This seems really specific information that’s not really relevant to that parent comment. How did you learn about this and why do you care?
Because my german colleagues were ranting about this whenever there was a break/issue in "Teams meetings". (which happens often)
Why do I care ? Because people are apparently not looking at reality when they make grandiose claims about renewables and electricity generation in Europe. Replace by renewables by all means - but at-least be honest about the data.
How does that make sense to you?
How does that make sense to you ?
Well, I hadn't heard that. That's interesting.
It makes sense to me because they were all clearly dependent on Russian gas, which is what caused the price spike in electricity across Europe. It still doesn't make sense to me that you think it's something to do with renewables.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-...
Turns out, nuclear is not the end all, be all solution. Who knew?
I don’t know why HN has such a rage boner for Germany’s energy transition, it doesn’t seem that triggered by any other country.
Not that the Germany is better than France. My point is that it s true that people who have a rage boner about Germany are not fair: if they really care about f* up, why they don't care about France?
I don't buy this idea that the German transition was an ideology driven f* up. The project was designed and supported by a lot of experts. They published their results, with their computations and all, and no real flaw was discovered. Sure, there were some pro-nuclear partisans who, like the anti-nuclear ones, would never accept that such studies were scientifically sound just because it did not say what they ideologically wanted to hear.
At the time, the project was scientifically sound. It did not work out because 1) the government did half of the things the project said it should do, 2) as every long-term project, it had some uncertainties, and it turned out some elements did not "aligned". An alternative project of keeping with nuclear generation was also scientifically sound, but it is not scientifically correct to pretend that this one was "better", or "more rational", or even "less ideological". People who come here and say "it was an ideological f* up" are just people who see it did not worked out and are not smart enough to not think "obviously, if it would have be me, I would have done it way better, the only reason it failed is because they suck and are irrational while I'm wayyyy smarter than everyone and soooo rational".
If I look at https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE and see patterns like 50 GW at 3 am and 60 GW at 1 pm I wonder: how can you ensure providing the base output 24/7 entirely with renewables? I have seen facilities within industrial complexes that literally required more electricity than a whole city 24/7. The demand of electricity that needs to be provided 24/7 is enormous.
There is in addition a huge challenge to manage loads in a grid (that was never designed for it) for regional variance and unpredictability in energy production (e.g., sunshine in the north and wind in the north but no need there) and the consumption (e.g., industry in the south).
In classical “German ideology” fashion laws are passed, one-way door decisions are made, “experts testify” that everything works and 10 years later the thing blows up.
And it’s not just me who “brilliantly came up with this assessment” - but I borrowed it from publicly shared opinions of industry leaders: https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/industrie/nikolas...
So, why does it work out and I have it all wrong? What were the evil forces that sabotaged this very well thought through idea? Because I went all PV and geothermal heat pump and energy efficient housing. What have you done?
- the electricity grid _before the move to go out of the nuclear_ was not sustainable: reducing emission implied electrifying, which implies local flexibility that the grid at the time was simply not able to provide. The "old" nuclear plants had to disappear in the mid-/long-term, and because of that, there were several possibilities. Idiots are assuming that if Germany would not have got out of nuclear, the situation would be perfect today, which is just plain stupid (the situation would be closer to the French one: everything looking fine on the surface, but heading right for the wall).
- the "no wind night" challenge is technically as "easy" as the technical challenge of developing a grid with nuclear plant. It's difficult to understand for the laymen, but the "old" nuclear plants were technically not to the level for a grid without gas and coal, and need to be replaced by new ones which will need to solve a lot of problems that are similar to the "no wind night" challenge. In simulation, it turns out that large distance grid connectivity (which is better for the resilience anyway) and some storage (which was at the time (and still today) way more room to progress than some nuclear technology) are fixing the "no wind night" challenge quite effectively. It may seem surprising, but in science, the conclusions of computations are way more reliable than the gut-feeling of laymen.
I understand it is frustrating to see that your naive understanding is contradicted by conclusions from proper studies, and it is very easy to just conclude "I'm smarter, I know it will not work, the only explanation is that it was ideology".
(not sure I get your point when you bring Nikolas Stihl: isn't this guy as much as an expert on grid simulation than you? Being an industry leader does not magically give them a pass on doing exactly the same mistake as you, which is: drawing naive conclusions from naive understandings and concluding that if experts have a different ones, the only explanation is that they are "ideological")
> What were the evil forces that sabotaged this very well thought through idea?
