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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
well it is about renewables and more specifically the more unpredictable nature of generation under renewables that can lead to this scenario. They have such a huge base of renewables with massive fluxuating levels of energy generation that it can have this effect especially when they still need the gas/coal generation for reliable baseload when the renewables are below average. that isn't to say renewables are bad or good but this is most definitely a result of the increased levels of renewables.
The title is misleading and typical greenwash propaganda.
Germany has one of the highest energy price on the world and even in times when the wind blows consumers pay a premium. Prices here only have one direction - upwards and the sky is the limit.
Hey, coal is also a renewable!
... given a long-enough timeframe.
#DeleteChrome
Germans pay more for power than almost every other Western country. That fact was conveniently left out of the push piece in the submitted story.
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.
Time to get some of those mega-batteries on the grid.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
Actually the conditions for coal cannot be repeated naturally. Coal formed before microbes evolved the ability to break down the hard cellulose of trees. This is long before terminates as well, which broke down trees in forests. Theoretically some coal can still form in the existing peat bogs, but new peat bogs cannot be formed either.
Can't they sell the surplus to bordering countries? Seems like they could get some sort of rebate from the extra power generation.
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.
Who is sitting around checking the current electric rate to see if it goes negative and they can turn stuff on to make a profit? I just don't see how a short term negative rate translates into anybody actually using electricity more because of it.
We want and need cheap and dependable power, not expensive and erratic power.
Actually the conditions for coal cannot be repeated naturally. Coal formed before microbes evolved the ability to break down the hard cellulose of trees. This is long before terminates as well, which broke down trees in forests. Theoretically some coal can still form in the existing peat bogs, but new peat bogs cannot be formed either.
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.
We have what would be a peat bog a bit north of where I live, in a lake. But instead of forming peat, it's a fine source of methane gas.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
A huge amount of subsidized renewables.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
AC re Russian price manipulation?
Nations in free Europe and the Soviet Union worked on a gas network. The network was built and nations in free Europe could then buy gas if they wanted.
The Soviet Union delivered a set amount of gas for a set price. No changes to the price after the contract by the Soviet Union.
Russia now delivers a set amount of gas at a price nations in free Europe want to pay for.
The gas flows from Russia as agreed and then new contracts are agreed on.
Russia cannot do retroactive "price manipulation" as the contract is signed before the gas flows. The price is agreed and then the gas is delivered for that set price.
If the price was going to be too much for nations in free Europe they are free to not sign the next contract and consider the costs of new gas imports with ships.
Ship cost compared to established pipe line? Russian gas price is found to be very competitive and the nations of free Europe get the gas they paid for.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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
Hydro is ideal for variable loads; probably better than natural gas or nuclear. It is very easy to regulate the supply of water to control the amount of power generated, without needing to dump waste heat in the form of costly purified water (steam) to the environment. It just requires the operator to run the hydro plant during peak only, and not to attempt to run it as baseload.
Unlike large companies, the regular consumer in Germany doesn't profit from the ever decreasing cost of electricity ... prices keep going up, despite the falling prices on the energy market. Thanks to guaranteed prices for producers of renewable energy, the EEG-Umlage (Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz, renewable energy law) - which is something like an additional tax - has increased from about 0.02€/kWh to almost 0.07€/kWh between 2010 and 2017. Interestingly, this tax doesn't have to be paid by "energy-intensive" producing companies, like steel production etc., so - thanks to successful lobbying - the people have to pay the big companies' part, too ... typically, Germans have to pay around 0.32€ per kWh of electricity ... while electricity companies pay something like 0.05-0.06€ on the open market ... ... so private customers are paying the bill for companies ...
While the EEG has succeeded in increasing the production of renewable energy, as usual the politicians have failed in writing a law that is halfway balanced
That's actually really interesting. Do you have a source that goes into more detail?
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.
Pumped hydro installations. They "buy" excess energy and then sell back into the grid when prices are high.
