When I see these charts I definitely don’t want to be that sweating guy in grid operator’s control room desperately trying to turn off some solar parks to stabilize the grid. Solar generation goes from nothing at night to 80+% during daytime. Ouch.
The articles says the hot water _threatened_ a shut down. Did it actually happen to shut down because of the water temperature in the summer month in 2022, or was this FUD?
- "During the week to May 13, Germany's solar farms produced 17,531 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity, according to data from LSEG,"
This is an obviously wrong number, and I'm not even sure how they accomplished such a specifically weird mistake. "Mean of 17,351 MW" would be plausible. That's different by a factor of 168.
Because it's a nonsensically small number; and it's contradicted with the graph immediately below it, that shows larger amounts of energy (MWh) generated in individual hours, than the supposed figure for the entire week. The peaks on the graph are ~40,000 MWh/hour sustained over multiple hours (eyeballing it). The amount generated in the entire week can't be 17,000 MWh, a number smaller than that.
(For anyone unclear about units: the y-axis of the graph is GWh/h, the same as 10^3 MWh/h, or simply just 10^3 MW. The unit [MWh] = 10^6 [Watt]*[hour]).
Yes, the units are correct. But currently Germany is generating 33 GW of solar power (according to electricity maps). Therefore the 17GWh is generated after 0.5 hrs. For a whole week this value is way too low, even if it was a cloudy week (which it wasn't).
Forgive me as I am one of those illiterate people - but if it is right to say: "By 2011, solar PV provided 18 TWh of Germany's electricity, or about 3% of the total" why is it not right to say the above?
I see that the parent has already addressed this in another comment and has edited their original statement, but I'll leave my question up - this helped me understand the difference:
We're building the solar equivalent of the total cumulative nuclear capacity germany has ever build every 3 years.
If we manage to hold off regressive forces that are trying to derail the current trajectory with whataboutism of nuclear and fusion, we might actually make it to CO2 neutrality in a reasonable timeframe.
Cicero is a well-known, "conservative" (at best) to political rather right-wing magazine. It's not any better in terms of neutrality than the Telegraph. Find a reputable source and we can talk about it. And please don't come up with the Merkur or some other yellow-press who covered that nonsense for clicks.
You'll notice that, if you read the original messages, nowhere did they suggest anything concrete. They're just offering to investigate what would need to be done to continue operation. This is just blown out of proportion and thus far has had no relevance in the German political landscape. It's rightfully ignored.
While it's true that the accusations were out there, the whole thing was quickly proven wrong.
The document in question is accessible [0] (in German, and even hosted at the website of Cicero, which invented the story) and clearly comes to the conclusion that nuclear reactors in Germany should not continue to run. It's even written in bold letters.
Nuclear operators try to minimize losses of the shutdown by not replacing parts that are still workable until the shutdown. When you know of the impending shutdown, you can plan for the plant to be as EOL as possible. If you plan for long term use, parts are replaced gradually so that there's no big revamp pending.
> Reserve plant capacity needs to double by 2026, regulator says
That does not imply more plants if you're in a phase where you take plants out of continuous operation. It's just that existing plants must be kept in reserve and can't be completely disconnected.
Nuclear has less capacity than solar.
Nuclear has less capacity than on-shore wind.
Nuclear is currently 3x as expensive as on-shore wind.
Nuclear is currently 2x as expensive as solar.
France spend the last 70 years building low-CO2 energy reactors. Nobody is disputing that this is a great thing™, but that doesn't mean that it is the right technology for other nations to go with now, who can't go back in time 70 years.
I'm gonna use the most expensive storage technology I know (lithium-ion) and forego cheaper alternatives like pumped hydro just to make a point.
I'm gonna use data from lazard, because it looks like the most recent study[1].
