Germany Sets New National Record With 85 Percent of Its Electricity Sourced From Renewables (digitaltrends.com)

Germany was able to set a new national record for the last weekend of April with 85 percent of all electricity consumed in the country being produced from renewables -- wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power. Digital Trends reports: Aided by a seasonal combination of windy but sunny weather, during that weekend the majority of Germany's coal-fired power stations weren't even operating, while nuclear power stations (which the country plans to phase out by the year 2022) were massively reduced in output. To be clear, this is impressive even by Germany's progressive standards. By comparison, in March just over 40 percent of all electricity consumed in the country came from renewable sources. However, while the end-of-April weekend was an aberration, the hope is that it won't be for too much longer. According to Patrick Graichen of the country's sustainability-focused Agora Energiewende Initiative, German renewable energy percentages in the mid-80s should be "completely normal" by the year 2030.

Comments

Not bad

[Lennie]

10 or maybe even more years ago, Germany government was funding renewable energy production to get it to a mass production level, since a couple of years they are funding energy storage.

Anyone want to complain how it's not working ?

Re:Not bad

[Anonymous Coward]

10 or maybe even more years ago, Germany government was funding renewable energy production to get it to a mass production level, since a couple of years they are funding energy storage.

Anyone want to complain how it's not working ?

You can't have what Germany has without the heavy hand of government.
Something that is anathema to you american rednecks and hillbillies.
Especially to those in both chambers of Congress.

Re:Not bad

[ShanghaiBill]

Anyone want to complain how it's not working ?

Sure, I will. Electric power in Germany is more than twice as expensive as it is in America. That is because the costs of all the subsidies are pushed onto the consumer in what is effectively a regressive tax. Maybe what they are doing has some long term benefits, but considering that more than half of every electric bill goes to subsidise the renewables and the politically driven nuke closures, by many criteria it is "not working".

So what are they getting at such an enormous cost? This "85%" figure is a statistical fluke. Most days Germany gets 45% of their electric generation from coal, and 26% from lignite or "brown coal", the world's filthiest fuel. Overall, Germany's electricity generation produces nearly as much CO2 per kw-hr as America. There was no good reason to shut down their nukes, as they were already running and already fueled. Nearly all the cost of a nuke is in the construction, and while building new nukes is economically questionable, it is silly to shut down a stable running plant. If those plants are kept in operation, they could offset nearly all the lignite. Instead they are installing solar panels in the world's second cloudiest location (the Bering Sea is first).

Re:Not bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Or how about a real one.. They buy electricity from else where but don't count that since they sold renewable while it was in over supply. This really wouldn't work for all of the EU at once. Since then you really would need to store it. And even Germany requires spinning reserves.

Re:Not bad

[thegarbz]

Electric power in Germany is more than twice as expensive as it is in America.

Electric power in the entire world is twice as expensive as it is in America. Petrol and diesel even more so. Don't mistake what makes Germany unique for what actually makes America unique.

Re:Not bad

[Kiuas]

It is expected to be nuclear free by around 2023

I personally think this is their main problem. Right now the focus of all industrialized nations should be on ditching the use of fossil fuels as rapidly as possible. Nuclear power is an effective way of producing energy to cover up for what cannot be produced by renewables. Right now as they're adamant on ditching nuclear as well, their CO2 emissions are rising and they're unlikely to meet their emission goals, because increased demand has to be met with increased used of natural gas, which, while better than coal for sure, is not as good emissions wise as nuclear.

Now don't get me wrong, I think nuclear is not a permanent solution so the idea of going fully renewable is good. I just think their implementation and schedule is slightly foolish. If they kept some of the nuclear and used that to provide the rest of what they need, they wouldn't have to use natural gas, or import as much energy from abroad.

The main reason I stopped voting for the Green party here in Finland was their illogical opposition to the use of nuclear energy as part of a strategy to cut down on emissions. Because the 'green' crowd has absurd fears of nuclear due to radiation they end up favoring policies which in the short-to-mid term drive emissions up, all in the name of protecting the environment.

The challenges with storing nuclear waste are much easier to solve than the challenges we're going to amass by continuing to release CO2 in current amounts, which is why I don't favor adopting the German approach even though we do have the same goal in mind.

Re:Not bad

[Mashiki]

Define "short term" because here in Ontario, we're at ~16 years and the costs just keep going up. It's completely screwed up the electricity system of Ontario as well. So much so that even the government that parroted it for over a decade is say well, we screwed up. You know why they're saying that? Because they're about to go from a majority to a non-party and are trying to salvage themselves.

