Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023 • Hacker News Board

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#361

Post by ZeroGravitas » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

looping__lui wrote: post #357

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a) you can indeed literally replace gas by biogas, b) your article suggests that we can't quickly replace Russian gas with biogas, which is true. But there's nothing that can quickly replace Russian gas, we can do a whole bunch of things (imported gas, imported electricity, imported chemicals, renewables, efficiency, heat pumps) but even that isn't a perfect short term fix. But it's already at 5% of the electric…

You need to support 50% of the grid with new gas plants. You *CANNOT* phase out gas plants , coal plants and nuclear and solely rely on renewables as of today (and the next 30, 50???) years in an industrialized nation like Germany. And maybe don’t paraphrase the article like “hey its a challenge but possible”. We don’t have enough agricultural space to cover our demand. The number of (ethical,infrastructure,price) pr…

The article is saying that we can't expand biogas to replace all our current gas usage. Which is fine, as electricity meets most of those needs better anyway (e.g. heat pumps for home or industrial heating/cooling, renewables for the majority of electricity).

But the article also states that non-food based manure biogas could be expanded to 3x current with no impact on food (well, except to make German meat and dairy more GHG friendly). Food waste is another source that doesn't compete for land. Coal mines and landfills leak methane. New satelitte tech can pinpoint small sources and fine people that don't capture it, providing both a stick and a carrot.

So, the small amount of unavoidable gas usage, can be met by capturing stuff that would otherwise be released as methane. We already have gas storage and gas turbines. We can mix in green hydrogen too if need be.

50% is the capacity we need, not the amount of energy that needs to be supplied.

Here's a Wartsila projection for Germany suggesting 8% "flexible gas" is what's required, with 59% of peak capacity. That is, a very small amount of the year, it's used a lot. Luckily we already have large amounts of gas storage built. (Also, we've done a complete loop on this thread: "Gas generation capacity is different from GHG and other pollutants caused by actually burning fossil gas. Don't be fooled by people implying they are the same.")

https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy...

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#362

Post by danhor » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 7:45 PM UTC

cubefox wrote: post #287

danhor wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The renewable push in germany came because the greens (and other parties) wanted to shut down nuclear and replace it. If the exit from nuclear was never started, germany would have been much less willing to invest in renewables. German invesments in the early 2000s were one of the steps towards renewables being viable. If germany kept nuclear as-is the counterfactual might look worse due to the expansion of renewable…

> The renewable push in germany came because the greens (and other parties) wanted to shut down nuclear and replace it. If the exit from nuclear was never started, germany would have been much less willing to invest in renewables. Investment in renewable energy is not a value in itself. France has much lower CO2 emissions because they invested in nuclear energy which can replace both coal and renewable energy. > If g…

> But an expansion of nuclear could have happened

Very unlikely. Nuclear (in the West) hasn't been expanded in the last 30 years, partially due to overblown safety concerns but also due to cost issues. There has been no hugely successful nuclear build, all that tried took almost as long as the renewable industry has existed in any real sense and cost absurd amounts of money. Looking at other large german projects during that timeframe, it's unlikely there would have been more than one plant opening. The hope of nuclear advocates is that by increasing economies of scale in production and reducing it on the individual plant level the economics of NPP will work out in future. I'm highly doubtful but hope they're successful.

> Wind and solar themselves are highly volatile and require an additional stable energy source like coal or nuclear.

For wind and solar to make sense, you need complimentary power sources. Wind and solar do have very complimentary characteristics (night/day as well as winter/summer), but not perfectly. This means "base load" power sources which should run as much as possible like (lignite and somewhat black) coal or especially nuclear work very badly (economically), due to the high cost of the plant and low utilization factor. B

In a fully renewable grid, most of the day power will solely come from wind and solar, probably with batteries filling the gaps during morning and evening and some form of long term storage like P2G/Hydrogen/... will cover dunkelflauten (time spans without solar nor wind) during winter. There should be overproduction during most of the time.

In an almost fully nuclear grid, solar might be used during summer to cover ACs or similar things, but storage is still required to avoid needing build enough NPPs to supply peak power usage. France uses large amounts of hydrostorage on the alps and the european power grid to reduce the NPP overcapacity needed during the day.

This is in contrast to gas, most forms of hydroelectricity, batteries or (hopefully) P2G/Hydrogen, whose costs primarily scale with the amount of energy, not power.

Building an grid almost only based on nuclear and wind/solar without some form of flexible generation is economically nonsensical. Both can be used in the same grid to some amount, but don't complement each other well.

EDIT: https://jeromeaparis.substack.com/p/the-duck-in-the-room-the... explains the duck curve and the issues for base load power sources because of it nicely

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#363

Post by _ph_ » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 7:54 PM UTC

JanSt wrote: post #343

_ph_ wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is not true. Maintenance was done with the respect to the planned life time. They couldn't just have kept running. That the previous government didn't knew about the Russian war onto Ukraine makes no difference. Gas prices have recovered to pre-war levels, so there is no extra need for the nuclear plants compared to before the war.

This is simple not true. https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/politik... You still pay teice the price for gas as before because we had 30yr low costs (below spot) contracts with Gazprom.

