I don't hate the Sun. I hate people who think that more production from green power is the answer to our problems. Green power production is one part but it is too unreliable to be counted on. Much more money needs to be spent on storage and transmission of electricity so that it is available when and where it is needed and not just when and where it is produced.
What happens when it is predicted that most solar and wind power will not be available? Sure you can bring plants on line but even idle plants need maintenance and operation. It takes days and a lot of energy to cold start a plant. What if these standby plants are used 20% of the time? Energy would be very expensive as their maintenance costs would have to be recouped in 20% of the time.
By the way, nuclear and hydroelectric are conventional power.
Sure they might not make it with 20 plants but they could scale down to 2 plants
Look at the variability in day to day green power. Two plants won't be enough to make up for the times when green power is not available. You can not turn up the sun or the wind when needed. A prime example is on page 143. Notice that they used about 700Mw of conventional energy during the weekdays. Solar was almost non existent because it is winter and for some reason there wab not much wind power either. You need to size the base load plants to the maximum requirement; not the minimum.
Why should the Germans pay for overcapacity?
Exactly my point. Why pay for overcapacity on green energy that may or may not be available when needed so that base load plants can sit at warm up state to kick in when needed..
That's why the plans include wind, geothermal, hydro, biomass and concentrated solar.
Wind; Unreliable look at the charts in this document starting on page 53. Notice how muchce the sage green varies from day to day? Some days it is significant and some days it is nonexistent. Geothermal; Very restricted areas of natural sources. Can cause earthquakes if injecting water. Uses a lot of water which is becoming scarce if doing injection. Hydro; most viable sites are already in use. biomass; very expensive power. Concentrated solar; very expensive with heat storage.
The point of that comment is in the fact that you CAN transport power all across the continent without much loss
Where are your loss figures? All I have seen is that it can be transported but not how much the loss is.
It is a project planned out to 2050 with SuperSmart Grid covering EU by 2030 and 50% of EU's own electricity production
It is a plan that has not been approved or funded yet. Plans are easy implementing them is much harder.
capacity factor. How about you look at the report cited in the article. 30.533 GW installed. 24.4 TWhs produced in 7 months. 30.533 * 7 months * 30 days * 24 hours = 153.9TWhrs. 24.4/153.9 = 16%. capacity factor to wind.
The link to turbines is from a current manufacturer. Just look at the detailed charts starting on page 45. Notice how little sage green there is on many of the charts. That means very little wind power was produced.
Did you look at the detailed chats to see how much wind energy was actually produced? It varies greatly from hour to hour. Yes there will always be some electricity generated but in most cases "some" is not enough. According to this the capacity factor of wind is pretty low. If wind farms follow the calculation in that article one would need to install almost for times the capacity to have the same output as a conventional power plant.
Newer turbines don't need to shut down due to high wind speeds,
You need to do a little more research. All turbines have a cutout speed; even modern ones.
That is the price paid to producers and is based on supply and demand. As demand goes down and price decreases. The storage companies will have an effect on this supply and demand.If storage companies started buying electricity during low periods it the demand will rise and so will the price. As they put electricity back into the system supply will rise and price will drop. This will decrease the swing between high and low prices. Even at 2 time it is not enough to pay for construction, maintenance and operation of the storage plants. All prices would have to rise to subsidize them.
Did you notice that there was no entry for solar in that chart? From my calculations the capacity factor of solar in Germany varies from 2% in January to 11% in July. Considering that baseload power plants could be as high as 90% one would need up to 45 times the solar capacity to match the output. When most people see an installation of XMW capacity of solar they think it can replace X MW capacity of fossil fuel plants. That is not true.
They have to buy at the higher price to compensate for the higher cost for constructing green projects.
When one build a plant one must pay for the plant. The cost per Kwhr is calculated by taking the construction cost and dividing it by the the amount of energy produced over the repayment period. If the cost is calculated based on the installed capacity it would be less than 1/3 the actual cost. Even at the higher prices the projects won't pay for themselves.
At dusk in England where is the power going to come from? It wold be dark all the way to Japan even in summer. At the equator the day length is always 12 hours. So in winter it would be 4 hours/day more than Frankfurt and in Summer it would be four hours less. So in summer It would be dark along the entire longitude. So where would the solar power to supply England and all of Europe and Asia to Japan come from? Same thing for dawn in Japan. Can that longitude supply all of Europe and Asia? Sure there can be storage involved but that is my point; not enough money is going into storage.
