12 ms·

Relevant: "Germany's 66.5 GW of installed wind is only producing as much as the 3 reactors that turned off last night used to produce." https://twitter.com/ener

Relevant: "Germany's 66.5 GW of installed wind is only producing as much as the 3 reactors that turned off last night used to produce." https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1647799729734971396 https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1647799729734971396

Krasnol 3y ago
Wind alone produces ~20% of the recent years electricity in Germany. Nuclear produced only half of that in recent years. The whole renewable energy production covers ~40% of all the energy produced. Despite 16 years of almost full stop of expansion. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energie/Erzeugung/Tabellen/bruttostromerzeugung.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energ...
- stuff4ben 3y ago
  Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. Plus renewables are extremely intermittent power sources. Nuclear solves both the land-use and consistency problems. Plus, from the article: "...to build enough wind turbines and solar panels to supply at least half the electricity needed for global consumption 'would require two billions tons of coal to produce the concrete and steel, along with two billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades. [And] more than 90% of the world’s solar panels are built in Asia on coal-heavy electrical grids.'" https://www.manhattan-institute.org/if-you-want-renewable-energy-get-ready-to-dig https://www.manhattan-institute.org/if-you-want-renewable-en...
  - schleck8 3y ago
    > Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. I'm from Northern Germany where all the wind turbines are and you are wrong
  - Krasnol 3y ago
    No we won't. There are plenty of studies on the topic. Those areas are there and already identified. Wind alone would just double to manage the Energiewende by 2050: https://www.naturschutz-energiewende.de/aktuelles/flaechenverfuegbarkeit-fuer-die-energiewende/ https://www.naturschutz-energiewende.de/aktuelles/flaechenve... I don't get your other argument. If you push for renewables instead of wasting money on over due and over budget nuclear reactors, you can create an industry at home. Create massive amounts of jobs and improve on the technology. It's already happening and those improvements are way faster than everything we've seen with nuclear in the recent decades.
    - illiarian 3y ago
      > If you push for renewables instead of wasting money on over due and over budget nuclear reactors --- start quote --- Ernst & Young (EY) has found that an average power and utility megaproject is delivered 35% over budget and two years behind schedule Of the megaprojects surveyed, 64% were delayed and 57% were over budge. Almost three-quarters of hydropower, water, coal and nuclear infrastructure projects were over budget by 49% on average, --- end quote --- https://www.offshorewind.biz/2016/12/02/offshore-wind-projects-have-less-delays-and-cost-overruns-says-ey/ https://www.offshorewind.biz/2016/12/02/offshore-wind-projec... "Data shows the avg. 50MW PV construction project delays cost $2M. The average solar construction project is delayed by about 20% with the consequences hovering around $2M in costs." https://percepto.co/solar-construction-delays-budget-overruns-data-shows-the-avg-50mw-pv-construction-project-delays-cost-2m/ https://percepto.co/solar-construction-delays-budget-overrun...
      - ben_w 3y ago
        > nuclear infrastructure projects were over budget by 49% on average, Ahem.
        illiarian 3y ago
        Let me fix that quote for you: "Almost three-quarters of hydropower, water, coal and nuclear infrastructure projects were over budget by 49% on average,". ALL OF THEM. Not just nuclear.
        ben_w 3y ago
        You're the one promoting nuclear as if it's better than the rest in this regard. Nuclear is… just another mega project, just like the rest. You don't get to use that quote to say everything else is more expense when it's everything including your darling.
        illiarian 3y ago
        > You're the one promoting nuclear as if it's better than the rest in this regard. Do not ascribe words to me that I didn't say or imply > You don't get to use that quote to say everything else is more expense I literally said nothing of the kind
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. No, you won't. > 'would require two billions tons of coal to produce the concrete and steel, along with two billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades. [And] more than 90% of the world’s solar panels are built in Asia on coal-heavy electrical grids.' Fantastic! The world burns that much coal every three months, so after 6 months we could close all the mines and coal power plants, and thereafter all the future PV will be made by renewable powered grids.
    - stuff4ben 3y ago
      Except you won't have enough solar and wind alone to generate the needs of the world's power demands. I don't get why some people like yourself are so against nuclear when combined with solar and wind its the best of both worlds? We're all in agreement that coal needs to go, but switching to just solar and wind is not the sole answer and never will be. You will run out of land at some point. No one wants to look at fields of spinning turbines and solar panel arrays when you can get the same effect in a much smaller footprint.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        I'm relatively positive about nuclear power: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35659464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35659464 Thing is, the best time to build it was the 60s. Now? There's a few cases where I think it's still the best option — ignoring politics, it would be great for shipping, and I'd be really happy if that somehow becomes a standard outside the military — but for most cases, it's just the most expensive solution to greenhouse gases, or joint-worst if you use LiIon as the storage solution. And if you do want to ignore the political dimension, for example but not limited to the way that Israel will bomb any Iranian reactor just in case the latter might be weaponised, then to compare like-for-like you have to ask the same about a global HVDC grid — my fantasy-football solution, in that it's technically possible but still extremely unlikely. > You will run out of land at some point Ah, no. Not at present power use per person. Even England, which is not at all well-placed for solar, has enough land to be (electrically) powered by solar alone. Remember, civil infrastructure — buildings, rail lines, car parks, etc. — already has a huge footprint and PV can fit on almost any roof and between almost any gap. (Also the wind can be offshore, apparently that's great for people who don't like the look of them on hilltops, less so for radar).