Which is where Tesla's coming in with their massive battery installations.
Batteries are very expensive for grid storage. A better option is to widen the grid, so a peak in one area can fill in a trough in other areas.
Oh, and it used to be possible (back in the old days of predictable low demand at night) to purchase an off-peak hot water system, that only heats water when electricity is cheap. I imagine adaptive systems are now available.
The renewables aren't just about getting off coal. They're about getting off Russian energy supplies, and away from Russian price manipulation.
If the price was going to be too much for nations in free Europe they are free to not sign the next contract and consider the costs of new gas imports with ships.
Firstly, you just confirmed what the said, the Russians set prices at what they want and tell people they can always freeze in the cold over the winter becaue as you know full well gas consumption would be hard to cover by sea routes. Russia uses gas as a political blackmail instrument so it's about more than just the gas prices, it's about politics and blackmail. Secondly, renewables are now getting cheaper than even natural gas, renewables are simply shaping up to be less expensive in every way so investing in them is investing in the future of energy production.
That's exactly what Europe has done, except now people are saying "hurrrr Germany needs France to keep the lights on!!1"
Yeah, they do. By design.
On a related note, the UK government's assessment of the interconnection with the EU post Brexit basically amounts to "electricity is important in modern Britain." Great insight.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The problem in Germany here is regulation to make things very simply for consumers that also produce power with a wind-mill. They are paid standard prices, so they can't be punished for producing power when the net is overloaded, so the wind-mills owned by consumers are never put into free-wheeling mode.
Add in good batteries and this all smooths out and lowers energy consumption generally too.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Consumers were not paid to use electricity. A short-term negative price at the wholesale level does not reach consumers. Despite the criticism, the renewable energy law, which is in part to blame for these pricing artifacts, has been a big success. Almost a third of the electricity produced in Germany is from renewable sources.
Electric cars.
One company in Finland got fee ride (plus "coffee money") by loading (buying) electric cars when electricity was cheap and unloading (selling) when electricity was expensive. This is going to get big.
overpopulation =/= overproduction. please pay attention.
If your a libertarian you'll hate this:
composition-average-german-household-power-price-2006-2017.png (PNG Image, 1132 x 800 pixels)
If you're left wing you'll hate that too.
If you're right wing you'll hate all of the renewables stuff.
German is doing a remarkable job of making renewables look bad, their public pay insane amounts whilst electricity gets offered for free or less to factories when they're all closed for Christmas.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
"requiring the wind to be blowing, the sun to be shining and the water levels to be high enough."
While nukes need high enough levels of water in the cooling water river they use, which isn't' the case sometimes in summer so they have to shut down, or the water is already hooter than the law allows for using it as cooling and so they have to shut it down, while in winter it's frozen, so they have to shut it down...not to mention all those security inspections.
Ditto for the coal ones.
And remember, Germany uses brown coal mostly and they have to raze entire villages and pay off the owners to get under the coal beneath it.
It's just now worth it anymore.
And both use tons of subsidies while lately the offshore wind turbines don't need them anymore.
They'll replace all the coal and nuke ones.
"Batteries are very expensive for grid storage. A better option is to widen the grid, so a peak in one area can fill in a trough in other areas."
They already do that, they export power to Austria and Switzerland (for free or negative prices) their nuke owners have already complained multiple times of the 'unfair competition'.
"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...
I don't quite understand, why can't new peat bogs be formed nowadays?
I would beg to differ on your attempted "it depends on what you mean"-type excuse for misinterpreting what is generally a socially accepted translation of those words into a mathematically expressible meaning.
While your statement that "if the price in 2007 was 50% of what it is now then it has doubled" is, by itself, correct, this is not at all what GGP said. Saying that the price has gone up by +50% definitely does NOT mean "the price in 2007 was 50% of what it is now". To me, and I would wager most Slashdotters would agree with me, when one says "the amount has gone up by p percent", that is a percentage before the change; that is:
p = (NewAmount - OldAmount) / OldAmount
where p can be (but doesn't have to be) expressed as a percentage
I've never seen anyone use NewAmount as the denominator when only the change is mentioned.
