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Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

77 points by melling 5y ago

28511524 5y ago
“Options include reserve thermal power plants, battery storage or cables for importing electricity from other markets.” Or nuclear. Sad that this isn’t seen as an option any longer.
- randomdata 5y ago
  The prevailing nuclear designs are not an option. They are only suitable for base load production, whereas wind is only suitable for peak load production. They serve entirely different purposes on the grid and are not meaningfully interchangeable. When the wind stops blowing you need another technology that is suitable for peak load production (batteries, natural gas, etc.).
  - acidburnNSA 5y ago
    Current-design nuclear plants themselves are perfectly capable at ramping up and down on demand on the order of 10s of minutes. They usually just choose not to because fuel is a small fraction of their total cost and so the current (and adjustable) markets pressure them into selling as much electricity as possible by staying near 100%.
    - randomdata 5y ago
      Yes, the economics is why they are not suitable.
      - acidburnNSA 5y ago
        Yeah but it if you just made a market that valued the ability to ramp up and down on demand then that could be fixed pretty easily. Some form of capacity market exclusively for low-carbon energy could do it. https://learn.pjm.com/three-priorities/buying-and-selling-energy/capacity-markets.aspx https://learn.pjm.com/three-priorities/buying-and-selling-en...
    - tjansen 5y ago
      Once you have them, is there any reason why you would want to ramp it down, other than trying to justify the existence of wind turbines?
      - acidburnNSA 5y ago
        Yes. Demand does ramp up and down every day, so you have to follow that. For example, in California the demand varies from about 22 GW to around 30 GW on a typical day.
    - Factorium 5y ago
      This is why we need to consider energy demand, as well as supply. Specifically, if we had a whole continent's worth of electric cars charging during the day to soak up excess solar production (8am - 6pm); And allowed them to offload the same energy back into the grid from 6pm - 8am. To deal with the duck curve: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sam-Milshtein/publication/335893104/figure/fig2/AS:804597450952705@1568842389392/Californias-Duck-Curve-11.jpg https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sam-Milshtein/publicati... The simplest way to solve this is to mandate EV charging points at all workplaces and commuter parking lots, and require all new EVs include the UI and functionality necessary to upload to the grid interactively, and adjust regulations to actually allow and encourage that. We could also build giant solar farms in Morocco and Western Sahara, a comparatively stable and friendly part of Northern Africa, where peak solar times conveniently align with the evening peak of Central Europe.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Or nuclear. Sad that this isn’t seen as an option any longer Is anti-nuclear sentiment consistent across Europe?
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Nothing, especially sentiments, are consistent across the entirety of Europe.
  - alexott 5y ago
    mostly in Germany...
    - dagw 5y ago
      In Sweden there is only one 'major' political party (The Liberals) really advocating for nuclear power, and they're currently at less than 3% in the polls.
  - junon 5y ago
    It is here in Germany. Nobody here likes nuclear. My ex is a PhD in bioinformatics and argues against nuclear using quite outdated information, even. Nuclear is a non-starter for many. Too many people afraid of another Chernobyl or nuclear waste handling without understanding what caused the former or not being informed about how we deal with the latter, today.
    - morsch 5y ago
      You must mean tomorrow, because today, we just keep the stuff around in intermediate facilities.
      - gambiting 5y ago
        The thing is, we know how to store nuclear waste in such a way that it's a solved problem forever. Literally gone and not a worry for any generation from now until forever. It's called deep borehole disposal[0]. Drill a hole all the way down to Earth's crust, put your waste there = it's not coming back on anything shorter than geological timescale. " It is estimated that only 800 boreholes would be sufficient to store the entire existing nuclear waste stockpile of the USA"[0] From what I understand it isn't being done for two reasons: 1) cost 2) once stored this way it's almost impossible to retrieve. Spent nuclear fuel is kept around partially because we know we might be able to recycle it into fresh fuel in the future. If we dump it in a hole deep in the ground it's gone forever. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Increasing nuclear capacity is a long-term task, it's not possible to do it quickly in response - all the major nuke plants would be already running at capacity most of the time, there's no option for them to just generate more.
- cure 5y ago
  > Or nuclear. Sad that this isn’t seen as an option any longer. Maybe this statement is just a reflection of what can be done in a reasonable amount of time (a few years)? Planning and building nuclear plants takes an order of magnitude longer, it seems.
  - tehsauce 5y ago
    realistically building batteries or thermal storage at that scale will probably take as long as nuclear plants
    - dagw 5y ago
      With batteries and thermal storage you can scale up over time. You can have a new small thermal storage or battery facility up and running in 2-3 years and slowly build it out over the next 20 years, with the option to change technology or capacity as needed during that time. With nuclear you have 20 years of 'nothing' before you have anything to show for your efforts.
      - tehsauce 5y ago