  - haweemwho 3y ago
    > Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. Ramping up from 40% to 100% increases land use by orders of magnitude? Did I miss something?
    - froh 3y ago
      nope. you didn't miss anything. we'd already be there if Bavaria and similar states hadn't blocked building wind farms in Bavaria, because of the bad looks, or myth busted infrasound, or myth busted bird mass extinctions, or very real existential angst of Munich's Siemens...
      - haweemwho 3y ago
        Isn't Siemens in the wind power business as well?
        froh 3y ago
        nuclear transforms mining rights into money, so does coal or oil or gas. wind transforms the decentralized location of the plant into energy, so does solar. wind and solar transfer the heart of the profits from mining to decentralized, local communities. in that context Siemens is publicly traded, and does what the board wants it to do. they had fig leave wind investments. Germany has divested from solar production, battery production and wind plant production. _di_-vested.
  - walnutclosefarm 3y ago
    > Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. Plus renewables are extremely intermittent power sources. Nuclear solves both the land-use and consistency problems. I take no issue with people such as yourself advocating for nuclear power, but this particular argument is nonsense. You could generate all the energy used over a year in the US (100 quads or so) on roughly the amount of land that is currently used to produce corn for ethanol. Yeah, that's a lot of solar panels, and it may not be the way to get all our energy, but running out of land is NOT the issue.
- illiarian 3y ago
  > Wind alone produces ~20% of the recent years electricity in Germany. Yearly production means nothing on the night when it produces single-digit percentages of its installed capacity, does it?
  - lispm 3y ago
    We can import electricity from the European grids we are connected to. For example my region has recently brought up a 1.4 GW HVDC underwater cable, which can be used in both directions. It connects North Germany to Hydro power in Norway.
    - illiarian 3y ago
      > We can import electricity from the European grids we are connected to. Ah yes. The magical grid that will surely have the capacity to supply all of Germany's power if suddenly there's night and no wind just in Germany (and nowhere else in Europe, stopping at the border, apparently).
      - lispm 3y ago
        This is rare and currently we have a diverse mix of electricity production. When wind gets more dominant, it will be offshore and connected to a larger North Sea grid. Then storage will be more important and also more viable. I'd guess that in ten years the max capacity for wind electrical energy in my region (Northern Germany) is around 2 to 3 times larger than the max demand. Thus large scale storage will be build up.
        illiarian 3y ago
        > This is rare This literally happened just 6 days ago. > we have a diverse mix of electricity production. Yes, yes we do: coal and biofuel (so more burning), and corn for biofuel is taking up 6% of Germany's land area. > When wind gets more dominant, it will be offshore and connected to a larger North Sea grid So, some magical future > I'd guess that in ten years the max capacity for wind electrical energy in my region (Northern Germany) is around 2 to 3 times larger than the max demand. Max capacity means nothing when production is low. > Thus large scale storage will be build up. More magical thinking (there are currently no grid-scale storage solutions that would've survived just one night from the link I provided)
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  > Nuclear produced only half of that in recent years. It would have produced a lot more if German didn't shut down it's nuclear reactors. Plus, France produces over 70% of it's electricity from nuclear, sometimes over 80%.
rhaway84773 3y ago
On a night when wind output was particularly low. Another way to put this is that variable sources of energy are variable.
- timellis-smith 3y ago
  Of course and that needs to be factored into renewable supplies which massively increases their cost. When you have periods of Dunkelflaute you potentially need to have full grid redundancy either through inter-connects, other energy generation sources or battery backup, none of which are cheap.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Indeed, on all counts; it's just that the easy-obvious-and-suboptimal solution (LiIon batteries which are the worst solution you don't have to explain to anyone) are on-par with the cost of nuclear.
  - timellis-smith 3y ago
    Oh and while we're about it interconnects just increase the systemic risk of multiple regions experiencing Dunkelflaute at the same time. And it's not enough to say that this almost never happens because in a system that expects many 9s of availability almost never is just not acceptable.
    - haweemwho 3y ago
      Storage can provide base load and for anything non-critical you have flexible pricing that automatically lets people stop doing things that can be done later the week, like charging your Tesla. Markets work. Use them.
  - pydry 3y ago
    >Of course and that needs to be factored into renewable supplies which massively increases their cost. It is and it does but being 5x cheaper means even a massive increase in cost still doesnt put it in the same league as nuclear power.
stefan_ 3y ago
Relevant, for when you are a simpleton that believes in cherry-picked data.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Krasnol 3y ago