Now the kicker is people use less electricity and the prices keep going up, just like how they claimed that "ToD" meters would make electricity cheap. And the costs of it kept going up. This whole idea of paying via FiT and green energy rebates doesn't work and only makes people poorer. Hell it drives businesses out, which means governments need to find new tax bases. So who are the first taxed? Shouldn't be hard for anyone to figure out, but if you need a hint, it's not businesses. And the Federal Liberal Party is pushing for this exact same garbage on Canada.

Re:Not bad

[LynnwoodRooster]

They need to do a better job, then? Because once you adjust for purchasing power of different currencies, Germany has about the most expensive electricity in the world (save for a few small island nations). Yes, it's renewable - it also is twice that of their nuclear powered neighbor, France. So kudos, Germany - you've proved that you can occasionally spike high in "renewables" generation for only twice the price of a sane, nuclear power approach!

Re:Not bad

[ls671]

Also in Quebec, it is 97% renewable electricity and Quebec is several times bigger than Germany in area. So they have been deserving a /. article for years I guess...

https://www.mern.gouv.qc.ca/en...

Re:Not bad

[thegarbz]

You know, electricity was cheap in Canada until they started pushing "green energy" too.

Electricity was cheap in Australia too before they started pushing green energy. Except green energy had nothing to do with the price. Along with green energy came major infrastructure investments and the decree that we should never again have power outages. The gold plating began.

Causation vs correlation. A lot has happened in the power generation and transmission business in the past 15 years all over the world.

What do people think is going to happen when prices go up 40% when all this is figured in and wages continue to remain stagnant.

They stop running the AC and Heater at the same time? Many other countries have coped just fine, except that where I live prices didn't go up 40% they went up 350%. We are also coping just fine and then were one of the few to avoid a major recession during the crisis. The Canadians are worse than the Americans when it comes to average electricity consumption. Fortunately you're marginally better in actual emissions but you have still a way to go before you start getting an emissions footprint as good as China.

Maybe it's time prices reflected what you do to the world and then you can start looking for alternatives.

Re:Not bad

[AmiMoJo]

The Green Energy Act came in 2009, 8 years ago. According to Wikipedia, it likely only have a very minimal effect on prices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

In fact, all available evidence suggests that only around 3% of the cost increase was due to "green" subsidies and FiT, the majority being other incidental costs and guaranteed payments to nuclear generators.

If you really care about getting energy costs down, you should demand nuclear plants have their guaranteed payment agreements cancelled (likely impossible) and support expansion of renewable energy as quickly as possible.

Re:Not bad

[bsolar]

From the link you provided:

Électricité de France (EDF) – the country's main electricity generation and distribution company – manages the country's nuclear power plants. EDF is substantially owned by the French government, with around 85% of EDF shares in government hands.

78.9% of Areva shares are owned by the French public sector company CEA and are therefore in public ownership.

EDF remains heavily in debt. Its profitability suffered during the recession which began in 2008. It made €3.9 billion in 2009, which fell to €1.02 billion in 2010, with provisions set aside amounting to €2.9 billion.

The Nuclear industry has been accused of significant cost overruns and failing to cover the total costs of operation, including waste management and decommissioning.

In 2016, the European Commission assessed that France's nuclear decommissioning liabilities were seriously underfunded, with only 23 billion euros of earmarked assets to cover 74.1 billion euros of expected decommissioning costs.

Re:Not bad

[I'm New Around Here]

Maybe because it is very wrong on some points.

Germany is not "the size of a single average US State". It is larger than all but four states, those four being Alaska, Texas, California, and Montana.

Germany's population of 82,000,000 is not "a tiny fraction" of the US' 330,000,000, it's about one quarter.

Re:Not bad

[Ol Olsoc]

Who says you pay just the same? It costs a little more than the median US average price, and a lot lower than nearly half the states. And therefore they use less, get just as much (they are, if anything, getting more: it's colder on average over all Germany than it is on average over all the USA, even including Alaska), and pay less overall.

There's no need to sign you up. You don't sign up to use less. You just use less. You sign up to get more out of what you DO use by insulating your home, avoiding wasteful use of power (the sun and wind dry clothes just fine), and not being a stupid fuck, basically.

Some folks just don't get it. As I have pointed out many times, my energy conservation tactics have resulted in a net profit for me. I use less electricity than I did 15 years ago, and my bill is only ten percent more than my neighbors, who are in town for only a few days a month - they are paying almost the same as me for a home in maintenance mode, while I even have a hot tub spa. and am home every day except when on vacation.

