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Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

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Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#181

Post by cypress66 »

bombcar wrote: post #21
sschueller wrote: post #8

Here is what Switzerland is doing at the moment to prevent the worst case which would be rolling black outs. They are planning for the worst case so they don't get caught with their pants down. This includes: - Currently trying to fill as many reservoirs as possible - Securing gas in foreign reservoirs. - Plan for emergency gas plants that can be operational by January/February, the time Switzerland has the least ele…

I wonder if it is cost effective going forward to install two meters and panels on every house with one being “essential” and the other being “intermittent” so the power company has the option of blacking out the intermittent boxes only. I’d rather have all my computers, lights, etc shut down than my whole house.

Doing that seems insane instead of just fixing the root problem.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#182

Post by panick21_ »

quonn wrote: post #122
bArray wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> German putting some nuclear shutdowns on hold This is precisely what I had been jumping up and down about for years, especially at the beginning of this year. The irony that Germany doesn't want nuclear power internally, yet buys their direct neighbour's nuclear power instead. > France is looking like they might get their fleet back on track by beginning 2023 after they sorted out their corrosion issues Apparently.…

Actually Germany usually exports power to France. In fact many of the nuclear plants in France don‘t work, especially this year.

Amazing that people shit on France when the have been providing and exporting nuclear energy for 40 years. Saying that nuclear plants don't work is just idiotic when at any point you can look at CO2 intensity and France is always among the very best, and the best for a country so industrialized. And not just in the last 5 years, but the last 30 years.

And the only reason nuclear plants in France have been down this year, is because as always in the last 30 years, the French Left attempted to kill nuclear and starting in 2015 started de-prioritizing it.

And those plans will soon be online when the maintenance is done and then continue to provide green energy for decades.

The failure in France was to try to get away from nuclear and stop building new plants. Instead starting to use more and more gas.

France had amazingly advanced nuclear plants ready for to be built in large numbers to secure the future. But guess what happen, the French Left (with Greens) killed these programs.

French nuclear works fine, and has been for 40 years. Had other countries acted like France we would be in a much better situation now.

And I for one would prefer some temporarily offline plants rather then breathing lots and lots of coal dust.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#183

Post by pydry »

NKosmatos wrote: post #75

We need more nuclear power plants and we need them yesterday, there is no other mid term solution for the ongoing/coming energy crisis. The problem is that replacing old nuclear power plants (or building new ones) takes many years, time we don’t have… Let’s see how this situation evolves.

>We need more nuclear power plants

They're 5x more expensive than wind and solar and about 2x more expensive than a wind+solar+pumped storage combo.

In France their capacity factor has declined to ~72% which is only about 5% above the best wind farms.

What's the up side? I dont see it any more. It's an overpriced means of generating electricity that is slightly less variable that has a lead time of 19.5 years more than a solar farm.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#184

Post by cloutchaser »

phicoh wrote: post #164
origin_path wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple gas pipelines from Russia are closed because European governments refuse to allow them to run. That's gas sanctions, why do you argue otherwise? For example Germany refuses to open Nord Stream 2, and Nord Stream 1 is broken due to sanctions on equipment repair - the turbines are made by Siemens and several are sitting in UK factories unable to be re-exported back due to sanctions. Although the troubles with…

The key thing to remember is that Russia reduced the gas supply to Europe already one year ago. Way before they invaded Ukraine, and therefor before any of the recent sanctions. It is assumed that Russia sent a warning message to EU countries not to interfere. Fortunately, most EU countries recognized that Russia was no longer a reliable supplier. And imposed sanctions, delivered weapons anyhow. Russia thought they c…

I think you are reading way too many one sided sources.

The Russians are selling more to China and India since the war. The higher price of gas means in the short run they are making more money.

Yes, some sanctions might be annoying, in the way a mosquito is annoying to you, but basically nothing europe has done has really had an impact. (Most weapons have come from the US).

