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Comment by sqeezy | Hacker News Reader

actually you are wrong.

germany is exporting way more as they are importing http://phasenpruefer.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Handels...

The image is from the German-language article "Stromexport Deutschlands erreicht immer neue Rekorde (aktualisiert)", 7 October 2015.

http://phasenpruefer.info/deutschlands-stromexporte-bricht-r...

English title courtesy of Google Translate: "Germany's electricity exports are constantly growing (updated)".

Offcourse they are exporting - or more accurately, forcing the neighbours to deal with their green energy surpluses.

Context matters, a lot.

Both France and Germany are net electricity exporters on an annual basis.

But when France sends surplus nuclear electricity to its neighbors that's supposed to be a plus for nuclear technology. When Germany sends surplus renewable electricity to its neighbors that's supposed to be a minus for renewable technology. Both nuclear and renewable generation are rigid in their own ways; neither is as flexible as gas powered generation, but of course neither has the substantial fuel costs or emissions of gas powered generation either.

The point is that Germany is exporting energy when nobody needs it and is thus causing problems for the grid.

France exports energy when German solar cells and wind are in a dip.

My point is that German exports are peak surpluses that cause problems for the grid and French exports are on-demand because steel mills need to work when wind doesn't blow and sun doesn't shine.

But thank you for proving my point. Although you tried to obfuscate away the context.

Are you a renewables activist?

If "nobody needs it" then there will be no consumption in another country to take the German production. (Some production does actually get curtailed, never matched with consumption in Germany or in a connected country). It's not like Germans are smuggling waste-electricity past customs agents into another country. French reactors do very little "on-demand" adjustment either. You can see graphs here; look at the yearly ones: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/

French electricity trade with neighboring countries makes a exports make a jagged line. Fossils make a jagged line. Nuclear is the smoothest line of any of them: it does hardly anything on-demand. It does the same thing day after day. That is an advantage in certain ways (no worries about lost production on a windless night) but a disadvantage in others; you cannot save money/resources by stopping a reactor the way you can by stopping a gas turbine.

I am someone interested in post-fossil electricity. 15 years ago that meant I was primarily interested in nuclear power. Much to my surprise, the nuclear industry basically stalled and the renewable industry expanded scale and cut costs much faster than I thought possible. Following the change in the numbers, I am reading more about renewable technology than nuclear technology nowadays. That's where the most rapid improvements are coming from. I'll change my opinion again if the numbers change again and nuclear starts delivering aggressively on scale-up, costs-down. I'm interested only in numbers from real hardware, though. I've seen enough daydreams in the forms of PowerPoint and TED talks (from nuclear dreamers and renewable dreamers alike) to last me a lifetime.

This is because in energy production timing matters. If you over-produce and dump your energy into our shared grid then I must throttle back my base load production, and then when the sun goes down and you do not have enough capacity to handle your needs and require me to increase my production so that you avoid brownouts then your energy production plan is flawed. If the only way you can make your energy production look acceptable is 'on an annual basis' then your plan is pushing the negative externalities onto your neighbors.

Is the German army involved in this dastardly scheme? How else could one explain the atrocities of international power distribution that you describe?

Oh, right, there are contracts for all of this stuff. Power companies freely negotiate how they sell power to each other. "Externalities", try again.

http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/germanys-gree...

When they have their surpluses - they are actually paying their neighbors to take power from them. I.e. they are selling it at a negative rate.

When the renewables are offline - they are paying a premium for electricity from fossil fuels.

While Germany does indeed _produce_ stellar amounts of renewable energy. They are completely dependent on their own and neighbors fossil power production.

Thus they can claim that they are "exporting" renewables. The turth is that their renewables infrastructure and the retarded system of incentives they have set up - result in one of the most expensive electricity prices in the world: https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-elect...

Notice how the more renewables a country has - more expensive the electricity is.

Why? Because renewables are really not all that ecological as the activists would like to claim.

Simply because renewables cause more problems than they solve. And the surplus resources spent (or rather wasted) on "green" energy are also a form of energy. Thus one can argue that "green" energy is actually a net contributor to pollution - due to the aforementioned externalities.

Until we get insane amounts of storage (which will also pose a significant potential for pollution) - green energy industry is actually contributing to problems.

And while you are sarcastic - current state of affairs is not due to common sense or economics. But due to politics.

But it's a private market? the only people who should be suffering are those who own generation equipment which can't keep up with the higher rate of change of dispatch. E.g. Steam turbine operators.

I think your point has some merit if the net effect is higher power prices overall. Unfortunately I don't have this information...

Either way, the reality is that renewable technology is making the slow-ramping generators uneconomical. Even if you remove wind-farms from the supply side of the equation you still have roof-top solar eating into the demand side and creating a daily demand profile which requires gas/liquid fuel generators to match.

I've seen a recent example of a cool summer day (Australian) where the daily demand minimum actually occurred at mid-day due to coincidence of maximum roof-top solar generation and low air-conditioning use! Under this kind of scenario your nuclear/coal steam turbine will be running at a horrible financial loss...

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