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Consumers In Germany Were Paid To Use Electricity This Holiday Season (inhabitat.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inhabitat: The cost of electricity in Germany has decreased so dramatically in the past few days that major consumers have actually been paid to use power from the grid. While "negative pricing" is not an everyday occurrence in the country, it does occur from time to time, as it did this holiday weekend. This gift to energy consumers is the result of hundreds of billions of dollars invested in renewable energy over the past two decades. This most recent period of negative pricing was a result from warm weather, strong breezes, and the low demand typical of people gathering together to celebrate. Germany's temporary energy surpluses are a result of both low demand and variably high supply. Wind power typically makes up 12 percent of Germany's power consumption on a daily basis. However, on windy days, that percentage can easily multiply several times the average. The older segment of Germany's energy portfolio, such as coal plants, are not able to lower output quickly enough. Thus, there is a glut of electricity. On Sunday, Christmas Eve, major energy consumers, such as factory owners, were being paid more than 50 euros (~$60) per megawatt-hour consumed. Further reading: The New York Times
I doubt that random negative price days offset the ~50% rise in electricity costs for German households over the past 10 years. They are paying even when it's "free" via the government funded subsidies paid out to green energy providers funded by their tax dollars.
Okay. Tell that to the eastern provinces of Germany. Or really any part of Germany, when they realize that CNG in their part of the world will come from Gazprom.
The renewables aren't just about getting off coal. They're about getting off Russian energy supplies, and away from Russian price manipulation.
Which is where Tesla's coming in with their massive battery installations.. and likely other companies soon enough given Tesla's success with them (though I don't know the economics yet but that will come..) The batteries can balance out the unpredictability in near real-time, and compensate for the biggest drawback of renewables.
Of course its not all upsides. There's extra space required to house all of those batteries, you have to account for the manufacturing of the batteries when determining the relative cost of renewables vs traditional power generation, and of course they're very new so its possible that we haven't yet discovered all of the potential failure modes that could arise when we start relying on them to large extents like that.
It is still a production problem... it just depends on what kind of production.
Wind, solar and hydro are all great, in theory. For all three, you can rather quickly turn down the level of generation by disabling some turbines, closing some water outlets/inlets, or pointing solar panels in other directions... but they come with their own problems: requiring the wind to be blowing, the sun to be shining and the water levels to be high enough... they are good for peak & ideal times, but less so for base loads.
Nuclear is pretty straight forward... rods go in or out and affect the amount of heat generated. Heat leads to steam, steam can either be run through turbines depending on demand or dumped into environment (sorry to the poor birds flying by).
Natural gas, you can treat similarly (but not identically) in terms of turning down production and dumping excess steam if you don't want to run too much through your turbines.
Coal is a whole other matter. Load levels for coal are projected days and weeks into the future as you don't have the ease of a few pipes feeding the whole thing. You can slow the rate at which coal is added to the system, but what is there is going to keep burning for a while... and in the case of a low demand for the thermal energy... will often get dumped.
Source: Many long conversations with an uncle who be rather senior in a multi-state power co-op. While personally & professionally in favor of nuclear, he also understood the less than well known pitfalls of the other systems.
He was also the one who confirmed my theory on the silliness of 'Earth Hour'. Where such a sudden downturn in electrical consumption sees different carbon costs to dumping the thermal energy (though he is not a believer in man made 'climate change').
Nuclear: None
Natural gas: Low (given the ease of turning down the input).
Coal: High.
Keep that in mind: Quick & unexpected downturns in power consumption to save the earth, can actually result in a net positive expenditure of carbon emissions... and in this case, it may be more desirable to have people use the energy (either leaving their lights/heat on when not at home, mining for bitcoin, or looking for aliens with Seti@home) than have the thermal energy be dumped.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
It's only a failure of you selectively compare it to France, a country with a lot of really expensive and extremely heavily subsidised nuclear power. In fact it's so expensive that the French don't want it any more, leaving their energy companies to start leaching off other countries like the UK.
Germany started in a poor position. It's half way through its transition, so any proclamation of failure is premature. It's reduced its coal consumption, massively increased renewables, and built up a huge new industry with jobs and wealth.
Oh, and done something good for the planet too.
What is the alternative? Throw even more money at a dying technology like nuclear?
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There appears to be a fungus that also breaks down lignum developing and essentially ending the carboniferous age - or at least the coal forming part of it.
The carboniferous age lasted about 60 million years, from 360 Mya to 300 Mya, and during that time a lot of undigested wood turned into coal. Enough CO2 was sucked out of the atmosphere to trigger a major ice age.
A fungus finally figured out how to digest lignin, in a process described by biochemists as "untying a knot with a flamethrower". The same process is still used by fungi today, pretty much unaltered. By stopping the carbon-and-ice death spiral, these little fungi saved the planet. Without them, even the dinosaurs would have never existed. If you want to show your gratitude, go to a Chinese restaurant and order some "mu er" (wood ear). Some people think they are slimy and don't care for the taste, while others (including me) love'em. But while you are chewing, remember that you wouldn't even exist without the little critters.
Germany does not pollute more. Germany uses close to half as much electricity as the US per capita (7.1MWh vs 12.96MWh per year). Germany produces almost a third of the electricity from renewable sources. A little over half is from fossil fuels (including natural gas). The rest is nuclear. The US gets close to two thirds of its electricity from fossil fuels and only 15% from renewables. The remaining 20% are nuclear. The Per capita, the US consumes far more electricity from fossil fuels than Germany consumes in total.
The "Energiewende" is not a failure, although the nuclear lobby certainly wants to make people think so. Germany has steadily increased the share of renewable energy in the electricity mix. The share of coal and other fossil fuels in the mix is slowly decreasing, even though fossil fuels are picking up some of the share from the declining nuclear energy.
While nuclear energy has the advantage of low CO2 output, it is neither clean nor cheap. Nuclear fuel production is very polluting. CO2 isn't the only form of pollution. France subsidizes its nuclear power plants. Don't forget that France has nuclear weapons, so it needs nuclear know how for that too. Besides, the subsidized electricity has caused wasteful habits: Resistive heating is still common in France. Residential electricity use is significantly higher in France than in Germany. This is going to cause significant problems when nuclear power plants become untenable, even for a country as heavily invested in them as France. France's nuclear power plants are aging to the point of making further operation reckless.
"A huge amount of subsidized renewables."
The latest batch of offshore wind turbines are not subsidized at all, the companies didn't want the money.
"Offshore Wind Farms Offer Subsidy-Free Power for First Time"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...