30 ms·
Germany hits 80 GW milestone
- simonebrunozzi 3y agoPhoto Voltaic, or PV, of course. 14 GW just in 2023 alone. Note that Gigawatts is the installed capacity, but GWh is the actual production. Germany produces 2.5 times more energy from wind, rather than solar (quite intuitive, considering that solar is much less productive in Germany compared to, say, Greece or northern Africa). From Wikipedia [0]: Germany's installed capacity for electric generation increased from 121 gigawatts (GW) in 2000 to 218 GW in 2019, an 80% increase, while electricity generation increased only 5% in the same period. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany
- hurril 3y agoAnd then it stops blowing so they buy all our Swedish electricity, making us all pay for the german environment. Except the germans.
- Zetobal 3y agoGermany is a net energy exporter... in the last two years especially helping out the crippled french nuclear power systems.
- ffgjgf1 3y agoThat was only possible because of coal plants. If that’s unavoidable I’m sure most French people prefer that’s burned in Germany rather than France.
- lispm 3y agoHalf of the French nuclear power plant fleet was offline in 2022. -> https://www.catf.us/2023/07/2022-french-nuclear-outages-lessons-nuclear-energy-europe/ https://www.catf.us/2023/07/2022-french-nuclear-outages-less...
- oezi 3y agoThe Germans certainly don't want to export dirty coal power but my understanding was that they were essentially aiding France to overcome a summer of draughts which crippled the mono-culture in France.
- uecker 3y agoSummer droughts and also high energy use in winter with electric heating is where France regularly depends on imports.
- hurril 3y agoExporting coal power. Lovely.
- skywal_l 3y agoIn the last two years only. FTFY
- pgeorgi 3y agoThe "help out the French" thing was a temporary situation due to France's power plant maintenance issues but on an annual basis Germany has been a net electricity exporter since 2003: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331853/electricity-imports-exports-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331853/electricity-impo...
- danielbln 3y agoWe don't pay? We paid like 40 cents per kwh im late 2022, vs 26 cents in Sweden. Feel free to blame whoever, but German end consumers are probably not to blame.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago> but German end consumers are probably not to blame. If they overlap with the German voters who voted for Merkel and especially Schroder (who literally became an agent working for the Russian government after he left office) before that then we can certainly blame them.
- oezi 3y agoCertainly mistakes were made, but please recall that it is primarily market forces which led us to the German gas dependence. Russian gas was just cheaper than American and Qatari gas.
- hurril 3y agoWe pay that and more because both Germany and Sweden decided that nuclear power is a bad idea. You would pay even more if we weren't selling, which in a sense would be more fair because then you would bear the consequences of your own actions. Downvote me all you want, dear germans.
- icehawk 3y agoI don't understand what you mean by that?
- hurril 3y agoWhen your energy mix is biased towards wind and solar, the market price for energy fluctuates with the weather, basically. So when there's a lot of wind in an area, then energy is cheap (and the wind farms lose money.) When there's no wind, energy becomes expensive and the wind farms lose money. This means that base power generation from nuclear also loses money when there's a lot of wind, and that coal power is needed when there isn't any [wind.] So we all pay more _and_ destroy the environment more. When there's no wind in Germany, they buy from the energy market, driving up prices all the way up to what Coal and Oil power generation costs (which is expensive and terrible), since that is the competition. And since everyone pays market prices, we all suffer from Germany's lack of nuclear. (And ours.) In a sense: Germany has socialised their energy production. If I was conspiratorical, I would say that Russia played Germany like a fiddle in this regard. Cancel your nuclear so that you have to buy gas for energy production. And here we are. Thank you Sweden and Germany.
- wazoox 3y agoActually it has been revealed that Gazprom supported financially anti-nuclear and pro-renewable NGOs in Germany for many, many years. That's not conspirational, just a fact.
- pgeorgi 3y agoGermany's location means that it's a logistics hub. Gas, electricity, goods - large percentages of each are going into Germany on one end and leave it on another.
- KptMarchewa 3y agoYour power plants earn that money. Tax it or something.
- lm28469 3y agoThe main problem with renewable energies, at least in Germany, is that they're not replacing anything, they're just added on top of existing fossil sources, so in the end we still pollute as much and we're still as far as ever from our end goal. The fact that we consume so much more just hides the truth behind nice percentages. The reality is that Germany burns as much fossil fuel as they were 20 years ago, and on top of that they offer the most expensive end user kwh price of Europe https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig1-installed-net-power-generation-capacity-germany-2002-2023.png?itok=FaxUA7uM https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/cheap-electricity-prices-europe.png https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/cheap-electric...
- sdk16420 3y agoYou are confusing installed capacity with power used. The consumed power is going down since the early 2000s, but since the generated power by most renewables depends on the weather and season, more reserve capacity needs to be installed. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
- asdefghyk 3y agoThe reserve capacity , would need to be 100% - to be able to supply the country for at least several days if/when renables are not able to produce , most likely due to weather.
- ben_w 3y agoThe capacity doesn't have to be constantly burning fuel 365 days a year in order to solve weather issues, just for however long the combination of startup/shutdown time and adverse weather duration. Adverse weather conditions can be predicted sufficiently well in advance that this matters.
