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I moved to Germany this year from Canada, and I've been incredibly impressed with the speed and aggressiveness with which Germany has been pursuing renewable en

I moved to Germany this year from Canada, and I've been incredibly impressed with the speed and aggressiveness with which Germany has been pursuing renewable energy sources[1]. This is great news because it's happening despite the fact that Germany is really not an ideally situated country for any of the major renewable energy sources, so these advances are applicable to other countries in ways that e.g. the experiences in Denmark or South Australia might not. The buildout of renewable energy sources in Germany has been so widespread and so successful that they're no longer the interesting part of the problem. Now that the electrical grid here is averaging 60-70% renewable electricity in any month of the year, the limiting factors now are energy storage, and long-distance flexible transmission of electricity. Transmission lines are a not-so-sexy, but totally vital part of running a grid with so much intermittent electricity production that's only accurately forcastable a few days in advance. There's been a lot of HVDC lines build connecting Germany to the UK and various scandinavian countries, but one of the biggest things we're still waiting on is a new link from the north of the country to the south. The south has more solar resources, and the north has more wind resources, so there needs to be way more capacity to share. Storage is going to be a very hard problem to tackle and has a less clear path forward. Batteries are going to play an important role, but in the near term they're likely only to be valuable for smoothing out supply and demand over a two to three day window. Something that doesn't get discussed very much though is how much bio-gas Germany generates. German farmer collective, landfill operators, and wastewater operators actually make quite a bit of money by using specialized bacteria to compost organic material and generate methane. Bio-gas is responsible for around 8-9% of German electricity generation. It's currently used in a very consistent way, with the same amount being burned nearly every hour of every day, but eventually when wind, solar, battery, and HVDC electricity sources are able to take over most day-to-day electricity needs, this bio-gas could instead be stored and used as a backup power source, as well as being sold to industry for hard-to-electrify industrial processes. Afterall, if all that gas were stored instead of used up immediately, it'd only take 11-12 days of storage to store enough gas to power the whole grid for a day. This is really important, because the amount of solar and wind energy being produced can vary huge amounts from week-to-week. --------------------- [1] Yes, I know, Germany made a gigantic mistake decomissioning their nuclear reactors early. I strongly disagree with that choice, and I think there's a deeply rooted misunderstanding and fear of nuclear power in this country which is a big shame. Despite this, good progress is being made however.

firebot 3y ago
Nuclear isn't profitable. Renewables have plummeted in cost making nuclear cost prohibitive, and let's face it, if they're ever built it'll probably be too little too late.
- eigenspace 3y ago
  First of all, nuclear is very expensive, but most of that cost is in the original construction, of the reactor. In the wake of Fukushima, Germany decomissioned many already built, mature reactors that could have continued to safely and cheaply operate for decades. Shutting down pre-existing reactors and justifying it with "well, building new reactors is expensive" is at best stupid. Second of all, renewables are incredibly cheap when they're a minority of the grid. The problem is that if there's a shortfall of electricity, things get real expensive real fast. To make realistic grid-scale comparisons between renewables and nuclear power, you need to compare the cost of renewables-plus-storage against the cost of nuclear, and at that point things get a lot more nuanced and hard to compare. For instance, solar PV is the cheapest electricity you can get, but in places with a lot of preexisting solar installation it's also some of the lowest value electricity. During the middle of a sunny summer day in Germany, electricity spot prices can go negative because so much solar is being produced, but then that same night, prices shoot up because suddenly all those PVs stop producing any electricity at all. It's a bit of a race to the bottom if you don't have storage to offset those swings. ____________________________ All that said, I'm of course a big fan of renewables and I'm glad Germany is investing in them, and I think there's a bright future ahead with them. But using the low cost of solar modules and wind turbines as an argument against keeping nuclear power stations online is silly -- especially when there's still coal plants operating in Germany.
- hollowturtle 3y ago
  I agree nuclear initial investment is high but it’s cheaper to maintain in the long run than renewables. The making of solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric power stations release more carbon in the athmosphere than nuclear sites. Making of this stuff, especially batteries for stocking, produce more poisonous material than any nuclear site will, and must be stocked underground with high risks. Exaust fission materials produced by humanity so far is so little that stocking isn’t a problem and in some kind of reactors can even be recycled! Renewables don’t guarantee power continuity, nuclear fission does. I can go on the whole day, renewables alone can’t power the ever increasing world need. A mix of nuclear reactors, even small, and renewables could

firebot 3y ago

Nuclear isn't profitable. Renewables have plummeted in cost making nuclear cost prohibitive, and let's face it, if they're ever built it'll probably be too little too late.

eigenspace 3y ago
First of all, nuclear is very expensive, but most of that cost is in the original construction, of the reactor. In the wake of Fukushima, Germany decomissioned many already built, mature reactors that could have continued to safely and cheaply operate for decades. Shutting down pre-existing reactors and justifying it with "well, building new reactors is expensive" is at best stupid. Second of all, renewables are incredibly cheap when they're a minority of the grid. The problem is that if there's a shortfall of electricity, things get real expensive real fast. To make realistic grid-scale comparisons between renewables and nuclear power, you need to compare the cost of renewables-plus-storage against the cost of nuclear, and at that point things get a lot more nuanced and hard to compare. For instance, solar PV is the cheapest electricity you can get, but in places with a lot of preexisting solar installation it's also some of the lowest value electricity. During the middle of a sunny summer day in Germany, electricity spot prices can go negative because so much solar is being produced, but then that same night, prices shoot up because suddenly all those PVs stop producing any electricity at all. It's a bit of a race to the bottom if you don't have storage to offset those swings. ____________________________ All that said, I'm of course a big fan of renewables and I'm glad Germany is investing in them, and I think there's a bright future ahead with them. But using the low cost of solar modules and wind turbines as an argument against keeping nuclear power stations online is silly -- especially when there's still coal plants operating in Germany.
hollowturtle 3y ago
I agree nuclear initial investment is high but it’s cheaper to maintain in the long run than renewables. The making of solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric power stations release more carbon in the athmosphere than nuclear sites. Making of this stuff, especially batteries for stocking, produce more poisonous material than any nuclear site will, and must be stocked underground with high risks. Exaust fission materials produced by humanity so far is so little that stocking isn’t a problem and in some kind of reactors can even be recycled! Renewables don’t guarantee power continuity, nuclear fission does. I can go on the whole day, renewables alone can’t power the ever increasing world need. A mix of nuclear reactors, even small, and renewables could