Texas to supply all of the electricity to everything in the radius of 1500 miles
And where does Texas get the power when it is dark during a storm?
I somehow get the feeling that you haven't bothered to read the links I gave you
They have signed a lot of agreements but I don't see them having built many production plants in the Sahara yet. The TuNir project is still on the drawing board. The only plant that had gotten off the ground is a 500MV plant in Morocco. A lot more needs to be done to power Europe.
When the cost per watt is calculated on installed capacity as opposed to actual capacity the figures are at least 1/3 of what they really are. That makes solar appear much cheaper than it really is. Maybe that is why the cost of household electricity in Germany has gome up by 61% since 2000 making it the most expensive in Europe.
According to this electricity prices have risen 61% since 2000 making it the most expensive electricity in Europe. That rise is blamed on renewable. It is cool to break records but at what price?
It is a great project and I am all for it. They are trying but need investment and that is hard to come by because most investors are interested in production and not storage.
By the way did you notice that the efficiency of the two existing compressed air plants are 42 and 54%. That would mean that the daytime rate would have to be about twice the night time rate to break even. That does not take into account the costs for running and maintaining the compression plant. with that taken into account the night time rate would have to be 1/3 the daytime rate. That is not going to happen any time soon.
Finally, Germany does not have separate day/night rates.
Like I sad there are ways but very few are actually building them. More money need to be spent on storage but that is not as sexy as breaking production records.
My point is that the realistic capacity of the installed solar generators is far below the theoretical capacity. This discrepancy causes cost calculations to seem to be much better than they really are. For example, if It costs $5M to build a 5MW facility then the cost per watt is $1. If that 5MW facility actually produces 1MW that is $5/watt.
Until we get superconducting power lines resistance in the line will limit distance. There is no way electricity generated on North America will be used in Europe.
By the way, just because someone is trying does not mean they will succeed.
Take a look at page 71 of the report. Notice that as solar becomes more prevalent there is more electricity being imported.at dawn and dusk and more surplus exported around noon. What if every country tried to do that? There would be shortages at dawn and dusk and massive surpluses at noon. This is why I say that electricity generation is not the problem; electricity storage is.
On page 22 of the report it states that 1.32 TWh were produced in calendar week 29. According to page 3 there are 34.558 GW of installed capacity. Lets do some math; 13200/7/16= 11.8. That is 34% of capacity.
The chart says that there is 34.558 GW of solar capacity installed. They then show that 19.4Twh of energy was produced in the first seven months. Lets do some math. The longest day in Frankfurt is 16 hours and 23 minutes while the shortest day is 8 hours and 3 minutes. Therefore, on average the sun is up for 12 hours.19400Gwh / 7 months / 30 days / 12 hours = 7.4 Mw produced on average. That is 22% of capacity. That would mean that when the sun is up solar plants are producing, on average, 22% of their installed capacity. What happened to the other 78%?
Lets do the same calculation for wind power. 24200 TWh/7 months/ 30 days / 24 hours = 4.8 Mw. 4.8/30.533 = 16% (wind works after dark so not daylight adjustment). Where is the other 84% of capacity.
If you buy power only at night or when wind generators are not working but require us to keep our plants available 24/7 there is a problem. When you need power from conventional plants you really need it but we can't charge extra to keep up the infrastructure.
Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
You will say something different during a winter storm where solar is almost zero and wind generators are shut down due to over speed. It does not matter if you use fossil fuel heat if the electric controls don't work. Welcome to the problem with green energy; you ca not turn it up on demand.
That is the problem. Notice that conventional electricity generation is used when there is not enough green power produced. Storms that would over speed wind power and block most of the solar power happen quite often and could drop green power generation drastically. During those times convention power plants need to be available. If they are not profitable then they will not be available and brownouts and blackouts will occur due to lack of power. The problem with green power is not generation; it is storage so it can be used when needed and not just when produced. Sure there are some technologies available but they are not widely used. More money needs to go into the storage issue.
It is equally possible that this project will fail and they will go back to the bullet train anyway wasting even more money. A penny thrown away is a penny spent.
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I don't hate the Sun. I hate people who think that more production from green power is the answer to our problems. Green power production is one part but it is too unreliable to be counted on. Much more money needs to be spent on storage and transmission of electricity so that it is available when and where it is needed and not just when and where it is produced.
