Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[Hillhater]

Sure, but since there has been little change in the installed capacities of either RE or Fossil fueled generation....
....the difference is just that it has been a windy/sunny start to 2020 compared to previous years.
And of course , if the wind is blowing then the fossil plants get turned down. !

That's exactly how it's supposed to work. As the amount of coal/gas that is burned decreases, then:

1) Carbon emissions and pollution go down
2) Fuel prices go down (supply/demand)

Win/win.

Sadly, you missed the point of it resulting just from a change in the weather,....
It is not a sustainable situation, when the wind drops, they are back where they started in Jan....or worse maybe ?

 

[JackFlorey]

Sadly, you missed the point of it resulting from a change in the weather,....It is not a sustainable situation, when the wind drops, they are back where they started in Jan....or worse maybe ?

Nope, they are better off - because they didn't have to burn as much coal/gas. So less risk of blackouts, less cost to the utility, less pollution. Win/win.

 

[Hillhater]

Sadly, you missed the point of it resulting from a change in the weather,....It is not a sustainable situation, when the wind drops, they are back where they started in Jan....or worse maybe ?

Nope, they are better off - because they didn't have to burn as much coal/gas. So less risk of blackouts, less cost to the utility, less pollution. Win/win.

Jack,..why do you think Germany retains that 100+GW of coal and gas generation ?
Answer .. ...to keep the countrys lights on when the wind drops at night . (Often !)..and to protect against their biggest blackout risk.. lack of .wind
And of course its unlikely that the consumers will see any change in the power supply price resulting from these frequent, temporary, changes in supply mix.
..just more margin for the generators.
EG.. a weeks generation profile in Germany ..Nov 2019
Where would they have been on 26/11 without coal+Gas +++

 

[JackFlorey]

Jack,..why do you think Germany retains that 100+GW of coal and gas generation ? Answer .. ...to keep the countrys lights on when the wind drops at night .

Uh - yes. That's what I said. Have you not been following the conversation?

And of course its unlikely that the consumers will see any change in the power supply price resulting from these frequent, temporary, changes in supply mix.

Probably true. Power companies will keep the increased profits for themselves. (Which is probably one reason that we are seeing such a rapid growth of solar and wind - $$$ in executive's pockets.)

 

[Hillhater]

The increase shown is “generated” power.
But 3.3 TWh increase over 2018 is actually only 0.6% of the annual total generated.
....Huge overcapacity !

+3,3TWh/a would be +100TWh/a in 30 years

Again, that 3.3 TWh is solely due to higher/more frequent wind this year..not new capacity !

And it's just one source, there is also onshore wind and photovoltaiks (and biomass)

Yes , but neither of them have significant increases in installed capacity since last year.
The largest change in output is from wind which has only increased 0.7 GW (nameplate) over 2019, which could never account for the extra 18TWh generated by wind in 2020 ......( infact less than 1.0 TWh possible)

I possible electricity mix foe Germany in 2050 (still 30 years to go) would be something like 200TWh/a solar, 600TWh/a onshore wind and 200TWh/a offshore wind and 100tWh/a rest (hydro, biomass, gas2power)

If you have to replace wind every 20 years and solar every 30 years and if onshore wind has 3000h/a, offshorw wind 5000h/a and solar 1000h/a you end up with a installation of ca. 7GW solar/a, 10GW/a onshore wind and 2GW/a offshore wind on average.

You are very optimistic !..
..so 10 GW/a installation rate for wind ?
It has taken over 4 years to install the last 10 GW of onshore wind in germany....
...and last year , germany installed just 0.5GW of new wind capacity !
Likewise offshore ,.. it has taken 3 years to install 2 GW of offshore wind.
..last year only 0.18 GW was installed !
And Solar is not much better with only 1.5 GW installed each year recently.
Your targets would require a hugh increase in resources, finance, political and community committments, several times greater than any experienced so far. !

 

[Hillhater]

Jack,..why do you think Germany retains that 100+GW of coal and gas generation ? Answer .. ...to keep the countrys lights on when the wind drops at night .

Uh - yes. That's what I said. Have you not been following the conversation?

Sure have jack,.
...have you been reading what you posted ?..
What you said was..

