Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 134 posts

Re: Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

#101

Post by pydry »

littlestymaar wrote: post #90
addicted wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or rather, as is the case in any transition, as you move to the new you still continue to rely on the old, so the entire system continues to fail if the old fails. This stops being a problem once the transition is complete. But that’s to a great extent the definition of a transition.

You cannot go full renewable though, at least not if you power supply comes from wind. Even offshore fields have big periods without productions (because there is not enough wind, but also because there is too much). I did the calculation for France a few years ago: if you wanted to run on wind + battery, on a typical year you'd need two weeks of storage! Nobody considers this realistic, and gas is expected to cover…

Did you include solar energy, energy imports or demand shaping in your model?

Re: Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

#102

Post by PeterisP »

hrfbi wrote: post #56
PeterisP wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sort of is the democratic principle. There are three alternatives: 1. This choice gets made in whatever way does get (at least passive) consent of the general public; 2. The leaders try to make a different choice and get promptly replaced in the next elections with whichever populists promise to ignore the elites and roll back these choices; 3. The leaders make a different choice and violently enforce them in an…

4. The decisions are taken by the unaccountable EU. (Precisely what's been happening for quite some time now)

Yes, that's what's been happening but it's exactly what I'd call "just-sort-of-happened without informed consent of the masses" - which is sustainable only while the costs are relatively trivial. If the impact grows, it will have to devolve to one of the three scenarios; the EU core institutions are composed of country's prime ministers and of directly elected representatives - all of those could and would be held accountable as soon as the people started to be bothered enough about the EU-wide decisions; currently they mostly vote for local parties based on their local issues, but if (when?) climate change and various options for tackling it (or not) would become an important issue in elections, then the same parties will put their EU-level votes as a key part of their election agenda.

Re: Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

#103

Post by ajsnigrutin »

ip26 wrote: post #68
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you need to pay your electricity bill today,... ...and buy food to eat... ...global warming is something for future-you to care about.

Yes, I understand the future-you aspect. You handle the most immediate costs first. But I don't think that qualifies "adequate dental care" or "maintaining a healthy weight" (two problems frequently prioritized below this month's rent) as luxuries. Not only are they something everyone should have, deferring attention to those things is a net cost for everyone in the end (sufferers are miserable, society pays). This i…

I mean... I agree that fixing your tooth now for 100eur (price of a filling here) will save you from an artificial tooth (1000+eur) in the long run,... but this doesn't help you a lot if you don't have 100eur now.

If you have enough money, you can insulate your house, build geothermal heating, solar heating+power, and all that stuff. At that "richness level", a power bill increase is a negligable cost. If you're really poor, power bill increases mean choosing between freezing at home or eating. I pay ~45eur monthly for power (i get heat from elsewhere), and doubling that to 90eur would mean one less aliexpress toy for me. It would also mean around 10 days of cheap food for someone poor.

Basically, rich can afford to be green, but forcing green policies impacts poor the most. Ban non-eco cars? Sure... someone rich already has a car with low exhausts to pass the bar, and they will replace the car for a new one, even cleaner in a few years... poor people have an old beater with a shitty engine, burning oil, and a new eco policy means, that they have no way to drive to work anymore.

Re: Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

#104

Post by cinntaile »

realusername wrote: post #81
bildung wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decisions like these seldomly are about engineering alone. France didn't embrace nuclear out of the goodness of their hearts - they wanted to become a nuclear power, and needed the infrastructure and specialists and so on to become one (establish study paths, and give those students the prospect of jobs so that they actually choose the new paths etc.). Now that this isn't of strategic importance anymore, France lost…

> Now that this isn't of strategic importance anymore, France lost interest in nuclear plants (just look at what gets built in recent decades in France). Because nuclear power by itself isn't that interesting, mostly because it is so hugely expensive and inflexible. Half of the problem in France are the green activists & the public to build more and the other half is that the EU is extremely against nuclear and does…

The EU isn't against nuclear, the EU is against illegal state subsidizing in a liberalized market.

