Hacker News Reader

Comment by troupo | Hacker News Reader

> The simulations I have seen to get to 100% for Europe and North America without long term storage have used a 200% (aka 3X) overbuild.

You don't need simulations. Right now solar+wind in Germany is at capacity that is 2x Germany's consumption.

Almost every day (and definitely every night) they burn coal and import electricity from other countries because, you know, night happens, cloudy days happen, quiet days with little to no wind happen.

View on HN

That's because they haven't done much storage yet. Which is to be expected, you want to leave that for the end because it's the most expensive bit. They're planning 15GW of 4-hour batteries by 2030.

https://blog.fluenceenergy.com/energy-storage-roll-out-can-s...

Just to give you a perspective, energy Germany needs is around 61 GW. It's likely to go up as people switch to electric cars.

Also, that article is make believe as every single graph and stat in it (and in the linked study) talks about the future. I'm afraid they are literally doing this extrapolation: https://xkcd.com/605/

I thought overbuild figures usually include capacity factors, putting Germany at something like 0.3x instead of 2x?

My guess is that a power grid engineer would include capacity factors, but I've never seen the mass media, politicians, or advocacy groups think like an engineer in this regard. Even making that adjustment it doesn't factor in seasonal variations. Not understanding these factors results in ignorant headlines like:

California just ran on 100% renewable energy, but fossil fuels aren't fading away yet https://www.npr.org/2022/05/07/1097376890/for-a-brief-moment...

Renewables are now way cheaper than coal https://energynews.us/newsletter/renewables-are-now-way-chea...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com