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The Great German Energy Experiment

technologyreview.com

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Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#71

Post by khuey »

onli wrote: post #30
toemetoch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Inevitably, some hot July week will come when a high-pressure system stalls over Europe, stilling turbines just when sunburned Germans reach for their air conditioners The summer in Germany isn't that hot. Middle europe, not california. Accordingly, we don#t have air conditioners (in general) These scenarios do happen. They're not always as straight-forward as the one suggested (low production/high demand). A few we…

I don't know about Belgium. Maybe air conditioners there are more common? In Germany, it is said that cold winters are more dangerous for the energy balance, as the cold also increases energy demand and the photovoltaik-cells aren't as useful as in a hot (and sunny) summer.

PV cells are actually more efficient at lower temperatures. The lost production comes entirely from decreases in the amount of sunlight.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#72

Post by onli »

Symmetry wrote: post #63
onli wrote: post #20

The article has a heavily biased view. Some points it gets wrong: >"If you close eight nuclear plants, which were carbon-free, overnight, you will increase carbon emissions," Nuclear plants are not carbon free. Getting the uranium, transporting the nuclear waste, transporting the people who run the plant costs a lot of carbon emissions. You need to look at the whole picture. >Inevitably, some hot July week will come…

Nuclear plants are not carbon free. No, but of course solar power isn't carbon free either by the same logic. The problem is that in the short term the power that those nuclear plants were providing is being made up for by coal plants, which are much worse for the environment.

>made up for by coal plants, which are much worse for the environment

This is exactly the point the article is missing. According to the german public, for the environment and the whole humanity the risks from nuclear plant are that high that coal plants, even though they are now used more and are unhealthy, are way less dangerous.

Keep in mind that the plan is to shutdown all nuclear plants, substitute them with green energy and use coal only as long as needed in between the change.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#73

Post by orangecat »

onli wrote: post #72
Symmetry wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear plants are not carbon free. No, but of course solar power isn't carbon free either by the same logic. The problem is that in the short term the power that those nuclear plants were providing is being made up for by coal plants, which are much worse for the environment.

>made up for by coal plants, which are much worse for the environment This is exactly the point the article is missing. According to the german public, for the environment and the whole humanity the risks from nuclear plant are that high that coal plants, even though they are now used more and are unhealthy, are way less dangerous. Keep in mind that the plan is to shutdown all nuclear plants, substitute them with gre…

According to the german public, for the environment and the whole humanity the risks from nuclear plant are that high that coal plants, even though they are now used more and are unhealthy, are way less dangerous.

Yes, and the German public is flat-out wrong.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#74

Post by mbq »

skore wrote: post #47
lmm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I find the criticism torwards the Energiewende quite hard to understand, sure it is a very difficult problem but unless we find a fundamentally new energy source or nuclear fusion becomes viable the path Germany is on is without alternative. There's one obvious alternative: Build and run nuclear power plants. We have enough uranium to supply our energy needs for centuries, and the overall environmental impact is bet…

> We have enough uranium to supply our energy needs for centuries That's incredibly short sighted. And not just the measure of 'centuries' (even if that were true, it's still arguably just postpone the problem). Energy demand is going up, sharply, as more countries join our standard of living. We will , definitely, need technologies that are as clean as possible to meet the demand, eventually. No amount of pollution…

The nuclear plants are not the only source of highly toxic nuclear waste -- medicine, science and industry have also a fine share, and they are often dealing with much more dangerous isotopes that are in the nuclear waste.

The storage problem comes fact any attempt of reason immediately sinks in an overall panic; and the by-design scaleable long-run solution is pretty simple -- to put them from where we have mined them. Oklo reactors proved such storage can last billions of years.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#75

Post by onli »

orangecat wrote: post #73
onli wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>made up for by coal plants, which are much worse for the environment This is exactly the point the article is missing. According to the german public, for the environment and the whole humanity the risks from nuclear plant are that high that coal plants, even though they are now used more and are unhealthy, are way less dangerous. Keep in mind that the plan is to shutdown all nuclear plants, substitute them with gre…

According to the german public, for the environment and the whole humanity the risks from nuclear plant are that high that coal plants, even though they are now used more and are unhealthy, are way less dangerous. Yes, and the German public is flat-out wrong.

We have not a single working endlager for the waste the nuclear plants are producing. Historically, there have been several large accidents, Tschernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile, and several more smaller ones which would almost been fatal.

I know that people on HN obviously like technology, and noticed that many people who like technology like nuclear plants. Maybe because they see them as great technology and are able to believe in that.