- Cost of Lithium-Ion Battery Packs 139$/kWh [2]
- 139000$/MWh
- We want the levelized cost of electricity, so let's assume, again to make a point, that we have to throw the battery out after 500 cycles instead of it only operating at 80% charge. That's 139000$ / 500 = 278$
- The EU estimates that in a 80% renewable grid you need approx 30% storage capacity. So let's assume we need 40% storage capacity for a 100% grid.[3] That's 278$ * 0.4 = 112$
- Cost for solar 24–96$
- Cost for wind 24–75$
- Cost for solar + storage 136$ - 208$
- Cost for wind + storage 136$ - 187$
- Cost for new nuclear: 141–221$
So you can combine renewables with the most expensive/deluxe storage technology available today and it's still cheaper than nuclear.
They estimate €80 per MWh for an entirely renewable System.
So do you want to provide a study that has some contradicting numbers, or do you just want to admit that no amount of evidence is going to change your mind and move on?
Cool link, thanks. But speaking about hydrogen production and not storage is a bit misleading: currently we can story only 0.5TWh of energy using hydrogen WORLDWIDE, and this paper proposes 55TWh just for Germany. Currently, hydrogen is mostly used for greenwashing fossil fuels, with a promise that if be build infrastructure using "bad" hydrogen, we will be ready when "good" hydrogen arrives.
Yeah its used for greenwashing. But you wanted a 100% study and I provided one.
Our point is that nuclear is used exactly for the same purpose:
"We don't need to invest into renewables, because fusion and nuclear is gonna magically save us all in 10 years."
Again it's great that france has this much nuclear right now. But that's not a good path for the rest of europe catching up. Especially not with the current price trajectories. (Nuclear becoming more expensive, storage and renewables getting cheaper)
I'm not saying we shouldn't invest in renewables, but that we need to consider their limitations, primarily intermittency and unfeasability of storing TWhs of energy for later. At the same time, we need to find a way to cheaply and fast build new nuclear power stations (like Korea and China are doing). Time is running out, yet a large group of public opposes the single biggest source of clean energy there is.
> The EU estimates that in a 80% renewable grid you need approx 30% storage capacity.
The number I first gave(CO2 per kWh) is when Germany was at more than 80% renewable, at the time I wrote the comment.
As we can all see the 'low carbon' target you set yourself in your example is not enough.
Your pro-nuclear propaganda is just anti-renewable propaganda in a trench-coat.
Should germany do more? Yes!
Is it great that france spend the last 70 years building 0-CO2 emmision power plants? Yes!
Should germany spend its money on the cheapest, most available technology? Yes!
Is your nuclear greenwash for new reactors in germany an obvious conservative derailment strategy to delay more investment in renewables?
Yes! (you might actually believe this stuff, but german conservative parties that use this dogwhistle certainly don't)
You can't pay for something that doesn't exist. You just can't store enough energy to turn renewables into a baseload energy source because it's orders of magnitude more than existing storage solutions.
The capacity factor in winter for solar is below 10%. Nuclear is typically at more than 90% in winter.
The target we are speaking is CO2 emitted, it already reached the "target" in france, with less than 60gCO2/kwh to provide electricity the whole year, to the whole grid.
> but that doesn't mean that it is the right technology for other nations to go with now
you propose something that is not feasible with the current technology.
Reports indicate countries should build a lots of clean energy source, as fast as possible, including nuclear, solar, wind, to use these clean energy source and replace fossil energy, to limit global warming
Right now, France doesn't do that fast enough (not enough investment in nuclear, and renewable), and Germany is headed to the opposite direction (need of fossil fuel to produce in renewable down-time).
Every euro spend on nuclear is a euro not spend on something that's giving you 2-3x as much energy generated.
Rewewables have been called "infeasible" at 5%, at 25% at 50%, now we're at 60%. I'm prette sure you'll yell "infeasible" even if we're running at 100%...
“On the right track” would be “we know we’re going to make it without mass extinction of humans”. Currently I’m not so sure and I doubt anyone knows.
We’re making changes, but the course correction haven’t been sufficient so far and it remains to be seen if we will be able to do enough fast enough to avoid said cataclysm.
Coal produce 10% of the energy of Germany right now, it's 60% of the emissions.
