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Comment by pojzon | Hacker News Reader

Ive tried to explain this issue to EVs fanatics, but nobody listens.

Anytime you mention energy transmision issues - you get total backlash.

We wasted EU money on pointless stuff while we could have upgraded our transit cables etc.

The transmission issues will be solved: more and more HVDC interconnections start construction in Europe every year. Grids that still rely heavily on coal and natural gas can, and will, be improved.

An EV bought today will only get cleaner as the grid gets cleaner. A new fossil-fuel vehicle today will always be dependent on fossil fuels, and will always pollute at least as much as the day it was purchased.

even if it ran on gasoline created from carbon dioxide extracted from the atmosphere?

We don't have perfectly impact-free ways of creating energy. So using less energy to achieve the same goal is always better. And carbon dioxide is not the only pollutant that cars emit.

we dont have any way of 'creating' energy

Technically correct but missing the point. Conventionally, burning things, PV, wind, etc. are all classified as "creating energy" even if it makes thermodynamics pedants unhappy.

That gasoline wouldn’t be an energy source, it’d be an extremely crappy battery.

Far better to just send the power via grid to an EV @95% then toss 60% or more of it to make a gallon of gas

it’s a more practical solution for right now though. we can’t expect the world to switch its entire infrastructure overnight, or even quickly. yes, the rich nations might get a head start, but they represent such a small fraction of emissions.

>yes, the rich nations might get a head start, but they represent such a small fraction of emissions.

Not really for automotive emissions. The US alone accounts for almost half the world's road CO2 emissions.

and automotive emissions account for ~10% of all CO2 emissions. 20% if you want to include all transport (e.g. sea shipping, planes, etc.)

there’s been a lot of media attention on how individuals need to make an effort to beat climate change, but the reality is that industry is the only sector able to make a meaningful impact.

This thread is discussing EVs vs gasoline so not sure why you're changing the topic suddenly.

apologies, i don’t understand. you seemed to suggest cars are a significant contributor to CO2 emission.

10% is huge though.

Exactly. If we could cut global emissions by even 10%, it would make a pretty meaningful dent in climate change. Unfortunately, as of now, global emissions are still rising!

Its not practical. The extra energy costs act like a high tax.

It might make sense, for a while with aircraft, or for a classic car that rarely gets used, but would be too expensive for developing nations to use when they have other options. They'd save lots of money by using the same energy directly in newly built (or converted) EVs.

I really hate this "overnight" argument, because it's used to avoid starting. Nobody claims that we can switch to EVs over night. We could however switch to only producing EVs in like two to five years and fifteen to twenty years later almost all cars could be EVs. That's plenty of time to fortify the electric grid for the extra demand and build adequate numbers of charging points for people without garages.

Exactly or simply biogas/biomethane as fuel.

How many neighbors on a block of houses can have simultaneous charging?

All of them? The typical car is moved less than 100km per day and is parked upwards of twenty hours a day. With a kilowatt or two you car charge the car.

There's 10 houses on my street, if every house had 2 cars and each drove 50 miles a day at 3 miles per kWh, and the cars are parked 10 hours overnight, that's 3kW per house

As we can all boil a kettle (3kW), or have a shower (10kW), or cook a sunday roast (5kW), and indeed do those at the same time, it's not a problem.

This response is correct. Be sure to forward it to the folks in the EU this winter when they're unable to charge their cars or heat their homes.

We should be thinking long term, but we can't forget about the present and the path to the glorious future. I think in hindsight we'll soon admit that we botched the transition to a greener world and caused needless suffering by putting ideologies before engineering.

You’ve got it backwards. The current energy problems in Europe are due to a reduction in the supply of imported natural gas, nothing to do with renewables.

By reducing Europe’s dependence on imported fossil fuels, renewables are part of the solution to energy security.

Backlash is probably because such argument can sound like “better give up on EVs and go back to ICE” rather than “let’s invest more in the energy infrastructure”.

If you call people fanatics, they won’t believe you’re making a good faith argument.

Germany’s obsession with solar and wind is absolutely baffling. It takes very little to know that Germany simply does not have the conditions for large scale solar.

Yet it was pushed so heavily in lieu of nuclear power. Absurd.

Nuclear isn't going well for France right now. And most of the EU uran comes from Russia

Yeah but nuclear fuel can be sourced from elsewhere - it does not have the steep physical barriers of nat gas. And any existing nuclear power issues can be solved.

