3 ms·

No you can't (unless you do it yourself but the price is extremely high if you want uninterrupted power). What happens is: your provider purchase "green energy

by joss82 4y ago

No you can't (unless you do it yourself but the price is extremely high if you want uninterrupted power). What happens is: your provider purchase "green energy certificates" which means that some green electricity was generated on a sunny and/or windy day. When it's night and the wind don't blow, you use coal and gas as everyone else. No storage is cheap enough to store solar and wind energy on day-to-day scale, let alone seasonally. Please don't let the brainwashing gets to you and inform yourself.

highwaylights 4y ago
There's a massive business opportunity for someone willing to produce low density batteries for home use. In a lot of countries customers are billed significantly less during the night than during the day for electricity, so the incentives already exist to make it financially worthwhile if a home battery pack that can provide a days typical use can be installed at a reasonable cost. This would substantially smooth out base load requirements and mean that renewables could make up substantially more of the energy mix.
- joss82 4y ago
  > There's a massive business opportunity for someone willing to produce low density batteries for home use. Can you explain why, please? I'm genuinely interested. I don't understand how this would be anything other than rich prepper niche market. Installing batteries in all homes is going to be more expensive than grid storage, since you will need to pay more in total installation costs rather than installing ginormous grid batteries (or reversible dams, where feasible) in bulk.
  - highwaylights 4y ago
    My thinking on this is that if you don't need to pack the energy storage into a small volume (like in a vehicle), and if weight is less critically important (as it'll occupy space in e.g. a garage), it opens up a lot more options for storage medium (as an example, iron-flow packs). At scale the costs could come down quite substantially given that the basic chemistry is iron, salt, water and little else - at which point it's a substantial financial boon to the customer given that they could see an up to 50% reduction in their energy costs (going by tariffs in my own region) to compensate.
    - aembleton 4y ago
      Couldn't the grid install these somewhere for less than every home doing their own installation? The net effect would be the same but might be cheaper overall.
      - joss82 4y ago
        My point exactly. Iron flow sounds great though. Thanks for mentioning, I'll look into it.
      - freemint 4y ago
        It could and it might even be more efficient. That doesn't mean home installation is not a huge market though. It also has access to different capital.
        highwaylights 4y ago
        > It also has access to different capital This is what I think the real benefit is, and also why I think we'll see both. I don't see the political will or financial commitment materialising for large scale energy storage in the short term because it's an upfront cost to a taxpayer whichever way you slice it. Individuals are free to self-fund their own battery pack installations though, and can then decide if the upfront cost is worth the reduction in rates to shift energy usage to non-peak times. Once that sufficiently takes off it becomes easier to sell the public at large on the idea, and will also drive down costs, at which point I could see wide-scale grid storage becoming thing. At that point, renewables are scalable to almost 100% of energy usage (assuming vehicles and industry transition away from combustion machinery).
reaperducer 4y ago
When it's night and the wind don't blow, you use coal and gas as everyone else. Since this thread is about Germany, and not everyone on HN reads threads in scope, it's worth pointing out that this is not universal. In most of Texas, for example, the wind blows most fiercely — and regularly — at night. Solar power contributes to the grid during the day, and wind power picks up that generation loss when the sun goes down. I once saw a graph of it from a utility regulator published in a newspaper. Not every geography is so lucky in this manner. But because this is the global internet, it's important to point out that solar and wind aren't exclusively daytime sources on most of the planet. What Germany needs is a source of wind that works at night. I've read that Spain imports energy from North Africa. Perhaps a more robust link in that direction is the solution.
- sveme 4y ago
  Wind blows over the north sea day and night.
HotHotLava 4y ago
There are several power companies in Germany that are offering 100% green power after X years, in the sense that they're committing to constructing or buying new green power plants with a generating capacity at least as high as the amount sold X years ago. The actual power from your outlet is going to be the same no matter which company you buy from, but it's still buying "green power" in a more meaningful way than a zero-sum relabeling.
merb 4y ago
> No you can't (unless you do it yourself but the price is extremely high if you want uninterrupted power). What happens is: your provider purchase "green energy certificates" which means that some green electricity was generated on a sunny and/or windy day. When it's night and the wind don't blow, you use coal and gas as everyone else. that is bullshit. also besides that germany is small compared to other countries and dense, there is no time of the day where its nowhere windy nor sunny. so at the moment there is just no need to purchase green energy certificates for the bigger providers, they can either buy power from other providers or they can produce their green power. and also it does not matter, since if you need 3kW and they can't deliver green power at the moment they will deliver more green power later, thats how it usually works. > No storage is cheap enough to store solar and wind energy on day-to-day scale, let alone seasonally. also bullshit. it has nothing to do with cost, more with there is no storage for everybody. most providers that offer 100% green power actually do generate the amount of power in green that you use (that is their premise) of course they can't create different power lines, thus it's a mix. (in germany it's forbidden to mark your product as "100% green power" if you buy certificates, of course you can write it some where but if your contract states it, it would be illegal, but there is a difference between contract and marketing, of course... Energiewirtschaftsgesetz - EnWG §42)

by joss82 4y ago

highwaylights 4y ago

There's a massive business opportunity for someone willing to produce low density batteries for home use. In a lot of countries customers are billed significantly less during the night than during the day for electricity, so the incentives already exist to make it financially worthwhile if a home battery pack that can provide a days typical use can be installed at a reasonable cost. This would substantially smooth out base load requirements and mean that renewables could make up substantially more of the energy mix.

