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No, I was replying to a person saying how Germany has expensive electricity (because Luddites, I guess opposing nuclear). It's not the case because it's an appl

No, I was replying to a person saying how Germany has expensive electricity (because Luddites, I guess opposing nuclear). It's not the case because it's an apples to oranges comparison, and I used France as a counter example for nuclear. There's a lot of misinformation on the cost of the "Energiewende", I routinely see the same people throwing around numbers of 300 billion, 400 billion, 500 billion etc. 500 is the most common one, but it's baseless. I believe it was an estimate on what it might be in 2025 or something, but it has no relation to reality. In the end, whatever the correct amount may be, the result is not only not criminal, it is amazing. A whole new industry was kickstarted, that resulted in deployment of terawatts of renewables capacity worldwide to date. It almost singlehandedly killed deployment of new fossil fuel plants in many countries of the world and is now starting to retire existing fossil fuel plants. And it's still growing exponentially, we will realistically see 1TW per year deployment very soon. The IEA makes estimates on future deployment and it's a joke at this point because every year their updated estimates for 2030 are shattered. I cannot imagine a more successful policy if your goal is to decarbonize the world. My point about Macron is not that his policies are wrong or that he is dishonest, I actually don't have a real problem with french nuclear, old or new. The point was that he is involved at all, and that's because the EDF cannot proceed without the government, it cannot really fund them on its own (hence, their prices are not real). You say they should've built new ones 10 years ago, but that's exactly my point. If they'd done that when they should've, the price now would not be 20c per kWh today, but a lot more than that. Now the price is "low" but at the cost of the infrastructure running on fumes.

pyrale 3y ago
> If they'd done that when they should've, the price now would not be 20c per kWh today, but a lot more than that. Why? If we build new plants now, they will be amortized over their lifetime, not the very minute they're out of the gate or using existing plants. For that reason, it would take quite some time before prices shift significantly, even if we had started building 10 years ago. > the result is not only not criminal, it is amazing. Well, that's your opinion. My issue with Germany's current plan is that for renewables to effectively become the bulk of a country's production, there are many things that need to be done. Investments in transport infrastructure, in electrification, in storage, in research about how to handle all of those, etc. But to date, most of the effort goes to the easiest problem (adding renewable production) and the other ones are a bit neglected. The hands-off stance of Germany's leadership is a direct source of this problem: some planification is required to succeed in this task. As an example, how often have you heard about south Germany's north-south grid issues [1], and why was this not tackled at the very beginning of Germany's renewables push? Why did germany not restructure its 4 (!) TSOs when it started greening its energy? I get that German HNers would tell me "It's political, things don't work like that in Germany". But the logical consequence is that tons of money have been spent in the wrong place. [1]: https://www.powerengineeringint.com/smart-grid-td/td-infrastructure/preparing-germanys-grid-to-bridge-the-north-south-renewables-gap/ https://www.powerengineeringint.com/smart-grid-td/td-infrast...
- locallost 3y ago
  Why? Because you can only amortize something if you can afford it. You are labeling a lot of things as one-off items, but the reality is that the EDF is already heavy in debt that it will take a long time to even pay that off, and eventually there will be a straw that breaks the camel's back. And the price of new plants is such that it's a very heavy straw. Is it really my opinion, or are the things I mentioned actually facts? There was no renewables industry before the Energiewende, Germany implemented a transparent way to fund its creation and the whole thing blew up worldwide. As a consequence of that, a whole lot of co2 emissions in the world were not only removed but prevented entirely. I don't know why anyone would call this a failure. The North-South issue is discussed frequently, maybe not so much in the mainstream (although I honestly wouldn't know), but e.g. I see it mentioned in social media among people reporting on or dealing with energy. One of the proposals that made sense to me is that Germany should no longer have a single market and a single price, but several regions. This would force states that are blocking development like Bavaria to finally put up or shut up, e.g. either build more or pay more. Regardless of that it's clear there needs to be more grid buildout, it's really not the case this is not discussed. That you ask me why this issue wasn't solved initially is I guess not an unexpected viewpoint considering the differences in the way France and Germany work. France is more centrally planned whereas the states hold a lot of say on regulations in Germany. For the sake of this discussion it's not important which way is better, but it just is like this and it makes no sense to solve problems in a way they're otherwise never solved. Also in the end the same questions could be raised for nuclear plants: why were any built before e.g. there was a plan to store nuclear waste? We are over 60 years into their commercial use and only a handful of countries even have a plan on what to do with it. A lot of money was spent on temporary storages worldwide, it would've been a lot cheaper to first solve the problem completely. So I'd dare say it's anyway not possible to solve problems completely before you actually did anything, so renewables shouldn't be kept to a non-existing standard.
  - pyrale 3y ago
    > Why? Because you can only amortize something if you can afford it. Money can always be borrowed for a profitable investment. > Regardless of that it's clear there needs to be more grid buildout, it's really not the case this is not discussed. Yeah, that was my point. It's been known forever, and is only being tackled now. With proper planning, it would have been online for a while now. France is way lower in terms of renewables use, but we're already pumping investment in our TSO in order to open our options for future electric production and interconnections. > Also in the end the same questions could be raised for nuclear plants: why were any built before e.g. there was a plan to store nuclear waste? Work to determine how to store waste has started 30 years ago. That's the reason we have a solution on the way now. That's a good example of long-term planning. > renewables shouldn't be kept to a non-existing standard. My point isn't even about renewables, Germany is rich enough to live through that expense. My point is that a little planning would probably have resulted in funding split more evenly between the different issues. The problem Germany currently has is that by offering subventions without much plannings, most of the effort went in problems that could be solved easily, and optimized to extract subsidies. A French approach would have been to nationalize and merge the 4 TSOs. That would be unlikely for Germany. But a more balanced German attempt could have been to earmark a significant share of the subsidies to grid innovations and investments, whether it's batteries, new lines, interconnections, automated stability mechanisms, etc...