The amount of sunlight your receive, however, will always be the same.

How do you solve that the rivers are too hot to cool the reactors to produce more energy?

We have built reactors in literal deserts, but the cooling system needs to bw different ofcourse

https://min.news/en/tech/30bdf6748162428883857d361132e177.ht...

This meme has to end, there’s only one nuclear power plant in France (Blayais) that has no cooling towers, and another 4 have to occasionally throttle power output due to ecological concerns (used water is too hot, they currently have temporary exceptions).

The water is never too hot to cool the reactors, it's too hot to release back into the river, for environmental reasons. Evaporative cooling solves that problem, but then you "lose" water, which is never great in a heat wave.

A nuclear plant using sea water never stops due to heat waves, because it can dilute any amount of hot water.

The water can get too hot and/or short in supply to cool the nuclear plant.

It's not magic, it's a machine with design limits that extreme weather events can push up against.

It also can pollute rivers and kill fish before it gets to that level.

Sea cooled reactors have issues with jellyfish.

Having said that, the EU needs more gas in winter when it's cold, so doing the maintenance/refueling in the summer makes sense.

Still doesn't change the basic facts that a mix of solar/wind etc. is cheaper and better than nuclear and the annoying 'nuclear isn't affected by the weather' meme is wrong.

You forgot storage or massive long distance transportation that nuclear future does not require, but solar/wind future does. That changes the "cheaper and better" to "there is no cheap solution, we need both solar/wind and nuclear".

> It's not magic, it's a machine with design limits that extreme weather events can push up against.

We have yet to see 80°c water in the rivers upstream. As I said earlier, the issue is never cooling the reactor, it's always about the state of the environment downstream.

> Nuclear isn't going well for France right now. And most of the EU uran comes from Russia

Even not doing well it's better then Germany's wind and solar - it's rare to see Germany electricity polluting going below 4x France - not to mention coal whose transportation is also affected by low water levels

Meanwhile over here in the UK, the press is blaming the energy crisis partly on the fact that our government didn't spend loads of money on solar and onshore wind like Germany. We're even worse situated to benefit from solar than they are. (The renewable program here is mostly focused on offshore wind, which is the least-bad option given our geography, plus attempts at nuclear that are widely criticized by the press as wastes of money given how much cheaper onshore wind and solar are.)

Britain is the best position country in Europe for wind and tidal power.

There was a project to pay down cable to import reliable, cheap 24/7 power from Iceland and hobernment said 'nah'. They also cancelled a 340 MW tidal project

Real question: What is the largest tidal power installation in the world? Why do we see so little of it?

I think there's a 2MW test turbine off Scotland which I think is the biggest in the world.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-she...

Just not as cost effective as wind, which got to piggyback of onshore turbine development.

We don't see large tidal power installations because they are not every economical so far. In theory there's a lot of energy to be won, but the salt water causes corrosion issues, and maintenance gets expensive quickly

on the other hand its 100% reliable and needs no fuel, does notndepend on drought, etc.

This is a very good post. I never before considered the issue of corrosion. To that point, does this also affect offshore wind power generation (turbines)? I guess the difference will be: the turbine is not underwater!

offshore wind is much less effected because all the complicated parts are 100 feet up, and much easier to partially seal.

But the UK has HVDC line to norway right?

Yes it does, in fact the UK is in the process of building many more HVDC interconnectors (see table in 3rd section of page) https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy...

Is wind power even worth the investment? From disposal issues to wind turbines killing birds and bird habitats to sheer unreliability, wind seems to have a ton of issues.

You wrote "disposal issues": As I understand, the current generation of windmill blades are not recycled. Rather, they are sent to landfill (at least in United States -- can someone please comment for other countries that they know about? UK?). Two things to consider: (1) Fiberglass mostly inert and safe to bury. Please correct me if wrong. (2) Can future designs be recycled? I assume yes.

wind mills kill way fewer birds than mining does. wind has a few incredibly minor issues, but so does everything, and wind is green and cost effective.

In an ideal world countries like Spain and Greece invest in solar but they're completely incompetent. So you get the absurd situation that the Netherlands is European leader in solar energy lol. Most densely populated country in Europe has solar parks for fuck sake.