The article is about shutting down the reactors at the 31.12.22. As you know, they were not shut down at that date but ran some months more. That doesn't say anything about the long term maintenance requirements. And in any case they would have to be inspected before any further decisions to be taken as the article only states "they might be able to run further". But that was only an opinion, not a result of a inspection.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#364

Post by looping__lui » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 8:04 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #361

looping__lui wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to support 50% of the grid with new gas plants. You *CANNOT* phase out gas plants , coal plants and nuclear and solely rely on renewables as of today (and the next 30, 50???) years in an industrialized nation like Germany. And maybe don’t paraphrase the article like “hey its a challenge but possible”. We don’t have enough agricultural space to cover our demand. The number of (ethical,infrastructure,price) pr…

The article is saying that we can't expand biogas to replace all our current gas usage. Which is fine, as electricity meets most of those needs better anyway (e.g. heat pumps for home or industrial heating/cooling, renewables for the majority of electricity). But the article also states that non-food based manure biogas could be expanded to 3x current with no impact on food (well, except to make German meat and dairy…

You need to provide >100% installed capacity with gas as you phase out coal and nuclear. Because renewables aren’t reliable and you kind of need a conventional backup today.

We are missing 50% in gas plant capacity.

Your happy collection of “nice happy ideas” isn’t gonna cut it at the scale we need it to happen within 7 years. I’m so tired of this nonsense by people like you.

This isn’t some elementary science fair project. It’s people gambling away the economic foundation of Germany over some “would be nice” ideas.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#365

Post by llampx » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 8:05 PM UTC

locallost wrote: post #335

llampx wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a very good article on HN about how nuclear reactors only seem to have gotten harder to plan and execute in Western countries since the 1980s due to ever-increasing regulations. Building a nuclear reactor doesn't have to take decades.

That's a favorite of mine because at the same time those same regulations are cited as the reason why the plants are incredibly safe.

The changing regulations over time add to the complexity.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#366

Post by eldaisfish » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 8:11 PM UTC

phicoh wrote: post #265

eldaisfish wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are the cheapest source of energy PROVIDED the cost of providing energy when they are generating zero energy is paid for by someone else. This argument keeps coming up and is entirely wrong and very misleading. Renewable energy due it its intermittent nature creates a problem and does nothing to solve that problem. The cost of that solution must be factored into the cost of energy from renewable generation…

There was a perfectly reasonable transition strategy. Install as much solar and wind turbines as possible and rely on natural gas plants are other times. Natural gas plants are relatively cheap and can in the future be converted to hydrogen. The big advantage is that solar and wind can directly reduce CO2 emissions, instead of waiting for decades for new nuclear power to come online. Converting heating of buildings t…

the part where it went terribly wrong is relying on variable energy sources to power a grid designed around the assumption of controllable power generation.

There is a not a single gigawatt scale power grid anywhere in existence that has managed to supply growing load, over extended timeframes using renewable generators.

This is the heart of the problem - we will eventually reach a stage where renewable energy powers entire grids but we are not there yet nor is the end in sight for much of the world. In the meantime, we must eliminate carbon emissions and power sources like nuclear are ideal.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#367

Post by eldaisfish » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 8:13 PM UTC

Taig wrote: post #329

eldaisfish wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of your comments are misleading and are often renewable energy propaganda. "In 2023, Germany lacks 15 to 20 gigawatt of secured power output”. This comment was from Harald Schwarz, Professor for energy distribution and high voltage technology at the Brandenburg University of Technology. EU Fact check rates this as mostly true. The claim that germany has sufficient capacity for its energy needs is just wrong.

That is true, but it is also not the goal to achieve 100% secured power output, nor is it necessary. The calculations that determine the necessary electricity production to cover Germany's needs at all times are more complicated than just looking at the installed secured power output and involve factors, such as the likelihood of unavailable renewable energy production. And even if the worst case happens, there are s…

this is all well and good but seems to ignore the central problem - energy security is a national priority. Hand waving away the problem by pointing to energy markets or a decentralised grid does not address the fundamental issue.

You are right, the goal is not 100% secured energy supply but we have multiple problems at the same time - energy security and climate change to name just two.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#368

Post by cubefox » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 8:14 PM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #297

cubefox wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their stance on immigration is completely mainstream in many other countries.

That doesn't contradict what I wrote.

But then you would have to claim that the mainstream parties of many, if not most, countries are "right extremist". Japan would probably count as significantly more "extremist" than the AfD.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#369

Post by cubefox » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 8:20 PM UTC

Timon3 wrote: post #338

harrid wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's exactly proof of how immensely far left Germany's politics have shifted. In absolute terms, the AFD is a left leaning party. They still support "immigration" for example.

Could you explain how the AfD is left leaning? Their positions align with the right: - stopping immigration - stronger rights for police and authorities - emphasis on classical gender roles, ban of LGBT "propaganda" (as they call it) - lowering taxes and reducing government size - leaving the Euro zone and creating a new currency And since they are taking these positions to their extremes, it seems entirely fair to c…

Similar positions count as moderate in many other countries.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#370

Post by Timon3 » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 8:24 PM UTC

cubefox wrote: post #369

Timon3 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain how the AfD is left leaning? Their positions align with the right: - stopping immigration - stronger rights for police and authorities - emphasis on classical gender roles, ban of LGBT "propaganda" (as they call it) - lowering taxes and reducing government size - leaving the Euro zone and creating a new currency And since they are taking these positions to their extremes, it seems entirely fair to c…

Similar positions count as moderate in many other countries.

You did not understand me correctly. They are taking extreme versions of these positions. It doesn't matter whether the positions themselves count as moderate in other countries or not.