So while parts of what you say is true, frankly the situation is terrible for Europe, quite bad for Russia, and pretty awesome for the US

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#185

Post by cypress66 »

rwmj wrote: post #163
tluyben2 wrote: post #37

I am happy I got solar earlier this year. I thought it would be very expensive but we are very frugal with energy and it only was 7k euro to go off grid. During the day we can run anything (tons of sun so washing, dish washing, etc etc), during the night less so but we go to bed early (21:00) and get up at 5.

Solar installers here in the UK have literal years of backlog and are either not returning calls or quoting installation dates in 2024.

Doesn't UK weather make solar a bad idea?

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#186

Post by oneoff786 »

koheripbal wrote: post #146
quonn wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let‘s see. France heats with incredibly inefficient wall heaters. In any case, this winter is very special. It‘s not a good example to make an argument for one technology or another. Long-term I think Germany is better prepared. A lot of work has been going into heat pumps, properly isolating houses, renewables and so on.

WINTER is a special case? Is this a serious comment? If renewables cannot handle WINTER then that's pretty telling of what quality of a solution it is.

Current existing renewables infrastructure, not renewable energy theoretically. If you had no natural gas infrastructure it would be useless.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#187

Post by panick21_ »

quonn wrote: post #133
koheripbal wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"usually" just means when their renewable power happens to be running. French have been using the last few years to do maintenance on their nuclear plants. Going into this winter, Germany will suffer far far more than France.

Let‘s see. France heats with incredibly inefficient wall heaters. In any case, this winter is very special. It‘s not a good example to make an argument for one technology or another. Long-term I think Germany is better prepared. A lot of work has been going into heat pumps, properly isolating houses, renewables and so on.

If you already have a system where everybody uses electricity in house warming its far, far, far (and lots more fars) easier to switch to heat pumps while in Germany lots of houses have gas/oil heating. Going from that to heat pumps is 100x more difficult and costly.

France is in a much better situation. Better isolation, heat pumps are technology independent, you just need reliable electricity.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#188

Post by hackerlight »

mistrial9 wrote: post #172
micwag wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We also have to remember that Europe seized Russian euros and broke contracts in other ways First point is true, but the second ist not. Germany went out its way to ensure all contracts are fulfilled to avoid this claim. > it's not really obvious if Russia would even want to go back to selling to Europe. Russia very much wants to go back to selling gas and oil to europe, they have after all no other relevant indust…

> Even chinese and indian experts see russia as the loser of this conflict how is the ruble doing on international currency exchange?

A higher FX is usually neither here nor there and whether it's desirable depends on the makeup of exports vs imports. That's why countries often have a fixed peg instead of a "just make it go up" policy.

Russia is the definite loser out of this, and indeed everyone is, the decision to invade was a catastrophe for everyone on multiple levels.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#189

Post by oneoff786 »

pmlnr wrote: post #170
NKosmatos wrote: post #75

We need more nuclear power plants and we need them yesterday, there is no other mid term solution for the ongoing/coming energy crisis. The problem is that replacing old nuclear power plants (or building new ones) takes many years, time we don’t have… Let’s see how this situation evolves.

Yeah... about that. I was completely pro-nuclear until very recently, when I learnt that: - the summer droughts caused nuclear reactors to stop due to the lack of water - russia provides ~40% of ALL nuclear fuel - even France is getting their from Kazahstan So in light of these: more solar and wind, combined with possibly metan generation to store it as per https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/07/22/were-going-to-…

Kazakhstan is not part of Russia. Russia appears to be a very small supplier?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium...

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#190

Post by philjohn »

maCDzP wrote: post #174

As a Swede that just went though an election with electricity prices being discussed this is very interesting. Prices in Sweden are at an all time high. I don’t remember this analysis being talked about. The problem was cast mostly as a domestic issue - that’s my take at least. In hindsight I think it was only the left that had a solution that maybe would address this for Sweden at least. They wanted to have domestic…

Always be wary a political party promising solutions to situations outside their control ...
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