51–60 of 86 posts
Wait, what? Whatever happened to all the coal fired power plants Germany is going to spin up to keep us all warm and toasty?
Could still be better. Having the same level of CO2e per GWh over the last 12 months as the USA is kind of embarrassing for an EU member state. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US (You need to set the time period to last 12 months, not sure if you can encode that into the URL)
They phased on nuclear too early - other than that they're RAPIDLY moving in the right direction, as is the US.
And by "record low", we mean "nearly six times that of neighboring France." Compare: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&...
Germany renewable generation capacity is relatively new, France will have to pay the bill to replace their legacy nuclear fleet as it approaches end of life. France is coasting on old capital investments that will eventually come due. Cost of renewables and batteries continues to decline, the cost of nuclear does not. Pencil out what it would cost to replace all current French nuclear generation at today’s nuclear bu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
However, in 2023, Germany has for the first time produced most of its electrical power (52%) from renewable energy sources [1]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-2023-renewa...
Currently at 80GW of solar and 66GW of wind with a goal of 215GW cumulative solar capacity by 2030. Roughly speaking, they’ll have over 300GW of wind and solar by the end of the decade assuming at least another 20GW of wind gets built. For comparison, this is five times more than all existing French nuclear generation capacity (61GW), and does not include hydro, pumped hydro, batteries, and interconnectors. So the wh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany renewable generation capacity is relatively new, France will have to pay the bill to replace their legacy nuclear fleet as it approaches end of life. France is coasting on old capital investments that will eventually come due. Cost of renewables and batteries continues to decline, the cost of nuclear does not. Pencil out what it would cost to replace all current French nuclear generation at today’s nuclear bu…
Germany will have to replace all of it's solar and wind capacity long before most French reactors become EOL.
The French are looking to have their entire nuclear fleet become EOL the next 20 years and for replacement they have 1 reactor being constructed. That is an awful spot to be in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany will have to replace all of it's solar and wind capacity long before most French reactors become EOL.
Which is factored in the cost. Sometimes companies upgrade early because the newer versions are more efficient. The French are looking to have their entire nuclear fleet become EOL the next 20 years and for replacement they have 1 reactor being constructed. That is an awful spot to be in.
The document says "generation". I though Germany imported a lot of their electricity. I can't tell if these numbers include the source of the imported power.
Germany had been a net electricity exporter for the last 2 decades. I'm assuming that's still the case for last year or it would be bigger news. I did see one article fretting that they might turn into a net importer later in the decade.
Image of net export (2023) by month: https://ibb.co/jDkg9sF.
You can query and visualize these data on the official site of the Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency): https://www.smard.de/home/marktdaten. It's a capable tool, you should check it out. Once using it I realized that news reports cannot replace looking at the time series data.
Germany is killing it. Since I've moved here I've been following renewable energy numbers and also what the government commits to, and it's incredible how they've managed to meet consistently the solar and wind generation goals. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to meet other goals such as amount of housing built etc. But coming from a third-world country where I wouldn't trust any kind of plans coming from the g…
German here. German middle class considers the current political situation (across all federal layers) the least trustworthy in at least 30-50 years. The majority of the people is frustrated AF because of government paralysis for no real reasons but political gambling. It's that bad that >90% of my friends and acquaintances chose to not read the news anymore and go with ignorance and escapism. Germany seems to be goi…
By now, I fully agree with Neil Postman's verdict that news primarily exists to entertain. Many discussions could be decided by looking at a chart if the discussion's participants had the will and competency to do so, which, I am afraid, is regularly not the case.
Regarding the production and consumption of electrical power, I find www.smard.de/home/marktdaten a great tool. Before using it, I had no idea of basics such as the order of magnitude of power production and consumption or the meaning of units like Watt hour. In effect, quitting news helped me to expand my horizons far more than I expected.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Currently at 80GW of solar and 66GW of wind with a goal of 215GW cumulative solar capacity by 2030. Roughly speaking, they’ll have over 300GW of wind and solar by the end of the decade assuming at least another 20GW of wind gets built. For comparison, this is five times more than all existing French nuclear generation capacity (61GW), and does not include hydro, pumped hydro, batteries, and interconnectors. So the wh…
Capacity is not generation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capacity is not generation.
Generation capacity * capacity factor = reasonable estimate of generation over a window of time.