I wouldn’t doubt, given the nefarious consequences for Germany, that this site is Russian INFOSEC campaign. Germany cannot function without Russian gas right now. Simple there isn’t enough BTU’s. Why did Germany put itself into this strange Russian dependency is also very strange. Perfectly fine and environmentally friendly nuclear power plants for dependency from Russian natural gas. Why?
> Why did Germany put itself into this strange Russian dependency is also very strange. For the same reason, the US has long been dependent on Russia for space travel and is still dependent for the ISS: It worked for a long time quite well, was cheaper and more secure than the alternatives, and that Putin running amok was a scenario that most people did not think was likely, if they have imagined it at all. Recall th…
3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine
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Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why did Germany put itself into this strange Russian dependency is also very strange. For the same reason, the US has long been dependent on Russia for space travel and is still dependent for the ISS: It worked for a long time quite well, was cheaper and more secure than the alternatives, and that Putin running amok was a scenario that most people did not think was likely, if they have imagined it at all. Recall th…
This Russian gas dependency was solidified well into Russian recent developments. After Crimea invasion, as an example. After Russian influence over American election.
There wasn't that much bloodshed in Crimea. And to be honest, nobody really knew if the people there were pro or anti Russia anyway. Russia and USA have been influencing each others elections, and those of almost every other nation in the world for many decades.
These events weren't even close to what is happening now. Also, why is it Germany's duty to protect Ukraine anyway?
Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that's outside, not inside. Even an old building with lesser insulation and double-pane windows will hold a higher temperature when inhabited. Humans radiate more than a few watts. It's not comfortable, it's definitely a health concern, but it's still not 0°C. An anecdote from earlier this winter when the electricity prices peaked in Europe: my girlfriend and I live on 79 sqm in a modern apartment building with t…
Was that only your apartment or the whole building?
Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and renewable sources just can't provide the energy needed, as should be clear by now (although it was widely understood for the past 30 years at least). Renewable energy cost has fallen _a lot_, and Germany doesn't need nuclear power, IF it worked towards this goal: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...
These costs are always misrepresented, even here on HN where people should know better. Incremental costs on a sunny day do not represent the true cost of a renewable system. They never include massive battery costs, and are never designed to provide robust baseload power. The grid needs to be up 99.5% of the time. The rule of thumb in engineering is that every 9 costs another 10x - and this applies to energy product…
Yet every discussion has claims about how energy storage is somehow a solved problem; usually with some handwaving about pump storage or how batteries have gotten cheaper. There are, interestingly enough, never any real world examples of this.
It's perfectly rational to argue that solar and wind have obvious merits that could be worth subsidizing but that usually isn't the argument. Solar and wind are always cheaper period. Which just isn't true
Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have long considered that those buying their power from wind or solar should have remote relay switches in place that simply cut power when there is no solar or wind produced. Seems exactly what they are buying.
hydroelectric is also renewable
Option a) the power to pump was generated using fossile fuels. In this case pumped storage is just "greenwashing" energy and doesn't actually produce any.
Option b) the power was generated using renewables. In this case the pumped storage just counts the renewables twice.
This "pumparound" is what makes up the gains in hydroelectric power, not only in Germany, but in most countries: There simply isn't infinite amounts of useable space for hydroelectric power.
If you look at the generated energy, though you will see a constant increase in generated power:
2016: 11,258 MW hydroelectric power, of which 6,806 MW (more than half) are pumped. Generation: 21.5 TWh
2019: 11,022 MW hydroelectric power, of which 6,364 MW (still more than half) are pumped. Generation: 27.88 TWh
A major component of the rise in generation is that pump-around.
From an energy storage PoV they aren't even that effective: Let's say you wanted to supply Munich and surroundings with power for 3 days (~2Mio people). Let's also assume that there are only people living there, so no industry or infrastructure. Let's also assume we have 100% efficiency in our pumped storage system. Let's also assume that everybody lives in two-person housholds (to make the math eaiser). According to destatis, a two person houshold consumed 3221kWh in 2018 (without industry and infrastructure). Dividing by 356 gives us the daily consumption. In Joules, this amounts to 3.25710^13 joules. Dividing by 9.81 m/s^2 and we achieve a value of 3d3.3210^12 kgm. There are now two ways to handle this:
1. high mass
2. high distance
Let's choose something flashy and pump lake constanze (bodensee), the largest freshwater lake in central europe. We would have to pump this up by almost a quarter of a meter to save this amount of energy. And this is with completely optimistic values: double this for electric cars, then add the same amount for electric heating, then again for industry, then add another at least 20% for inefficiency of the hydroelectric generation. And then you have to consider that this is one German city. Or, maybe in a different view: German renewables only need to lose 1/40 th of their efficiency for you to be in this situation (if you want to go 100% renewable).
One also has to consider that, even if it were possible to add more capacity (which the German hydroelectric association doesn't believe is), one has to consider that hydroelectic is by far the most environmentally destructive of all power generation methods. Simply the flooding of a single valley is such an utter environmental disaster, that one has to be very sure that this valley absolutely _has_ to become a hydroelectric installation. Additionally one has the construction of the damn itself, as well as the enormous disturbance of every instance of wildlife both up and downstream for decades to centuries (and that ignores the both human and wildelife destruction brought on by a damn break).
I would gladly take the construction of a nuclear powerplant over a hydroelectric one, considering that the biblis reactor alone has a nameplate capacity of almost half the amount of non-pumped hydroelectric power.
Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> hypocritic nonsense Please, stay calm. Germany is in a transition process. Nuclear is phasing out, renewable is coming. In the EU Austria, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Norway, and Portugal have no nuclear power plants (Estonia has none, but is planning one; Croatia has none, but operates one together with Slovenia; Poland is planning one for 2040). Germany is just joining this club…
> Nuclear is phasing out, renewable is coming. Shouldn’t one have the replacement first and only then close the existing producers?!
Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine
#227Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Fools for relying on Russian energy in the first place.” This is a tough one. Yes, but at same time there was and still is a long term benefit to normalizing Russia’s identity as a “Western” power. That’s a long haul project and Germany/EU wasn’t wrong to engage economically with them, mutually, to that end. Given the history of Germany/Russia in particular, this mutual dependence is arguably working exactly as it w…
>This is a tough one. Yes, but at same time there was and still is a long term benefit to normalizing Russia’s identity as a “Western” power. That’s a long haul project and Germany/EU wasn’t wrong to engage economically with them, mutually, to that end. Engaging economically is one thing, dependence on Russian energy is another. It was absolutely insane post-2014 to have an energy strategy with such a profound depend…
Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
How's the electric heater and the electric blanket work without power?
The issue isn't electricity, it's the fact that German municipal heat plants run on natural gas. Replacing all of that with electrically-powered equipment (centralized or at the endpoints) takes time.
Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine
#230If you double-down on renewables, then you double-down on natural gas. Germany decided to close down their nuclear and coal generation, so the only thing that is left is natural gas for base load (and to augment renewable intermittency problems).