Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 451 posts

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#31

Post by mardifoufs »

hef19898 wrote: post #20
kurupt213 wrote: post #11

It’s hard to be sympathetic when this situation was so obvious and preventable. This is what short term greed and irresponsible governance looks like.

Us Europeans can still look at Texas, if we want to know how it is properly done, can't we?

Saying the equivalent of "no u" when no one else even brought up the USA is weird but I guess typically european way to deflect criticism . Not that comparing a regional blackout due to exceptional weather conditions, to a continent wide energy shortage cause by policy that has been going on for more than a year now makes any sense.

(Even quebec, which is very used to extreme winters, lost electricity for nearly a month back in 1998. On the other hand, I can't think of anything similar to this train wreck situation europe managed to get itself into, not since the 70s at least. So it is a pretty unique fuck up due to very bad policy, and one that's been happening in slow motion)

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#32

Post by matjet »

hef19898 wrote: post #20
kurupt213 wrote: post #11

It’s hard to be sympathetic when this situation was so obvious and preventable. This is what short term greed and irresponsible governance looks like.

Us Europeans can still look at Texas, if we want to know how it is properly done, can't we?

Texas has the same pattern as Europe; higher percentages of solar and wind, resulting in an overdependence on gas.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#33

Post by sofixa »

retinaros wrote: post #17
hef19898 wrote: post #10

It is so funny to see all those anti-renewable lobbiests come out of the woods everybtime something happens with regard to energy that can be, somehow, blamed on renewables. Previously it was the fossil fuel lobby, now it is the pro nuclear lobby. All predict doom, everytime. And all of those fail to properly analyse the way electricity is priced on the European market, and then start looking at those special causes,…

lower than expected capacity because macron wanted to go away from nuclear five year ago. what do you think the shareholders of french nuclear and energy company wanted when they heard that? to reduce cost, hires, maintenance. the government is to blame for everything happening in france for abidding to the green party that were fed russian propaganda about renewable energies such as solars that just have renewable t…

> because macron wanted to go away from nuclear five year ago

Source? The plan was to reduce nuclear share to ~50%, not "go away from nuclear", which still required building a ton of new reactors to replace those close to their end of life. Furthermore, the nuclear reactors are owned and operated by EDF, which has always been majority state owned and is in the process of being renationalisated. Shareholders were never asked about anything.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#34

Post by sva_ »

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…

> They also put out a plan which starts with asking people to use less electricity to worst case which would be planned 4 hour rolling blackouts.

Time to buy some powerbanks

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#35

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

xiphias2 wrote: post #30
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…

Here's what rich countries are doing in general: outbidding pour countries for the limited amount of resources available in the short term. I lived in Switzerland and of course they are doing great, but Swiss people won't be the ones freezing to death in winter. Also the amount of LPG redirected from India and Pakistan to Europe will have a huge effect on those countries. In Hungary the country is trying to get back…

>Here's what rich countries are doing in general: outbidding pour countries for the limited amount of resources available in the short term.

Not just energy, but food, vaccines, medical supplies, consumer products, etc. This has always been the case but now it's at the point where third world countries will probably have major civil unrest and emigration due to the shortages of food and energy they will face from being outbid by Europe and other rich countries during this shortage.

Europeans can resort to going on fewer and less expensive vacations to compensate for the increased prices of energy, food, game consoles and GPUs, but I doubt anyone here will actually starve or freeze to death, while that may be an actual reality for some people in some developing nations.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#36

Post by ohgodplsno »

hef19898 wrote: post #19
retinaros wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lower than expected capacity because macron wanted to go away from nuclear five year ago. what do you think the shareholders of french nuclear and energy company wanted when they heard that? to reduce cost, hires, maintenance. the government is to blame for everything happening in france for abidding to the green party that were fed russian propaganda about renewable energies such as solars that just have renewable t…

Oh, so it is some politians fault that power plant operators screw up maintenance? PV and wind, using Chinese modules, outbid nuclear already in 2017 (?), being cheaper then Hinkley C. Never mind where we vet nuclear fuel rods from, right? Plus the fact that the summer heat wave and drought had negative effects on power plant output, not for the first time, due to limited cooling capacities. But hey, the current poli…

What you are saying is both inaccurate and lies.

>Oh, so it is some politians fault that power plant operators screw up maintenance?

Firstly, EDF, the french operator for nuclear power plants belongs to 80+% to the state. So, first off: fucking yes it is, especially when said politicians have spent the last 20 years not investing in their plants, despite the insane work that EDF has done. Reminder that said politicians are forcing EDF to sell 120TWh worth of electricity to "alternative providers", who are currently kicking out their customers to just make money selling that electricity back on the market.. Secondly, maintenance was delayed by Covid, a once in a century event, and two years worth of delay is remarkably short. Thirdly, due to said politicians continuous non-maintenance of the nuclear sector, there are indeed very few people able to maintain said reactors. Surprising isn't it ? Spend 20 years saying nuclear is shit and should be abandoned (purely because of political plays to win alliances with the greens) and then play surprised when your only source of reliable power doesn't have anyone to maintain it, because what engineer would do the career suicide of going in an industry which is being abandoned ?

>PV and wind, using Chinese modules, outbid nuclear already in 2017 (?),

Ah yeah, the PV and wind that Germany has installed, that are currently pretty much all not working (https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE?utm_source=electrici..., 370gCO2/kWh, up to 510 yesterday, and hasn't gone underneath 300 for the past month) ? Sounds great. Both for people who get to sell their PV that only needs to run for half the year because it literally can't in winter and for the petrol groups that are selling gas to make up for the energy.

But sure, they cost less. Don't take into account the insane maintenance costs (have fun changing your turbines every 20 years, they're made of non recyclable material, it's all good), the insane land use (contrary to some beliefs, not every country has surface to waste like the US does), the inconsistency of the production (see: germany).

The german greens are, for once in their fucking lives, doing something sensible, both when it comes to Ukraine or nuclear power plants (and they're doing so because they are forced). Don't let that make you forget the past 30 years of decisions that set all of us back.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#37

Post by tluyben2 »

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.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#38

Post by mardifoufs »

flohofwoe wrote: post #9

Quoted post unavailable.

Why do comments like these only pop up on articles that highlight problems in europe? I never see them in the hundreds of articles per month that focus on the US. It's weird because that is exactly the type of comment you used to read from fragile patriotic americans that were unable to handle any criticism back in the early 2000s, but this time from europeans.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#39

Post by lawn »

kurupt213 wrote: post #11

It’s hard to be sympathetic when this situation was so obvious and preventable. This is what short term greed and irresponsible governance looks like.

The vast majority of the affected aren't the ones responsible for this mess, why is it hard to be sympathetic for those people?

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#40

Post by bitschubser_ »

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.

isn't it much "easier" to implement some kind of progressive price on energy? first 1000kw/h are "cheaper" than market (per person in household), next 500kw/h double the price, next 500kw/h doubles again etc... For things like heatpumps you usually have an extra meter with special day/night tarifs (in germany), the rest is metered as general consumption. I always wonder through how much energy my peers burn, we have a 2 person household with 2 e-bikes which are used regulary + both in home office (heating is gas) and "just" need 1200kw/h pA (and our appliances are not all A++)
Post reply on HN