...because they didn't have to burn as much coal/gas. So less risk of blackouts,

Implying that the risk of blackouts was due to the use of coal/gas ....??
Or did you mean something else ?

 

[JackFlorey]

...because they didn't have to burn as much coal/gas. So less risk of blackouts,

Implying that the risk of blackouts was due to the use of coal/gas ....??

Yes. If you have three sources of power, you are less likely to have blackouts than if you have two sources of power. And you are less likely to have blackouts due to lack of fuel if you are using less fuel.

Coal plant loses power at 11am? Now you have a backup. Running low on coal? Solar and wind can reduce the need so you don't run out before the next load gets in.

 

[Hillhater]

Get real jack !
A coal plant may fail,..but its unlikely to be due to lack of fuel !..maybe a generator fries or the most common, a safety trip....but in either case there are always multiple other generator units and other plants that take up the slack..that is just normal operational management and back up planning.
But.. wind can shut down (due to lack of “Fuel”) unexpectedly, or even if you see it happening , there is nothing you can do without a reliable backup source...see that graphic i posted earlier...even on a National grid scale !
Ditto for solar..unreliable, unpredictable. ( well i guess you can predict its going to shut down for 60% of every day at least.)

 

[Cephalotus]

Jack,..why do you think Germany retains that 100+GW of coal and gas generation ?

A fossil fuel powerplant by itself does not harm anyone very much. It's the burning of fossil fuels inside that does the harm.

So 100 power plants running at just 10% capacity has the same impact on carbon emissions than reducing 100 power plants to 10 power plants running at 100% capacity.

Obviously for providing residual power to wind and solar you need plants with high capacity but little utilization.

Usually building a power plant for low capacity is not something investors look forward, too. The nice thing is, most of the power plants are already here This is a good thing, not a bad.

 

[Cephalotus]

The increase shown is “generated” power.
But 3.3 TWh increase over 2018 is actually only 0.6% of the annual total generated.
....Huge overcapacity !

That's why it is wiser to look for long term trends and the longer trends look quite encouraging. We are not there yet, but it is doable. We already installed 7-8GW of new solar each year some years ago and this was at a time when solar was 5 times more expensive than it is today.

Obviously no country will decarbonize its entire energy sector if the rest of the world does not. Green steel is more expensive than steel made with coal, so either everyone does it the same way or you introduce some form of carbon tariff on your borders which would be the EU in that case.

But we are talking long term here. A lot changes in just a few years.

next steps are more solar and wind, more battery electric cars, more heat pumps and, flexible fossil fuel power plants and starting some hydrogen experiments.

I'm quite optimistic that in just 10 years by 2030 we will have CO2 emissions lower than our country had 100 years before.

 

[Cephalotus]

In fact it harms the climate tremendously. I can't get behind an attempt to damage the climate beyond what's already been done. We should be working on ways forward, not ways to go backwards.

Obviously nuclear has its benefits, mainly for the climate.

On the other hand our nuclear reactors are old and worn out designs, a critical failure can happen any day and there is simpley no guarantee that we would not contaminate a significant amount of our densely populated country.

It's a 1 trillion Euro gamble we are not willing to bet on. And we don't need, because we found other options. In 2020 so far solar alone produced more electricity in Germany than our few remaining nukes. who would have thought that such a thing is possible just 20 years ago?

simply as that.

As you can see from Germany's long term CO2 emission chart it didn't do much harm anyway.

So getting them switched of is a quite good idea and we did it at the right time, when we had the money and the motivation to do it. For many other countries building new nukes is simply not an option, because they are to expensive, so they will keep their old nukes running and running until someday something will crack in those old reactors.
It happened before, it will happen again. A 1 trillion Euro gamble. A bad accident will be able to ruin a smaller country and will hurt any larger country quite badly.

5. Switch to electric heating
In areas that need it, natural gas is a lot more efficient than electric. (eventually syngas or methane from hydrogen.)

the next decade we will try to make some hydrogen out of electricity. We will likely also see countries like Norway or Russia making hydrogen out of methane, sequestering the carbon.
In such decade it is stupid to make methane out of hydrogen, when there is still lots of cheap methane in form of natural gas in usage. It would be grotesquely stupid to waste that most expensive imaginable synthetic carbon hydrates for something like heating, when you desperately need it in 2050 to power planes. 8which will be able to pay the price).