5% of nuclear would reduce by a third the Germany emissions by reducing coal usage.
5% of German production is about twice the projected capacity of Hinkley Point C, the only current nuclear plant I remember the name of, so that might cost maybe €60B. The same amount of PV would cost maybe €2B. If you overbuild PV by 300% you still have >€50B cost difference.
You can reach any conclusion if you're willing to disregard price differences of more than 10×. Ditto if you're willing to assume near-zero cost by assuming inexpensive restauration of hardware that's past the end of its design life.
Independent of belief, "X has the following good feature" does not imply "X is a good idea" or "X is worth serious consideration". Belief is one thing, cost is quite another and cannot be believed away.
What a weird reference from you. Fukushima is long gone and decisions were made at that time by the government at that time to phase out of nuclear power generation for multiple reasons. That's the situation to work with, anything else is superfluous.
Or if they had gone full nuclear like France. From the article:
"While Germany's power carbon intensity vastly exceeds the roughly 45g of CO2/KWh of France's nuclear-heavy system, the 166g reading at 1 p.m. on May 13 was below the 170g of CO2/KWh emitted during the same hour in Britain, which on an annual basis has a far lower carbon intensity than Germany."
Do you agree with the content in the article you sent ?
It says it's for "water too hot" not "lack of water", a nuclear plant can be retrofitted with cooling tower to not heat up the river. This is not done for cost reasons, we are already overproducing when theses nuclear plant need to shut down due to temperature.
> Kpler analyst Emeric de Vigan said the restrictions were likely to have little effect on output in practice
The article you cite, mention an expert that says it will have "little effect on output", you make it as a big problem.
And as the article says, France is still a net exporter at this climate, we export to countries that need a lot of electricity in the night, like Germany, exports have been massive theses days https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electrici... , despite germany attempt to sabotage our industry.
Right now when it is sunny PV panels produce at their peak. May is optimal time for solar energy for the northern hemisphere. Summer reduces efficiency due to heat.
Summer temepratures reduces efficiency of all thermal power plants, including nuclear and coal, since heat engines are more efficient when their cold bath side is held at a lower temperature.
Nuclear reactors take a long, long time to recoup the investments. During that time the cost of electricity generated by them is quite high compared to renewable sources like wind and solar.
This compounds when cheaper sources are being added to the grid, pushing prices down and making nuclear even less viable economically. For nukes to work, economically speaking, electricity prices need to be stable over a long period of time or they become perpetually in the red.
For this to work you can't have liberalised electricity markets, you need the government take the brunt of the risk of new nukes when it's economically not viable and have a design that spans a lifetime of 50-70 years so future generations can benefit from the lower cost after the capital costs are paid off.
Germany build the equivalent solar-capacity to the sum of every nuclear reactor it ever operated in the last 3 years.
Our _green_ minister of the economy and energy continued running the reactors even past their agreed run-time because the Ukraine war happened, but they simply reached end-of-life.
So we've replaced the small amount of nuclear we had with renewables already. Now you might ask why we don't build new ones to move away from fossil fuels faster.
But why should you? It's impossible to argue that it would be economical given this chart:[1]
That's very impressive amount of solar capacity, but the nameplate power is not super useful measure in solar, as the capacity factor for solar is somewhere between 10-15% in Germany, while for nuclear it's more like 90%. To get rid of fossil fuels in Germany, a ton of natgas heating would need to be replaced with electric heat pumps, driving up the power consumption during winter. Solar hardly produces any energy during the winter.
Is that nameplate or actual usable solar? In Texas or Spain the solar capacity factor is about 0.2, in Germany it's probably 0.15 or less.
So if it's nameplate equivalent but with nuclear capacity factor of 0.9 or more you'd have to 6x the solar to produce the same amount of energy to the grid over a year.
It's a capital intensive project that should run 24/7 to recupe the cost.
What will happen when solar is cheaper than nuclear 50% of a year(that is going to happen, we can charge batteries for a day and solar will have enough capacity)?