joss82 4y ago
> There's a massive business opportunity for someone willing to produce low density batteries for home use. Can you explain why, please? I'm genuinely interested. I don't understand how this would be anything other than rich prepper niche market. Installing batteries in all homes is going to be more expensive than grid storage, since you will need to pay more in total installation costs rather than installing ginormous grid batteries (or reversible dams, where feasible) in bulk.
- highwaylights 4y ago
  My thinking on this is that if you don't need to pack the energy storage into a small volume (like in a vehicle), and if weight is less critically important (as it'll occupy space in e.g. a garage), it opens up a lot more options for storage medium (as an example, iron-flow packs). At scale the costs could come down quite substantially given that the basic chemistry is iron, salt, water and little else - at which point it's a substantial financial boon to the customer given that they could see an up to 50% reduction in their energy costs (going by tariffs in my own region) to compensate.
  - aembleton 4y ago
    Couldn't the grid install these somewhere for less than every home doing their own installation? The net effect would be the same but might be cheaper overall.
    - joss82 4y ago
      My point exactly. Iron flow sounds great though. Thanks for mentioning, I'll look into it.
    - freemint 4y ago
      It could and it might even be more efficient. That doesn't mean home installation is not a huge market though. It also has access to different capital.
      - highwaylights 4y ago
        > It also has access to different capital This is what I think the real benefit is, and also why I think we'll see both. I don't see the political will or financial commitment materialising for large scale energy storage in the short term because it's an upfront cost to a taxpayer whichever way you slice it. Individuals are free to self-fund their own battery pack installations though, and can then decide if the upfront cost is worth the reduction in rates to shift energy usage to non-peak times. Once that sufficiently takes off it becomes easier to sell the public at large on the idea, and will also drive down costs, at which point I could see wide-scale grid storage becoming thing. At that point, renewables are scalable to almost 100% of energy usage (assuming vehicles and industry transition away from combustion machinery).

reaperducer 4y ago

When it's night and the wind don't blow, you use coal and gas as everyone else. Since this thread is about Germany, and not everyone on HN reads threads in scope, it's worth pointing out that this is not universal. In most of Texas, for example, the wind blows most fiercely — and regularly — at night. Solar power contributes to the grid during the day, and wind power picks up that generation loss when the sun goes down. I once saw a graph of it from a utility regulator published in a newspaper. Not every geography is so lucky in this manner. But because this is the global internet, it's important to point out that solar and wind aren't exclusively daytime sources on most of the planet. What Germany needs is a source of wind that works at night. I've read that Spain imports energy from North Africa. Perhaps a more robust link in that direction is the solution.

sveme 4y ago
Wind blows over the north sea day and night.

HotHotLava 4y ago

There are several power companies in Germany that are offering 100% green power after X years, in the sense that they're committing to constructing or buying new green power plants with a generating capacity at least as high as the amount sold X years ago. The actual power from your outlet is going to be the same no matter which company you buy from, but it's still buying "green power" in a more meaningful way than a zero-sum relabeling.

merb 4y ago

> No you can't (unless you do it yourself but the price is extremely high if you want uninterrupted power). What happens is: your provider purchase "green energy certificates" which means that some green electricity was generated on a sunny and/or windy day. When it's night and the wind don't blow, you use coal and gas as everyone else. that is bullshit. also besides that germany is small compared to other countries and dense, there is no time of the day where its nowhere windy nor sunny. so at the moment there is just no need to purchase green energy certificates for the bigger providers, they can either buy power from other providers or they can produce their green power. and also it does not matter, since if you need 3kW and they can't deliver green power at the moment they will deliver more green power later, thats how it usually works. > No storage is cheap enough to store solar and wind energy on day-to-day scale, let alone seasonally. also bullshit. it has nothing to do with cost, more with there is no storage for everybody. most providers that offer 100% green power actually do generate the amount of power in green that you use (that is their premise) of course they can't create different power lines, thus it's a mix. (in germany it's forbidden to mark your product as "100% green power" if you buy certificates, of course you can write it some where but if your contract states it, it would be illegal, but there is a difference between contract and marketing, of course... Energiewirtschaftsgesetz - EnWG §42)