4 ms·
> When there is zero wind and zero sun then it doesn't matter how much over provisioning there is: your output will be zero. That does not really happen over l
by jnxx 6y ago
> When there is zero wind and zero sun then it doesn't matter how much over provisioning there is: your output will be zero.
That does not really happen over large geographic regions, within which one can distribute energy via the electrical grid. In Germany, there has been a lot of research put into that before the non-nuclear strategy was decided. It was a political decision, but it has been prepared by many, many engineers and researchers.
In fact, there are times where Germany exports needed energy to France, in spite of that France has much more nuclear power. Sometimes that happens in hot sommers, when rivers have to little water and they become hot. Then, nuclear plants need to be shut down because otherwise they would cause environmental damage.
Other times, it happens in winter, because a lot of heating in France is electrical to accomodate for nuclear energy. But sometimes there is a shortfall, and it turns out that on windy winter days there is an excess of wind energy in western and northern Europe.
Another thing, storing energy is not necessarily expensive. A lot of energy use is things like room heating, room cooling, or hot water. Now, heat can be stored efficiently for many hours. (In larger tanks or earth installations, it can even be stored efficiently for months).
- corty 6y agoThere are times when Germany exports energy to France, and those are hugely popularized due to the reasons you stated. However, the far more frequent cases are: Germany has excess transient wind or solar energy, even making energy prices negative sometimes (due to fixed guaranteed producer prices and guaranteed preference). Energy storage companies in neighboring countries, mostly pumped hydro in the alps and Norway, buy the excess power and sell it back when there is demand (of course with an appropriately large margin). In general, Germany has not planned for and refuses to build any significant kind of energy storage. Existing pumped hydro plants are even shut down. Transmission lines to even out the regional differences due to weather and consumption are planned, but do not exist yet for the usual reasons and will not exist for the next decade or so. This means that Germany relies on the rest of the European grid to balance out its excess production or consumption phases, of course at a significant cost in stability and money. Cherry-picking times where the balancing-out causes energy exports to France is just propaganda imho.