        It’s true you can start small and scale up, but it still would probably take many years to accumulate enough batteries to make a significant difference. Secondly, it doesn’t make 20 years to build a modern nuclear power plant, 5 years is a better estimate. So nuclear is still easily the cheaper/faster/proven method compared to batteries or thermal.
        dagw 5y ago
        5 years is a better estimate. How I wish that where true. But looking at all current new Nuclear power plant projects in Europe and the US it's clear that we are incapable of that. Yes we can argue about why that is and how in theory it shouldn't take that long, but the truth is that best case scenario it will take you more than 5 years just to get a building permit to start buildings a new nuclear power plant.
  - 5y ago
- guerrilla 5y ago
  We do hydro and biomass[1] in Sweden. I'm not sure why Germany, France and Italy, given the topographies, would have a problem with that. Have they not diverisifed as much? 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Sweden https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Sweden
  - riboflavin123 5y ago
    Hydro is still vulnerable to downturns, though they need to be more prolonged to equal what's happening with the wind in this report. (California's 2021 drought is a good example of how hydro power can fall short.) I mentally think of power generation reliability as: Uncontrollably variable from hour-to-hour: wind, solar, tidal motion Uncontrollably variable on month-to-year spans: hydro Pretty controllable: nuclear (and fossil fuels)
  - Kankuro 5y ago
    In France, most of the places where dams could be placed are already taken. It also means that pumped hydroelectric energy storage can only be set up marginally.
  - phtrivier 5y ago
    Hydro already accounts for 10/15% of electricity production in France (thanks FSM for the Pyrennes chains and the rivers) - and it does not seem like we have much more capacity (there are some small dams from the early XXth century that are being reused.) Nuclear and wind suffer from NIMYBism and are now nothing more than political totems. PV is going this road now that people are realizing installing solar farms means cutting on forest or actual food farms. Coal is already pretty much extinct. Whereas gas is "painless" from a political point of view, private interest in the field (total, engine) have a strong history of political influence, and "gas" wins if RE are installed but the sun does not shine nor the wind blows... So gas is the energy of the future for Europe until there is a breakthrough in fusion or safer modular fission. This will not make the geopol situation any simpler in the east, and is of course a disaster climate-wise - except maybe for coal-heavy countries like Poland and Chez Republic
- ddevault 5y ago
  Maybe someone can correct me, but I don't see how we're going to get out of climate change (generally, but also specifically) without nuclear power. We need something which can produce a reliable base load and I don't think there are any other widely available options which don't produce heaps of emissions.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Or better reactive demand. Could my fridge/freezer run at deep chill when energy is cheap? Could an a/c build a block of ice for later? Could tank-based water heater recover more slowly when energy is cheap? Could a parked EV schedule its recharge better? Could a washing machine defer or go into “slow-mode” when cost is high? Same with dishwashers? Could lights dim a bit? Could hvac go into slow mode? In a way, my utility can do things that force this (voltage reductions), but it’s only really effective for resistive loads, and could increase resistive losses on the transmission/distribution network. https://www.ieso.ca/en/Sector-Participants/IESO-News/2021/01/IESO-to-Conduct-Routine-Voltage-Reduction-Test-on-January-19 https://www.ieso.ca/en/Sector-Participants/IESO-News/2021/01... One big problem is that transmission/distribution costs aren’t variable based on time-of-day, but they could be too.
- Factorium 5y ago
  The major issue is regulation, which is not designed for things like Small Modular Nuclear Reactors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor We could be building hundreds of these across Europe, placing them close to small cities and using the waste heat for district heating.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Nuclear isn’t on demand, you still need a place to bank energy when you don’t need it since the plant is going to produce a constant load that (given high capital and operating costs of the plant itself) you’ll want to use productively. Natural gas instead would really shine as a backup power source.
  - derefr 5y ago
    An array of small modular [nuclear] reactors (SMRs) could be set up to switch parts of the array on and off over the course of the day to scale with load. Small plants have shorter ramp-up and ramp-down times, as they move around smaller amounts of working fluid, and power lighter turbines which thus have proportionately higher friction/lower inertia. Of course, this is a lot less efficient than having one big nuclear reactor pumping huge turbines; but it’s possibly more efficient than other forms of peak-load generation, which is the key issue. Plus, any given individual SMR would produce a low-enough wattage to be able to reasonably divert/“dump” power from it into an practical-to-construct-anywhere sink or battery (e.g. building-sized pumped storage, rather than huge dam-sized pumped storage) for handling ramp-down discontinuities.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      As long as we are going there, backing a traditional nuclear power plant with a reservoir for pumped storage would work as well. But the land needed for such is immense and limited (though great for recreation opportunities). Nuclear could also be coupled with a desalinization plant that would use excess energy to produce clean water for later use (but there are other challenges there). If liquid hydrogen fuel was ever useful, it could produce that with excess capacity also (but again, other issues).