- woodruffw 3y ago
- epistasis 3y agoIt's worth pointing out for those of us in the US that Germany has less solar insolation than anywhere in the continental US: https://globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=44.933135,-144.991617,3 https://globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=44.933135,-144.991617,3 If Germany can do this much solar, than New England is going to have a much much easier go of it. And why isn't there far more solar in Florida, when solar is such a cheap source of electricity for running all that AC? Because of regulatory capture by utilities and fossil fuel interests.
- brnt 3y agoWhy dont Floridians install panels themselves? Airco use correlates strongly with sunshine, so I imagine they pay themselves back within a year or three.
- zdragnar 3y agoHurricanes, probably.
- ozim 3y agoPV is a bit counterintuitive in that it loses efficiency when it gets hot. Best efficiency is when circuitry is a bit colder and not in full sunshine and 30+ degrees C. Full sunshine around 15-20C works well. So coupling AC with PV seems like a no brainer it doesn’t work that well when you really want to blast that AC full power because panels get too hot from the outside temperature.
- fullspectrumdev 3y agoIs it possible to use some form of cooling on the panels? The heat would need to fuck off to somewhere though…
- someplaceguy 3y ago> PV is a bit counterintuitive in that it loses efficiency when it gets hot. Is that significant enough to matter? How much does it lose?
- fadac85323 3y ago[flagged]
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoIowa has 12GW from 6000 wind turbines installed, and growing daily! Some days in the summer, energy independent!
- kibwen 3y agoExtremely impressed at Iowa for seizing its opportunity to be a major wind energy producer. I visited the Iowa State Fair a few years back and they had a big turbine smack-dab in the middle of the fairgrounds, along with a building with educational exhibits on wind energy. Kudos to them.
- gniv 3y agoYeah, you don't hear local politicians brag a lot about this, but the whole middle of US has tons of wind power. Texas alone has more than 40GW: https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/economic-data/energy/2023/wind-snap.php https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/economic-data/energy/2...
- stevenjgarner 3y agoThe average monthly electricity bill in Iowa is $142 [1], or $1,704 annually. As of 2022, Iowa's population was roughly 3.2 million [2], giving an estimated electricity consumption of ~$532 per capita annually. What has to happen for near energy independence to translate to near zero cost? Granted the amortization of installed wind generation is not zero, but I am certain it is not $532 per capita. Interesting side note. Previously, Iowa had one operating base load nuclear plant - the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo, which ran for over 40 years before permanently shutting down in August 2020 due to economic reasons and damage from a derecho storm. [1] Citation: EnergySage's 2023 data https://www.energysage.com/ https://www.energysage.com/ [2] Citation: https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=IA https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=IA
- simon_acca 3y agoFor context, demand in Germany sits at about 500 TWh/year https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-demand?tab=chart®ion=Europe&country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-demand?tab=ch...
- recursive 3y agoIn case it isn't obvious 500 TWh/year is less than 80 GW.
- simon_acca 3y agoWith some caveats perhaps... theoretically speaking if 80GW of PV were to produce at 100% output power 24/day that would be about 700TWh in a year
- winwang 3y agoMore clarity: 500 TWh/yr is ~57 GW on average. From a quick google, it seems that peak electricity usage is 60-80 GW, which makes the 80 GW milestone much more interesting.
- vwkd 3y ago[dead]
- lispm 3y agoFor those interested. We had a windy week in Germany. There was a record of >53MW wind electricity production. 83 million population. 1/4 of the US. https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&source=total https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&... Right now there is 48 MW from wind and 5 MW from coal.
- passwordoops 3y agoThanks for the link. For those of us who don't read German, is any imported?
- lispm 3y agoEnglish: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&source=total https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&...
- lnsru 3y agoIt shows, that wind generates a lot of power at the moment. But at the moment it is very windy. Not normal windy for this time of the year.
- lispm 3y ago2/3 of our the wind electricity production is in the winter half year. 2020 had records: https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/energie-blog/winter-sturm-wind-rekord https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/energie-blog/winter-sturm-win... We are in 2023 way past this record.
- lnsru 3y agoAnd without wind it’s 53 MW from coal. Even more with increased demand for heat pumps and electric vehicles in not far future. Here in Munich I constantly get warning about wind gusts from my warning apps. This windy period imho is not usual.
- lispm 3y ago
- exabrial 3y agoStop shuttering perfectly fine nuclear. If they’re unsafe designs that’s one thing, but let’s not be patting ourselves on the ass yet.
- viktorcode 3y agoIt is the most expensive power source. Cost is prohibitive without the state footing part of the bill. And depending on the type of power station, it is not as reliable too: remember past year France shut down few of their nuclear plants due to the draught causing water levels in rivers to drop? They needed that water for circuit cooling.
- snickerer 3y agoThere was always only one real reason to have nuclear power plants: to produce the base material for atomic weapons.
- exabrial 3y agoThis is so categorically false and can easily be disproven by any educated person, which you are apparently not.
- retinaros 3y agothe best thing with people preaching renewable its that it became a religion where facts do not mater. french nuclear energy got destroyed by recent governments and political mowement backed by germany and green party that wanted france nuclear industry to disappear. if not for the war in ukraine france would not have done a 180. plants shut down because under investment, government asking operators to reduce workforce with negative growth for over a decade. all because of the renewable religion. meanwhile germany destroy its cities to dig coal and power its country when there is no wind. oh and wind is renewable but not the device producing the energy, it lasts barely 20 years with regular maintenance and hen you heed to burry the turbines. its a ponzi.