Wind alone produces ~20% of the recent years electricity in Germany. Nuclear produced only half of that in recent years. The whole renewable energy production covers ~40% of all the energy produced. Despite 16 years of almost full stop of expansion. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energie/Erzeugung/Tabellen/bruttostromerzeugung.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energ...

stuff4ben 3y ago
Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. Plus renewables are extremely intermittent power sources. Nuclear solves both the land-use and consistency problems. Plus, from the article: "...to build enough wind turbines and solar panels to supply at least half the electricity needed for global consumption 'would require two billions tons of coal to produce the concrete and steel, along with two billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades. [And] more than 90% of the world’s solar panels are built in Asia on coal-heavy electrical grids.'" https://www.manhattan-institute.org/if-you-want-renewable-energy-get-ready-to-dig https://www.manhattan-institute.org/if-you-want-renewable-en...
- schleck8 3y ago
  > Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. I'm from Northern Germany where all the wind turbines are and you are wrong
- Krasnol 3y ago
  No we won't. There are plenty of studies on the topic. Those areas are there and already identified. Wind alone would just double to manage the Energiewende by 2050: https://www.naturschutz-energiewende.de/aktuelles/flaechenverfuegbarkeit-fuer-die-energiewende/ https://www.naturschutz-energiewende.de/aktuelles/flaechenve... I don't get your other argument. If you push for renewables instead of wasting money on over due and over budget nuclear reactors, you can create an industry at home. Create massive amounts of jobs and improve on the technology. It's already happening and those improvements are way faster than everything we've seen with nuclear in the recent decades.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    > If you push for renewables instead of wasting money on over due and over budget nuclear reactors --- start quote --- Ernst & Young (EY) has found that an average power and utility megaproject is delivered 35% over budget and two years behind schedule Of the megaprojects surveyed, 64% were delayed and 57% were over budge. Almost three-quarters of hydropower, water, coal and nuclear infrastructure projects were over budget by 49% on average, --- end quote --- https://www.offshorewind.biz/2016/12/02/offshore-wind-projects-have-less-delays-and-cost-overruns-says-ey/ https://www.offshorewind.biz/2016/12/02/offshore-wind-projec... "Data shows the avg. 50MW PV construction project delays cost $2M. The average solar construction project is delayed by about 20% with the consequences hovering around $2M in costs." https://percepto.co/solar-construction-delays-budget-overruns-data-shows-the-avg-50mw-pv-construction-project-delays-cost-2m/ https://percepto.co/solar-construction-delays-budget-overrun...
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > nuclear infrastructure projects were over budget by 49% on average, Ahem.
      - illiarian 3y ago
        Let me fix that quote for you: "Almost three-quarters of hydropower, water, coal and nuclear infrastructure projects were over budget by 49% on average,". ALL OF THEM. Not just nuclear.
        ben_w 3y ago
        You're the one promoting nuclear as if it's better than the rest in this regard. Nuclear is… just another mega project, just like the rest. You don't get to use that quote to say everything else is more expense when it's everything including your darling.
        illiarian 3y ago
        > You're the one promoting nuclear as if it's better than the rest in this regard. Do not ascribe words to me that I didn't say or imply > You don't get to use that quote to say everything else is more expense I literally said nothing of the kind
- ben_w 3y ago
  > Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. No, you won't. > 'would require two billions tons of coal to produce the concrete and steel, along with two billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades. [And] more than 90% of the world’s solar panels are built in Asia on coal-heavy electrical grids.' Fantastic! The world burns that much coal every three months, so after 6 months we could close all the mines and coal power plants, and thereafter all the future PV will be made by renewable powered grids.
  - stuff4ben 3y ago