  - zbrozek 5y ago
    There's lots of things to do with extra electricity, it's just a question of whether or not it's economical. Here in California, for example, I could imagine the excess being used to opportunistically desalinate water and refill reservoirs. If water and emissions were priced appropriately, it might be worthwhile? It's not exactly a battery, but it's a way to make overbuilding more palatable. Alternatively if the grid is unreliable, end-use customers will install their own batteries and generating capacity. Voila, problem solved on someone else's dime!
- meragrin_ 5y ago
  Nuclear falls under thermal power plants. It would be redundant to simply add it to the list.
- HereIGoAgain 5y ago
  Yup.. This HAS to be on the table if we want ANY hope of powering a society anywhere near 100% renewable!
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.md/xHaTY https://archive.md/xHaTY
marvin 5y ago
It's weird that we have higher late-summer electricity prices that we did mid-winter this year. But all things considered, energy prices do in fact need to be high in order to support faster deployment of renewables and CO2-neutral energy. Sucks for everyone who has marginal incomes, but I'm sure we can make some adjustments to the safety net policies to mitigate that.
- tomp 5y ago
  > energy prices do in fact need to be high in order to support faster deployment of renewables and CO2-neutral energy. In this case, energy prices are (partially) high because of deployment of renewables (and not nuclear)
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  > But all things considered, energy prices do in fact need to be high in order to support faster deployment of renewables and CO2-neutral energy. >Sucks for everyone who has marginal incomes, but I'm sure we can make some adjustments to the safety net policies to mitigate that. When people complain about policies that screw the middle class this is exactly the kind of stuff they are talking about. The poors scrape by with their vouchers. The middle class flounders until they're poor enough to qualify for the vouchers. Energy, education, healthcare, housing, etc. etc. etc. regardless of the sector the effect is the same. People have a habit of voting against people who screw them once they figure it out. Burning fossil fuels might be unsustainable on a 50yr timeline but squeezing people financially is unsustainable on a 5yr timeline that gets us the worst of both.
  - radicalbyte 5y ago
    In Germany, consumers pay a significantly higher rate than industry.
  - marvin 5y ago
    While I agree in general, I'd argue that energy/climate gas emissions are in its own category, because they represent an unpriced externality that will have terrible consequences if the world doesn't get serious about sustainable solutions very soon. Also keep in mind that my country has an annual national budget of $35,000 per capita, one third of which goes to welfare programs. We practically have a basic income program going already. We're not totally insulated from the forces that besiege the middle class, but I'm pretty sure we're mitigating them as well as anyone. Would love to hear your suggestions on what policies would do better, assuming an intention to prevent catastrophic global climate change.
Mrdarknezz 5y ago
It's time for a nuclear expansion so we can transition out of our fossil dependency.
- croisillon 5y ago
  I read "nuclear explosion" and it took me a few seconds to parse what you were saying
  - Arrath 5y ago
    Well, it should result in a net decrease in electricity demand, if nothing else..
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Yep... solar and wind are fine... until there is a windless night, and you need power. Nucler just works.
runako 5y ago
Subhead: "...coupled with a shortage of natural gas..."
- otherme123 5y ago
  And "...record high rights of CO2 emissions..." I hate that the headline, which they know is the only thing a lot of people read, implies "high prices due to eolic/renewables", when the true underlying cause is that gas and coal cost a lot more than 5 years ago. And they left the "abundant wind power has at times led to periods of cheap electricity" to the bottom of the article, where nobody would read it. I guess some people would rather pay $100 every month of the year than $150 one month and $30 the other 12.
HonestOp001 5y ago
Haves and have nots once again. The elites can make proclamations for what they want to do regarding energy generation, they will never have to live it as they will have back up generators on their compounds to deal with it. Us serfs will be at the mercy of feel good proclamations and energy programs that are not ready for prime time.
- xwdv 5y ago
  Still better than the serfs of olden days though, no?
  - dimitrios1 5y ago
    Maybe, maybe not. At least back then, the threat of violent revolution was real and actualized. I don't think any group of revolters could defeat any of the modern western armies.
    - infamouscow 5y ago
      You mean like the USA in Vietnam, the USSR in Afghanistan, or the USA in Afghanistan?
      - TheGigaChad 5y ago
        Were you dropped on your head as a baby?
kohlerm 5y ago
hmm not sure I can follow the logic. Germany does have quite a lot of wind power doesn't it? Also AFAIK prices in Germany went up because of higher demand for Gas. And then somehow it is expected, as soon as there is a big enough crisis energy prices will go up exponentially.
- lm28469 5y ago
  Germany always had bad prices, it's been twice the French's price for as long as I can remember https://strom-report.de/electricity-prices-europe/ https://strom-report.de/electricity-prices-europe/
  - otherme123 5y ago
    Germany messed up, because instead of phasing out coal before anything else (like they did in UK or Spain), they phased out nuclear plants. Spain or UK, both at only 20% nuclear but without coal, have the same prices than France, thanks to the renewables keeping it low.
  - hackeraccount 5y ago