There are tons of ways to fail. Seeing something not working perfectly and concluding that the project itself was therefore stupid is just incorrect. And we should also keep in mind that the risk of failures was, at the time, according to science, as big if they would have gone in the "nuclear direction". Sometimes you may take the most rational decisions and it still does not work out.
> What have you done?
I really hope this is not one of those stupid argumentation panic "oh yeah? oh yeah? well, you seem to know better than me and have pointed out the stupid things I say, but how many push-ups are you able to do?" (but don't worry, I've done _a lot_).
“ In simulation, it turns out that large distance grid connectivity (which is better for the resilience anyway) and some storage (which was at the time (and still today) way more room to progress than some nuclear technology) are fixing the "no wind night" challenge quite effectively.”
Not in reality it seems though. I take a look at April 3, 7 am: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE Solar was zero. Wind dropped to 20% coal was increased to 30%. April 2nd at 3 pm, wind stood at 37% and coal stood at 13%. So, where after two decades of “going renewable” is this even remotely speaking yo your ideological dream world? Let me reiterate: wind dropped by 50% and they had to increase coal by 100%. At night.
I want renewables to work. I put my money where my mouth is. But after two decades or so of “trying” we are only showing data demonstrating they can’t work for Germany the way people like you want us to believe.”
I'm not sure I understand your question. You are saying "the problem is that it did not work because it was ideological". I'm saying "it is incorrect, the plan was not an irrational crazy thing out of ideology, it was a scientific study and the choice was as rational as other possibilities". Then you are now telling me "well, the plan does not work, so it can only be ideological, unless you provide a plan that will work for sure". That does not make any sense. Nobody can come with a plan that works for sure. Saying "you don't have a plan that works for sure, so I can say whatever I want and I'm right" is certainly not a rational way of thinking.
> Not in reality it seems though.
What? You are saying that in a grid that the German government has botched, there is no capacity for compensate for "no wind night". How does that prove that the "no wind night" is an impossible obstacle?
Again, it is MATH! Math proves it is possible. The fact that the German government did not put their money where their mouth was is obviously not proving that not possible.
And don't get me wrong, it works both way: France messed up their nuclear park. It DOES NOT MEAN NUCLEAR CANNOT WORK. Based on our conversation so far, I doubt that if someone bring France summer problems to demonstrate that nuclear does not work, you will not, legitimately, say that it's a stupid argument. That's the same here.
And as long as there are idiots that are unable to discuss the situation by accepting the complexity and by accepting that, maybe, just maybe, decisions that don't fit their naive conclusions are not the result of "bad ideological guys", then, we will never progress.
> ... your ideological dream world ... people like you ...
I see. And you are criticizing the German government for being ideological. For your information, I was part of a team that helped creating new nuclear project. But you are yet one of those m*rons who are incapable of not seeing the world in black or white. You criticize the German government, and yet, you fall 1000 times faster into the "oh my, this guy is bringing reality that I don't like, so I should convince myself that my church is the great rationality on earth and that he is an heretic". Pathetic.
Well, today it doesn’t and tomorrow it won’t either.
I’ve seen my fair share of “objective projects/engagements where the wanted outcome was communicated very clearly” by German government bodies.
I love the idea of decentralised and local energy generation; energy efficient housing/living. I spent $$$ on it.
But Germany has an industry that is so hungry for a constant supply of electricity that I see no realistic viable path in renewables for that. People like you have claimed for two decades there is - yet, here we are: running coal full steam at night.
Idealists like you destroy our planet.
It is not the case. The model say: if you do A, B and C, it will work, but if you do A but not B and C, it will fail. The German government has done A but not B and C. What happened with Germany is CONFIRMING that the model works. Other elements of the models are applied in other countries, such as France or England (not the full deployment, but the elements deployed behave exactly as the model predict).
> People like you have claimed for two decades there is - yet, here we are: running coal full steam at night.
Yep, running coal full steam in France when the nuclear power plants fail. So, according to you, nuclear is not working, renewable is not working, ... What's your plan? Whatever you give me, I can easily find places where it failed, which, according to you, is enough to claim that the whole strategy was "ideological".