Of course, if you say "that's p percent of the new amount," then it explicitly gives the denominator to be NewAmount. But just to say "a change of p percent" is to use the old amount.
In other words, if a certain price increases by 300%, and then drops by 75%, and then the cycle repeats itself several times, you might think that the price is rising rapidly (since 300 sounds so much more than 75) but you still end up with the same price:
Price2 = Price1 + Price1 * 300%
Price3 = Price2 - Price2 * 75% [which is the same as Price1]
Price4 = Price3 + Price3 * 300% [which is the same as Price2]
Price5 = Price4 - Price4 * 75% [which is the same as Price3, and so forth]
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Exactly. Conversely, France needs Germany to keep the lights on when their nukes cannot reliably provide (too hot, too cold, too much load - their availability is on average less than 80% and their installed capacity is just 2/3 of the peak demand). One hand washes the other.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Battery storage facilities are currently outside and not in buildings so access is not an issue.
You mean GWh (Gigawatt-hours) of storage. Gigawatts is a term meaning power (Joules per second). Scientifically speaking, energy should use the term Joules but the non-standard term kWh was used by the energy generating sector and has stuck in daily usage which causes confusion of GWh versus GW. You could say GWh is a marketing term.
Just like the confusion over calories (Cal) versus kilo-calories kcal). 1 Cal = 1000 kcal. Cal is used as a marketing term in the food industry despite the labels in Europe saying kcals in the fine print.
Not really. Germany has so many plants, it exports still even when it is dark and there is no wind (Dunkelflaute). One could easily shut down some coal plants.
The rate goes negative because the energy supplier needs to pay someone to consume the surplus energy otherwise it costs the energy supplier even more money in trying to manage the surplus. Therefore, the rate goes below zero to make it attractive to someone to consume the energy, having free cost energy is not attractive enough.
While nukes need high enough levels of water in the cooling water river they use, which isn't' the case sometimes in summer so they have to shut down,
This is a very rare occasion. For example, during summer heat waves in the US Northeast, it is nuclear plants that keep the lights one while almost no wind is producing. One plant out of many reducing output is very different than the entire wind output of Germany falling because of low wind conditions.
The generation profile is not determined by low use conditions, but rather highest demand conditions coupled with worst generation conditions (low wind). You talk about exporting when demand is low as a reason to shut down plants.
They are not used for grid storage. They are used as a buffer. The Australian ones can cover about 30 minutes of downtime. That then gives enough to get a solution I.E start up fuel or gas based energy or reroute delivery while preventing a knockdown effect in other areas.
It is basically a very large UPS. The one you have before you start up the diesel generator at your NOC.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
All excess power generation should be used to mine BC. What's not to like?
Fiat Lux.
From the article: "Do German consumers benefit from negative prices? Not directly. The wholesale costs of power make up only about a fifth of the average household electricity bill in Germany. The rest is a stew of taxes, fees to finance renewable-energy investments, and charges for use of the grid. That means their bills are lower than they otherwise would be, because power prices are sometimes negative, though household energy bills have been rising overall anyway. Basically, utilities are not depositing money in customer's bank accounts." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...
Nuclear is not as straight forward as you say. You also want your fuel to be used evenly, have to take into account the level of fission products in the reactor, etc. Nuclear is also less reliable than solar and wind, so you also have to plan for sudden unplanned loss of power sources. There is also a weather factor for nuclear as nuclear plants depend on water for cooling, so if water levels are too low or it becomes too hot, it does not work. The later is the reason France depends on Germany for power and not vice versa as incorrectly claimed by many here.
If we fuck off to California, the region will have two less champions and custodians.