Electric heating is very efficient if you use heat pumps. It does not work for any building but that's no reason not to use it where it does work.

PS: I see no problem with importing "turquoise hydrogen" from Russia which they could make cheaper from natural gas and nuclear power using pyrolysis than we could make green hydrogen from water electrolysis.
Would also give them a post-fossil area business case and the pipelines are already here or will be built anyway.

 

[Hillhater]

......In 2020 so far solar alone produced more electricity in Germany than our few remaining nukes. ..........

If you keep telling yourself often enough, eventually you might believe that.. !
.....but anyone who bothers to check the facts, will not !
2020 solar production (up to June 16)...24.5 TWh
2020 Nuclear production same period....28.2 TWh
And of course you ignor the fact that the Nuclear generation is produced at a constant 6-7 GW , 24 hrs every day, from just 8GW installed capacity, whilst the solar is produced intermittently, from a 50 GW installed capacity, in a variable, unpredictable pattern and never for a continuous 24hr period.
.....i cannot believe we are still persisting with such a flawed generation system after 30+ years of dealing with its issues.

 

[Cephalotus]

...
If you keep telling yourself often enough, eventually you might believe that.. !
.....but anyone who bothers to check the facts, will not !
2020 solar production (up to June 16)...24.5 TWh
2020 Nuclear production same period....28.2 TWh
And of course you ignor the fact that the Nuclear generation is produced at a constant 6-7 GW , 24 hrs every day, from just 8GW installed capacity, whilst the solar is produced intermittently, from a 50 GW installed capacity, in a variable, unpredictable pattern and never for a continuous 24hr period.
.....i cannot believe we are still persisting with such a flawed generation system after 30+ years of dealing with its issues.

You are right, I've been wrong here.

I mixed the numbers up solar vs. nuclear. Actually nuclear production in 2020 was a bit higher than solar production so far as you stated correctly.

Obviously solar production s higher during day than during night, but that usually fits the demand curve.

The best indicator would be to compare the market price of solar vs the market price of nuclear.

A market price for nuclear does not exist afaik, but the baseload price might be a substitute for that


Have a look:

Solar: https://www.netztransparenz.de/EEG/Marktpraemie/Marktwerte
Baseload: http://www.baseload.kwk-infozentrum.de/

During the last years the average value of baseload production has not differed significantly from the average value of solar electricity in Germany, give or take 1ct/kWh here and there.
2020 is a special Situation because of the market crash during the Covid-19 shutdown. We now have prices around 1-2ct/kwh and we will have to see how that develops.

Obviously the market value of solar will self canibalise itself, when you have lets say 100GW, but for 50GW the value is still there as you can see from the charts.

The problem in the German electricity market during the last years is not to high prices but way to low prices. The most significant cause of that is the nature of the EEG which puts the RE at a price of 0ct/kwh in the merit order of power plants.

This system needs a reform but THIS is difficult.

Prediction of solar power and the intermediate nature of its production is not so complex. We had the partial solar eclipse in 2015 which had been an excellent test for the grid. Solar power gradients have been as high as the highest gradients would be with 100GW solar power installed and our grid was able to handle that in 2015:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283976623_Impact_of_the_Solar_Eclipse_from_20_th_March_2015_on_the_German_Electrical_Supply-Simulation_and_Analysis


The grid and residual power plants have become more flexible since than as you can see on our lignite power blocks which often go into "hot reserve" now, something considered quite impossible just a few years ago, but the plnats can handle the extra stress level.

Shutting down the nukes will give more flexibility, but our next problem is rotating masses in times of "100% RE", a Problem which we will be able to solve, too, of course.


The volatility of solar and wind power is something we can handle, the "lack" of storage is a imagined problem thats does not exist today as you can easily see on the arbitrage market. If there would be a need for that kind of storage the market prices would indicate that. They do not.

5GW of planned extra demand from electrolyseurs till 2030 will add more flexibility from the demand side.

I do not say that all is rosy and of course 100GW or 200GW of solar are much more complicated to integrate than 50GW, but it will be doable. Maybe we will have to throw away some of the produced electricity, because there is not enough demand, not enough grid capacity or not enough storage, but so what?

Throwing away 5% from 100GW and using 95% gives us a lot more solar power than using 99% of 50GW.