    I've always thought Germany's energy prices were by design - I think it's a round about way of engaging in financial repression. Germany is an exporting country and reducing domestic consumption helps with that strategy.
- tjansen 5y ago
  > Germany does have quite a lot of wind power doesn't it? Yes, but just not every week. The amount of energy produced per year by wind power is fine. But you'd need the capability to store it for weeks or even months to use it as a reliable energy source.
hourislate 5y ago
The articles title is misleading (more hysteria from the media). In Germany the price for a megawatt hour is 129 euro and in the UK it jumped to 330 euro. So it seems that Energy Prices in the UK hit records. Not surprising since they put all their eggs in one basket. The rest of Europe seems fine.
lm28469 5y ago
I wonder how climate change will play with wind energy in the longer term. We might kill stable/recurring winds and end up with a bunch of windmills in the middle of a no wind zone.
- bserge 5y ago
  Just use half of them in fan mode.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Finally a use case for these electricity highways I’ve been hearing about. We can move wind from where there’s too much to where there isn’t enough.
em3rgent0rdr 5y ago
ElectricityMap is a nice live view of current energy generation and consumption by type of energy. Unfortunately right now https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE shows Germany is generating most energy from Coal. It is sad that they didn't embrace nuclear like neighboring France.
- realusername 5y ago
  That's always what people should have in mind when they see those headlines "100% renewable today!", yeah but there's some days where it reaches 3%.
  - pydry 5y ago
    Which days? It's currently 43%.
    - realusername 5y ago
      Wait until winter, now it's just no wind but then you'll have no wind and not much sun both in the same time.
      - pydry 5y ago
        The wind does still blow and the sun still shines in winter. I was wondering if you were referencing data from a particular day in winter 2020 or if it was a guess.
- bildung 5y ago
  Decisions like these seldomly are about engineering alone. France didn't embrace nuclear out of the goodness of their hearts - they wanted to become a nuclear power, and needed the infrastructure and specialists and so on to become one (establish study paths, and give those students the prospect of jobs so that they actually choose the new paths etc.). Now that this isn't of strategic importance anymore, France lost interest in nuclear plants (just look at what gets built in recent decades in France). Because nuclear power by itself isn't that interesting, mostly because it is so hugely expensive and inflexible. Germany was never allowed to get nuclear infrastructure because they started two world wars, and at the time no one was interested in Germany having nukes for the third attempt. Even research alone wasn't allowed for decades after the end of WW2. That's also the reason why Germany has no capacity for processing used fuel rods and does this in France to this day - its dual use tech.
ojosilva 5y ago
In Spain, the government chose to, temporarily, lower taxes on electric energy from +27% to a (not yet there) target of around 10%. Some (but not all) countries in Europe also have high energy taxes that can be lowered to mitigate the impact of high prices on mid and lower-income citizens. Definitely not a long term solution, but hopefully it has the intended effect. However, lowering taxes could also end up pushing market prices even higher as demand is high and supply limited. Finding a long term solution will be very tricky as the energy market is a bad mix of free and regulated markets and political ambitions that skid across the full spectrum.
- Dma54rhs 5y ago
  If we want the greener future the prices have to reflect the reality. We want people to use less energy, doesn't make sense lowering the prices like that. Obviously going green means paying more.
pydry 5y ago
This article seems to be trying to turn a story about unprecedented highs in natural gas prices (mirroring surging post-covid commodity prices all over) into a story about the wind sometimes not blowing. Alternative article : https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/expensive-winter-ahead-europes-power-prices-surge-2021-09-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/expensive-winter-ahe...
- StreamBright 5y ago
  Yeah the two things are related. You need a battery or a gas turbine if you have windmills in the energy mix. This is why ultimately wind (or any other uncontrollable energy source) is tough to integrate into any energy grid.
  - addicted 5y ago
    Or rather, as is the case in any transition, as you move to the new you still continue to rely on the old, so the entire system continues to fail if the old fails. This stops being a problem once the transition is complete. But that’s to a great extent the definition of a transition.
    - StreamBright 5y ago
      No, absolutely not. We are never going to rely purely on wind, since it is uncontrollable.
    - littlestymaar 5y ago
      You cannot go full renewable though, at least not if you power supply comes from wind. Even offshore fields have big periods without productions (because there is not enough wind, but also because there is too much). I did the calculation for France a few years ago: if you wanted to run on wind + battery, on a typical year you'd need two weeks of storage! Nobody considers this realistic, and gas is expected to cover this part in the end. Edit: I forgot the link to my model: https://bourrasque.info/images/20180116-moulins-%C3%A0-vent/donn%C3%A9es%20RTE%20+%20stats.ods https://bourrasque.info/images/20180116-moulins-%C3%A0-vent/...
Proven 5y ago
HAHAHA - "after winds stop blowing" - who could have thought???
HereIGoAgain 5y ago
And people want us to put all our eggs in this basket without ability to go back, even in emergency.. This type of ideology is more like one big death cult.

