Germany solar power output jumps to record highs
reuters.com
reuters.com
For April: https://ned.nl/nl/dataportaal/energie-productie/elektricitei... Solar was 27% of total energy production, and wind was 37%, which when you consider nights, means that you _must_ have peaks well over 50%.
Today, at midday, solar is 69% of total production.
This is an obviously wrong number, and I'm not even sure how they accomplished such a specifically weird mistake. "Mean of 17,351 MW" would be plausible. That's different by a factor of 168.
During a duration of time it is okay so say an amount of energy (MWh) was produced, right?
(For anyone unclear about units: the y-axis of the graph is GWh/h, the same as 10^3 MWh/h, or simply just 10^3 MW. The unit [MWh] = 10^6 [Watt]*[hour]).
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany#History
(Or is the wikipedia article wrong too?)
https://www.tls-containers.com/tls-blog/understanding-mw-and....
We recently went on the Autobahn for a 1000km journey, and you can see some solar farms, but very few. There is still a huge potential.
Solar will also kick into second gear as soon as batteries get cheaper or EV batteries are recycled into house batteries.
We're building the solar equivalent of the total cumulative nuclear capacity germany has ever build every 3 years.
If we manage to hold off regressive forces that are trying to derail the current trajectory with whataboutism of nuclear and fusion, we might actually make it to CO2 neutrality in a reasonable timeframe.
You didn't read the article I sent, it show you don't care about what it says but you try to attack the article because you dislike what it say.
The article state it's source is cicero, a... german magazine.
https://www.cicero.de/innenpolitik/robert-habeck-akten-atomk...
[0] https://assets.cicero.de/2024-04/2022-03-03_Atomaufsicht_Ver...
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-just-cant-quit-russia...
A well known example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix
UK stepped up and started to invest in the supply chain and replace Russia one day.
New gas plants are required to make use of gas as a storage medium one way or another.
> Late last month, Germany’s energy regulator said the country needs more coal power.
If you want a less biased source, here is bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-30/germany-s...
> Reserve plant capacity needs to double by 2026, regulator says
> Power stations on standby are mostly coal-, gas-fired plants
This article is riddled with statements that are factually incorrect. :(
I guess this is hard to research if you don't speak German, though.
> If you want a less biased source, here is bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-30/germany-s...
Can't read this, it's behind a paywall.
> Reserve plant capacity needs to double by 2026, regulator says
That does not imply more plants if you're in a phase where you take plants out of continuous operation. It's just that existing plants must be kept in reserve and can't be completely disconnected.
> If we manage to hold off regressive forces that are trying to derail the current trajectory with whataboutism of nuclear
Nuclear already reached the target. It's not some "whataboutism".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
Nuclear has less capacity than solar. Nuclear has less capacity than on-shore wind. Nuclear is currently 3x as expensive as on-shore wind. Nuclear is currently 2x as expensive as solar.
France spend the last 70 years building low-CO2 energy reactors. Nobody is disputing that this is a great thing™, but that doesn't mean that it is the right technology for other nations to go with now, who can't go back in time 70 years.
I'm gonna use the most expensive storage technology I know (lithium-ion) and forego cheaper alternatives like pumped hydro just to make a point.
I'm gonna use data from lazard, because it looks like the most recent study[1].
- Cost of Lithium-Ion Battery Packs 139$/kWh [2]
- 139000$/MWh
- We want the levelized cost of electricity, so let's assume, again to make a point, that we have to throw the battery out after 500 cycles instead of it only operating at 80% charge. That's 139000$ / 500 = 278$
- The EU estimates that in a 80% renewable grid you need approx 30% storage capacity. So let's assume we need 40% storage capacity for a 100% grid.[3] That's 278$ * 0.4 = 112$
- Cost for solar 24–96$
- Cost for wind 24–75$
- Cost for solar + storage 136$ - 208$
- Cost for wind + storage 136$ - 187$
- Cost for new nuclear: 141–221$
1: https://www.lazard.com/media/typdgxmm/lazards-lcoeplus-april...
2: https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-...
3: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/research-and-technology/e...
Fortunately there's no such thing as diminishing returns and we can just make assumptions like this without any backing./s
But sure let's take a paper that estimated costs for the 100% renewable case: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4dc8#...
They estimate €80 per MWh for an entirely renewable System.
So do you want to provide a study that has some contradicting numbers, or do you just want to admit that no amount of evidence is going to change your mind and move on?
There are multiple sources for those interested, https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2021/6/11/some-rules-o... is a brief dot point page, the Hydrogen UK and European Hydrogen Backbone reports are longer more detailed technical report papers.