From what I've read, in Spain there was for a long time (may still be?) pretty effective/expensive legislation against installing solar panels anywhere. Reason? Regulatory capture, with energy companies lobbying hard against anything that might weaken their position or profiteering opportunities.

I wouldn't call that necessarily incompetence. Corruption and cronyism, yes.

Yes, for a few years we had what was popularly called "Sun tax" in order to disincentivise people from installing solar panels in their homes. It was removed in 2018, though.

Although corruption was probably present, I would say that this kind of politics is precisely what we would expect from pro-business parties (in this case, the People's Party). They do have a long history of eschewing environmental policies as soon as any big company has money to lose because of them.

I live in Cyprus which experiences sunshine almost 365 days a year and has an isolated power grid from the rest of the world. We also suffer from the incompetency of Greece and Spain but I believe solar parks are not the solution. Building solar parks is a waste of land which could be used for other purposes (agriculture for example). A much better solution is to ensure every single building has solar panels on its roof. Until recently there was no incentive or motivation for this but during the past 6 months with increasing electricity costs there has been a shift to PV to the point that cost of setup has almost doubled but people are still installing them. We're heading in the right direction but it will take years for energy independence.

You wrote: <<Building solar parks is a waste of land which could be used for other purposes (agriculture for example).>> From a stricly economic view, many times a solar park in a very sunny place is more economically efficient than agriculture. That said, including social and political views, of course, we need enough agriculture to feed our societies!

I have unfortunately witnessed fields of orange trees being cut down and replaced with PV panels. Our local market has indeed an oversupply of oranges (to the point that sometimes it's more cost effective not to cut fruit rather than pay employees to do it) but I can't help to think if removing fully grown trees is better for the environment.

Your comment is flame. You really don't believe that competence is the only reason solar/wind didn't scale up right? If you remember, those countries were/are almost bunkrupt, since 2010 or so. Where would these massive investments come from? I mean the north didn't even want to move away from Russia, certainly they wouldn't care for funding solar in Greece, Spain or Italy.

The "Green new deal" however is a step in that direction. But IMO its theatrics. EU money to buy green German cars and green German infra with no plan on longevity or strategic change. Truth is, that if EU wanted energy independece, they could have it many years now. Be it nuclear or Mediterranean natural gas (the same gas now Israel is going to sell to EU).

Not that the respective governments are competent. They are not, thats a given. But the "competent" part of Europe is only so in a stupidly myopic level.

I agree with the sentiment of this post. The finance required for green energy production is often over looked. After all, India has huge deserts in the north west of their country. Yes, they have some of the largest solar parks in the world, but why isn't 25% of it covered with solar panels? Financing.

You wrote: <<But the "competent" part of Europe is only so in a stupidly myopic level.>> Can you explain this more? (Zero trolling.) I don't understand what you mean.

I'd put it down to politics.

Financing has generally been a positive for renewables.

The ability to predict output years in advance and lock in prices works well with finance to build up front.

The reason they've not built more is because the whole globe needs to work together or else one nation can save money by not bothering and just polluting instead.

If that politics got fixed (which it has slowly) then renewables would be rolled out more.

A bit late but hope you see it.

I mean that what we call the "competent part of Europe" is only competent in a myopic level. When it comes to their own local economy as if it is operating in vacuum. I argue that most of the foreign policy decisions of these members where made with short-term view of their own country economy, completely F'ing up their long term prospects by ignoring the potential and the dynamics of the periphery.

The EU could have invested in solar in Greece, Italy and Spain and Cyprus and interconnects further north, and likewise offshore wind in Denmark, pumped storage in Sweden, Austria and Greece

But it failed in securing energy resilience. I hope it has learned its lesson.

I don't think is that easy as doing it in the game city skylines :)

We choose to be energy independent, not because it will be easy, but because it will be hard

HVDC interconnects are not hard. We have them already. Allocating land isn't hard, it's a law in the Spanish parliament.

It just requires political will to survive. Which apparently isn't a thing people have.

The EU (meaning both the individual countries and together as the EU) did all these things. They could and should have done more, but generally have been world leaders in this.

After a solid start everything stalled around 10 years ago -- once Russia saw the threat and hooked europe on cheap gas.

Growth in Solar in Spain was negligible for 6 years from 2013 to 2019.

Italy likewise increased less than 10%

Greece has hardly any solar, with nothing built from 2013 until this year. That plant cost 130m for 350m kWh a year - that's 4c/kWh over 10 years, plus operating costs.