Thanks to electricity pricing, it won't be bought and thusprice from nuclear will have to be double in remaining time.
Why is it so hard to get a clear story on nuclear power on Havker News? The threads below devolve to: “you’re lying!”, “no, you’re lying!!” Yall pretend to be geniuses and turn into raving flame wars at the slightest mention of nuclear.
The numbers are too low. We have seen a surge in solar panels on balconies (~10% in this higher income neighborhood), which isn't taken into account. Also several people in my family have their roof full for their own consumtion + EV, this also not taken into account.
We recently went on the Autobahn for a 1000km journey, and you can see some solar farms, but very few. There is still a huge potential.
Solar will also kick into second gear as soon as batteries get cheaper or EV batteries are recycled into house batteries.
Small scale systems (Balkonkraftwerke („balcony power plant“) as we call them) that feed directly into the circuit of a house will appear as reduced load in these numbers (i.e. measured load isn‘t as high as it would be otherwise).
The trade-offs here don't seem favourable. Gemany's per-capita energy production has been dropping [0] and I'm going to be waiting to see what their industrial manufacturing does but I doubt we're going to see China-style explosive growth out of them any time soon.
We've got a very persistent trend across all these ideology-before-prosperity western countries where their energy policy is proving to be a disaster. We're getting literal de-growth of energy and a lot of the political fireworks are probably related to that. Hopefully we see some long-term improvements, but the last decade has not been pretty.
I mean the amount of energy they can tap into is going down. It means a substantial segment of the population are worse off, because they can't afford stuff/can't afford transport/can't afford to live comfortably. Energy is a general good for achieving a high quality of life.
I don't know. I can only speak of germany and my subjective feeling and I don't think it's as bad as people want it to be. Yes we have hard times, but come on, we still live in luxury.
Why are there so many nuclear fans on here? I am no expert and yes it sounds like nuclear energy is "clean and easy", but we still don't know what to do with the waste and if it'd be cheaper is apparently a heavy debate. So what's bad about removing the risk of nuclear powerplants and producing less nuclear waste?
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] threadhttps://www.reuters.com/business/energy/warming-rivers-threa...
This is an obviously wrong number, and I'm not even sure how they accomplished such a specifically weird mistake. "Mean of 17,351 MW" would be plausible. That's different by a factor of 168.
During a duration of time it is okay so say an amount of energy (MWh) was produced, right?
(For anyone unclear about units: the y-axis of the graph is GWh/h, the same as 10^3 MWh/h, or simply just 10^3 MW. The unit [MWh] = 10^6 [Watt]*[hour]).
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany#History
(Or is the wikipedia article wrong too?)
https://www.tls-containers.com/tls-blog/understanding-mw-and....
We're building the solar equivalent of the total cumulative nuclear capacity germany has ever build every 3 years.
If we manage to hold off regressive forces that are trying to derail the current trajectory with whataboutism of nuclear and fusion, we might actually make it to CO2 neutrality in a reasonable timeframe.
You didn't read the article I sent, it show you don't care about what it says but you try to attack the article because you dislike what it say.
The article state it's source is cicero, a... german magazine.
https://www.cicero.de/innenpolitik/robert-habeck-akten-atomk...
[0] https://assets.cicero.de/2024-04/2022-03-03_Atomaufsicht_Ver...
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-just-cant-quit-russia...
A well known example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix
UK stepped up and started to invest in the supply chain and replace Russia one day.
New gas plants are required to make use of gas as a storage medium one way or another.
> Late last month, Germany’s energy regulator said the country needs more coal power.
If you want a less biased source, here is bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-30/germany-s...
> Reserve plant capacity needs to double by 2026, regulator says
> Power stations on standby are mostly coal-, gas-fired plants
This article is riddled with statements that are factually incorrect. :(
I guess this is hard to research if you don't speak German, though.
> If you want a less biased source, here is bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-30/germany-s...
Can't read this, it's behind a paywall.
> Reserve plant capacity needs to double by 2026, regulator says
That does not imply more plants if you're in a phase where you take plants out of continuous operation. It's just that existing plants must be kept in reserve and can't be completely disconnected.
