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Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

kaikenhuippu.com

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Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#101

Post by nl »

buzzkillington wrote: post #93
codemac wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear power is the only solution. How much energy storage do we need to not need nuclear? That seems to be an assumption you're making that I'm not actually familiar with.

That's the wrong question. The right question is how much time do you think the grid should be offline each year? It's a simple question no renewable proponent wants to talk about because it makes their whole case indefensible.

Renewables plus transmission plus storage plus gas generation is easily as reliable as the generation mix we have now.

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#102

Post by Valgrim »

buzzkillington wrote: post #93
codemac wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear power is the only solution. How much energy storage do we need to not need nuclear? That seems to be an assumption you're making that I'm not actually familiar with.

That's the wrong question. The right question is how much time do you think the grid should be offline each year? It's a simple question no renewable proponent wants to talk about because it makes their whole case indefensible.

The right answer is zero time, of course. A renewable smart grid includes long distance transmission lines, short term storage (batteries) and long term storage (pumped hydro). It's never been just about the panels and wind turbines.

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#103

Post by buzzkillington »

nl wrote: post #101
buzzkillington wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the wrong question. The right question is how much time do you think the grid should be offline each year? It's a simple question no renewable proponent wants to talk about because it makes their whole case indefensible.

Renewables plus transmission plus storage plus gas generation is easily as reliable as the generation mix we have now.

Great, but we don't have the transmission, storage or gas generation currently.

So we need to spend trillions to build a system that still produces enough CO2 to make a mass extinction inevitable by 2100.

Am I the only one that sees a problem with this?

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#104

Post by dekhn »

oh_sigh wrote: post #83
dekhn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My collection of 20+ year old T-shirts does not support this hypothesis. my experience has been the agitator in the washer is what causes the most damage.

The lint in the lint trap comes from somewhere, and I really doubt that much material is flying off of air dried clothes.

I can't see any problems with this; those are tiny fibers and they don't make a big difference except over years. It doesn't affect the weave that much.

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#105

Post by cmroanirgo »

buzzkillington wrote: post #93
codemac wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear power is the only solution. How much energy storage do we need to not need nuclear? That seems to be an assumption you're making that I'm not actually familiar with.

That's the wrong question. The right question is how much time do you think the grid should be offline each year? It's a simple question no renewable proponent wants to talk about because it makes their whole case indefensible.

There's always the opinion that solar is useless on cloudy days. It's my understanding that on a normal cloudy day they're only 25% as efficient as when sunny, and 10% when it's really cloudy. So, not great, but it's something that is being improved upon all the time.

> In some cases, clouds can actually result in better panel performance than standard sunny weather. A cloud can reflect or sometimes even magnify sunlight, which results in additional power output from your solar panels. [0]

In my country (Oz) we have two states that are into solar: SA has a tesla battery plant (built in > "We know that the 100 megawatt capacity of the existing Hornsdale battery has saved South Australian electricity consumers $40 million per year since its inception," he said. [1]

[0] https://news.energysage.com/solar-panels-work-night-cloudy-d...

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-19/sa-big-battery-set-to...

In short, the good thing about solar is:

- easy to set up, low cost, easy to maintain, easy to upgrade, easy to switch off if over supply ever happens. - good for moving away from coal provided you have storage.

As other's have mentioned, the nuclear option costs billions and takes years to set up whereas battery storage of renewables is very very quick indeed to set up, and instantly produces savings.

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#106

Post by anoncake »

jakub_g wrote: post #32

I'm rather a noob in the topic, but I've been reading in recent months about energy market and it seems like a collective insanity in the light of the climate crisis. - In most(whole?) Europe, electricity used by trains is taxed higher than jet fuel used by planes (legacy measure from decades ago which was meant to boost air market; of course now it's hugely difficult to change it) - Germany went strongly into renewa…

> you can never reach 100% renewables

Bullshit. You need storage, obviously.

> Am I missing something

Yes.

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#107

Post by anoncake »

derefr wrote: post #88
jakub_g wrote: post #32

I'm rather a noob in the topic, but I've been reading in recent months about energy market and it seems like a collective insanity in the light of the climate crisis. - In most(whole?) Europe, electricity used by trains is taxed higher than jet fuel used by planes (legacy measure from decades ago which was meant to boost air market; of course now it's hugely difficult to change it) - Germany went strongly into renewa…

> you can never reach 100% renewables. So you need a backup, which is either gas or coal. Why isn't nuclear the backup? "90% renewable, 10% nuclear" sounds politically-viable; it's still "moving away from nuclear."

No, a power source as insanely dangerous as nuclear is fortunately not politically viable at all here in the long term.

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#108

Post by nl »

buzzkillington wrote: post #103
nl wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables plus transmission plus storage plus gas generation is easily as reliable as the generation mix we have now.

Great, but we don't have the transmission, storage or gas generation currently. So we need to spend trillions to build a system that still produces enough CO2 to make a mass extinction inevitable by 2100. Am I the only one that sees a problem with this?

mass extinction inevitable by 2100

This is very emotive language, which is fine, but there is no currently projected scenario where mass extinction is inevitable or even likely.

Great, but we don't have the transmission, storage or gas generation currently.

We are well on the way. In many parts of the world this is the majority energy mix already.

So we need to spend trillions to build a system that still produces enough CO2

This is untrue. It's roughly the same cost as replacing coal stations with new coal stations, which is roughly ten times cheaper than replacing them with nuclear. And it cuts energy production C02 production by about 70% which is easily enough to meet most targets to stabilise the climate.

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#109

Post by theredlion »

anoncake wrote: post #107
derefr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can never reach 100% renewables. So you need a backup, which is either gas or coal. Why isn't nuclear the backup? "90% renewable, 10% nuclear" sounds politically-viable; it's still "moving away from nuclear."

No, a power source as insanely dangerous as nuclear is fortunately not politically viable at all here in the long term.

Please do go on

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#110

Post by nl »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #105
buzzkillington wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the wrong question. The right question is how much time do you think the grid should be offline each year? It's a simple question no renewable proponent wants to talk about because it makes their whole case indefensible.

There's always the opinion that solar is useless on cloudy days. It's my understanding that on a normal cloudy day they're only 25% as efficient as when sunny, and 10% when it's really cloudy. So, not great, but it's something that is being improved upon all the time. > In some cases, clouds can actually result in better panel performance than standard sunny weather. A cloud can reflect or sometimes even magnify sunl…

Note that in Australia the Victorian interconnector to South Australia went down recently at the same time as a coal station outage in Victoria.

South Australia ran on 55% renewables, 65% gas, while powering the Portland aluminium smelter in Victoria for 55 days[1][2].

Also - outside solar - most Australian states gets significant power from renewables (wind and hydro). Right now as I write this roughly 30% of the power in Queensland is solar, 20% in NSW, about 10% is wind in Victoria with another 15% being solar. In South Australia about 20% is gas, with all the rest being wind and solar. Tasmania is 100% renewable (almost all hydro)[3].

[1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-and-batteries-saved-the-day...

[2] https://reneweconomy.com.au/murdoch-media-headline-shock-ren...

[3] https://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch/

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