How is that heat distributed to the house when there is no electricity for the fan (forced air) or pump (hot water)? Convection is only so efficient.
What happens when it is predicted that most solar and wind power will not be available? Sure you can bring plants on line but even idle plants need maintenance and operation. It takes days and a lot of energy to cold start a plant. What if these standby plants are used 20% of the time? Energy would be very expensive as their maintenance costs would have to be recouped in 20% of the time.
By the way, nuclear and hydroelectric are conventional power.
Sure they might not make it with 20 plants but they could scale down to 2 plants
Look at the variability in day to day green power. Two plants won't be enough to make up for the times when green power is not available. You can not turn up the sun or the wind when needed. A prime example is on page 143. Notice that they used about 700Mw of conventional energy during the weekdays. Solar was almost non existent because it is winter and for some reason there wab not much wind power either. You need to size the base load plants to the maximum requirement; not the minimum.
Why should the Germans pay for overcapacity?
Exactly my point. Why pay for overcapacity on green energy that may or may not be available when needed so that base load plants can sit at warm up state to kick in when needed..
It works in the summer. In winter that 34% drops to 4%. This is the problem with reporting the highs and ignoring the lows.
That's why the plans include wind, geothermal, hydro, biomass and concentrated solar.
Wind; Unreliable look at the charts in this document starting on page 53. Notice how muchce the sage green varies from day to day? Some days it is significant and some days it is nonexistent.
Geothermal; Very restricted areas of natural sources. Can cause earthquakes if injecting water. Uses a lot of water which is becoming scarce if doing injection.
Hydro; most viable sites are already in use.
biomass; very expensive power.
Concentrated solar; very expensive with heat storage.
The point of that comment is in the fact that you CAN transport power all across the continent without much loss
Where are your loss figures? All I have seen is that it can be transported but not how much the loss is.
It is a project planned out to 2050 with SuperSmart Grid covering EU by 2030 and 50% of EU's own electricity production
It is a plan that has not been approved or funded yet. Plans are easy implementing them is much harder.
Then why is the actual production so much lower than the installed capacity?
capacity factor.
How about you look at the report cited in the article. 30.533 GW installed. 24.4 TWhs produced in 7 months. 30.533 * 7 months * 30 days * 24 hours = 153.9TWhrs.
24.4/153.9 = 16%. capacity factor to wind.
The link to turbines is from a current manufacturer. Just look at the detailed charts starting on page 45. Notice how little sage green there is on many of the charts. That means very little wind power was produced.
Did you look at the detailed chats to see how much wind energy was actually produced? It varies greatly from hour to hour. Yes there will always be some electricity generated but in most cases "some" is not enough. According to this the capacity factor of wind is pretty low. If wind farms follow the calculation in that article one would need to install almost for times the capacity to have the same output as a conventional power plant.
Newer turbines don't need to shut down due to high wind speeds,
You need to do a little more research. All turbines have a cutout speed; even modern ones.
That is the price paid to producers and is based on supply and demand. As demand goes down and price decreases. The storage companies will have an effect on this supply and demand.If storage companies started buying electricity during low periods it the demand will rise and so will the price. As they put electricity back into the system supply will rise and price will drop. This will decrease the swing between high and low prices. Even at 2 time it is not enough to pay for construction, maintenance and operation of the storage plants. All prices would have to rise to subsidize them.
Did you notice that there was no entry for solar in that chart? From my calculations the capacity factor of solar in Germany varies from 2% in January to 11% in July. Considering that baseload power plants could be as high as 90% one would need up to 45 times the solar capacity to match the output. When most people see an installation of XMW capacity of solar they think it can replace X MW capacity of fossil fuel plants. That is not true.
They have to buy at the higher price to compensate for the higher cost for constructing green projects.
When one build a plant one must pay for the plant. The cost per Kwhr is calculated by taking the construction cost and dividing it by the the amount of energy produced over the repayment period. If the cost is calculated based on the installed capacity it would be less than 1/3 the actual cost. Even at the higher prices the projects won't pay for themselves.
