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What I don't get is the people on hacker news who argue that what we're seeing in Europe isn't the death knell of 'green grids'. This happened because we remov

What I don't get is the people on hacker news who argue that what we're seeing in Europe isn't the death knell of 'green grids'. This happened because we removed base load generation from coal and nuclear and replaced it with gas. The only thing which can turn on fast enough to match clouds movements. Then went and bought that gas from geopolitical adversaries.

doikor 4y ago
> This happened because we removed base load generation from coal and nuclear and replaced it with gas. The only thing which can turn on fast enough to match clouds movements. You might not be able to turn nuclear on/off very fast but adjusting from ~5% to 100% and back is really fast. Actually faster then most gas peaker plants in W/min change rate. This is not really done much outside of France as the running cost of a nuclear plants are roughly the same at 5% and 100% of output (actual fuel costs are very small part of the total cost of running a nuclear power plant)
- thrown_22 4y ago
  In markets where renewables are a large chunk of the theoretical maximum power hugely negative prices are common. Producing 5% of 1MW for 5 minutes might be costing you more than what you made selling 100% of that 1MW for most of the day.
  - doikor 4y ago
    In Finland they got that situation somewhat covered. The same companies that own most of the nuclear power plants (Olkiluoto) are also some of the largest consumers (UPM and Stora Enso. Two very large paper companies). They also own a lot of hydro so they have a lot of capability to adjust the equation both from the input and output side. These paper companies own all this production because electricity is a massive part of their operational costs and by owning the production if the market goes bad they can just use it themselves at cost of production instead of selling the electricity on the open market basically capping the cost of electricity in their costs. (edit: Actually now that I think about it this is very similar to how most big cloud platforms work. Basically you build infrastructure for your own use and then also sell the same infrastructure to anyone who is interested.) > Producing 5% of 1MW can be costing you more than what you made selling 100% of that 1MW for most of the day. The thing is that with nuclear the costs will be mostly the same when plant is off, at 5% or at 100% (probably most expensive is at off state as you can't use the electricity you made yourself to run all the cooling systems etc). Obviously if the market prices are negative you just run at plant at minimum power which is basically just enough to cover the plants own usage.

doikor 4y ago

> This happened because we removed base load generation from coal and nuclear and replaced it with gas. The only thing which can turn on fast enough to match clouds movements. You might not be able to turn nuclear on/off very fast but adjusting from ~5% to 100% and back is really fast. Actually faster then most gas peaker plants in W/min change rate. This is not really done much outside of France as the running cost of a nuclear plants are roughly the same at 5% and 100% of output (actual fuel costs are very small part of the total cost of running a nuclear power plant)

thrown_22 4y ago
In markets where renewables are a large chunk of the theoretical maximum power hugely negative prices are common. Producing 5% of 1MW for 5 minutes might be costing you more than what you made selling 100% of that 1MW for most of the day.
- doikor 4y ago
  In Finland they got that situation somewhat covered. The same companies that own most of the nuclear power plants (Olkiluoto) are also some of the largest consumers (UPM and Stora Enso. Two very large paper companies). They also own a lot of hydro so they have a lot of capability to adjust the equation both from the input and output side. These paper companies own all this production because electricity is a massive part of their operational costs and by owning the production if the market goes bad they can just use it themselves at cost of production instead of selling the electricity on the open market basically capping the cost of electricity in their costs. (edit: Actually now that I think about it this is very similar to how most big cloud platforms work. Basically you build infrastructure for your own use and then also sell the same infrastructure to anyone who is interested.) > Producing 5% of 1MW can be costing you more than what you made selling 100% of that 1MW for most of the day. The thing is that with nuclear the costs will be mostly the same when plant is off, at 5% or at 100% (probably most expensive is at off state as you can't use the electricity you made yourself to run all the cooling systems etc). Obviously if the market prices are negative you just run at plant at minimum power which is basically just enough to cover the plants own usage.