Please do fuck off and take your NIMBY attitude with you. Everybody becomes a champion for nature and custodian of pristine environments when something encroaches on their view. I am not a city-dweller and there are dozens of windmills that I can see from my place. That's why I can't stand people who bullshit others about the ways they're impacted by windmills. "Whoosh-whoosh" from over a kilometer away in every direction? Are you Dumbo or do you just have his ears? The fucking nerve; Comes here from a country that rapes the planet like no other and wants to tell us we can't put windmills within sight of him in one of the most densely populated countries in the world.
Coal and Gas plants have to be powered up and down slowly, in order to all the components to heat up and cool down gradually and avoid any heat stress that could cause metal fatigue.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
They could make even more money if they could do cryptocurrency mining while the car was idle.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I don't quite understand, why can't new peat bogs be formed nowadays?
Peat is considered a very slowly renewable energy source. It is formed in wet acidic and anaerobic conditions, which slow down the decay process. The peat forming waters that I refer to are in a lake, at the shallow areas, just deep enough to canoe through. The plant material is mostly the remains of various water lilies, some of which have substantial plant mass. Every year, new mass is formed. The water has a lot of tannin in it, and is acidic. So the biomass at the bottom decomposes very slowly. This is not the typical peat formation method. But when canoeing or kayaking through those area, you can't help but touch the stuff on the bottom, and you get methane bubbles.
I should take a lighter and try igniting the gases some time.
So to be accurate, peat is renewable, just very slowly. To turn it into coal, you'd have to figure out away to stop those lignum munching fungi. Shanghai Bill has the best explanation in the thread.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Answer: on-demand bitcoin mining! Use up all the extra generation and get paid twice to do it!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Germany emits almost twice as much CO2 per capita as France. Hard to call that a success.
The same way you deal with a fire in a building with several hundred tons of coal, or a warehouse filled with oil barrels?
Nice FUD. It turns out that energy-dense materials are energetic, no matter what form.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The best places for such plants are abandoned coal mines. Also uses the same level of skill of mining jobs. Rather than extend coal mining the mines should be used for energy storage.
So if that was the case then why don't they build new pipelines to somewhere else?
Because gas in general is getting too expensive and you'd be better off spending your money on renewables, even the Wall Street banksters and the sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf States are beginning to figure that out.
Or invest in other types of energy-production? Or start building houses with better insulation to reduce the heating-requirements >90%.
I think you'll find that this is what many N-European countries are doing. Both of these trends translate into bad news for Russia though since Putin relies on oil and gas money to pay for his war machine and buy popularity with the people.
There is most likely an overpopulation in Europe, however. Density and resource consumption are at high levels around here. So I'm not sure how GP could react this way even to a misread comment.
Ezekiel 23:20
You don't even need to sell it back. Just the flexibility of electric cars as consumers alone rewards both their owners (who can ride more for the same money paid) and the electricity producers (who get perhaps less money they'd get otherwise, but still more than if they had no outlet at all).
Ezekiel 23:20
I am talking about the worst case scenario with no light and wind. As for example, in January this year there were several days where this was the case. This is not unusual. But even then - in contrast to what many slashdotters seem to believe - Germany was still able to export (net exports) electricity at all times during January. At no time - even during high demand - was the amount of imports bigger than the exports. The idea that Germany would somehow depend on nuclear power from France is simply a myth (or a lie).
Source for the data: https://www.agora-energiewende...
it is never normal customers who get the privilege of using this cheap energy...
France still plans to reduce nuclear to 50% - just not already by 2025 as planned by the old government.
http://www.mining-journal.com/...
While France exports a huge amount of electricity, this is mostly cheap surplus electricity at times of low demand. At times of high demand or many plants are down (e.g. during heat wave), it often critically depends on imports. In contrast, in the last years this was never the case for Germany.
http://energypost.eu/france-ca...
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
But even in total, Germany is about to overtake France as the biggest electricity exporter - especially with all the trouble France had with its nuclear plants this year.
http://www.worldstopexports.co...
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...
https://www.platts.com/latest-...