77 points by melling 5y ago

“Options include reserve thermal power plants, battery storage or cables for importing electricity from other markets.” Or nuclear. Sad that this isn’t seen as an option any longer.

randomdata 5y ago
The prevailing nuclear designs are not an option. They are only suitable for base load production, whereas wind is only suitable for peak load production. They serve entirely different purposes on the grid and are not meaningfully interchangeable. When the wind stops blowing you need another technology that is suitable for peak load production (batteries, natural gas, etc.).
- acidburnNSA 5y ago
  Current-design nuclear plants themselves are perfectly capable at ramping up and down on demand on the order of 10s of minutes. They usually just choose not to because fuel is a small fraction of their total cost and so the current (and adjustable) markets pressure them into selling as much electricity as possible by staying near 100%.
  - randomdata 5y ago
    Yes, the economics is why they are not suitable.
    - acidburnNSA 5y ago
      Yeah but it if you just made a market that valued the ability to ramp up and down on demand then that could be fixed pretty easily. Some form of capacity market exclusively for low-carbon energy could do it. https://learn.pjm.com/three-priorities/buying-and-selling-energy/capacity-markets.aspx https://learn.pjm.com/three-priorities/buying-and-selling-en...
  - tjansen 5y ago
    Once you have them, is there any reason why you would want to ramp it down, other than trying to justify the existence of wind turbines?
    - acidburnNSA 5y ago
      Yes. Demand does ramp up and down every day, so you have to follow that. For example, in California the demand varies from about 22 GW to around 30 GW on a typical day.
  - Factorium 5y ago
    This is why we need to consider energy demand, as well as supply. Specifically, if we had a whole continent's worth of electric cars charging during the day to soak up excess solar production (8am - 6pm); And allowed them to offload the same energy back into the grid from 6pm - 8am. To deal with the duck curve: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sam-Milshtein/publication/335893104/figure/fig2/AS:804597450952705@1568842389392/Californias-Duck-Curve-11.jpg https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sam-Milshtein/publicati... The simplest way to solve this is to mandate EV charging points at all workplaces and commuter parking lots, and require all new EVs include the UI and functionality necessary to upload to the grid interactively, and adjust regulations to actually allow and encourage that. We could also build giant solar farms in Morocco and Western Sahara, a comparatively stable and friendly part of Northern Africa, where peak solar times conveniently align with the evening peak of Central Europe.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Or nuclear. Sad that this isn’t seen as an option any longer Is anti-nuclear sentiment consistent across Europe?
- capableweb 5y ago
  Nothing, especially sentiments, are consistent across the entirety of Europe.
- alexott 5y ago
  mostly in Germany...
  - dagw 5y ago
    In Sweden there is only one 'major' political party (The Liberals) really advocating for nuclear power, and they're currently at less than 3% in the polls.
- junon 5y ago
  It is here in Germany. Nobody here likes nuclear. My ex is a PhD in bioinformatics and argues against nuclear using quite outdated information, even. Nuclear is a non-starter for many. Too many people afraid of another Chernobyl or nuclear waste handling without understanding what caused the former or not being informed about how we deal with the latter, today.
  - morsch 5y ago
    You must mean tomorrow, because today, we just keep the stuff around in intermediate facilities.
    - gambiting 5y ago
      The thing is, we know how to store nuclear waste in such a way that it's a solved problem forever. Literally gone and not a worry for any generation from now until forever. It's called deep borehole disposal[0]. Drill a hole all the way down to Earth's crust, put your waste there = it's not coming back on anything shorter than geological timescale. " It is estimated that only 800 boreholes would be sufficient to store the entire existing nuclear waste stockpile of the USA"[0] From what I understand it isn't being done for two reasons: 1) cost 2) once stored this way it's almost impossible to retrieve. Spent nuclear fuel is kept around partially because we know we might be able to recycle it into fresh fuel in the future. If we dump it in a hole deep in the ground it's gone forever. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal
PeterisP 5y ago
Increasing nuclear capacity is a long-term task, it's not possible to do it quickly in response - all the major nuke plants would be already running at capacity most of the time, there's no option for them to just generate more.
cure 5y ago
> Or nuclear. Sad that this isn’t seen as an option any longer. Maybe this statement is just a reflection of what can be done in a reasonable amount of time (a few years)? Planning and building nuclear plants takes an order of magnitude longer, it seems.
- tehsauce 5y ago
  realistically building batteries or thermal storage at that scale will probably take as long as nuclear plants
  - dagw 5y ago
    With batteries and thermal storage you can scale up over time. You can have a new small thermal storage or battery facility up and running in 2-3 years and slowly build it out over the next 20 years, with the option to change technology or capacity as needed during that time. With nuclear you have 20 years of 'nothing' before you have anything to show for your efforts.
    - tehsauce 5y ago
      It’s true you can start small and scale up, but it still would probably take many years to accumulate enough batteries to make a significant difference. Secondly, it doesn’t make 20 years to build a modern nuclear power plant, 5 years is a better estimate. So nuclear is still easily the cheaper/faster/proven method compared to batteries or thermal.
      - dagw 5y ago
        5 years is a better estimate. How I wish that where true. But looking at all current new Nuclear power plant projects in Europe and the US it's clear that we are incapable of that. Yes we can argue about why that is and how in theory it shouldn't take that long, but the truth is that best case scenario it will take you more than 5 years just to get a building permit to start buildings a new nuclear power plant.