Our point is that nuclear is used exactly for the same purpose: "We don't need to invest into renewables, because fusion and nuclear is gonna magically save us all in 10 years."
Again it's great that france has this much nuclear right now. But that's not a good path for the rest of europe catching up. Especially not with the current price trajectories. (Nuclear becoming more expensive, storage and renewables getting cheaper)
The number I first gave(CO2 per kWh) is when Germany was at more than 80% renewable, at the time I wrote the comment. As we can all see the 'low carbon' target you set yourself in your example is not enough.
Btw the EU wants 80% renewables by 2050, that includes coal guzzlers like poland. Germany wants 100% renewables by 2035.
So you're barking at the wrong tree.
The tree I'm barking at kills thousands of European every year by burning coal, and finance anti-nuclear propaganda. https://env-health.org/IMG/pdf/dark_cloud-full_report_final....
https://www.ege.fr/sites/ege.fr/files/media_files/German_Int...
Should germany do more? Yes!
Is it great that france spend the last 70 years building 0-CO2 emmision power plants? Yes!
Should germany spend its money on the cheapest, most available technology? Yes!
Is your nuclear greenwash for new reactors in germany an obvious conservative derailment strategy to delay more investment in renewables? Yes! (you might actually believe this stuff, but german conservative parties that use this dogwhistle certainly don't)
The capacity factor in winter for solar is below 10%. Nuclear is typically at more than 90% in winter.
The target we are speaking is CO2 emitted, it already reached the "target" in france, with less than 60gCO2/kwh to provide electricity the whole year, to the whole grid.
> but that doesn't mean that it is the right technology for other nations to go with now
you propose something that is not feasible with the current technology.
Reports indicate countries should build a lots of clean energy source, as fast as possible, including nuclear, solar, wind, to use these clean energy source and replace fossil energy, to limit global warming
Right now, France doesn't do that fast enough (not enough investment in nuclear, and renewable), and Germany is headed to the opposite direction (need of fossil fuel to produce in renewable down-time).
Every euro spend on nuclear is a euro not spend on something that's giving you 2-3x as much energy generated.
Rewewables have been called "infeasible" at 5%, at 25% at 50%, now we're at 60%. I'm prette sure you'll yell "infeasible" even if we're running at 100%...
We’re making changes, but the course correction haven’t been sufficient so far and it remains to be seen if we will be able to do enough fast enough to avoid said cataclysm.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/29295/umfrage...
> Wouldn't change much if any at all.
5% of German production is about twice the projected capacity of Hinkley Point C, the only current nuclear plant I remember the name of, so that might cost maybe €60B. The same amount of PV would cost maybe €2B. If you overbuild PV by 300% you still have >€50B cost difference.
You can reach any conclusion if you're willing to disregard price differences of more than 10×. Ditto if you're willing to assume near-zero cost by assuming inexpensive restauration of hardware that's past the end of its design life.
Of course I'm wrong, I think differently than your beliefs, Atheist were wrong too.
Independent of belief, "X has the following good feature" does not imply "X is a good idea" or "X is worth serious consideration". Belief is one thing, cost is quite another and cannot be believed away.
Which was 141 TWH in 2010 and would have more than replaced the entire brown&hard coal use for 2023.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330065/gross-electricit...
"While Germany's power carbon intensity vastly exceeds the roughly 45g of CO2/KWh of France's nuclear-heavy system, the 166g reading at 1 p.m. on May 13 was below the 170g of CO2/KWh emitted during the same hour in Britain, which on an annual basis has a far lower carbon intensity than Germany."
The France that regularly has to shut down its reactors in the summer because there's no water for cooling left? Great idea!
but you're right, half of them were down for other reasons, too: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr...
It says it's for "water too hot" not "lack of water", a nuclear plant can be retrofitted with cooling tower to not heat up the river. This is not done for cost reasons, we are already overproducing when theses nuclear plant need to shut down due to temperature.
> Kpler analyst Emeric de Vigan said the restrictions were likely to have little effect on output in practice
The article you cite, mention an expert that says it will have "little effect on output", you make it as a big problem.
And as the article says, France is still a net exporter at this climate, we export to countries that need a lot of electricity in the night, like Germany, exports have been massive theses days https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electrici... , despite germany attempt to sabotage our industry.
Germany is at 388gCO2eq/kWh.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/warming-rivers-threa...
We've got a very persistent trend across all these ideology-before-prosperity western countries where their energy policy is proving to be a disaster. We're getting literal de-growth of energy and a lot of the political fireworks are probably related to that. Hopefully we see some long-term improvements, but the last decade has not been pretty.
What do you mean by that and why is it bad? Do you mean that we save energy and need less? That doesn't sound bad tbh.