I never said Germany depends on nuclear power from France. They have their own nuclear power which provides a stable base. They also, like France, are a large net exporter of electricity.
There are times, like France, when they import more than they export. Those are not very often but they happen.
Would it not make more sense to say, make it "Free electricity night" and instead of sending out rebates, buy batteries to solve the problem once and for all? Don't dump the energy, save it for lower production days.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The person I originally replied to said Germany depends on nuclear power from France. Yes, there a moments where Germany imports more than it exports. This is rare, for brief periods of time, and never critical (as there are enough plants to create the electricity in Germany, but may be just cheaper to import). In France, this happens more often and for longer times when demand is very high (e.g. due to electric heating in winter) or when many nuclear plants are off-line (e.g. during heat waves in summer or this November due to inspections and outages) and France then often depends on imports.
France has not historically had issues with plants being off line, and heat related shutdowns are very rare, and can be planned and dealt with. Unlike wind, where massive drops in output cannot be scheduled, and must be made up from other sources. In fact, most of Germany's net import periods coincide with low wind output nationally and higher demand.
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.
To add to this description, the way the knot is "tied" is that wood is a cellulose-in-lignin composite, in which the lignin is a combinatorial polymer -- the plant uses several different monomers that are sort-of randomly put together, giving you a very large number of possible products, making it impossible for any reasonably-sized set of enzymes to tackle. As Shanghai Bill described it, the eventual fungal solution was to start by pumping a blast of free radicals into the lignin, breaking it up into fragments that were more amendable to further processing.
This also points to a fundamental problem with the development of cellulosic ethanol -- we haven't managed to speed up the fermentation process much, because wood and other plant structural materials are the end result of a eons-long evolutionary stalemate between plants and microbes. There simply aren't any easy molecular biology shortcuts for digesting it; all approaches appear to have been well-balanced between biological costs incurred by the defender and the attacker.
Of course, maybe we can get around the problem by circumventing the rules of the game. For instance, bulk physical treatment process can pre-degrade plant material (physical conditions aren't accessible to microbes because of scale or biological compatibility, but engineers will still need to make the cost and energy consumption of the process economically worthwhile). Or, genetically engineering plants to produce easily degraded lignins (but this means your biomass crops have unilaterally disarmed one of their defense mechanisms).
You are kidding, right? France had historically lots of issues with plants being off line (planned and unplanned). Most famously, during the major health crisis caused by the heat wave of 2003. Most recently, this year in January and November. It deals with this problems by importing power from elsewhere (e.g. from Germany) but it is generally considered a major issue, especially because it has an aging nuclear fleet and also because heat wave are expected to become more common. If other neighboring countries would rely on nuclear in the same way as France did, there would be a major crisis every two years or so. In contrast, even without wind and sun, Germany has enough plants and does not have to import power at any time. It can produce much more power than it needs at all times. It is only France, which has a very fragile grid in terms of unplanned outages.
The "Energiewende" is not a failure... Germany has steadily increased the share of renewable energy in the electricity mix.
Opinions differ. While "environmentalists" endorse that, it is opposed and regarded as a massive failure by people who care about the environment. Germany did not shut down all of their coal-burning power plants, instead they switched from burning coal to burning forests. That practice causes natural habitat destruction on a massive scale.
Generally, a helpful thing to keep in mind when when discussing energy and the environment is that renewable energy sources are not categorically good. Renewable=Good is stupid. Whale oil is renewable resource, should we go back to harvesting whales? Corn Ethanol is a renewable resource and its production uses about the same amount or more energy as it yields and promotes forest destruction, results in massive soil erosion causing river and stream pollution, places enormous amounts of toxic agri-chemicals in the environment and promotes food scarcity in third-world countries. Windmills murder birds, and so many that wind energy was only made viable in the U.S. because Obama gave the wind industry environmental waivers to murder American Eagles.