- 5y ago
guerrilla 5y ago
We do hydro and biomass[1] in Sweden. I'm not sure why Germany, France and Italy, given the topographies, would have a problem with that. Have they not diverisifed as much? 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Sweden https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Sweden
- riboflavin123 5y ago
  Hydro is still vulnerable to downturns, though they need to be more prolonged to equal what's happening with the wind in this report. (California's 2021 drought is a good example of how hydro power can fall short.) I mentally think of power generation reliability as: Uncontrollably variable from hour-to-hour: wind, solar, tidal motion Uncontrollably variable on month-to-year spans: hydro Pretty controllable: nuclear (and fossil fuels)
- Kankuro 5y ago
  In France, most of the places where dams could be placed are already taken. It also means that pumped hydroelectric energy storage can only be set up marginally.
- phtrivier 5y ago
  Hydro already accounts for 10/15% of electricity production in France (thanks FSM for the Pyrennes chains and the rivers) - and it does not seem like we have much more capacity (there are some small dams from the early XXth century that are being reused.) Nuclear and wind suffer from NIMYBism and are now nothing more than political totems. PV is going this road now that people are realizing installing solar farms means cutting on forest or actual food farms. Coal is already pretty much extinct. Whereas gas is "painless" from a political point of view, private interest in the field (total, engine) have a strong history of political influence, and "gas" wins if RE are installed but the sun does not shine nor the wind blows... So gas is the energy of the future for Europe until there is a breakthrough in fusion or safer modular fission. This will not make the geopol situation any simpler in the east, and is of course a disaster climate-wise - except maybe for coal-heavy countries like Poland and Chez Republic
ddevault 5y ago
Maybe someone can correct me, but I don't see how we're going to get out of climate change (generally, but also specifically) without nuclear power. We need something which can produce a reliable base load and I don't think there are any other widely available options which don't produce heaps of emissions.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Or better reactive demand. Could my fridge/freezer run at deep chill when energy is cheap? Could an a/c build a block of ice for later? Could tank-based water heater recover more slowly when energy is cheap? Could a parked EV schedule its recharge better? Could a washing machine defer or go into “slow-mode” when cost is high? Same with dishwashers? Could lights dim a bit? Could hvac go into slow mode? In a way, my utility can do things that force this (voltage reductions), but it’s only really effective for resistive loads, and could increase resistive losses on the transmission/distribution network. https://www.ieso.ca/en/Sector-Participants/IESO-News/2021/01/IESO-to-Conduct-Routine-Voltage-Reduction-Test-on-January-19 https://www.ieso.ca/en/Sector-Participants/IESO-News/2021/01... One big problem is that transmission/distribution costs aren’t variable based on time-of-day, but they could be too.
Factorium 5y ago
The major issue is regulation, which is not designed for things like Small Modular Nuclear Reactors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor We could be building hundreds of these across Europe, placing them close to small cities and using the waste heat for district heating.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Nuclear isn’t on demand, you still need a place to bank energy when you don’t need it since the plant is going to produce a constant load that (given high capital and operating costs of the plant itself) you’ll want to use productively. Natural gas instead would really shine as a backup power source.
- derefr 5y ago
  An array of small modular [nuclear] reactors (SMRs) could be set up to switch parts of the array on and off over the course of the day to scale with load. Small plants have shorter ramp-up and ramp-down times, as they move around smaller amounts of working fluid, and power lighter turbines which thus have proportionately higher friction/lower inertia. Of course, this is a lot less efficient than having one big nuclear reactor pumping huge turbines; but it’s possibly more efficient than other forms of peak-load generation, which is the key issue. Plus, any given individual SMR would produce a low-enough wattage to be able to reasonably divert/“dump” power from it into an practical-to-construct-anywhere sink or battery (e.g. building-sized pumped storage, rather than huge dam-sized pumped storage) for handling ramp-down discontinuities.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    As long as we are going there, backing a traditional nuclear power plant with a reservoir for pumped storage would work as well. But the land needed for such is immense and limited (though great for recreation opportunities). Nuclear could also be coupled with a desalinization plant that would use excess energy to produce clean water for later use (but there are other challenges there). If liquid hydrogen fuel was ever useful, it could produce that with excess capacity also (but again, other issues).
- zbrozek 5y ago
  There's lots of things to do with extra electricity, it's just a question of whether or not it's economical. Here in California, for example, I could imagine the excess being used to opportunistically desalinate water and refill reservoirs. If water and emissions were priced appropriately, it might be worthwhile? It's not exactly a battery, but it's a way to make overbuilding more palatable. Alternatively if the grid is unreliable, end-use customers will install their own batteries and generating capacity. Voila, problem solved on someone else's dime!
meragrin_ 5y ago
Nuclear falls under thermal power plants. It would be redundant to simply add it to the list.
HereIGoAgain 5y ago
Yup.. This HAS to be on the table if we want ANY hope of powering a society anywhere near 100% renewable!