> If we manage to hold off regressive forces that are trying to derail the current trajectory with whataboutism of nuclear
Nuclear already reached the target. It's not some "whataboutism".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
Nuclear has less capacity than solar. Nuclear has less capacity than on-shore wind. Nuclear is currently 3x as expensive as on-shore wind. Nuclear is currently 2x as expensive as solar.
France spend the last 70 years building low-CO2 energy reactors. Nobody is disputing that this is a great thing™, but that doesn't mean that it is the right technology for other nations to go with now, who can't go back in time 70 years.
I'm gonna use the most expensive storage technology I know (lithium-ion) and forego cheaper alternatives like pumped hydro just to make a point.
I'm gonna use data from lazard, because it looks like the most recent study[1].
So you can combine renewables with the most expensive/deluxe storage technology available today and it's still cheaper than nuclear.1: https://www.lazard.com/media/typdgxmm/lazards-lcoeplus-april...
2: https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-...
3: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/research-and-technology/e...
Fortunately there's no such thing as diminishing returns and we can just make assumptions like this without any backing./s
But sure let's take a paper that estimated costs for the 100% renewable case: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4dc8#...
They estimate €80 per MWh for an entirely renewable System.
So do you want to provide a study that has some contradicting numbers, or do you just want to admit that no amount of evidence is going to change your mind and move on?
There are multiple sources for those interested, https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2021/6/11/some-rules-o... is a brief dot point page, the Hydrogen UK and European Hydrogen Backbone reports are longer more detailed technical report papers.
Our point is that nuclear is used exactly for the same purpose: "We don't need to invest into renewables, because fusion and nuclear is gonna magically save us all in 10 years."
Again it's great that france has this much nuclear right now. But that's not a good path for the rest of europe catching up. Especially not with the current price trajectories. (Nuclear becoming more expensive, storage and renewables getting cheaper)
The number I first gave(CO2 per kWh) is when Germany was at more than 80% renewable, at the time I wrote the comment. As we can all see the 'low carbon' target you set yourself in your example is not enough.
Btw the EU wants 80% renewables by 2050, that includes coal guzzlers like poland. Germany wants 100% renewables by 2035.
So you're barking at the wrong tree.
The tree I'm barking at kills thousands of European every year by burning coal, and finance anti-nuclear propaganda. https://env-health.org/IMG/pdf/dark_cloud-full_report_final....
https://www.ege.fr/sites/ege.fr/files/media_files/German_Int...
Should germany do more? Yes!
Is it great that france spend the last 70 years building 0-CO2 emmision power plants? Yes!
Should germany spend its money on the cheapest, most available technology? Yes!
Is your nuclear greenwash for new reactors in germany an obvious conservative derailment strategy to delay more investment in renewables? Yes! (you might actually believe this stuff, but german conservative parties that use this dogwhistle certainly don't)
The capacity factor in winter for solar is below 10%. Nuclear is typically at more than 90% in winter.
The target we are speaking is CO2 emitted, it already reached the "target" in france, with less than 60gCO2/kwh to provide electricity the whole year, to the whole grid.
> but that doesn't mean that it is the right technology for other nations to go with now
you propose something that is not feasible with the current technology.
Reports indicate countries should build a lots of clean energy source, as fast as possible, including nuclear, solar, wind, to use these clean energy source and replace fossil energy, to limit global warming
Right now, France doesn't do that fast enough (not enough investment in nuclear, and renewable), and Germany is headed to the opposite direction (need of fossil fuel to produce in renewable down-time).
Every euro spend on nuclear is a euro not spend on something that's giving you 2-3x as much energy generated.
Rewewables have been called "infeasible" at 5%, at 25% at 50%, now we're at 60%. I'm prette sure you'll yell "infeasible" even if we're running at 100%...
We’re making changes, but the course correction haven’t been sufficient so far and it remains to be seen if we will be able to do enough fast enough to avoid said cataclysm.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/29295/umfrage...