It is also important to keep in mind that though we depend on coal, coal is harmful. Though AGW alarmism is political propaganda supported by junk science, coal releases mercury and other toxins in quantities large enough to yield significant and measurable declines in human health and longevity. Mountain-top removal mining is an environmental disaster. It would be good to replace coal with cleaner energy, but let's not be idiots and replace it with worse energy sources because we are suckered by the environmentalist lobby. Switching to more energy efficient homes, electric cars, grid-scale storage, photovoltaics, natural gas and fission reactors would be net environmental gains and some of those continue to get cleaner and cheaper. R&D on new technologies on average has big efficiency and environmental payoffs, despite government preferentially funding losers and that no on particular technology is a sure win. But many incremental improvements and/or a big breakthrough like viable fusion reactors would move us off of coal.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
You are kidding, right? France had historically lots of issues with plants being off line (planned and unplanned).
They have had plants come off line, but it has not historically presented any problems. You are trying to make it out to be some sort of problem.
The real problem is CO2 emissions, and that is much more a German problem than a French one, nuclear being a key differentiator.
You are kidding, right? France had historically lots of issues with plants being off line (planned and unplanned).
They have had plants come off line, but it has not historically presented any problems. You are trying to make it out to be some sort of problem.
You apply double standards. If Germany imports a little bit of electricity in the evening after sunset with low wind because this is a bit cheaper than spinning up a conventional plant, this indicates that wind power is a failure. If France relies on imports for most of January and November because the remaining operational plants of its nuclear fleet can not fully fulfill the demand this is "not a problem". Of course, it is not a problem. But only because others have an energy mix not mainly based on nuclear.
Nuclear is pretty straight forward... rods go in or out and affect the amount of heat generated.
Well, maybe your uncle should go back to university or get some remedial courses in nuclear engineering. Yes, nuclear reactors are controlled with control rods. And yes, if all goes according to plan, you can quickly shut the chain reaction down. But you cannot quickly vary the output of the reactor. First, because this leads to the build-up of undesirable fission products ("neutron poisons"), and secondly, because there is a large amount of residual decay heat. Nuclear powerplants typically provide base loads only, possibly changing at the several hours to days timescale. Like all thermal plants, they can in principle vent heat, but that is non-trivial on a large scale, and, of course, very inefficient.
Stephan
Nuclear is not as straight forward as you say. You also want your fuel to be used evenly, have to take into account the level of fission products in the reactor, etc. Nuclear is also less reliable than solar and wind, so you also have to plan for sudden unplanned loss of power sources. There is also a weather factor for nuclear as nuclear plants depend on water for cooling, so if water levels are too low or it becomes too hot, it does not work. The later is the reason France depends on Germany for power and not vice versa as incorrectly claimed by many here.
Nuclear power can load follow to an extent, but it's not capable of really fast responses like the big Australian Tesla battery. Also the economics do not favor using nuclear for load following. The big expense in nuclear is the initial capital cost and if you want to get a return on investment you run the plant as close to maximum output all the time, so nuclear is best suited for base load power.
I also think it's stupid to say that nuclear is less reliable than solar or wind. Does nuclear suddenly quit when the sun goes down or when the wind stops or when the plant is covered in snow?
As long as the population keeps increasing, it is self-evident that the planet is not overpopulated.
And if I eat and eat and weigh 400 pounds, it is self evident that I'm not over weight because I haven't actually died yet.
The Soviet Union and Russian pipelines got paid. Just the cost of energy. Thats why the nations of Europe wanted pipelines into the Soviet Union and Russia years ago. A pipeline is a very easy and low cost way of getting energy from Russia into Western Europe.
That is why nations in the EU keep going back to low cost Russian energy for generations.
The Soviet Union and Russia kept to every agreement nations the EU agreed to. All the gas flowed at an agreed price.
Bringing in energy by ship to a new port with all ints new costs is not going to be a cost saving to budgets that are limited.
Re "gas in general is getting too expensive" if you want to bring it in by ship.
The pipeline from Russia is in place, working and ready for any energy deal nations in the EU want.
