5 ms·

> The country only uses 556.5 TWh per year or ~1.5 TWh per day. 0.2 TWh is a high but much more reasonable estimate. Considering they already have .0377 TWh of

> The country only uses 556.5 TWh per year or ~1.5 TWh per day. 0.2 TWh is a high but much more reasonable estimate. Considering they already have .0377 TWh of storage or 19% of that suddenly the numbers don’t look that huge. The "average" isn't the issue here. If you just look at the graphs you will see that actual production is well below the required ~0.8-1.9 TWh load for several days in a row. That's how the buffering requirements multiply. You can also clearly see how massively larger the discrepancy between production and load is, when compared to the stable output of a nuclear (or fossil fuel) plant. > France has massive buffering from the rest of the European electric grid. It’s fine because they use peaking power not actually going 100% Nuclear, using significant peaking power generation. France doesn't have any buffering for itself that the other countries don't also share. As you can hopefully see by just looking at the graphs, Germany currently needs far more buffering than France: https://www.power-technology.com/features/featureovercapacity-and-the-challenges-of-going-100-renewable-5872868/ https://www.power-technology.com/features/featureovercapacit... > France uses 6,939.52 kWh (2014) per year. A 0.1 euro discount is 70$ per person per year, not exactly crazy money. A 0.1 EUR (=10 cents) discount is ~670 EUR per person per year, or roughly 40 billion EUR per year, just as I calculated earlier. This is more than the entire military budget. If this kind of money was really spent on nuclear subsidies, do you think it could just be kept secret? Wouldn't it be all over the media, wouldn't every renewables lobbyist be touting it, talking about "the big nuclear scam" going on in France? > Germany and much of Europe on the other hand has huge energy taxes which push up their bills. France also has those taxes[1], but the taxes in Germany are even higher to pay for the renewables[2]. [1] https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/France-electricity-bills-rise-to-1-000-per-household-as-costs-rise-in-June https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/France-electrici... [2] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-households-pay-power https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-house...

Retric 7y ago
Ops typo 0.01 as should have been obvious by the calculation. If you just look at the graphs you will see that actual production is well below the required ~0.8-1.9 TWh load for several days in a row. Only because they had insufficient production. If you do the optimization extra production vs vs storage. It's more or less X$/kWh for storage, but Y$/kWh / (numbers of hours you would be storing it) for generation. (to simplify) If you pay say 100$ per kWh of storage and 1,000$ per kWh of generation then storage is only a net savings up to 10 hours between generation and usage. This ends up working out so you want enough generation that in the absolute worst day you still produce more electricity than you need. Be that from nuclear or wind. It's much cheaper to do this with returnables over very large areas. Overcapacity is not inherently a bad thing as long as it's cheaper on net than the other options. It does absolutely destroy more expensive sources of production, but that's how economies are supposed to operate.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > Ops typo 0.01 as should have been obvious by the calculation. It's not obvious that you made a typo there. Sure, reducing the cost by one cent is only ~70$ per citizen per year. But it's also only one cent, which is not much of difference, so you wouldn't really have a point there. The price difference to Germany on the other hand is about ten cents (=0.1 EUR). What's more likely, you got yet another thing wrong after getting so many things wrong, or it was a simple typo? > Only because they had insufficient production. If you do the optimization extra production vs vs storage. It's more or less X$/kWh for storage, but Y$/kWh / (numbers of hours you would be storing it) for generation. There are days where production is 1/10th of the requirement, followed by days where production is double that required. Some days, there just isn't enough wind. What's the overcapacity required there? Where exactly does it show up in your earlier calculation of kWh cost? It's pretty telling that you're ready to point out the demand to production discrepancy for nuclear, but when it comes to wind, which has far higher such discrepancies, you basically ignore it. > Overcapacity is not inherently a bad thing as long as it's cheaper on net than the other options. It does absolutely destroy more expensive sources of production, but that's how economies are supposed to operate. Overcapacity destroys electricity infrastructure if it's not manageable anymore. Negative energy prices signify that the grid is nearing its limits. Also, if you end up needing 5-10x more capacity than base load, is it really still cheaper?
  - Retric 7y ago
    Germany specifically has very high electricity prices, it’s a poor comparison to the rest of Europe even excluding France. https://1-stromvergleich.com/electricity-prices-europe/ https://1-stromvergleich.com/electricity-prices-europe/ Frances electricity prices are 0.01 euro’s lower than Great Britten a comparable economy, but France is still higher than much of Europe. > There are days where production is 1/10th the requirement. Wind production in a single country on it’s own is extremely variable. Germany: “The day with the lowest wind yields was 24th July 2018. With an average output of 1338 MW, corresponding to 10 percent of the average daily output, only 32,1 GWh of wind power was fed in on this day.” However, solar output on that day was not also 10% of normal. Low solar power and low wind power days are inversely correlated. Further, variability decreases over larger geographic areas. A realistic look at generation goes something like this. As an optimization problem you need to compare daily demand which is seasonal and weather dependent with solar and wind generation which are also seasonal and weather dependent. Further, choosing wind locations that match your demand both seasonally and hourly. Figuring out the cost of excess capacity for each generating source. After doing that you can back fill with imports and hydro generation which is dispatch able over time. Storage is effectively a last resort, though after building it you want to maximize it’s use which means reducing the need to import and use hydro power. Finally, on extremely unusual situations you ask some consumers to cut demand and finally use backup generators.

