331–340 of 467 posts
price of 1MWh on Dec 21 2020: 45€ price of 1MWh on Dec 21 2021: 316€ https://www.wiwo.de/my/unternehmen/energie/knappheitspreise-...
price of 1MWh on Dec 23 2021 in France: >400€ https://www.services-rte.com/en/view-data-published-by-rte/f... Spot markets be spotting, we can play this game all day long.
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Germany would have problems if not for French nuclear, and a great many, rather expensive, gas power plants. For exactly how much, just look at what has happened to the UK as they left the EU wide powersharing agreements. Its also worth nothing that the rising power prices have largely prevented germany from moving away from using gas to for stoves and heating, which is a huge part of their total CO2, and pollution o…
- why then, if we go by jhgb's source, is France missing 52 min of electricity per year while Germany is missing 12 min? Are they stabelizing the german grid at their own disadvantage? - are nuclear power plants cheap? Isn't Hinkley Point C guranteed 10 ct/kwh + inflation. Wasn't it the new Finnish nuclear plant that cost 11 billion Euros? What do gas power plants cost, 20 billion? > 'which have largely prevented ger…
The climate, really.
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Primary energy consumption looks quite a bit different though: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... Also worth noting that "biomass" often gets hidden in the "clean energy" part, but that just means burning something other than oil/coal/gas.
So germans are still buying (some) Russian gas for heat, while shutting down nuclear plants? That just seems wrong. > biomass" often gets hidden in the "clean energy" part, but that just means burning something other than oil/coal/gas. That's usually CO2 neutral if it's waste/wood pellets etc. Whether it's "clean" or "sustainable" is a hot topic, but in terms of climate it's a lot better than fossil fuel.
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No not quite, burning fuel for heat locally will always be at least twice as effective as ideal conversion to power, followed by ideal conversion to heat, in practice its closer to three times. Therefore power prices need to fall substantially gas prices before the switch is worth it. That will never happen while producing power from gas or more expensive alternatives. In particular since the gas distribution infrast…
Heat pumps generally have a coefficient of performance (i.e., number of watts consumed vs. number of 'heat watts' moved) of ~4 with modern systems. So, compared to resistive electric heat (COP=1) it's roughly 4x as efficient. It gets worse in colder climates, (such as parts of Sweden...), but you should be doing better most of the time, as you aren't at super super cold temperatures all the time.
Compare building and installing 5 million heatpumps with building 2GW new nuclear power production ? The latter could include at least one city heated entirely by cooling water, but even ignoring that, using Finnish numbers for nuclear, and ballparking optimistically the heaters? They cost about the same, take about the same time to build and install... its unclear to me which would lower individual costs more, which would be better for the economy, or climate. I guess heatpumps win on individual costs, nuclear on the economy, and both being roughly equal on climate. The nuclear plant certainly wins on total maintenance resources/work, but the heatpumps on versatility of maintenance, i.e. you can just say fuck it with heat pump maintenance in a way you cant with nuclear. Nuclear wins on flexibility, while heatpumps win on rollout, giving its highest benefits very quickly, but taking as, if not far longer, to complete. There is often a benefit to mass production over individual small scale stuff though. If we could build at 1970ties + inflation prices though, the nuclear plant power would cost less than a tenth, and output more power than the total heating the corresponding 500k heat pumps provide.
Compare to how people buying and installing large supplemental home solar+lithium ion battery packs looks great, until you consider the cost and time to deploy a million such, and compare that to the cost and speed by which we could produce a large hydropower dam as energy storage. The latter wins by a landslide, or occasionally flood^^. Heatpumps are much better and cheaper, though, so its harder to tell.
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So germans are still buying (some) Russian gas for heat, while shutting down nuclear plants? That just seems wrong. > biomass" often gets hidden in the "clean energy" part, but that just means burning something other than oil/coal/gas. That's usually CO2 neutral if it's waste/wood pellets etc. Whether it's "clean" or "sustainable" is a hot topic, but in terms of climate it's a lot better than fossil fuel.
If you are worrying about the 'Russian' in 'Russian gas', better not question where Germany is getting its uranium from.
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transmitting energy from other half of the earth (where is daylight when you are sleeping) is probably not best idea (not sure if even economically or technically possible). Also would be wise to turn off nuclear energy once you have this 'big enough grid'.
Is day and night really the problem here? Because I thought demand usually peaks at certain times of the day (e.g. early in the evening in California: https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o... ), and actually bottoms out during the night. You would mostly use an interconnected grid (and storage) to compensate for this. Also there is wind energy which doesn't care about whether the sun shines or…
Transmitting power also consumes energy - you cannot have a electric wire across pacific to transmit power from US to EU without transformers - electric power line is not a fiber optic that transmit just signal.
I also doubt we have enough rare earth minerals to make all those magnets for wind turbine and and electric car enough for whole planet. Remember also you have to decomission those windturbine after some years which is expensive
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> No not quite, burning fuel for heat locally will always be at least twice as effective as ideal conversion to power Except NOT having to heat is even more effective than burning fuel for heating locally. So the move away from gas heating to low-energy buildings is definitely stimulated by higher gas prices. > Same thing for france. I doubt that, since France seem to be actually using their interconnects. Can't comm…
Insulation is exactly as beneficial to gas and power heated homes. It does jack shit or worse for cooking though. France is self sufficient, but imports when prices are low in order to keep levels high in reservoirs, which further decreases prices over the year.
Actually, not currently. A combination of regulator-mandated nuclear plant stops, scheduled nuclear plant maintenance and fossil plant closures means that France currently relies on importing a lot currently.
Your statement is true generally, but France's situation currently contributes to high energy prices.
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It does not work that way. Long distance extreme high voltage transfer loses about 5% per 1000km, with the transformers adding another 10%, under ideal circumstances. In practice its higher, and thats on land. Sea cables lose 100x per km around 50% per 100km, again under ideal circumstances. In practice double the losses per distance, and if using existing grids, double it again, because most places dont build top en…
> Long distance extreme high voltage transfer loses about 5% per 1000km. That's an incredibly low amount. Taking Berlin as an example, even 5000km lets you reach plenty of hot, sunny desert areas where any losses will be easily offset by vastly increased solar efficiency. Or you could spread out your wind energy sources to get more consistent coverage. In fact that's pretty much what Singapore is doing: building a so…
Here's a good article to give context about this decision and why Germans - who were affected by Chernobyl, btw - support this. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/history-behind-ge...
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To be fair, residential/commercial heating could be entirely electric, and heat pumps have additional benefits over natural gas heating (like being reversible in the summer). Presumably people would switch if the cost of electricity was low enough for it to be more economical. Decisions that result in the price of electricity staying high provide political leverage to gas producers. Though, eyeballing the numbers, it…
In northern countries where the primary need is heating (and there is very little need for cooling), heat pumps at current electricity and gas prices are 2x more expensive per kWh of heat put into the property. They are also about 3x more expensive to install. They only make sense in places that need cooling too, or when electricity gets cheaper.