown without any trouble. It would even improve grid stability, as we would have less excess capacity (http://www.dw.com/en/the-end-of-lignite-coal-for-power-in-germany/a-18806081).

So do it already.

France has been generating 80-90% of it's electricity from low carbon sources since the 1990's and you expect kudos for thinking about maybe closing down some fucking lignite burning power plants at some undefined time between now and 2020.

Saturday's agreement on closing 2.7 GW of German lignite power plants will reduce electricity from lignite there by 13%

Oh, fucking great, you're proud that they're going to close 13% of the lignite burning plants. Yipee!. And no mention of the hard coal burning plants.

Just look at the stats from https://www.energy-charts.de/p.... Germany's electricity in January 2016 was 7.5GW biomass constant (PM10/PM25 hell), 10GW nuclear constant, around 12GW brown coal, hard coal varying between 0 and 20GW, Gas between 0 and 12GW and renewables for the rest.

It's filthy.

Are we going to have more high particulate pollution days this summer when the wind happens to be blowing from Germany? How many people are being killed every year by the air pollution from your biomass and coal plants? 10's of Chernobyl's a year? 100's? 1000's?

Here is the daily, monthly and yearly balance for energy export from and to Germany: Energy Chart Please elaborate.

Citation needed -- that's not what the figures at https://www.energy-charts.de/exchange.htm say.

Germany needs overcapacity because wind and solar have pretty crappy capacity factors.

Year on year Germany exports to Danemark, Luxembourg, Holland, Poland, Austria and Switzerland, and imports from France, the Czech republic and Sweden. (Yes, Germany does export more than it imports).

In 2014 Germany exported 77.1 TWh, for which it earned 4591 million dollars.
France exported 37 TWh, for which it earned 3234 million dollars.

France is getting paid 46% more per Watt because it's selling when people need it's electricity, not when it's forced to because it has overproduction.

(Sources: http://www.worldstopexports.com/electricity-exports-country/3315 and
https://www.energy-charts.de/exchange.htm)

In fact this turns out to be wrong. At certain times of the year (and day) Germany exports to France, but for every year since 2011 Germany has been a net importer of electricity from France.

Source https://www.energy-charts.de/exchange.htm