4 ms·

Care to put some numbers on the no wind/no sun scenario? As an example, the share of renewables in Germany never dropped below 30% last year and that only happe

by sveme 4y ago

Care to put some numbers on the no wind/no sun scenario? As an example, the share of renewables in Germany never dropped below 30% last year and that only happened a couple of days. Average renewable contribution was >50%.

aeyes 4y ago
I imagine that this is only for the grid production? If I charge my car with solar at home it won't move the meter, energy consumed by households with solar might not show up in the statistics. In reality renewable contribution might be even higher, unless there is correction for this.
KptMarchewa 4y ago
Wind in Poland right now works on 2% capacity factor. 152MW out of 7.72GW installed. There is solar now, so renewables are not so bad. However, at 5AM it was bad - wind was only on 5%, zero solar. https://i.imgur.com/LAJ2cKP.png https://i.imgur.com/LAJ2cKP.png
barney54 4y ago
What is your source for this? I’m highly skeptical because it means there was never a time of low wind at night ir when it was cloudy. February 26th of last year sure looks like a lot less than 30% renewable. https://mobile.twitter.com/energybants/status/1497392463731908614 https://mobile.twitter.com/energybants/status/14973924637319...
- sveme 4y ago
  There's also hydro (incl. imported from Norway) and biomass. Source for total renewable over time is here: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-deutschland-gaspreis-spritpreis-energieversorgung https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-deutschland-ga... There might be spells during the day where this is less than 30%, but that's what short term storage would be there for. The nightmare scenario, often mentioned, is weeks of clouds and low winds, which does not seem to have occurred last year, at least. And even when it's cloudy you still have some solar. By the way, I'm not arguing that all is well and everything is solved, I just hate this juvenile argument of "but what if it's cloudy and there is no wind for weeks", because that does not happen often, especially not on a continent-wide grid with lots of offshore wind power in one of the windiest seas in the world.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    According to that source, this morning in Germany the total solar + wind + biomass energy production was under 410MWh, whereas gas + coal was around 8500MWh. Conservatively, _just the battery cells_ to make up for that shortfall _for just one hour_ would cost over $1B. This isn't a once in a while issue that can be solved with a few batteries. We need revolutionary grid-scale storage tech to make renewables work. Current batteries are orders-of-magnitude too expensive and we have orders-of-magnitude too little manufacturing capacity.
    - sveme 4y ago
      The problem with these discussions is always that we are laymen using handwaving arguments to push for or against a topic. So useless all in all and just aiming for winning an argument instead of trying to solve a problem. Frustrating. Let's ask Mark Jacobson from Stanford what his modelling shows: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/21-USStates-PDFs/21-USStatesPaper.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/21-U...
dahfizz 4y ago
> the share of renewables in Germany never dropped below 30% last year I find this very hard to believe. There was never a windless night all year? Not for an instant? This[1] seems to disagree. There were plenty of times when wind + solar generation was 3GW or lower, where total usage was over 50GW. If you look at all the electricity generated over the whole of 2022, about half came from renewables. But the grid doesn't operate on averages. Every load needs an instantaneous generation to match. And Germany regularly had times were wind + solar couldn't even meet 10% of demand. [1] https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2022&week=09&source=total https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...
- sveme 4y ago
  See my answer above. The load also does not work on ("base") averages, by the way.

by sveme 4y ago

aeyes 4y ago

I imagine that this is only for the grid production? If I charge my car with solar at home it won't move the meter, energy consumed by households with solar might not show up in the statistics. In reality renewable contribution might be even higher, unless there is correction for this.

KptMarchewa 4y ago

Wind in Poland right now works on 2% capacity factor. 152MW out of 7.72GW installed. There is solar now, so renewables are not so bad. However, at 5AM it was bad - wind was only on 5%, zero solar. https://i.imgur.com/LAJ2cKP.png https://i.imgur.com/LAJ2cKP.png

barney54 4y ago

What is your source for this? I’m highly skeptical because it means there was never a time of low wind at night ir when it was cloudy. February 26th of last year sure looks like a lot less than 30% renewable. https://mobile.twitter.com/energybants/status/1497392463731908614 https://mobile.twitter.com/energybants/status/14973924637319...

sveme 4y ago
There's also hydro (incl. imported from Norway) and biomass. Source for total renewable over time is here: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-deutschland-gaspreis-spritpreis-energieversorgung https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-deutschland-ga... There might be spells during the day where this is less than 30%, but that's what short term storage would be there for. The nightmare scenario, often mentioned, is weeks of clouds and low winds, which does not seem to have occurred last year, at least. And even when it's cloudy you still have some solar. By the way, I'm not arguing that all is well and everything is solved, I just hate this juvenile argument of "but what if it's cloudy and there is no wind for weeks", because that does not happen often, especially not on a continent-wide grid with lots of offshore wind power in one of the windiest seas in the world.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  According to that source, this morning in Germany the total solar + wind + biomass energy production was under 410MWh, whereas gas + coal was around 8500MWh. Conservatively, _just the battery cells_ to make up for that shortfall _for just one hour_ would cost over $1B. This isn't a once in a while issue that can be solved with a few batteries. We need revolutionary grid-scale storage tech to make renewables work. Current batteries are orders-of-magnitude too expensive and we have orders-of-magnitude too little manufacturing capacity.
  - sveme 4y ago
    The problem with these discussions is always that we are laymen using handwaving arguments to push for or against a topic. So useless all in all and just aiming for winning an argument instead of trying to solve a problem. Frustrating. Let's ask Mark Jacobson from Stanford what his modelling shows: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/21-USStates-PDFs/21-USStatesPaper.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/21-U...

dahfizz 4y ago

> the share of renewables in Germany never dropped below 30% last year I find this very hard to believe. There was never a windless night all year? Not for an instant? This[1] seems to disagree. There were plenty of times when wind + solar generation was 3GW or lower, where total usage was over 50GW. If you look at all the electricity generated over the whole of 2022, about half came from renewables. But the grid doesn't operate on averages. Every load needs an instantaneous generation to match. And Germany regularly had times were wind + solar couldn't even meet 10% of demand. [1] https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2022&week=09&source=total https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...

sveme 4y ago
See my answer above. The load also does not work on ("base") averages, by the way.