    Except you won't have enough solar and wind alone to generate the needs of the world's power demands. I don't get why some people like yourself are so against nuclear when combined with solar and wind its the best of both worlds? We're all in agreement that coal needs to go, but switching to just solar and wind is not the sole answer and never will be. You will run out of land at some point. No one wants to look at fields of spinning turbines and solar panel arrays when you can get the same effect in a much smaller footprint.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      I'm relatively positive about nuclear power: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35659464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35659464 Thing is, the best time to build it was the 60s. Now? There's a few cases where I think it's still the best option — ignoring politics, it would be great for shipping, and I'd be really happy if that somehow becomes a standard outside the military — but for most cases, it's just the most expensive solution to greenhouse gases, or joint-worst if you use LiIon as the storage solution. And if you do want to ignore the political dimension, for example but not limited to the way that Israel will bomb any Iranian reactor just in case the latter might be weaponised, then to compare like-for-like you have to ask the same about a global HVDC grid — my fantasy-football solution, in that it's technically possible but still extremely unlikely. > You will run out of land at some point Ah, no. Not at present power use per person. Even England, which is not at all well-placed for solar, has enough land to be (electrically) powered by solar alone. Remember, civil infrastructure — buildings, rail lines, car parks, etc. — already has a huge footprint and PV can fit on almost any roof and between almost any gap. (Also the wind can be offshore, apparently that's great for people who don't like the look of them on hilltops, less so for radar).
- haweemwho 3y ago
  > Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. Ramping up from 40% to 100% increases land use by orders of magnitude? Did I miss something?
  - froh 3y ago
    nope. you didn't miss anything. we'd already be there if Bavaria and similar states hadn't blocked building wind farms in Bavaria, because of the bad looks, or myth busted infrasound, or myth busted bird mass extinctions, or very real existential angst of Munich's Siemens...
    - haweemwho 3y ago
      Isn't Siemens in the wind power business as well?
      - froh 3y ago
        nuclear transforms mining rights into money, so does coal or oil or gas. wind transforms the decentralized location of the plant into energy, so does solar. wind and solar transfer the heart of the profits from mining to decentralized, local communities. in that context Siemens is publicly traded, and does what the board wants it to do. they had fig leave wind investments. Germany has divested from solar production, battery production and wind plant production. _di_-vested.
- walnutclosefarm 3y ago
  > Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. Plus renewables are extremely intermittent power sources. Nuclear solves both the land-use and consistency problems. I take no issue with people such as yourself advocating for nuclear power, but this particular argument is nonsense. You could generate all the energy used over a year in the US (100 quads or so) on roughly the amount of land that is currently used to produce corn for ethanol. Yeah, that's a lot of solar panels, and it may not be the way to get all our energy, but running out of land is NOT the issue.
illiarian 3y ago
> Wind alone produces ~20% of the recent years electricity in Germany. Yearly production means nothing on the night when it produces single-digit percentages of its installed capacity, does it?
- lispm 3y ago
  We can import electricity from the European grids we are connected to. For example my region has recently brought up a 1.4 GW HVDC underwater cable, which can be used in both directions. It connects North Germany to Hydro power in Norway.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    > We can import electricity from the European grids we are connected to. Ah yes. The magical grid that will surely have the capacity to supply all of Germany's power if suddenly there's night and no wind just in Germany (and nowhere else in Europe, stopping at the border, apparently).
    - lispm 3y ago
      This is rare and currently we have a diverse mix of electricity production. When wind gets more dominant, it will be offshore and connected to a larger North Sea grid. Then storage will be more important and also more viable. I'd guess that in ten years the max capacity for wind electrical energy in my region (Northern Germany) is around 2 to 3 times larger than the max demand. Thus large scale storage will be build up.
      - illiarian 3y ago
        > This is rare This literally happened just 6 days ago. > we have a diverse mix of electricity production. Yes, yes we do: coal and biofuel (so more burning), and corn for biofuel is taking up 6% of Germany's land area. > When wind gets more dominant, it will be offshore and connected to a larger North Sea grid So, some magical future > I'd guess that in ten years the max capacity for wind electrical energy in my region (Northern Germany) is around 2 to 3 times larger than the max demand. Max capacity means nothing when production is low. > Thus large scale storage will be build up. More magical thinking (there are currently no grid-scale storage solutions that would've survived just one night from the link I provided)
Manuel_D 3y ago
> Nuclear produced only half of that in recent years. It would have produced a lot more if German didn't shut down it's nuclear reactors. Plus, France produces over 70% of it's electricity from nuclear, sometimes over 80%.