You are focusing on problems that we discussed 10 years ago and have already solved. Our actual real problems are quite different like crashing market values, rotating masses, stress in baseload themal power plants that do not produce baseload electricity any more, power gradients and so on...

The main problem oday is the low(!) prices at the EEX. No power plant is able to make money at 2ct/kWh. This is not a technical problem, it's a self made financial problem.

 

[JackFlorey]

On the other hand our nuclear reactors are old and worn out designs, a critical failure can happen any day and there is simpley no guarantee that we would not contaminate a significant amount of our densely populated country.

Great argument for Gen III reactors.

It's a 1 trillion Euro gamble we are not willing to bet on. And we don't need, because we found other options.

Well, yes - coal. Not a great option. You are exposed to far more radioactive waste coming from coal plants than you are from nuclear plants.

It happened before, it will happen again. A 1 trillion Euro gamble.

Yes. You can take a gamble that a 1 trillion Euro accident will happen. Or you can pay the guaranteed 1 trillion euros in damage from coal power plants.

the next decade we will try to make some hydrogen out of electricity. We will likely also see countries like Norway or Russia making hydrogen out of methane, sequestering the carbon.
In such decade it is stupid to make methane out of hydrogen, when there is still lots of cheap methane in form of natural gas in usage. It would be grotesquely stupid to waste that most expensive imaginable synthetic carbon hydrates for something like heating, when you desperately need it in 2050 to power planes.

Right. So get it from biogas, which is an easy to generate and store fuel.

 

[Hillhater]

Obviously solar production s higher during day than during night, but that usually fits the demand curve....

Except for the winter months !
And Germany seems to be unique with peak demand still being at midday, whilst most countries with significant RE are displaying a version of the “Duck Curve” ,..with am and pm peak periods.?
.

Prediction of solar power and the intermediate nature of its production is not so complex. We had the partial solar eclipse in 2015 which had been an excellent test for the grid. Solar power gradients have been as high as the highest gradients would be with 100GW solar power installed and our grid was able to handle that in 2015:

A solar eclipse is a well known event that can be prepared and planned for.
Sudden weather changes are not predictable..cannot be planned into a schedule or production roster.

..., the "lack" of storage is a imagined problem thats does not exist today as you can easily see on the arbitrage market.

Germany does not require storage, it has 110% fossil fuel backup generation !

..You are focusing on problems that we discussed 10 years ago and have already solved. Our actual real problems are quite different like crashing market values, rotating masses, stress in baseload themal power plants that do not produce baseload electricity any more, power gradients and so on...

The problems i have mentioned, intermittent output, unpredictable output levels, back up capacity, etc etc, have been recognised since the 1990’s,..but have yet to be resolved !
Your “real problems” were also well known and predicted in the very early days of Solar, but as with many other facts, were ignored /put into the “too hard” basket and left for some other poor fool to solve in the future (now !)
The real issue that you do not want to mention is how long the population will support these RE plans when they realise the cost of power keeps increasing, despite the proclaimations of ever reducing costs for solar and wind, ..at the same time as the ever increasing spread of solar farms and wind turbines ?.
There is already considerable backlash.
Then there is the small matter of Economic ability to sustain and accellerate the RE conversion.
The costs are already crippling Germany and maintaining community/ political support will become increasingly hard.

 

[sendler2112]

The other consideration I often think about when Germany is bragging about it's solar and wind capacity is that much of the hardware is not made in Germany. So they are buying it from a global market. Good for them to have the commitment and surplus to try it. But Germany's electrical consumption is just 1/40 of current world consumption. And half billion people have never had more than a battery solar lantern and have no better opportunity than to poop in the river or across the street in the yard. And 3 billion still use sticks or dung as their only cooking and heat source. It's not just about Germany. You can't look at one country that is taking more than it's share and say " we are doing it, why can't you". Attempting to increase these industries 100x and then plowing ahead forever more to scale up everything, retrofit everything, will run up against non-renewable resource depletion and extractive consumption destruction. And still come up way short on a global scale.

 

[JackFlorey]

It's not just about Germany. You can't look at one country that is taking more than it's share and say " we are doing it, why can't you". Attempting to increase these industries 100x and then plowing ahead forever more to scale up everything, retrofit everything, will run up against non-renewable resource depletion and extractive consumption destruction. And still come up way short on a global scale.