It's fine I suppose if a person wants a huge vehicle that gets 10 mpg or less, and is satisfied with paying a hellava lot of their hard earned money ot an oil company. I just don't have a lot of sympathy when they bitch about the obvious solutions.

Every year technology has made strides in energy generation and storage, and every year the inertia crowd's whinging has become more hollow. Coal will stay in the ground, and Oil will become feedstock. Even if we did go balls to the wall oil and coal, we'd just reduce the recoverable amounts to a level that would be too expensive and not enough supply and do it sooner. And as a last thought, I don't know if this will be decried as cultural appropriation, but damnit, never ever bet against the Germans in matters of technology.

Re:hydro-electric

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

Hydroelectric isn't renewable. Sediment fills up the dams over time, and they are done. See for example:

The 200-foot high Matilija Dam (left, photo courtesy of Matilija Coalition), has completely filled in with sediment in only thirty years. It has been decommissioned and the process of removing the dam and restoring the river has begun.

RTFA!

Scientific studies predict that without the reservoir, sediment deposits in the main channel upstream of the dam could be flushed out in as little as five years (CEA). The actual time is dependent on the future hydrologic events occurring in the Colorado River Basin.

But still it ,might not have been a good place for a dam, but you can't generalize this to all dams. The Lake Homs Dam was opened in 284 AD and is still running "Remarkably, the reservoir has suffered very little silting since" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... so when they eventually have to remove it to flush out the silt, I'm pretty sure it has paid for that and the reconstruction. What the average lifespan for a dam is, i have no idea.

Impressive...

[jez9999]

"To be clear, this is impressive even by Germany's progressive standards."

No it isn't. It just shows their ongoing idiocy re: nuclear power. They could've reduced carbon (and other) emissions to zero by now if they'd increased nuclear output.

Re:Impressive...

[GuB-42]

Yeah, I wouldn't call a country shutting down nuclear power plants and building new coal plants "progressive".

If you look here : https://www.electricitymap.org... you'll see that most of the times, Germany is not that good. Right now it is at 414 gCO2/kWh, which is worse than the US (388) and 6 times worse than France (66). Ontario, Sweden and Norway are even better but they have the advantage of a high hydro capacity.
What all the good players have in common : nuclear power of course.

Re:hydro-electric

[phantomfive]

That sounds to me like a problem that can be solved with good engineering and proper design, just like many of the other environmental problems. I have spent something like a minute thinking about it.......

Engineers have been thinking about the problem for decades and haven't solved it. What are the chances you solved it with little thought?

And if I, with no expert knowledge, can think of what may well be a plausible way to address the issue, how much more could a proper team of engineers come up with, if they tried?

See this and this.

Not really 85% of power used

[tomhath]

Germany used X GWh that month. They produced 0.85X GWh from renewables.

No they didn't. They touched 85% for an instant when the wind kicked up on a Sunday morning before people got up and increased consumption.

It wasn't 85% for the month as you imply, and it wasn't even 85% for the weekend as the headline implies.

Re:Not really 85% of power used

[Mr D from 63]

Energy systems are only as good as their performance in high demand situations. They must be designed to handle the demand profile and therefore looking at the 'easy' times doesn't reflect the entire picture. Let looks at some other numbers besides that typical "we hit a hit percentage on a spring Sunday when little power was being used" scenario;

Spot production; (other sources or imports not listed);
May 8 at 23:30 Solar 0%, Wind 2.1%, Conventional 92%
May 10 at 1500 Solar 0%, Wind 0.04% Conventional 92%
These are not outlier moments, these are typical daily occurrences.

Total Electrical Production January 2017;
Solar 2%, Wind 7.95%, Conventional 80%


That is a glimpse of what 300 billion Euro in wind and solar achieves from a system capability standpoint.

Re:Not really 85% of power used

[Mr D from 63]

Lets looks at some full day productions percentages (Twh) for Germany;

Jan 6 2017: Solar=2.2% Wind=7.0% Conv =75.2% T=1.61 Twh
Jan 8 2017: Solar=0.3% Wind=3.2% Conv=79.0% T=1.46 Twh
Feb 5 2017: Solar=3.5% Wind=8.9% Conv=71.8% T=1.41 Twh
Mar 7 2017: Solar=2.8% Wind=6.7% Conv=75.4% T=1.60 Twh
Apr 4 2017: Solar=8.7% Wind=2.9% Conv=71.3% T=1.51 Twh

As we can see there are still many days in Germany where wind and solar struggle to provide even 10% of demand, and at times during those days actual contribution is less. I hope these numbers don't surprise anybody. They are exactly what we should expect.