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.md/xHaTY https://archive.md/xHaTY

marvin 5y ago

It's weird that we have higher late-summer electricity prices that we did mid-winter this year. But all things considered, energy prices do in fact need to be high in order to support faster deployment of renewables and CO2-neutral energy. Sucks for everyone who has marginal incomes, but I'm sure we can make some adjustments to the safety net policies to mitigate that.

tomp 5y ago
> energy prices do in fact need to be high in order to support faster deployment of renewables and CO2-neutral energy. In this case, energy prices are (partially) high because of deployment of renewables (and not nuclear)
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
> But all things considered, energy prices do in fact need to be high in order to support faster deployment of renewables and CO2-neutral energy. >Sucks for everyone who has marginal incomes, but I'm sure we can make some adjustments to the safety net policies to mitigate that. When people complain about policies that screw the middle class this is exactly the kind of stuff they are talking about. The poors scrape by with their vouchers. The middle class flounders until they're poor enough to qualify for the vouchers. Energy, education, healthcare, housing, etc. etc. etc. regardless of the sector the effect is the same. People have a habit of voting against people who screw them once they figure it out. Burning fossil fuels might be unsustainable on a 50yr timeline but squeezing people financially is unsustainable on a 5yr timeline that gets us the worst of both.
- radicalbyte 5y ago
  In Germany, consumers pay a significantly higher rate than industry.
- marvin 5y ago
  While I agree in general, I'd argue that energy/climate gas emissions are in its own category, because they represent an unpriced externality that will have terrible consequences if the world doesn't get serious about sustainable solutions very soon. Also keep in mind that my country has an annual national budget of $35,000 per capita, one third of which goes to welfare programs. We practically have a basic income program going already. We're not totally insulated from the forces that besiege the middle class, but I'm pretty sure we're mitigating them as well as anyone. Would love to hear your suggestions on what policies would do better, assuming an intention to prevent catastrophic global climate change.

Mrdarknezz 5y ago

It's time for a nuclear expansion so we can transition out of our fossil dependency.

croisillon 5y ago
I read "nuclear explosion" and it took me a few seconds to parse what you were saying
- Arrath 5y ago
  Well, it should result in a net decrease in electricity demand, if nothing else..
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Yep... solar and wind are fine... until there is a windless night, and you need power. Nucler just works.

runako 5y ago

Subhead: "...coupled with a shortage of natural gas..."

otherme123 5y ago
And "...record high rights of CO2 emissions..." I hate that the headline, which they know is the only thing a lot of people read, implies "high prices due to eolic/renewables", when the true underlying cause is that gas and coal cost a lot more than 5 years ago. And they left the "abundant wind power has at times led to periods of cheap electricity" to the bottom of the article, where nobody would read it. I guess some people would rather pay $100 every month of the year than $150 one month and $30 the other 12.

HonestOp001 5y ago

Haves and have nots once again. The elites can make proclamations for what they want to do regarding energy generation, they will never have to live it as they will have back up generators on their compounds to deal with it. Us serfs will be at the mercy of feel good proclamations and energy programs that are not ready for prime time.

xwdv 5y ago
Still better than the serfs of olden days though, no?
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. At least back then, the threat of violent revolution was real and actualized. I don't think any group of revolters could defeat any of the modern western armies.
  - infamouscow 5y ago
    You mean like the USA in Vietnam, the USSR in Afghanistan, or the USA in Afghanistan?
    - TheGigaChad 5y ago
      Were you dropped on your head as a baby?

kohlerm 5y ago

hmm not sure I can follow the logic. Germany does have quite a lot of wind power doesn't it? Also AFAIK prices in Germany went up because of higher demand for Gas. And then somehow it is expected, as soon as there is a big enough crisis energy prices will go up exponentially.

lm28469 5y ago
Germany always had bad prices, it's been twice the French's price for as long as I can remember https://strom-report.de/electricity-prices-europe/ https://strom-report.de/electricity-prices-europe/
- otherme123 5y ago
  Germany messed up, because instead of phasing out coal before anything else (like they did in UK or Spain), they phased out nuclear plants. Spain or UK, both at only 20% nuclear but without coal, have the same prices than France, thanks to the renewables keeping it low.
- hackeraccount 5y ago
  I've always thought Germany's energy prices were by design - I think it's a round about way of engaging in financial repression. Germany is an exporting country and reducing domestic consumption helps with that strategy.
tjansen 5y ago
> Germany does have quite a lot of wind power doesn't it? Yes, but just not every week. The amount of energy produced per year by wind power is fine. But you'd need the capability to store it for weeks or even months to use it as a reliable energy source.

