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Comment by foobar20200124 | Hacker News Reader

foobar20200124

The article does not mention that in addition to nuclear power plants we (over here in Germany) are also phasing out coal plants.

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The nuclear phase out will be finished in 2022 but coal phase out is 2038. 18 more years, 1 more generation away.

Coal+Lignite production is 170.9 TWh. Current nuclear production is 75.2 TWh and all renewables combined are 242.6 TWh.

So Germany has to find 75.2 TWh in 2 years and 170.9 TWh in 18 years. In the last 5 years, renewables are increased only by 50 TWh.

So, it will be extremely expensive to cover all these power requirements in renewables only. What do you think will happen? Either Germany will start buying power or buying gas to fund new natural gas power plants.

In any way, phasing out nuclear power is one of the worst ideas Germany has ever executed.

I should add that the comstruction of new wind generators has been effectively strangled to death by regulations enacted in the last years.

Offshore wind energy is limited by a regulation that limits imstalled power generation capacity. This limit is now reached, but the promised increase isn't happening. On land, a new law mandates a minimum distance to settlements that is large enough to exclude a big portion of Germany. Getting exceptions is a lengthy and risky process that requires support from the municipality.

1)You forget the energy efficiency / less energy consumption part

2)You forget the demand-response and energy storage part

3)" it will be extremely expensive to cover all these power requirements in renewables only" ; a lot of existing power plants are old would had been closed anyways... and renewable are becoming the cheapest new capacity, so I don't seen the extremely expensive part

I am not a big fan of this German "energy transition"... but often I find sloppy the critics addressed to this transition

1) Energy efficiency will surely be better over time but population is also increasing and migration rate to Germany is increasing as well. So this will probably even out the efficiency improvements.

2) Energy storage is a very difficult and expensive task. Germany is able to store energy around 7.6 GW[1], this number is comical next to the TWh numbers we are discussing.

3) You should perhaps read a bit more about this here [2] to be informed. It is quite obvious and proven from technological perspective and material costs that renewable energy is right now more expensive to produce and still causes more human fatalities than nuclear energy.

[1] : https://www.cleanenergywire.org/dossiers/energy-storage-and-... [2] : https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/how-much-does-ger...

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