But given the facts, no, the german public is not wrong. They are undisputably right. The Super-GAUs prove that.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#76

Post by nihilocrat »

cturner wrote: post #35
macavity23 wrote: post #2

Great article - upvoted. That it's inconceivable that the US or UK government could think about spending such an amount (~5% of GDP!) on a long-term science and engineering project speaks volumes about why the Germans are where they are, and why we're where we are, economically speaking. From an engineering point of view I think it's foolish to turn off the nuke plants, but public opinion is what it is, and this caus…

Theere's a basic role of government that's widely agreed upon - that it keeps us from hurting one another and clarity on the use of roads and telecommunications channels and the like. And I realise that opinions diverge above that, but I'll put mine. Generally government is poor at picking winners, and inefficient, and seems like a bad place to look for inspiration in engineering. When governments set up things like…

I also think government dilutes the effectiveness of the experts it employs, but at the same time the private sector is amazingly, exceedingly incapable of seeing benefit from anything but immediate profits. Investing in highly risky pilot programs which have high costs and uncertain benefits is something the private sector, except perhaps a few optimistic billionaires, would never do. If we had never supported difficult-to-quantify never-never projects, we wouldn't be finding exoplanets, we would have never discovered that asteroids are clumps of unfathomably abundant resources, we would have never gotten to the Moon, and Europeans would never have explored the New World, because the benefits at the time seemed dubious and the funding came from governments.

I am optimistic just because I have a high amount of trust for German government. They are a lot more cautious and less bandwagon-hopping and more capable of pulling stuff like this off whereas for most other industrialized governments the Energiewende would just be a dramatic stage show created by former-execs-turned-bureaucrats to put taxpayer dollars into contractor's pockets without any concern for actual results.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#77

Post by toemetoch »

adam-a wrote: post #51
toemetoch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Inevitably, some hot July week will come when a high-pressure system stalls over Europe, stilling turbines just when sunburned Germans reach for their air conditioners The summer in Germany isn't that hot. Middle europe, not california. Accordingly, we don#t have air conditioners (in general) These scenarios do happen. They're not always as straight-forward as the one suggested (low production/high demand). A few we…

I had no idea too much electricity could be a problem? I was trying to read more about this effect but google has no answers for me. Also, surely the obvious thing to do would be turn off some of the turbines in that situation?

- It's not just wind (turbines) but also solar.

- You don't have centralized access to all the facilities. E.g. small and medium-scale solar falls under the control of the owner AFAIK. Large scale wind also has other parties involved that don't want to miss out on income.

- Control of energy production on a national or regional scale follows prediction models, not only for demand but also price of resources such as gas and weather forecasts for renewables. So for a holiday they would shutdown a number of "classic" facilities to follow a day-ahead schedule. This probably increased the dependency on renewables for that day.

The big question "why didn't they shutdown wind farms": I don't know but I plan to find out.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#78

Post by skore »

mbq wrote: post #74
skore wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have enough uranium to supply our energy needs for centuries That's incredibly short sighted. And not just the measure of 'centuries' (even if that were true, it's still arguably just postpone the problem). Energy demand is going up, sharply, as more countries join our standard of living. We will , definitely, need technologies that are as clean as possible to meet the demand, eventually. No amount of pollution…

The nuclear plants are not the only source of highly toxic nuclear waste -- medicine, science and industry have also a fine share, and they are often dealing with much more dangerous isotopes that are in the nuclear waste. The storage problem comes fact any attempt of reason immediately sinks in an overall panic; and the by-design scaleable long-run solution is pretty simple -- to put them from where we have mined th…

Absolutely agreed - but we can "solve" energy differently. Not so much for other applications. So nuclear waste in energy is completely avoidable.

Not sure I understand your second paragraph.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#79

Post by onli »

ars wrote: post #48
onli wrote: post #20

The article has a heavily biased view. Some points it gets wrong: >"If you close eight nuclear plants, which were carbon-free, overnight, you will increase carbon emissions," Nuclear plants are not carbon free. Getting the uranium, transporting the nuclear waste, transporting the people who run the plant costs a lot of carbon emissions. You need to look at the whole picture. >Inevitably, some hot July week will come…

> Nuclear plants are not carbon free. Getting the uranium, transporting the nuclear waste, transporting the people who run the plant costs a lot of carbon emissions. But shutting them down when you already paid all the costs is clearly stupid. And he didn't say carbon free. He said "increase carbon emissions" (he probably meant carbon dioxide emissions), and it clearly will increase them.

He said carbon free. I cited that sentence.

Also a working nuclear "you already paid for"-plant costs money and produces carbon emissions.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#80

Post by larrydag »

sesqu wrote: post #50
larrydag wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bike generators are powered by people. People biking require time. What is the labor or opportunity cost of having all of these people sustaining 250W per hour or essentially a .25kW-hour? Just a thought but that doesn't sound cheap.

That's exactly what jsilence is saying. Energy from the grid is so incredibly cheap that you're using it without a second thought on things you would never consider doing without a grid. It could go up hundredfold before becoming expensive. Also, kWh/hour is just a kilowatt.

Here is an explanation of power and energy term confusion from wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilowatt_hour#Confusion_of_kilo...
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