pyrale 3y ago

> If they'd done that when they should've, the price now would not be 20c per kWh today, but a lot more than that. Why? If we build new plants now, they will be amortized over their lifetime, not the very minute they're out of the gate or using existing plants. For that reason, it would take quite some time before prices shift significantly, even if we had started building 10 years ago. > the result is not only not criminal, it is amazing. Well, that's your opinion. My issue with Germany's current plan is that for renewables to effectively become the bulk of a country's production, there are many things that need to be done. Investments in transport infrastructure, in electrification, in storage, in research about how to handle all of those, etc. But to date, most of the effort goes to the easiest problem (adding renewable production) and the other ones are a bit neglected. The hands-off stance of Germany's leadership is a direct source of this problem: some planification is required to succeed in this task. As an example, how often have you heard about south Germany's north-south grid issues [1], and why was this not tackled at the very beginning of Germany's renewables push? Why did germany not restructure its 4 (!) TSOs when it started greening its energy? I get that German HNers would tell me "It's political, things don't work like that in Germany". But the logical consequence is that tons of money have been spent in the wrong place. [1]: https://www.powerengineeringint.com/smart-grid-td/td-infrastructure/preparing-germanys-grid-to-bridge-the-north-south-renewables-gap/ https://www.powerengineeringint.com/smart-grid-td/td-infrast...

locallost 3y ago
Why? Because you can only amortize something if you can afford it. You are labeling a lot of things as one-off items, but the reality is that the EDF is already heavy in debt that it will take a long time to even pay that off, and eventually there will be a straw that breaks the camel's back. And the price of new plants is such that it's a very heavy straw. Is it really my opinion, or are the things I mentioned actually facts? There was no renewables industry before the Energiewende, Germany implemented a transparent way to fund its creation and the whole thing blew up worldwide. As a consequence of that, a whole lot of co2 emissions in the world were not only removed but prevented entirely. I don't know why anyone would call this a failure. The North-South issue is discussed frequently, maybe not so much in the mainstream (although I honestly wouldn't know), but e.g. I see it mentioned in social media among people reporting on or dealing with energy. One of the proposals that made sense to me is that Germany should no longer have a single market and a single price, but several regions. This would force states that are blocking development like Bavaria to finally put up or shut up, e.g. either build more or pay more. Regardless of that it's clear there needs to be more grid buildout, it's really not the case this is not discussed. That you ask me why this issue wasn't solved initially is I guess not an unexpected viewpoint considering the differences in the way France and Germany work. France is more centrally planned whereas the states hold a lot of say on regulations in Germany. For the sake of this discussion it's not important which way is better, but it just is like this and it makes no sense to solve problems in a way they're otherwise never solved. Also in the end the same questions could be raised for nuclear plants: why were any built before e.g. there was a plan to store nuclear waste? We are over 60 years into their commercial use and only a handful of countries even have a plan on what to do with it. A lot of money was spent on temporary storages worldwide, it would've been a lot cheaper to first solve the problem completely. So I'd dare say it's anyway not possible to solve problems completely before you actually did anything, so renewables shouldn't be kept to a non-existing standard.
- pyrale 3y ago
  > Why? Because you can only amortize something if you can afford it. Money can always be borrowed for a profitable investment. > Regardless of that it's clear there needs to be more grid buildout, it's really not the case this is not discussed. Yeah, that was my point. It's been known forever, and is only being tackled now. With proper planning, it would have been online for a while now. France is way lower in terms of renewables use, but we're already pumping investment in our TSO in order to open our options for future electric production and interconnections. > Also in the end the same questions could be raised for nuclear plants: why were any built before e.g. there was a plan to store nuclear waste? Work to determine how to store waste has started 30 years ago. That's the reason we have a solution on the way now. That's a good example of long-term planning. > renewables shouldn't be kept to a non-existing standard. My point isn't even about renewables, Germany is rich enough to live through that expense. My point is that a little planning would probably have resulted in funding split more evenly between the different issues. The problem Germany currently has is that by offering subventions without much plannings, most of the effort went in problems that could be solved easily, and optimized to extract subsidies. A French approach would have been to nationalize and merge the 4 TSOs. That would be unlikely for Germany. But a more balanced German attempt could have been to earmark a significant share of the subsidies to grid innovations and investments, whether it's batteries, new lines, interconnections, automated stability mechanisms, etc...