Comment by nmehner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nmehner | Hacker News Reader

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It's almost as if Germany is not a hive mind, but has different actors with different interests ;)

Coal: Bad, yes. This is being phased out: https://www.bmu.de/en/topics/climate-adaptation/climate-prot...

Gas: Mostly used for heating in Germany. Should be replaced with heatpumps/better insulation. Bad for heating, but since gas power plants are cheap, new gas plants will be used to generate electricity during the "Dunkelflaute" (no wind, no sun) until better solutions are available. So good for emergencies since plants are cheap and gas can be stored.

Solar: Good, many people have it in their back yards and I'm not aware of any protests.

Wind: Good, but most wind is in the north and Bavaria is blocking SuedLink, since the North will profit from it: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/kampf-gegen-stromtrassen-waru... So currently adding additional wind power in the north does not make a lot of sense, if the energy cannot be used. This is why a lot off offshore wind power is being delayed.

The new government is planning for 680-750TWh (80% renewable) of electricity in 2030 compared to 560TWh in 2020 (https://dynamic.faz.net/download/2021/Koalitionsvertrag2021-... ). So they are planning for electric cars as well. Electric cars are also interesting, because you can charge the cars based on prices / grid load thus making the grid more stable.

There are projects like NordLink (https://www.tennet.eu/our-grid/international-connections/nor... ) that use pumped storage in Norway for storing energy (capacity: 87TWh https://energifaktanorge.no/en/norsk-energiforsyning/kraftpr... ).

Also the high electricity prices in winter are aften caused by France, since a lot of electric heating is used there (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-01/france-fa... ).

Interesting times indeed, but I guess the new government will be more forward looking than the previous one.

A few hundred percent differences in spot prices is ok, since only a small amount of electricity is traded there. And these differences will make battery storage viable.

That list is incomplete without the world 'Nuclear' which is the Elephant in the Room in terms of Energy Availability, Emissions, Safety and how it contrasts with political perspectives.

For Germany that boat has sailed. I personally would have preferred to shut down coal before nuclear, but now nobody is going to touch nuclear with a ten foot pole. There is simply no discussion. For any party a demand to build new nuclear plants is political suicide (even on the right wing).

It is hard to get any unbiased information on cost, but to me it seems that even today renewable + storage is cheaper than building nuclear (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_energy#/medi... ).

So there is neither the political option nor an economic case for nuclear. Other countries will be subsidizing nuclear and make different decisions. It will be interesting to watch, if France will be able to build nuclear reactors in time and on budget and if Germany will be able to keep the grid stable. Both approaches carry some risks.

Wind + storage has yet to find acceptance as being commercial viable. The general plan presented by the green in Germany and nearby country is to wait for green hydrogen to become economical viable and use natural gas in the mean time.

Last time I checked, the current numbers is around 20x in cost to turn wind into hydrogen, compared to current hydrogen prices. It should be noted that hydrogen itself is not commercial viable to be burned for energy, which puts green hydrogen far from being cheaper than nuclear. There exist several other experimental and research experiments into storage for wind but so far nothing has research the point of commercial companies buying renewables energy when it is cheap and selling it when it is expensive.

For solar, renewables + batteries is cheaper since the batteries only need a few hours of capacity and they get a charge cycle each day. Since you can calculate the ROI very simply, you can find how many days (or rather nights) a lithium battery need to discharge in order to back the initial cost. For wind you got low wind conditions that last weeks or even months, occurring maybe a few times a year, and so capacity need to be very high and you get very few charge cycles. Thus the need for a storage medium that provide very high capacity at low costs, while at the same time being commercial viable compared to nuclear.

If wind + storage was cheaper than building nuclear than people would be building and investing into it right now. Instead they invest into natural gas and build pipe lines to Russia, which hints towards the economical reality that Germany is in. Those natural gas plants and pipe lines has a life expectancy of many decades, and unless a major shift occurs will be a central part of the energy grid until probably early 2100. What people build today is what they intended to use in the future.

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