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86 Percent of New Power in Europe From Renewable Sources in 2016 (theguardian.com)
Renewable energy sources made up nearly nine-tenths of new power added to Europe's electricity grids last year, in a sign of the continent's rapid shift away from fossil fuels. From a report on The Guardian: But industry leaders said they were worried about the lack of political support beyond 2020, when binding EU renewable energy targets end. Of the 24.5GW of new capacity built across the EU in 2016, 21.1GW -- or 86% -- was from wind, solar, biomass and hydro, eclipsing the previous high-water mark of 79% in 2014. For the first time windfarms accounted for more than half of the capacity installed, the data from trade body WindEurope showed. Wind power overtook coal to become the EU's second largest form of power capacity after gas, though due to the technology's intermittent nature, coal still meets more of the blocâ(TM)s electricity demand.
Clearly this evil, and an attack on fine upstanding God-fearing fossil fuel companies who have been so victimized by the evil uber-wealthy climatologists out to make the world into a Stone Age Communist Collective. Won't somebody think of the Kochs?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
When the new power gets to the point that the amount of power produced is not small compared to the existing sources, this will be interesting-- the grid will have to adapt to the time-variable sources.
I can't tell whether this calls for a "whoosh" comment or if it's double irony...
I checked and the USA was even lower at only 61.5% of new capacity being renewable. I was surprised there was any non-renewable being built new. If we truly started "phasing out" non-renewables then you would expect new capacity to be 100% renewable or even above 100% (if existing non-renewable plants were being shut down). I didn't realize we were still building *any* new coal/gas plants. I knew the existing ones were still being used but surprised that they were still building new ones. I'm surprised with as much renewable that is being built that our energy usage is going up fast enough to need that much new energy.
The "new capacity" is on top of the existing base load power plants. So when they do generate you might save some fossil fuel, when they don't generate there's not a problem.
That said, when people speak of "capacity" you can be sure they're blowing smoke. Actual generated megawatt hours is what matters; capacity means nothing, especially solar capacity in northern, cloudy areas like Europe
I have no idea what the actual number is
Then by all means make up statistics rather than googling it, why don't change your username to Trump? :)
In 2014 renewable energy made up 25.4% of all energy production in the EU.
Source: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s...
Now don't be fooled there is lots of similar stats here, like:
Renewable energy sources accounted for a 12.5 % share of the EU-28’s gross inland energy consumption in 2014.
(Presumably because not all energy is consumed, read the details if you care, but read before you bash).
The goal remains:
The EU seeks to have a 20 % share of its gross final energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020
Similarly, in 2014, the US was a 11%, source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(note. don't confuse electricity production for total energy production).
All these stats are from 2014, clearly things a better now, given most new energy production facilities are renewable.
Both of your statements are incorrect.
Because all renewable power generation goes offline at the same time,
Different forms of renewable power generation go offline at different times, and geographically separated sources don't go offline in synch. One thing you can count on is that solar power generation stops at night, but this is a known time dependence, and hence can be accounted for in scheduling; not an intermittancy, which is the hardest interruption to handle.
Actually, peak load and solar don't happen to match up well, peak load is usually in the late afternoon (summer AC). Wind is not much better and a whole lot less reliable. Both are extremely hard to schedule with sufficient margin to keep a stable power grid. This means you have to overbuild by a lot of capacity (more than double) to provide the reliable energy source necessary to keep the electric grid up.... OR you have to keep a pile of fossil fueled capacity around to pick up the slack when the renewables are not able to provide what is needed.
and there's no way to store electricity.
It's also not true that there's no way to store electricity. You should know better than that, you've never heard of batteries? What you probably mean to say is that electrical storage is too expensive to be economically viable. That statement, however, is disputable. Definitely in places where hydropower is stored in reservoirs this is untrue, and new battery, fuel cell, compressed-air, and even flywheel technologies are coming online with decreases in price.
Again, you are sort of right, but practically wrong. Energy storage is indeed expensive if for no other reason than conversion losses. A really good chemical battery is going to chew up about 30% of the input AC power when you do all the conversions and account for all the losses (AC -> DC, DC into chemicals to charge the battery.. Chemicals -> DC, DC to AC to discharge it). The equipment just doesn't scale well either and over the total cost of such systems + the loss make them *really* expensive.
Then there is the question of "how big" you need to make the storage capacity. I dare say that it's got to be a LOT bigger than you think it should be t account for the worst case. This is driven by or dependence on the electric grid and it's reliability. We simply cannot easily absorb outages and not realize that they will come with significant financial costs and even loss of life. We have nearly zero tolerance for blackouts, which drives the needed capacity in any storage system higher and higher. Oh, and don't forget the extra capacity on the generation side to recharge your storage PLUS keep the grid online...
The primary point I'm making here is that storage is NOT a viable option. Renewables as they exist today, do not have enough reliability to be anything more than alternatives and we will need to keep backup fossil fueled alternative sources ready for when the wind stops and it's raining for days longer than the batteries can cover....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Much of the new non-renewable capacity is upgrades to old stuff. For example, in Germany they are closing old coal power stations and replacing them with a smaller number of new ones, which are cleaner (but still suck) and better able to follow load and thus help support renewables.
Since they only count new builds and don't subtract all the old stuff going offline, you get 86%.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Nuclear is 500% more expensive to decommission than was projected. And after that there are millions in costs to protect the decaying nuclear waste lest it be taken by terrorists.
If only there were some new types of reactors designed after 1950....
No sig today...
Nuclear could become (with magic and prayers) cheap and renewable as farts - it will still be a security risk.
"Yeah but this new reactor design..." doesn't matter either.
You still have to build nuclear reactors in places where there will most likely be social upheavals resulting in wars in the next 50 years.
Cause those are the places where most people are being born, which means more energy needs, which means more powerplants - built in future Syrias.
Did someone say ISIS dirty bombs? Anyone? Anyone? NSA?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens