6 ms·

You cannot power a country with wind power alone. Even if you want to build wind turbines, you need nuclear, gas, or coal to back them up.

disgruntledphd2 4y ago
Wind, solar and pumped storage gets you a long way, to be fair. We definitely need some nuclear, but it's far too expensive to rely on.
- tjansen 4y ago
  Germany doesn't have much potential for pumped storage. It can work in a country like Norway, but not in Germany.
adrianN 4y ago
No, but you can power something like 70% of a country with wind power alone. Add in some solar and a few hours worth of storage and you can go 90+%. Add a few days of storage and you reach two nines. A few weeks for more nines.
- tpmx 4y ago
  "Add a few days of storage" This is very non-trivial and will take decades longer than building nuclear power.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Building enough nuclear power plants to power a country also takes decades and is very non-trivial. The quicker we reach 90% carbon-free, the more carbon budget we have left to figure out the remaining 10%. Renewables are the quickest, cheapest way to do that.
    - tpmx 4y ago
      The research and tech actually exists for large scale nuclear power. It's essentially a solved problem, unlike large-scale energy storage.
      - adrianN 4y ago
        We can always create methane or ammonia from hydrogen. That's a solved problem. The only research left to do is to bring down the price.
        ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        You can do hydrogen, but ammonia production is like 16% efficient?
        adrianN 4y ago
        Efficiency is less important than cost. Maybe ammonia is so much easier to transport and store that it's worth the efficiency penalty.
        ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        If I have this right, Ammonia is 2x more expensive than petrol per tonne, and has half the energy density of petrol, so it seems to be 4x more expensive? I am not sure how to compare with hydrogen, as you say costs for it are in storage and transportation
        tpmx 4y ago
        I.e. the "only" remaining problem is to do it at large scale at a reasonable cost.
        adrianN 4y ago
        Right now there is little demand for storage because we don't have sufficient renewable generation capacity. It is no surprise that storage technology hasn't been deployed at large scale and is still relatively expensive. But since we know how to build MW scale electrolyzers it's really just a matter of building more of them.
  - hnbad 4y ago
    The best time to build storage would have been fifty years ago. The next best time is now. We need power supply now, yes, but we will still need storage decades from now. So building them now is vital. Yet we aren't doing that. That's a problem. We literally have no time left, yet at the current course we'll be in the same situation in 2030 or 2050 as we are today and we'll keep making the same excuses.
  - freilanzer 4y ago
    > will take decades. We already had decades, so where is it?
  - SyneRyder 4y ago
    Tesla seems to have done it pretty quickly for South Australia: https://electrek.co/2018/05/11/tesla-giant-battery-australia-reduced-grid-service-cost/ https://electrek.co/2018/05/11/tesla-giant-battery-australia... Elon promised "Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free." And then had the entire thing connected and powering the South Australian power grid in just 63 days: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/10/elon-musk-i-can-fix-south-australia-power-network-in-100-days-or-its-free https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/10/elon-musk... I'm fairly confident that 100 days is less than decades.
    - DavidPeiffer 4y ago
      That project was 200 MWh. 1 day of Germany electricity consumption is on the order of 1,400,000 MWh, something like 7,000x larger. A "few days" of electricity storage would take orders of magnitude longer to build and deploy, even if we worked on Elon's most optimistic timeline.
tlocke 4y ago
If you build enough renewables, then there comes a point when at times you're generating more than is needed immediately. That surplus electricity can be used to make hydrogen gas by electrolysing water. The gas can be stored indefinitely and burned to generate electricity when needed. So with enough renewables, no fossil fuels are needed.
- Maakuth 4y ago
  This is not false, but the economics are not good for the full round trip. There are efficiency losses in the conversion both ways and hydrogen storage is not fun as it is very low density and due to small molecule size, prone to leaking through almost anything. Probably a lot of hydrogen will be produced this way during renewable peaks, but mainly it would be for industrial processes that need it.
- dmytrish 4y ago
  In theory, yes, it's possible to store renewable energy for later consumption, but this is not the case right now and rollout of any storage technology might take years without certainty that it will work well. In the current situation, it's either blackouts, or gas/coal, or nuclear when there's no sun and wind. On the other hand, I can understand why the current situation is like this: Germany boldly betted big time on renewables getting cheap enough, they made it work with backfill options available at the time. I just wish energy storage was tackled sooner as well.
- MauranKilom 4y ago
  > The gas can be stored indefinitely Storing hydrogen is far from trivial. It's a bit like trying to store water when you're only allowed to build tanks out of paper.
- eldaisfish 4y ago
  this "around the corner" argument is getting tiresome. We have a climate emergency NOW. We are actively hurting our future by continuing to emit carbon NOW. We already have a solution to that problem in the shape of nuclear power. Instead, we wait on renewables and storage to run the grid at some indeterminate point in the future. The debate on this issue really is toxic and frustrating. We need all solutions working NOW, not tomorrow, and one of those solutions is widespread nuclear power.
fyvhbhn 4y ago
This isn't true. You could even power the world just from renewables https://innovationorigins.com/en/researchers-agree-the-world-can-reach-a-100-renewable-energy-system-by-or-before-2050/ https://innovationorigins.com/en/researchers-agree-the-world...
Ygg2 4y ago
You could if there was an energy efficient, cheap, and widely available storage. Such storage is right now domain of unicorns and pixie dust. Other solution include near loseless transmission of power between sunny and shaded side.
immibis 4y ago
That's false. You can't power a country with one source of wind power in the manner to which they have become accustomed. Which is the same justification for so many bad things throughout history, be it wars for resources, to making battery-farmed workers pee in bottles because Jeffrey couldn't bear to have one fewer personal yacht. If people had grown up with variable supply of electricity, they would have no problem with it today. It's only the transition from something better to something worse that causes riots.

