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Comment by troupo | Hacker News Reader

Addendum:

When I wrote this it was even worse in Germany. 30% of total electricity coming from coal. Because:

- The total installed capacity of wind covers Germany's needs. Only 28% of installed capacity is produced

- The total installed capacity of solar exceeds Germany's needs. Only 2.7% of installed capacity is produced

That is, currently Germany needs 65 GW of electricity. Solar + wind have a total installed capacity of 134 GW, double what Germany needs. And together they still barely produce 30% of what Germany requires.

So Germany supplements that by burning coal, biomass and gas, and importing electricity.

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Germany is currently in an unplanned surprise energy war with Russia that coincided with the start of a shift to greener power. Fairly unique and relatively short-term set of circumstances.

The lesson learned is not “green power bad”, it’s “don’t rely on gas from dictators”.

> Germany is currently in an unplanned surprise energy war with Russia

Ah yes. This war is the reason why 134 GW of renewable energy only produce ~20GW, and why Germany burns 20 GW of coal (by pure coincidence that's about as much as the capacity of all decommissioned reactors since 2011)

The war is why coal specifically is being used to make up demand, yes.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/energy-crisis-fu...

The long term plan was always EU-wide energy projects to account for “its cloudy in Germany” scenarios. That plan isn’t complete.

> The war is why coal specifically is being used to make up demand, yes.

Again:

- is it war that makes renewables produce 15% of their installed capacity?

- is it war that made Germany shut down 20GW of nuclear power plants?

> That plan isn’t complete.

And it never will be complete. Because when it's cloudy in Germany, those clouds don't stop at Germany's borders. Literally see the comment above about Denmark.

> is it war that makes renewables produce 15% of their installed capacity?

No form of power meets its theoretical "installed capacity". No one runs their nuclear, gas, coal, or oil plants at 100% 24/7/365 either. Yes, some days it's less windy; some days it's more cloudy. The dramatic fall in cost for new solar and wind capacity makes the solution pretty obvious; you build more to account.

> is it war that made Germany shut down 20GW of nuclear power plants?

It's war that makes Germany temporarily wish they hadn't.

> Because when it's cloudy in Germany, those clouds don't stop at Germany's borders.

They're unlikely to cover the entire EU's interconnected grid (and there's talk of generation in Morocco; https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/04/13/...). When the entire EU is covered in clouds, it's especially unlikely that there's no wind at the same time.

Given Germany's plan is 60% renewable generation by 2050, not 100%, they clearly understand the need for some flexible options for the tail ends of things.

> No form of power meets its theoretical "installed capacity".

And yet unlike renewables nuclear (and coal and gas etc.) are very close to that. And nuclear routinely runs close to its capacity, predictably.

> When the entire EU is covered in clouds, it's especially unlikely that there's no wind at the same time.

So each EU country has to overprovision enough solar and wind to potentially generate power for the rest of the EU countries? Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38276778

> And yet unlike renewables nuclear (and coal and gas etc.) are very close to that. And nuclear routinely runs close to its capacity, predictably.

Sure. Apples to oranges; they're not the same thing. Theoretical perfect-day max generation isn't how you provision solar/wind, that'd be stupid; the folks building out Germany's renewable efforts aren't stupid.

If you need a certain baseline of a certain renewable, you overprovision (and trade capacity with other areas and generation methods). Given the cost of new solar/wind capacity these days, that still makes perfect economic sense. Any long-term renewables plan is going to include energy storage and peaker plants of some kind to ensure a reliable grid on a national/continental scale.

> If you need a certain baseline of a certain renewable, you overprovision

How much? Is 200% of required generation enough? Is 500%?

Again, you act like building power infrastructure is a "we're done!" scenario. It's like demanding to know how many more lines of code Linux will need to be finished.

Germany - and the rest of their interconnected EU grid - will continue to build out cheap, clean power for the forseeable future.

We progress towards a mix of renewables (wind, solar...) deployed at continental scale ( https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-... ) , backed up by V2G ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid ) and green hydrogen ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage ).

What's your point? Summer - October 2022 only half of the French nuclear power plants were operational, they had to import electricity over long periods of time. However, that's the whole point of the European integrated electricity market, you diversify geographically and by generation. By building more renewable sources, we will need less and less fossil capacity.

> Summer - October 2022 only half of the French nuclear power plants were operational, they had to import electricity over long periods of time.

Indeed. And what's your point?

> By building more renewable sources, we will need less and less fossil capacity.

How many more renewables?

The installed capacity of renewables in Germany is double its needs for power.

The installed capacity of renewables in Denmark is 1.5 times its needs for power.

Do we need 10 times more? 100 times more?

I think you're conflating the terms capacity and peak production here.

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the peak production makes German electricity cheap enough to make everyone around them use it when it's available. If all the neighbors used this approach too, over the course of a day it would be everybody's turn to provide energy for the neighbors as renewables production will never be zero globally.

> I think you're conflating the terms capacity and peak production here.

I'm not.

What I'm pointing out is that renewables in Germany are significantly overprovisioned. And still produce just 15% of their installed capacity because it's a quiet cloudy day.

> the peak production makes German electricity cheap enough to make everyone around them use it when it's available.

Ah yes. When they are available. That's the point, isn't it?

> If all the neighbors used this approach

Denmark is at 150% of its needs, was importing 40% of its energy from neighbors, and, ironically, from Germany which was burning coal.

So. How much each of the neighbors, and each of those neighbors' neighbors etc. need to overprovision renewables?

As others have already asked, are renewables over provisioned or insufficient? You keep claiming both.

And we get it, Germany burn coal for electricity. And we all know that is bad. Point taken and not objected.

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