Painfully slow delivery that was needlessly stalled for financial reasons

I don't think it was financial reasons (or at least not in the sense that it was costing the country as a whole money).

The fossil fuel industry spent Billions on propaganda. Politicians had the option of fighting that, or using it to become more popular and so get rich.

This cost their countries Billions more than they ever earned. They're still doing it, but they might wake up soon. Still a total waste of time, energy and money though.

> That, in combination with the downward pressure on wholesale electricity prices, threatened the finances of the major utilities. Particularly hard hit were the 26 GW of natural gas-fired combined cycle (GFCC) plants built after 2000 in anticipation of substantial growth in Spain’s electricity demand, making gas the single largest source of installed capacity. This brand new fleet saw its overall load factor drop from around 50 percent in the mid-2000s to below 20 percent in 2011 and then continue to fall, almost to single digits in 2014

> As a result of these developments, the promotion of renewable power went, in just a few years, from enjoying broad public support, or at least tolerance, to facing substantial opposition. Particularly outspoken in their criticism were large electricity consumers and the major utilities, whose returns on investment in non-renewable generating capacity was being put at risk (Linares and Labandeira 2013). These various pressures in turn prompted similar policy responses by successive governments led by different parties.

https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=110...

So prices went down, country made money, big interests lost money, specifically natural gas wasn't being burnt enough for their liking, renewables got paused for a while.

Russia (and several other authorotarian regimes) benefitted, but it was mostly Spanish people conning other Spanish people for money.

> Most densely populated country in Europe has solar parks for fuck sake.

I don't know how much is from solar parks? About 20% of all houses in the Netherlands have solar panels according to some sources so that adds up.

Spain has the 3rd installed capacity of solar power in Europe[1] and 2nd position in wind power[2]. It could be much better but also much worse :)

The previous government in Spain halted lots of funding for new power plants but as far as I know there is a lots of projects going on now. I expect to see a significant increment in the next years.

Also, in the Netherlands most of solar is installed in roofs, while in Spain is almost anecdotal. The previous government made difficult for individuals to install solar at home. Now that's gone but there is no subsidies, so individuals have to pay most of the installation from their own pockets, which are much more shallow than the dutch.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_European_Un... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_European_Uni...

I notice similar in Tokyo, Japan. There is so little rooftop solar installations, it is crazy. I assume it is a combination of economic and regulatory factors. At the very least, most of the outdoor train stations have very long platform coverings / roofs. These could certainly be covered with solar panels.

And yet, right now, solar is 20% of the electricity on the grid in Germany. Wind is 15% (per the electrictymaps app)

Sure it would be better if it was a sunnier place, still...

You should see how much they’ve invested in solar to hit that mark, and how much capacity is being unutilized

Top utilization of solar was approximately 25% of the installed base today

At the same time, 49% of nuclear in France is being used today and 62% of nuclear in the UK

So, it's "bad" but not everything is used 100% all the time

The thing is, on a perfect day, Germany has enough solar capacity to fulfill almost all of its electricity needs.

But that perfect day is rare, largely because of Germany’s climate.

So you have a situation where you have to essentially install over 100% of your needs in solar. You’re overspending for suboptimum results.

yes you overbuild, but solar is still one of the cheapest girls is electricity even when you consider the necessary overbuilding.

And how much all that solar equipment garbage is going to be disposed soon.

Maybe you could show us with a source?

This is a good one:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-...

Essentially, there’s plenty of installed solar capacity but most of it can’t be utilized fully unless its a perfect day. So you have to essentially rely on backup and keep installing more and more solar capacity beyond your needs because those perfect solar days are so rare in Germany.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has ever spent even two days in Germany - the country isn’t exactly brimming with sunlight.

Your article says Germany started off well but politicians were too scared to continue and other nations caught up.

In particular they dragged their heels on ICE to EV transition, which I agree with.

Luckily they shifted from a conservative towards a green government and all that stuff is moving forward again.

> Politicians have ignored other elements, like industrial production, building efficiency and, especially, vehicle traffic. Involving those areas and coming up with an overarching concept, that's the hard part that must now be addressed. And it will determine whether Germany will once again become a model of sustainable economic production or whether the entire experiment will end in failure.

Or you could tell us.

It would be even more better if they didn't close their nuclear power plants. I am still shocked how sad and untimely this decision had been.