Agreed.

I think some of the most important efforts in the world of renewable energy are the efforts to equip villages across Africa, India and Southeast Asia with microgrids. Getting a microgrid in a village to provide 20 watt-hours a day per person makes a much larger change in quality of life than supplying a German with an extra 10kwhr a day, no matter where the power comes from. And since costs are based on power (both $/kW and $/kWhr) that's much more cost effective than supplying larger amounts of power to Germans.

 

[Cephalotus]

Great argument for Gen III reactors.

For me it is very simple:

Look at the amount of radioactivity stored at the reactors site and expect all of it to escape. That's your worst case. The nature of the disaster is not relevant.
If you are able to handle that amount of radioactivity from a engineering, social and financial perspective nuclear is an Option. If not you depend on luck.

That's why I would give a lot more Money to Fusion (it will come to late anyway and nobody can tell you the cost) and this is why I have not much problems with nukes in US, Russia, China or Australia. Simply not my (big) problem.

Yes. You can take a gamble that a 1 trillion Euro accident will happen. Or you can pay the guaranteed 1 trillion euros in damage from coal power plants.

Or you don't use either.

Right. So get it from biogas, which is an easy to generate and store fuel.

It is an option. sadly an extremly inefficient one that takes HUGE amount of land to tun into industrialized corn farming using nitrogen fertilisers. Corn fields are ecological deserts and we get more and more problems with droughts over here.

Biogas is around 60% methane and 40% (green) CO2. Using sabatier process you could "add" hydrogen and make that 100% methane which is something that I would recommend. Very expensive though, so you Need to keep the metahe for the very important things like gas peakers or fuel for ships and not waste it for baseload power as we do now or fill it into ICE cars.

 

[Cephalotus]

I think some of the most important efforts in the world of renewable energy are the efforts to equip villages across Africa, India and Southeast Asia with microgrids. Getting a microgrid in a village to provide 20 watt-hours a day per person makes a much larger change in quality of life than supplying a German with an extra 10kwhr a day, no matter where the power comes from. And since costs are based on power (both $/kW and $/kWhr) that's much more cost effective than supplying larger amounts of power to Germans.

It is not A vs B. They are not opposing and you need both. Giving Africa mobile phones and lights is good for quality of life, ending the use of fossil fuels in Germany and elsewhere is important for the ecosytems of this planet.

In Germany switching to 100% rebewable electricity would propably cost ist residents maybe every second new smartphone that they buy today. Hardly any impact on quality of life.
For some poor folks in Africa it is the decission is between eating and having electricity. So in my opinion our way is much easier.

 

[Cephalotus]

The other consideration I often think about when Germany is bragging about it's solar and wind capacity is that much of the hardware is not made in Germany. So they are buying it from a global market.

Actually we make and export a lots of things in both industries. Solar is a lot more than just making wafers.

But Germany's electrical consumption is just 1/40 of current world consumption. And half billion people have never had more than a battery solar lantern and have no better opportunity than to poop in the river or across the street in the yard.

Adding cummulative historic CO2 emissions Germany is on 4th Position regarding CO2 pollutions after US, China and Russia.

And 3 billion still use sticks or dung as their only cooking and heat source.

It is mostly 10-15 countries that are responsible destruction of many ecosystems and for threating to make the planet a mostly unhabitable place within the next 100 years.

Africa has ist very own Problems, not the least the enormous growth of population, but their historic impact on ecosystems worldwide has been rather low.

It's not just about Germany. You can't look at one country that is taking more than it's share and say " we are doing it, why can't you". Attempting to increase these industries 100x and then plowing ahead forever more to scale up everything, retrofit everything, will run up against non-renewable resource depletion and extractive consumption destruction. And still come up way short on a global scale.

It's an example for the idea to go 100% solar+wind (and some imports) and not just a remote Island or a small Population country covered with forests, but a desnly populated country that is heavily industrialised, that has a huge export surplus from manufacturing and that has compareable bad solar and wind resources.

Other countries tried different paths, UK tried the nuclear path and so far their nuclear stategy looks like a significant and costly failure and they are turning quickly to solar+wind, too.
Other countries keep to their "burning coal" strategy, for example Poland and maybe also America under Trump. I fail to see any success here.


