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Germany's renewables are made ~30% up of burning hydrocarbons, which allows them to sneakily work around the baseload problems of wind and solar.

by blix 5y ago

Dma54rhs 5y ago
You can always pull from neighbor countries as well to smooth it out.
- logifail 5y ago
  Germany and Austria decided to split their common bidding zone in 2018 since "Surges of cheap electricity tended to push down prices in the common German-Austrian bidding zone, leading to a rise in demand and exports, something the two countries' grid connections were unable to handle." https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-austria-energy-europe-power-couple-break-up/ https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-austria-energy-europ...
pfdietz 5y ago
If CO2 taxes were high enough, one could make and then burn hydrogen instead, for long term or rare storage needs. And this is still likely cheaper than going with nuclear. https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/
- blix 5y ago
  Nuclear could be cheaper; its high cost is probably more regulatory than instrinsic. There is an obvious tradeoff here, but if you look at the renewable/clean energy programs in many first world countries, the primary trend seems to be replacing EOL nuclear with wind/gas. I think we could be doing better. Hydrogen is promising, but there are technical problems with transportation and storage. I'd like to see carbon taxes push us towards these types of solutions instead of burning 'renewable' carbon.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    If we're allowed to diverge from the actual world to hypothetical worlds, then renewables and storage can also be much cheaper. Hydrogen for load leveling can be stored underground as a pressurized gas, just as natural gas is stored. This is a demonstrated technology. Also, the US already has 1000 miles of hydrogen pipelines, so that too is a demonstrated technology.
    - blix 5y ago
      There are 50k miles of natural gas pipeline in my state alone. The US as a whole has 2M miles. Somtimes problems become a bigger as you scale. The main issue is hydrogen embrittlement; where steel spontaneously weakens and fractures in the prescence of hydrogen. The problem is much worse with pure hydrogen than with methane (where even the low concentrations of hydrogen are enough to pose a serious problem). There is a lot of serious enghineering work being done on this front, but I don't think we have reached the ablility to scale by a factor 200k just yet. The magical hypothetical world where nuclear is much cheaper is called "the 1970s." In this improbable scenario, first world countries like France completely divest from coal in favor of non-carbon-polluting energy techologies.
      - pfdietz 5y ago
        Yes, that is a magical alternate world, since France now cannot build nuclear power plants on time or budget. Flamanville 3 is an incredible fiasco with a budget ballooning by a factor of 5. Hydrogen embrittlement is a known issue with known solutions. After all, the world consumes 700 cubic kilometers (at STP) of hydrogen each year. This gas is confined in tanks and pipes, which obviously have to be made of materials for which the problem is solved.
        blix 5y ago
        There do exist materials for which hyrdogen embrittlement is 'solved,' but they are far too expensive to build 2M miles of pipe. Transportation at scale is a difficult challenge, and an active goal of a lot of metallurgy research.

Germany's renewables are made ~30% up of burning hydrocarbons, which allows them to sneakily work around the baseload problems of wind and solar.

by blix 5y ago

Germany's renewables are made ~30% up of burning hydrocarbons, which allows them to sneakily work around the baseload problems of wind and solar.

Dma54rhs 5y ago

You can always pull from neighbor countries as well to smooth it out.

logifail 5y ago
Germany and Austria decided to split their common bidding zone in 2018 since "Surges of cheap electricity tended to push down prices in the common German-Austrian bidding zone, leading to a rise in demand and exports, something the two countries' grid connections were unable to handle." https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-austria-energy-europe-power-couple-break-up/ https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-austria-energy-europ...

pfdietz 5y ago

If CO2 taxes were high enough, one could make and then burn hydrogen instead, for long term or rare storage needs. And this is still likely cheaper than going with nuclear. https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/

blix 5y ago
Nuclear could be cheaper; its high cost is probably more regulatory than instrinsic. There is an obvious tradeoff here, but if you look at the renewable/clean energy programs in many first world countries, the primary trend seems to be replacing EOL nuclear with wind/gas. I think we could be doing better. Hydrogen is promising, but there are technical problems with transportation and storage. I'd like to see carbon taxes push us towards these types of solutions instead of burning 'renewable' carbon.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  If we're allowed to diverge from the actual world to hypothetical worlds, then renewables and storage can also be much cheaper. Hydrogen for load leveling can be stored underground as a pressurized gas, just as natural gas is stored. This is a demonstrated technology. Also, the US already has 1000 miles of hydrogen pipelines, so that too is a demonstrated technology.
  - blix 5y ago
    There are 50k miles of natural gas pipeline in my state alone. The US as a whole has 2M miles. Somtimes problems become a bigger as you scale. The main issue is hydrogen embrittlement; where steel spontaneously weakens and fractures in the prescence of hydrogen. The problem is much worse with pure hydrogen than with methane (where even the low concentrations of hydrogen are enough to pose a serious problem). There is a lot of serious enghineering work being done on this front, but I don't think we have reached the ablility to scale by a factor 200k just yet. The magical hypothetical world where nuclear is much cheaper is called "the 1970s." In this improbable scenario, first world countries like France completely divest from coal in favor of non-carbon-polluting energy techologies.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      Yes, that is a magical alternate world, since France now cannot build nuclear power plants on time or budget. Flamanville 3 is an incredible fiasco with a budget ballooning by a factor of 5. Hydrogen embrittlement is a known issue with known solutions. After all, the world consumes 700 cubic kilometers (at STP) of hydrogen each year. This gas is confined in tanks and pipes, which obviously have to be made of materials for which the problem is solved.
      - blix 5y ago
        There do exist materials for which hyrdogen embrittlement is 'solved,' but they are far too expensive to build 2M miles of pipe. Transportation at scale is a difficult challenge, and an active goal of a lot of metallurgy research.