Retric 7y ago

Ops typo 0.01 as should have been obvious by the calculation. If you just look at the graphs you will see that actual production is well below the required ~0.8-1.9 TWh load for several days in a row. Only because they had insufficient production. If you do the optimization extra production vs vs storage. It's more or less X$/kWh for storage, but Y$/kWh / (numbers of hours you would be storing it) for generation. (to simplify) If you pay say 100$ per kWh of storage and 1,000$ per kWh of generation then storage is only a net savings up to 10 hours between generation and usage. This ends up working out so you want enough generation that in the absolute worst day you still produce more electricity than you need. Be that from nuclear or wind. It's much cheaper to do this with returnables over very large areas. Overcapacity is not inherently a bad thing as long as it's cheaper on net than the other options. It does absolutely destroy more expensive sources of production, but that's how economies are supposed to operate.

gridlockd 7y ago
> Ops typo 0.01 as should have been obvious by the calculation. It's not obvious that you made a typo there. Sure, reducing the cost by one cent is only ~70$ per citizen per year. But it's also only one cent, which is not much of difference, so you wouldn't really have a point there. The price difference to Germany on the other hand is about ten cents (=0.1 EUR). What's more likely, you got yet another thing wrong after getting so many things wrong, or it was a simple typo? > Only because they had insufficient production. If you do the optimization extra production vs vs storage. It's more or less X$/kWh for storage, but Y$/kWh / (numbers of hours you would be storing it) for generation. There are days where production is 1/10th of the requirement, followed by days where production is double that required. Some days, there just isn't enough wind. What's the overcapacity required there? Where exactly does it show up in your earlier calculation of kWh cost? It's pretty telling that you're ready to point out the demand to production discrepancy for nuclear, but when it comes to wind, which has far higher such discrepancies, you basically ignore it. > Overcapacity is not inherently a bad thing as long as it's cheaper on net than the other options. It does absolutely destroy more expensive sources of production, but that's how economies are supposed to operate. Overcapacity destroys electricity infrastructure if it's not manageable anymore. Negative energy prices signify that the grid is nearing its limits. Also, if you end up needing 5-10x more capacity than base load, is it really still cheaper?
- Retric 7y ago
  Germany specifically has very high electricity prices, it’s a poor comparison to the rest of Europe even excluding France. https://1-stromvergleich.com/electricity-prices-europe/ https://1-stromvergleich.com/electricity-prices-europe/ Frances electricity prices are 0.01 euro’s lower than Great Britten a comparable economy, but France is still higher than much of Europe. > There are days where production is 1/10th the requirement. Wind production in a single country on it’s own is extremely variable. Germany: “The day with the lowest wind yields was 24th July 2018. With an average output of 1338 MW, corresponding to 10 percent of the average daily output, only 32,1 GWh of wind power was fed in on this day.” However, solar output on that day was not also 10% of normal. Low solar power and low wind power days are inversely correlated. Further, variability decreases over larger geographic areas. A realistic look at generation goes something like this. As an optimization problem you need to compare daily demand which is seasonal and weather dependent with solar and wind generation which are also seasonal and weather dependent. Further, choosing wind locations that match your demand both seasonally and hourly. Figuring out the cost of excess capacity for each generating source. After doing that you can back fill with imports and hydro generation which is dispatch able over time. Storage is effectively a last resort, though after building it you want to maximize it’s use which means reducing the need to import and use hydro power. Finally, on extremely unusual situations you ask some consumers to cut demand and finally use backup generators.