Pay for ports and ships? Buy lots of energy at a low cost for Russia? Whats better for a growing EU economy? Low cost dependable energy?
Expanding ports, doing deals for ships and bringing in energy from random other nations?
The Soviet Unions and Russian energy deals with nations of the EU go back many years.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You apply double standards. If Germany imports a little bit of electricity in the evening after sunset with low wind because this is a bit cheaper than spinning up a conventional plant, this indicates that wind power is a failure.
I never said nor implied that wind is a failure, I don't believe wind is a failure, I've always maintained it is an important part of the mix to reduce CO2 emissions. Just pointing out the contrast to those that want to point out petty import/export balance perturbations as if it were some statement on nuclear in France, particularly when they've traditionally been a leading exporter of electricity in Europe.
Its well documented that France's energy mix, which includes significant nuclear contribution, provides a stable generation base, low CO2 emissions, and low cost. Germany, meanwhile. is struggling with their CO2 reductions under a strategy which reduces nuclear, as such they are facing higher costs and higher CO2 emissions, with no clear turning point in sight.
The latest batch of offshore wind turbines are not subsidized at all, the companies didn't want the money.
Not true. That Bloomberg article is quite poor analysis for an alleged financial services company.
The approved projects for offshore wind turbines in the North Sea will not enjoy any construction subsidies, but they will enjoy plenty of operating subsidies in the form of Germany's absurdly high energy taxes that go to operators of renewables. If they weren't going to be selling in to Germany's energy market, these projects would still not be viable.
Presumably economies of scale and efficiencies of installers will continue to drop the installation costs of large scale wind generators, but there is a floor, a minimum cost below which installers can not go without taking a loss. Raw materials will always cost something, and for the foreseeable future there will be some labor involved. I would be curious to see an analysis of what that floor might be, and how it compares to current wholesale grid prices around the world. Not curious enough to try googling myself though...
Why wouldn't you sell it back if you can make risk free money?
Reichsfuhrer Pusigraber is making sure our coal mines are never left abandoned.
No, they don't sell it back, when rices are high.
Pumped storages are used for balancing power: they are continuously used to stanbelice the grid.
Usually grid operators have day ahead and month ahead contracts with pumped storage providers.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The im-/exports of power between european nations is purely based on EU markrt conditions.
There is no single nation in the EU that could not disconnect from the EU grid and take care for its own power.
Believing otherwise is complete idiocy.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
France has since ten years continuously 30% of its plants offline ...maintenance and security upgrades.
During summer time, another 30% go offline because of low water levels in the ricers, they lack cooling water. No idea were you get this from: and heat related shutdowns are very rare Since the 1990s that happens every year: AGW! And Germany is the partner who provides the back up.
In fact, most of Germany's net import periods coincide with low wind output nationally and higher demand.
That is not a coincident, that is how power production and markets work. Why should we ramp up a coal plant when we can import power cheaper than produce it with our own plants?
Hint: the fact that we back up the French grid is usually a mutual deal of assistance, and not only purely run via the EEX. Hence we get power back when it fits them, us, and the rest of the market.
If we would talk here about two restaurants needing beef and beer no one would complain if the two owners help out each other by exchaning beer and beef. But because we are talking about Germanies Energiewende, helping each other out is now a bad thing?
The owners don't need to help each other out, they can run to the next super market and pay the super market price instead ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You are extrmely uninformed about the european and french grid ...
What do you mean with historical? .the french grid has problems since about 1990/1993 ... for me that is historical enough.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I'm more thnking about a mechanical mining computer (Baggage, or how ever he is spelled) that creates coins while drivig :)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You are an idiot.
Gas prices between the EU (esoecially German, that build the gas pipelines between the EU and Russia) are based on 30 year long running contracts. Every ~5 years a new contract running for 30 - 50 years over a new contingent of gas is made. The prices are 'fixed', or in other words, there are clauses binding the gas price to the world market oil price. E.g. every 3 month the price is adjusted to/by the average of the previous 4 or 6 month oil price.