The thing you are unable to understand is that failure is part of the reality: there is no obviously winning strategy, and rejecting a whole path based on failures that you are not even understanding is ridiculously obtuse.
> Idealists like you destroy our planet.
You are right: idealists LIKE YOU destroy our planet. I'm a pragmatic, I don't care if the solution is nuclear or renewable (but apparently you are totally unable to realize that, which just reinforce the conclusion that your analysis is disconnected from reality). But you are an ideologist: you have decided what is the "correct" solution without knowing the real situation, and you invented excuses to confirm what you have in your head is "the good thing".
But whatever, it does not change the facts: you may think the move was "ideological", but the facts are still there: it was not. You may insist and cry about it, it is very clear that you have no idea of what was the situation (you've even mentioned it yourself). Honestly, if you really want to help the planet, just stop saying useless things and accusing wrongly people of being "ideological" just because it does not fit with the naive model you have created from your superficial understanding of the situation.
France generated less than 1% of electricity with coal in 2022: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1263322/electrical-produ...
While in Germany it was over 30%: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
There is a qualitative difference between an occassional need for some coal in particularly adverse situations, and relying on it for almost a third of your electricity needs.
Driven by an ideological agenda of Ms Merkel and the green party, they shut down nuclear power plants (needed to cover our base load in chemical/manufacturing/whatnot) and replaced it with gas from Russia (don’t ask me why). Now that Russian gas isn’t exactly on the table anymore and we not only depend on Russian gas for heating but also a great deal for electricity (nuclear was shut down, remember) we have no choice but ramp up to coal thanks to the Green party.
The fact that Germany’s “greenest” (carbon emissions-wise) day was still worst than France’s most polluting day speaks volumes.
Wind power and solar DO NOT suffice to cover Germany’s electricity need unless you go full-scale deindustrialisation (which the Green party certainly would favor). I’m all in for PV on everyone’s roofs, I have geothermal heating for my house, I built everything low energy - but please lets stop the ideological destruction of our economy and our environment by the Green party’s “vision”.
You have been misinformed. They shut down nuclear to replace it with renewables. They already used Russian gas at the time.
2. this is the hard part, but there is good news.
solar and wind over large areas are fairly consistent and with HVDC you can transfer power 1-2 thousand miles with low losses. there's also a small but rapidly growing amount of storage on the grid. right now, we treat hydro as primarily generation with a side benefit of storage, but it's shifting to primary storage with a side benefit of generation. doing so gives most grids a decent ability to scale up and down renewable generation at will. lastly, you can use fossil fuels when everything else isn't giving you enough. a fossil fuel plant that runs a couple times a year for a few hours is a lot better than 40% of the grid being fossil fuel year round.
there's also a decent amount you can do in terms of demand shaping as the grid gets smarter. electric hot water tanks can be used as batteries where you set them up to turn on when there's excess power. you can also do things like make agreements with energy hungry sectors (like ore refining) to throttle output when necessary (compensating them for the lost revenue).
3. this is easy. refill batteries, smelt aluminum, turn off generation.
If I eyeball the electricity consumption correctly, the lowest consumption was like 50 GW at 3 am in the morning and the highest was 60GW (+20%) at 1pm.
Our freakin grid is NOT capable of managing an additional load for EVs as of today or any time soon. We cannot produce enough electricity to move gasoline driven cars to EV because we right now barely manage to keep or industry alive and geothermal heatpumps and whatnot will strain it further. So regarding 1) its BULLSH*T its a massive problem.
2) Where do you live that you believe Germany can store electricity in hydro? Why do you believe there is demand shaping when we literally need a constantly high load (see 1)???
3) Yes, I understand. Easy peasy. If i get a battery for my solar panels, the investment costs are effectively above 30cents/kWh which is bogus. Yes, you can just turn off that aluminium smelter or chemical plant running a continuous process.
You clearly have never been close to an industry complex, worked in anything remotely related to “Germany’s industrial backbone”. It’s ideological wishful thinking.
If this choice was actually made to please the greens, as the theory goes, that would have been a first for Germany, a country built on its close ties between industry and government. Not to mention that the greens aren't usually fond of burning fossil fuel.
Occam's razor should suffice to understand the political process that went down here.
putin took advantage of this, europe put their neck in the guillotine for him