> Wouldn't change much if any at all.
5% of German production is about twice the projected capacity of Hinkley Point C, the only current nuclear plant I remember the name of, so that might cost maybe €60B. The same amount of PV would cost maybe €2B. If you overbuild PV by 300% you still have >€50B cost difference.
You can reach any conclusion if you're willing to disregard price differences of more than 10×. Ditto if you're willing to assume near-zero cost by assuming inexpensive restauration of hardware that's past the end of its design life.
Of course I'm wrong, I think differently than your beliefs, Atheist were wrong too.
Independent of belief, "X has the following good feature" does not imply "X is a good idea" or "X is worth serious consideration". Belief is one thing, cost is quite another and cannot be believed away.
Which was 141 TWH in 2010 and would have more than replaced the entire brown&hard coal use for 2023.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330065/gross-electricit...
"While Germany's power carbon intensity vastly exceeds the roughly 45g of CO2/KWh of France's nuclear-heavy system, the 166g reading at 1 p.m. on May 13 was below the 170g of CO2/KWh emitted during the same hour in Britain, which on an annual basis has a far lower carbon intensity than Germany."
The France that regularly has to shut down its reactors in the summer because there's no water for cooling left? Great idea!
but you're right, half of them were down for other reasons, too: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr...
It says it's for "water too hot" not "lack of water", a nuclear plant can be retrofitted with cooling tower to not heat up the river. This is not done for cost reasons, we are already overproducing when theses nuclear plant need to shut down due to temperature.
> Kpler analyst Emeric de Vigan said the restrictions were likely to have little effect on output in practice
The article you cite, mention an expert that says it will have "little effect on output", you make it as a big problem.
And as the article says, France is still a net exporter at this climate, we export to countries that need a lot of electricity in the night, like Germany, exports have been massive theses days https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electrici... , despite germany attempt to sabotage our industry.
Germany is at 388gCO2eq/kWh.
For April: https://ned.nl/nl/dataportaal/energie-productie/elektricitei... Solar was 27% of total energy production, and wind was 37%, which when you consider nights, means that you _must_ have peaks well over 50%.
Today, at midday, solar is 69% of total production.
Also, if you care about low prices, nuclear is among the worst options.
This compounds when cheaper sources are being added to the grid, pushing prices down and making nuclear even less viable economically. For nukes to work, economically speaking, electricity prices need to be stable over a long period of time or they become perpetually in the red.
For this to work you can't have liberalised electricity markets, you need the government take the brunt of the risk of new nukes when it's economically not viable and have a design that spans a lifetime of 50-70 years so future generations can benefit from the lower cost after the capital costs are paid off.
Our _green_ minister of the economy and energy continued running the reactors even past their agreed run-time because the Ukraine war happened, but they simply reached end-of-life.
So we've replaced the small amount of nuclear we had with renewables already. Now you might ask why we don't build new ones to move away from fossil fuels faster. But why should you? It's impossible to argue that it would be economical given this chart:[1]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
So if it's nameplate equivalent but with nuclear capacity factor of 0.9 or more you'd have to 6x the solar to produce the same amount of energy to the grid over a year.
It's a capital intensive project that should run 24/7 to recupe the cost.
What will happen when solar is cheaper than nuclear 50% of a year(that is going to happen, we can charge batteries for a day and solar will have enough capacity)?
Thanks to electricity pricing, it won't be bought and thusprice from nuclear will have to be double in remaining time.
We recently went on the Autobahn for a 1000km journey, and you can see some solar farms, but very few. There is still a huge potential.
Solar will also kick into second gear as soon as batteries get cheaper or EV batteries are recycled into house batteries.
We've got a very persistent trend across all these ideology-before-prosperity western countries where their energy policy is proving to be a disaster. We're getting literal de-growth of energy and a lot of the political fireworks are probably related to that. Hopefully we see some long-term improvements, but the last decade has not been pretty.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany
What do you mean by that and why is it bad? Do you mean that we save energy and need less? That doesn't sound bad tbh.