At dusk in England where is the power going to come from? It wold be dark all the way to Japan even in summer. At the equator the day length is always 12 hours. So in winter it would be 4 hours/day more than Frankfurt and in Summer it would be four hours less. So in summer It would be dark along the entire longitude. So where would the solar power to supply England and all of Europe and Asia to Japan come from? Same thing for dawn in Japan. Can that longitude supply all of Europe and Asia? Sure there can be storage involved but that is my point; not enough money is going into storage.
Texas to supply all of the electricity to everything in the radius of 1500 miles
And where does Texas get the power when it is dark during a storm?
I somehow get the feeling that you haven't bothered to read the links I gave you
They have signed a lot of agreements but I don't see them having built many production plants in the Sahara yet. The TuNir project is still on the drawing board. The only plant that had gotten off the ground is a 500MV plant in Morocco. A lot more needs to be done to power Europe.
When the cost per watt is calculated on installed capacity as opposed to actual capacity the figures are at least 1/3 of what they really are. That makes solar appear much cheaper than it really is. Maybe that is why the cost of household electricity in Germany has gome up by 61% since 2000 making it the most expensive in Europe.
According to this electricity prices have risen 61% since 2000 making it the most expensive electricity in Europe. That rise is blamed on renewable. It is cool to break records but at what price?
It is a great project and I am all for it. They are trying but need investment and that is hard to come by because most investors are interested in production and not storage.
By the way did you notice that the efficiency of the two existing compressed air plants are 42 and 54%. That would mean that the daytime rate would have to be about twice the night time rate to break even. That does not take into account the costs for running and maintaining the compression plant. with that taken into account the night time rate would have to be 1/3 the daytime rate. That is not going to happen any time soon.
Finally, Germany does not have separate day/night rates.
Like I sad there are ways but very few are actually building them. More money need to be spent on storage but that is not as sexy as breaking production records.
My point is that the realistic capacity of the installed solar generators is far below the theoretical capacity. This discrepancy causes cost calculations to seem to be much better than they really are. For example, if It costs $5M to build a 5MW facility then the cost per watt is $1. If that 5MW facility actually produces 1MW that is $5/watt.
Until we get superconducting power lines resistance in the line will limit distance. There is no way electricity generated on North America will be used in Europe.
By the way, just because someone is trying does not mean they will succeed.
Take a look at page 71 of the report. Notice that as solar becomes more prevalent there is more electricity being imported.at dawn and dusk and more surplus exported around noon. What if every country tried to do that? There would be shortages at dawn and dusk and massive surpluses at noon. This is why I say that electricity generation is not the problem; electricity storage is.
On page 22 of the report it states that 1.32 TWh were produced in calendar week 29. According to page 3 there are 34.558 GW of installed capacity. Lets do some math; 13200/7/16= 11.8. That is 34% of capacity.
The chart says that there is 34.558 GW of solar capacity installed. They then show that 19.4Twh of energy was produced in the first seven months. Lets do some math. The longest day in Frankfurt is 16 hours and 23 minutes while the shortest day is 8 hours and 3 minutes. Therefore, on average the sun is up for 12 hours.19400Gwh / 7 months / 30 days / 12 hours = 7.4 Mw produced on average. That is 22% of capacity. That would mean that when the sun is up solar plants are producing, on average, 22% of their installed capacity. What happened to the other 78%?
Lets do the same calculation for wind power. 24200 TWh /7 months/ 30 days / 24 hours = 4.8 Mw. 4.8/30.533 = 16% (wind works after dark so not daylight adjustment). Where is the other 84% of capacity.
If you buy power only at night or when wind generators are not working but require us to keep our plants available 24/7 there is a problem. When you need power from conventional plants you really need it but we can't charge extra to keep up the infrastructure.
Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
You will say something different during a winter storm where solar is almost zero and wind generators are shut down due to over speed. It does not matter if you use fossil fuel heat if the electric controls don't work. Welcome to the problem with green energy; you ca not turn it up on demand.
That is the problem. Notice that conventional electricity generation is used when there is not enough green power produced. Storms that would over speed wind power and block most of the solar power happen quite often and could drop green power generation drastically. During those times convention power plants need to be available. If they are not profitable then they will not be available and brownouts and blackouts will occur due to lack of power. The problem with green power is not generation; it is storage so it can be used when needed and not just when produced. Sure there are some technologies available but they are not widely used. More money needs to go into the storage issue.
It is equally possible that this project will fail and they will go back to the bullet train anyway wasting even more money. A penny thrown away is a penny spent.