With that you have a set of 6 contracts, overlapping each other and expiring one by one every 5 years.
There is absolutely no way the russians can manipulate the EU gas prices based on their own gas delievery.
And they can not cut of Europe.
The whole of Euore has enough gas storage and local gas production e.g. in the north sea to run the whole EU for minimum 5 years,
If the russions would 'invalidate' one contract, we could cancel all of them, who you think is hurt more? The poor EU citizen who does not care if gas prices double or the Russian economy that loses 50% of its gas customers?
The idea that the EU, in particular Germany, is dependent on Russian gas is just fud, and who believes it, is an idiot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Load levels for every power plant are projected days and weeks into the future.
Regardless if coal, wind or solar.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Europe has no frozen rivers anymore since 1977, when AGW (and river heating by nukes) started to take effect.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
One plant out of many reducing output is very different than the entire wind output of Germany falling because of low wind conditions.
Hint: look on a map.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I can't waste time reading what you write because in your second paragraph you say solar doesn't work on a cloudy day which is patently not true do some research
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...
Source: Many long conversations with an uncle who be rather senior in a multi-state power co-op
I see your appeal to authority and raise you a conflict of interest.
though he is not a believer in man made 'climate change'
Which shows his understanding of aspects connected to his activity are pretty limited.
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.
That's just an excuse to feel good about being lazy and keeping on wasting energy.
There's two big problems with nuclear. One is subtle the other is pretty obvious. The obvious problem is that the cost/watt is high because of all the equipment you need to deal with a nuclear reactor and the steam cycle. You need a big heavy containment building, you need to get rid of the large amounts of waste heat; you need pumps, and redundant everything.
The more subtle problem is that because the cost/watt is high, you have to run the reactor flat-out as much as possible to bring the cost/kWh down to a sensible level.
That means that it's mostly only baseload electricity. And baseload electricity is historically the cheapest electricity. So you've got a relatively expensive way of making cheap electricity. Well, with care the economics just about work out. For baseload. But that doesn't solve the problem of where you get the peak load.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Wut? That's a pretty shitty analogy.
Perhaps you should look on a year instead of a week?
Low wind production us extremely rare, and in a european grid, why would anyone care?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Low wind production is quite commonplace actually. Step through every week of the year and you'll find many times it drops less than 2 GW total generation. I gave you the link....
In the first four weeks alone there are lows of 0.33, 0.53, and 0.78 GW output.... next to nothing.,
Even in a good wind week, like week 40, it drops to only 8GW
Then there are entire weeks that are really bad. Weeks 1-4, Weeks 26-35 are all pathetic weeks. 38.. There are others I skipped.
Please stop 'just saying stuff' that you want to be true and look at the facts.
Well,
I lost track about what we are talking.
The web site you link is not showing the day by day wind production. It shows two selected grid operators and how much wind/solar they feed into their grids. That has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of wind/solar power is fed into the whole german grid.
So no idea about what you want to talk.
Fraunhover is a good starting point to get informations about german grid(s): https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Well, I lost track about what we are talking. The web site you link is not showing the day by day wind production. It shows two selected grid operators and how much wind/solar they feed into their grids.
The link shows the entire German wind production for week, you can step through every week of the year. This is another case where you simply ignore facts and go off saying things that don't make sense. Your link does not show actual production history for days or weeks.
Wind variability does not go away just because you ignore it, and facts don't go away just because you decide to be willfully ignorant. You have no credibility.
No idea why you are so hostile. ...
Your link does not show what you think it does.
The base URL of the PDF I linked is a good starting point for your research.
But alas, as you seem to lazy, I look up for you a credible source of the weekly/daily wind production for 2016/2017.
Will take a few days
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Anyone else that reads this can plainly see what my link goes to, and how it backs my point. You can call it a potato if you like, but that doesn't change what it really is.