It wouldn't change much in this map, German nuclear plants always had cooling issues in hot summer. No open-loop cooling to prevent water from getting too hot for the fish, and plants capable of closed loop cooling eventually get issues with the river's water level. France has the same issues right now with their nuclear plants.

Winter is of course a different issue

Neither investment in EVs and repairing transmission issues live in isolation and both can be invested in at the same time. Solving one issue might also help solve the other (e.g. charging EVs can occur at non-peak times which balances energy demands, and in future EVs could be used as batteries to discharge into the grid during peak times).

California has to shut down their grid occasionally just because it's in such poor repair that wildfires are a risk. I can't imagine how they are going to handle everyone getting EVs.

Solar and distributed storage help fight this. A significant amount of charging off peak also actually reduces the load, making things more reliable and cleaner.

Fire related grid shutdowns are usually hyperlocal, meaning the few who need to charge during that time can just run a town over. (keep in mind that EVs can be charged just less than once a week for average use)

EVs are literally distributed storage, a Tesla Model S has a 90kWh battery -- that's enough to run the owner's house for 3 days.

In most places electricity cables are buried. In California they have them blowing around in the trees so they start fires.

Street-level and medium-voltage distribution, sure, but nobody wants to bury 100+ kV lines unless they really have to, because it's hugely expensive and also has much higher losses.

This isn’t true. In most places I’ve been, electrical lines have all been elevated on poles. Where I currently live, there is a pretty intensive line clearing program each spring to keep the lines clear. Even in places where house level lines were buried, the middle transmission lines were still elevated.

And I believe all high voltage transmission lines are above ground.

The difference is that California historically has fire prone conditions. It’s not like the rest of the country is doing something different and California has done something inherently wrong. It’s that California did what the rest of the country was doing, but without conditions to support it.

> This isn’t true.

Most countries don’t have regular residential streets with power lines up in the air.

The fires are mostly caused by large transmission lines outside of urban areas, not local lines on residential streets.

For example https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/10/15/pg... - these are normally buried elsewhere.

This is a very common way to setup power lines in the US.

It is significantly cheaper than burying lines from an initial cost point of view, so as long as the cost of preventive maintenance is low enough, it is a viable option. Particularly if the cost to fix lines is also low.

As an added bonus, it then also becomes easier to hang other lines (telephone, cable, fiber) on the same poles. This more difficult to do with buried lines, even if the lines are in conduit.

I’d prefer my electrical lines to be buried too, but I at least understand why they aren’t.

No, not all high voltage is above ground.

I’m just exhausted from arguing with the electrically illiterate.

HVDC makes transmission from state to state trivial at almost no loss. We should have a national HVDC grid so that a breeze in Texas might power a toaster in Connecticut.

Instead we have another $XX Billion for Ukraine. Another $13B here for a new carrier we’ll never need etc etc. So much waste everywhere while fundamental problems go unsolved.

The fall of Ukraine will mean the beginning of the new Soviet Union (but even _more_ evil), and most probably a world war, so it should be prevented at all costs possible. Not event to mention that the invasion is plainly evil, and should be repealed.

> new Soviet Union

Any reason to think this? Did Soviet Union form by Russia invading and conquering another country? No, it was a result of fall of the Russian empire and the Russian civil war.

The conditions now are very different. Fall of Ukraine would mean political win for Putin and his acolytes, maybe another invasion later on. But Soviet Union? More like stronger Russia, a revert to the Russian Empire.

Watch Russian state media. Literally stuff they say...

That's possible, but I think they just use the rhetoric to activate old people nostalgia and bring more support for the regime. Soviet union respawning does not seem likely, nobody except Russia wants that.

It's not a matter of cost, there's no political desire for a national HVDC grid so that a breeze in Texas might power a toaster in Connecticut - Texas has explicitly refused connecting to the rest of the country for many years.

Cost is a bit of a problem: each HVDC edge costs a lot, hence why it’s used almost entirely for long distance point to point links.

Maybe that will come down over time?

If you don’t help Ukraine, the reborn Soviet Union would become a valuable asset to China. You probably don’t want to happen.

Literally the whole West's defense spending for the last 70 years has been to counter Russia. Supporting Ukraine is the single most cost-effective thing any Western government can do right now...

Didn't think about it this way. That's brilliant (and dangerous of course).

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