hourislate 5y ago

The articles title is misleading (more hysteria from the media). In Germany the price for a megawatt hour is 129 euro and in the UK it jumped to 330 euro. So it seems that Energy Prices in the UK hit records. Not surprising since they put all their eggs in one basket. The rest of Europe seems fine.

lm28469 5y ago

I wonder how climate change will play with wind energy in the longer term. We might kill stable/recurring winds and end up with a bunch of windmills in the middle of a no wind zone.

bserge 5y ago
Just use half of them in fan mode.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Finally a use case for these electricity highways I’ve been hearing about. We can move wind from where there’s too much to where there isn’t enough.

em3rgent0rdr 5y ago

ElectricityMap is a nice live view of current energy generation and consumption by type of energy. Unfortunately right now https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE shows Germany is generating most energy from Coal. It is sad that they didn't embrace nuclear like neighboring France.

realusername 5y ago
That's always what people should have in mind when they see those headlines "100% renewable today!", yeah but there's some days where it reaches 3%.
- pydry 5y ago
  Which days? It's currently 43%.
  - realusername 5y ago
    Wait until winter, now it's just no wind but then you'll have no wind and not much sun both in the same time.
    - pydry 5y ago
      The wind does still blow and the sun still shines in winter. I was wondering if you were referencing data from a particular day in winter 2020 or if it was a guess.
bildung 5y ago
Decisions like these seldomly are about engineering alone. France didn't embrace nuclear out of the goodness of their hearts - they wanted to become a nuclear power, and needed the infrastructure and specialists and so on to become one (establish study paths, and give those students the prospect of jobs so that they actually choose the new paths etc.). Now that this isn't of strategic importance anymore, France lost interest in nuclear plants (just look at what gets built in recent decades in France). Because nuclear power by itself isn't that interesting, mostly because it is so hugely expensive and inflexible. Germany was never allowed to get nuclear infrastructure because they started two world wars, and at the time no one was interested in Germany having nukes for the third attempt. Even research alone wasn't allowed for decades after the end of WW2. That's also the reason why Germany has no capacity for processing used fuel rods and does this in France to this day - its dual use tech.

ojosilva 5y ago

In Spain, the government chose to, temporarily, lower taxes on electric energy from +27% to a (not yet there) target of around 10%. Some (but not all) countries in Europe also have high energy taxes that can be lowered to mitigate the impact of high prices on mid and lower-income citizens. Definitely not a long term solution, but hopefully it has the intended effect. However, lowering taxes could also end up pushing market prices even higher as demand is high and supply limited. Finding a long term solution will be very tricky as the energy market is a bad mix of free and regulated markets and political ambitions that skid across the full spectrum.

Dma54rhs 5y ago
If we want the greener future the prices have to reflect the reality. We want people to use less energy, doesn't make sense lowering the prices like that. Obviously going green means paying more.

pydry 5y ago

This article seems to be trying to turn a story about unprecedented highs in natural gas prices (mirroring surging post-covid commodity prices all over) into a story about the wind sometimes not blowing. Alternative article : https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/expensive-winter-ahead-europes-power-prices-surge-2021-09-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/expensive-winter-ahe...

StreamBright 5y ago
Yeah the two things are related. You need a battery or a gas turbine if you have windmills in the energy mix. This is why ultimately wind (or any other uncontrollable energy source) is tough to integrate into any energy grid.
- addicted 5y ago
  Or rather, as is the case in any transition, as you move to the new you still continue to rely on the old, so the entire system continues to fail if the old fails. This stops being a problem once the transition is complete. But that’s to a great extent the definition of a transition.
  - StreamBright 5y ago
    No, absolutely not. We are never going to rely purely on wind, since it is uncontrollable.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    You cannot go full renewable though, at least not if you power supply comes from wind. Even offshore fields have big periods without productions (because there is not enough wind, but also because there is too much). I did the calculation for France a few years ago: if you wanted to run on wind + battery, on a typical year you'd need two weeks of storage! Nobody considers this realistic, and gas is expected to cover this part in the end. Edit: I forgot the link to my model: https://bourrasque.info/images/20180116-moulins-%C3%A0-vent/donn%C3%A9es%20RTE%20+%20stats.ods https://bourrasque.info/images/20180116-moulins-%C3%A0-vent/...

Proven 5y ago

HAHAHA - "after winds stop blowing" - who could have thought???

HereIGoAgain 5y ago

And people want us to put all our eggs in this basket without ability to go back, even in emergency.. This type of ideology is more like one big death cult.