Germany now experiences solar+wind share on its electricity demand from 0% to 100%. This is the entire spectrum and it will not change with further increase of solar + wind capacity. It will still be between 0% and 100%, the change will be the hours per year in each state with more higher %-numbers and less lower % numbers and the change will be in the hours with more than 100%.

So if we can handly solar+wind from 0% to 100% now, why some of you think it will become an unsolveable problem in the future?

 

[Cephalotus]

The other consideration I often think about when Germany is bragging about it's solar and wind capacity is that much of the hardware is not made in Germany. So they are buying it from a global market.

Actually we make and export a lots of things in both industries. Solar is a lot more than just making wafers.

But Germany's electrical consumption is just 1/40 of current world consumption. And half billion people have never had more than a battery solar lantern and have no better opportunity than to poop in the river or across the street in the yard.

Adding cummulative historic CO2 emissions Germany is on 4th Position regarding CO2 pollutions after US, China and Russia.

And 3 billion still use sticks or dung as their only cooking and heat source.

It is mostly 10-15 countries that are responsible destruction of many ecosystems and for threating to make the planet a mostly unhabitable place within the next 100 years.

Africa has ist very own Problems, not the least the enormous growth of population, but their historic impact on ecosystems worldwide has been rather low.

It's not just about Germany. You can't look at one country that is taking more than it's share and say " we are doing it, why can't you". Attempting to increase these industries 100x and then plowing ahead forever more to scale up everything, retrofit everything, will run up against non-renewable resource depletion and extractive consumption destruction. And still come up way short on a global scale.

It's an example for the idea to go 100% solar+wind (and some imports) and not just a remote Island or a small Population country covered with forests, but a desnly populated country that is heavily industrialised, that has a huge export surplus from manufacturing and that has compareable bad solar and wind resources.

Other countries tried different paths, UK tried the nuclear path and so far their nuclear stategy looks like a significant and costly failure and they are turning quickly to solar+wind, too.
Other countries keep to their "burning coal" strategy, for example Poland and maybe also America under Trump. I fail to see any success here.


Germany now experiences solar+wind share on its electricity demand from 0% to 100%. This is the entire spectrum and it will not change with further increase of solar + wind capacity. It will still be between 0% and 100%, the change will be the hours per year in each state with more higher %-numbers and less lower % numbers and the change will be in the hours with more than 100%.

So if we can handly solar+wind from 0% to 100% now, why some of you think it will become an unsolveable problem in the future?

 

[Hillhater]

So if we can handly solar+wind from 0% to 100% now, why some of you think it will become an unsolveable problem in the future?.....

...Because you will always have periods with that 0.0% from Solar and Wind, .
With no other realistic back up for the 60+ GW needed, Germany will have to retain an available fleet of fossil fuelled generators.
Even Germany knows this, hence the recent opening of a new coal fired power facility.
Having 100% back up capacity on that scale is not Economically viable.

 

[sendler2112]

So if we can handly solar+wind from 0% to 100% now, why some of you think it will become an unsolveable problem in the future?

You totally missed the point of world energy scale. One country requiring 1/40 of electricity can boast of big gains in rebuildable electricity percentage when they are consuming a large part of available world hardware production. To see the whole world doing this will reveal the hard limits to access of non-renewable materials.

 

[JackFlorey]

It is not A vs B.

?? I didn't say it was. I said that solar for third world countries does far more to improve quality of life than solar for Germany, and as such should have more effort put into it.

 

[JackFlorey]

Look at the amount of radioactivity stored at the reactors site and expect all of it to escape. That's your worst case. The nature of the disaster is not relevant.

Right. And coal plants release all the radioactivity stored in the coal - by design.

So in one case you have a chance of release of radioactive material, and in the other you have a guarantee that it will be released. Which is worse?

Or you don't use either.

That would be great. We don't have that option and won't have it for 20 years or so. In the interim, you use the best option you have.

It is an option. sadly an extremly inefficient one that takes HUGE amount of land to tun into industrialized corn farming using nitrogen fertilisers. Corn fields are ecological deserts and we get more and more problems with droughts over here.

You get it from waste. Pig manure, sewage, bagasse,