rhaway84773 3y ago

On a night when wind output was particularly low. Another way to put this is that variable sources of energy are variable.

timellis-smith 3y ago
Of course and that needs to be factored into renewable supplies which massively increases their cost. When you have periods of Dunkelflaute you potentially need to have full grid redundancy either through inter-connects, other energy generation sources or battery backup, none of which are cheap.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Indeed, on all counts; it's just that the easy-obvious-and-suboptimal solution (LiIon batteries which are the worst solution you don't have to explain to anyone) are on-par with the cost of nuclear.
- timellis-smith 3y ago
  Oh and while we're about it interconnects just increase the systemic risk of multiple regions experiencing Dunkelflaute at the same time. And it's not enough to say that this almost never happens because in a system that expects many 9s of availability almost never is just not acceptable.
  - haweemwho 3y ago
    Storage can provide base load and for anything non-critical you have flexible pricing that automatically lets people stop doing things that can be done later the week, like charging your Tesla. Markets work. Use them.
- pydry 3y ago
  >Of course and that needs to be factored into renewable supplies which massively increases their cost. It is and it does but being 5x cheaper means even a massive increase in cost still doesnt put it in the same league as nuclear power.

stefan_ 3y ago

Relevant, for when you are a simpleton that believes in cherry-picked data.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]