disgruntledphd2 4y ago

Wind, solar and pumped storage gets you a long way, to be fair. We definitely need some nuclear, but it's far too expensive to rely on.

tjansen 4y ago
Germany doesn't have much potential for pumped storage. It can work in a country like Norway, but not in Germany.

adrianN 4y ago

No, but you can power something like 70% of a country with wind power alone. Add in some solar and a few hours worth of storage and you can go 90+%. Add a few days of storage and you reach two nines. A few weeks for more nines.

tpmx 4y ago
"Add a few days of storage" This is very non-trivial and will take decades longer than building nuclear power.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Building enough nuclear power plants to power a country also takes decades and is very non-trivial. The quicker we reach 90% carbon-free, the more carbon budget we have left to figure out the remaining 10%. Renewables are the quickest, cheapest way to do that.
  - tpmx 4y ago
    The research and tech actually exists for large scale nuclear power. It's essentially a solved problem, unlike large-scale energy storage.
    - adrianN 4y ago
      We can always create methane or ammonia from hydrogen. That's a solved problem. The only research left to do is to bring down the price.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        You can do hydrogen, but ammonia production is like 16% efficient?
        adrianN 4y ago
        Efficiency is less important than cost. Maybe ammonia is so much easier to transport and store that it's worth the efficiency penalty.
        ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        If I have this right, Ammonia is 2x more expensive than petrol per tonne, and has half the energy density of petrol, so it seems to be 4x more expensive? I am not sure how to compare with hydrogen, as you say costs for it are in storage and transportation
      - tpmx 4y ago
        I.e. the "only" remaining problem is to do it at large scale at a reasonable cost.
        adrianN 4y ago
        Right now there is little demand for storage because we don't have sufficient renewable generation capacity. It is no surprise that storage technology hasn't been deployed at large scale and is still relatively expensive. But since we know how to build MW scale electrolyzers it's really just a matter of building more of them.
- hnbad 4y ago
  The best time to build storage would have been fifty years ago. The next best time is now. We need power supply now, yes, but we will still need storage decades from now. So building them now is vital. Yet we aren't doing that. That's a problem. We literally have no time left, yet at the current course we'll be in the same situation in 2030 or 2050 as we are today and we'll keep making the same excuses.
- freilanzer 4y ago
  > will take decades. We already had decades, so where is it?
- SyneRyder 4y ago
  Tesla seems to have done it pretty quickly for South Australia: https://electrek.co/2018/05/11/tesla-giant-battery-australia-reduced-grid-service-cost/ https://electrek.co/2018/05/11/tesla-giant-battery-australia... Elon promised "Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free." And then had the entire thing connected and powering the South Australian power grid in just 63 days: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/10/elon-musk-i-can-fix-south-australia-power-network-in-100-days-or-its-free https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/10/elon-musk... I'm fairly confident that 100 days is less than decades.
  - DavidPeiffer 4y ago
    That project was 200 MWh. 1 day of Germany electricity consumption is on the order of 1,400,000 MWh, something like 7,000x larger. A "few days" of electricity storage would take orders of magnitude longer to build and deploy, even if we worked on Elon's most optimistic timeline.

tlocke 4y ago

If you build enough renewables, then there comes a point when at times you're generating more than is needed immediately. That surplus electricity can be used to make hydrogen gas by electrolysing water. The gas can be stored indefinitely and burned to generate electricity when needed. So with enough renewables, no fossil fuels are needed.

Maakuth 4y ago
This is not false, but the economics are not good for the full round trip. There are efficiency losses in the conversion both ways and hydrogen storage is not fun as it is very low density and due to small molecule size, prone to leaking through almost anything. Probably a lot of hydrogen will be produced this way during renewable peaks, but mainly it would be for industrial processes that need it.
dmytrish 4y ago
In theory, yes, it's possible to store renewable energy for later consumption, but this is not the case right now and rollout of any storage technology might take years without certainty that it will work well. In the current situation, it's either blackouts, or gas/coal, or nuclear when there's no sun and wind. On the other hand, I can understand why the current situation is like this: Germany boldly betted big time on renewables getting cheap enough, they made it work with backfill options available at the time. I just wish energy storage was tackled sooner as well.
MauranKilom 4y ago
> The gas can be stored indefinitely Storing hydrogen is far from trivial. It's a bit like trying to store water when you're only allowed to build tanks out of paper.
eldaisfish 4y ago
this "around the corner" argument is getting tiresome. We have a climate emergency NOW. We are actively hurting our future by continuing to emit carbon NOW. We already have a solution to that problem in the shape of nuclear power. Instead, we wait on renewables and storage to run the grid at some indeterminate point in the future. The debate on this issue really is toxic and frustrating. We need all solutions working NOW, not tomorrow, and one of those solutions is widespread nuclear power.

fyvhbhn 4y ago

This isn't true. You could even power the world just from renewables https://innovationorigins.com/en/researchers-agree-the-world-can-reach-a-100-renewable-energy-system-by-or-before-2050/ https://innovationorigins.com/en/researchers-agree-the-world...

Ygg2 4y ago

You could if there was an energy efficient, cheap, and widely available storage. Such storage is right now domain of unicorns and pixie dust. Other solution include near loseless transmission of power between sunny and shaded side.

immibis 4y ago

That's false. You can't power a country with one source of wind power in the manner to which they have become accustomed. Which is the same justification for so many bad things throughout history, be it wars for resources, to making battery-farmed workers pee in bottles because Jeffrey couldn't bear to have one fewer personal yacht. If people had grown up with variable supply of electricity, they would have no problem with it today. It's only the transition from something better to something worse that causes riots.