Re: Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

#105

Post by pydry »

realusername wrote: post #49
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #39

ElectricityMap is a nice live view of current energy generation and consumption by type of energy. Unfortunately right now https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE shows Germany is generating most energy from Coal. It is sad that they didn't embrace nuclear like neighboring France.

That's always what people should have in mind when they see those headlines "100% renewable today!", yeah but there's some days where it reaches 3%.

Which days? It's currently 43%.

Re: Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

#106

Post by realusername »

pydry wrote: post #105
realusername wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's always what people should have in mind when they see those headlines "100% renewable today!", yeah but there's some days where it reaches 3%.

Which days? It's currently 43%.

Wait until winter, now it's just no wind but then you'll have no wind and not much sun both in the same time.

Re: Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

#107

Post by realusername »

cinntaile wrote: post #104
realusername wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now that this isn't of strategic importance anymore, France lost interest in nuclear plants (just look at what gets built in recent decades in France). Because nuclear power by itself isn't that interesting, mostly because it is so hugely expensive and inflexible. Half of the problem in France are the green activists & the public to build more and the other half is that the EU is extremely against nuclear and does…

The EU isn't against nuclear, the EU is against illegal state subsidizing in a liberalized market.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-eu-transit...

That's maybe how they are trying to spin it yeah.

Re: Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

#108

Post by littlestymaar »

pydry wrote: post #101
littlestymaar wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot go full renewable though, at least not if you power supply comes from wind. Even offshore fields have big periods without productions (because there is not enough wind, but also because there is too much). I did the calculation for France a few years ago: if you wanted to run on wind + battery, on a typical year you'd need two weeks of storage! Nobody considers this realistic, and gas is expected to cover…

Did you include solar energy, energy imports or demand shaping in your model?

Oops I forgot to put the link to my model.

For your specific questions:

- Solar energy: sort of, I did three variants (100% solar, 100% wind, an the current Wind/solar ration)

- energy import: I kept the same energy import profile as of today. It would have made the model much bigger (I would have needed to simulate the entire European grid instead of just the French one, making me deal with tons of different data sources, which I didn't want to). By the way, the power connection between countries are currently pretty tiny compared to the consumption of a big country (granted, that could probably be changed if needed, but I don't know by which margin).

- demand shaping not at all, and it would definitely have an impact for short periods. But for the longer wind-deprived periods (in weeks) which I was trying to measure, I don't think it would make a significant difference.

Re: Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

#109

Post by Kretinsky »

pydry wrote: post #46

This article seems to be trying to turn a story about unprecedented highs in natural gas prices (mirroring surging post-covid commodity prices all over) into a story about the wind sometimes not blowing. Alternative article : https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/expensive-winter-ahe...

Since most major wind electricity project needs a complementary natural gas power plant to secure profitable long-term supply contracts, the smart move for the natural gas industry is to lobby hard for renewable.

This may explain why, for instance, in Europe, a Czech fossil-energy magnate buys[1] important shares of western european media (such as the liberal-left leaning Le Monde in France, for instance) while investing[2] in coal and gas.

[1] https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/medias/daniel-kretinsky-... [2] https://www.bfmtv.com/economie/entreprises/energie/pourquoi-...

Re: Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

#110

Post by cinntaile »

realusername wrote: post #107
cinntaile wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU isn't against nuclear, the EU is against illegal state subsidizing in a liberalized market.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-eu-transit... That's maybe how they are trying to spin it yeah.

I'm confused, I thought we were talking about France?

The above makes sense though, nuclear power plants are a bit too expensive to build compared to other alternatives. You get more bang for your buck by investing it elsewhere. I wonder what their definition of green is, it's clearly not CO2-based. Nuclear energy is not renewable so maybe that's their angle?

Post reply on HN