5 ms·

What's the news about this? Isn't this an already accepted plan which is moving ahead rather well?

by anovikov 11mo ago

ZeroGravitas 11mo ago
Now that people widely accept that LCOE of wind and solar are less than fossil alternatives, the same people who claimed without evidence that this wasn't true have moved on to baselessly claiming that grid integration costs mean they are still right. AEMO in Australia has had to put out similar work to this to show that renewables grids continue to save money as they approach 100% clean power. edit: I googled to find coverage of the recently released report and found this headline: > AEMO's net zero grid estimates blow out by billions, with coal to endure until 2049 in draft Integrated System Plan That coal is to remain only because an LNP (right-wing climate denier) state government has legislated that it will remain. The experts say that decision will drive costs up and reliability down, but the headline is trying to attach that to the net zero target they are undermining. It would be hilariously ridiculous if it wasn't costing people their health, their energy security and billions in extra costs. Accurate summary of latest draft: https://reneweconomy.com.au/isp-warns-of-missed-targets-and-added-costs-from-delays-and-as-lnp-throws-coal-spanner-in-the-works/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/isp-warns-of-missed-targets-and-...
ben_w 11mo ago
I think it's a mix of a few things, one of which is just denying Trump's talking point and therefore isn't new; another repeated point is that batteries are actually fine on this timescale, which is probably worth repeating given how often I find this surprises people. The new parts, or at least not widely reported if this has been done before, show that these savings are still present even after accouting for: • The grid needs upgrades • More things need to be electrified
- anovikov 11mo ago
  Well, it depends on whether we are thinking of making grid fossil-free on current scale of electricity use, or we are planning to replace all energy with electricity including transport, heating (even with heat pumps), etc. In the former case sure, no problem, and we don't even need all that many batteries, it will even happen by itself, no government coercion needed. In the latter case, i can't see how it can happen because no new nuclear can be politically built, no new hydro can be physically built, and wind potential is rather limited - increase wind output 2x and you are down to really marginal wind areas where ROI falls, big time. Which leaves solar, and that is a totally different level of variability and amount of lands it will take, skyrockets (if you want to reliably supply all of Germany for all it's final energy consumption with solar alone, having "only" 24-hour battery storage, all of land surface of Germany will not be enough).
  - ben_w 11mo ago
    > In the latter case, i can't see how it can happen because no new nuclear can be politically built, no new hydro can be physically built, and wind potential is rather limited - increase wind output 2x and you are down to really marginal wind areas where ROI falls, big time. Which leaves solar, and that is a totally different level of variability and amount of lands it will take, skyrockets (if you want to reliably supply all of Germany for all it's final energy consumption with solar alone, having "only" 24-hour battery storage, all of land surface of Germany will not be enough). Nuclear, perhaps. Hydro comes in two flavours, damming a river and damming a valley. You dam a river to get a constant power from the watershed, you dam a valley if all you need is a battery-equivalent; we're only short of rivers, there's a lot of valleys. Wind, you're way off. The UK's estimated wind potential is about 2.2 terawatts, which would be almost enough to double global electricity production by itself. This is because the North Sea is amazing; Germany also has some access to the North Sea. Solar, again, you're way off. The worst parts of Germany are around 1000 kWh/m^2/year as per https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Germany_GHI_Solar-resource-map_GlobalSolarAtlas_World-Bank-Esmap-Solargis.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Germany_... which I believe doesn't account for cell efficiency, which we can say is 22% at this point given what the cheap modules on my patio do; the area of Germany is 357,022 km^2 = 3.57e11 m^2, so "all of land surface of Germany" is 3.57e11 m^2 * 1000 kWh/m^2/year * 22% ~= 8.9 TW, which isn't just enough to fully-electrify all of Germany, it's enough to fully electrify all of continental Europe, by a factor of a bit more than 3.8 (given https://www.iea.org/regions/europe/energy-mix https://www.iea.org/regions/europe/energy-mix). Germany's 2023 consumption of primary energy (as a reminder, that's everything not just what's currently electricity) was just under 11 exajoules, averaging 342.2 gigawatts — if Germany was trying to convert itself alone (i.e. becoming weirdly isolationist), using just PV alone as the source (why?), with cheap modules (not the best), using the worst regions as the average for the whole country (low-balling the result), even without the boost you get from electrification because e.g. primary energy consumption is the full energy in ICE fuel tanks before the thermodynamic losses that BEVs don't have, it has 26 times as much land as it needs for that task. That's more than enough of a margin for a surprise climactic shift causing continuous all-year-round Dunkelflaute, even with just 24 hour storage (battery, or as per previous point, hydro). Germany's land area, by itself, even despite the location, is only insufficient if you want to use it (alone) to power more than half of the entire planet. Which of course Germany shouldn't be doing: if humanity created a power grid sufficient to do that (it is doable but only by China right now) there's plenty of better places to put the PV, enough so that no batteries at all would be needed.

What's the news about this? Isn't this an already accepted plan which is moving ahead rather well?

Now that people widely accept that LCOE of wind and solar are less than fossil alternatives, the same people who claimed without evidence that this wasn't true have moved on to baselessly claiming that grid integration costs mean they are still right. AEMO in Australia has had to put out similar work to this to show that renewables grids continue to save money as they approach 100% clean power. edit: I googled to find coverage of the recently released report and found this headline: > AEMO's net zero grid estimates blow out by billions, with coal to endure until 2049 in draft Integrated System Plan That coal is to remain only because an LNP (right-wing climate denier) state government has legislated that it will remain. The experts say that decision will drive costs up and reliability down, but the headline is trying to attach that to the net zero target they are undermining. It would be hilariously ridiculous if it wasn't costing people their health, their energy security and billions in extra costs. Accurate summary of latest draft: https://reneweconomy.com.au/isp-warns-of-missed-targets-and-added-costs-from-delays-and-as-lnp-throws-coal-spanner-in-the-works/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/isp-warns-of-missed-targets-and-...

ben_w 11mo ago

I think it's a mix of a few things, one of which is just denying Trump's talking point and therefore isn't new; another repeated point is that batteries are actually fine on this timescale, which is probably worth repeating given how often I find this surprises people. The new parts, or at least not widely reported if this has been done before, show that these savings are still present even after accouting for: • The grid needs upgrades • More things need to be electrified

anovikov 11mo ago
Well, it depends on whether we are thinking of making grid fossil-free on current scale of electricity use, or we are planning to replace all energy with electricity including transport, heating (even with heat pumps), etc. In the former case sure, no problem, and we don't even need all that many batteries, it will even happen by itself, no government coercion needed. In the latter case, i can't see how it can happen because no new nuclear can be politically built, no new hydro can be physically built, and wind potential is rather limited - increase wind output 2x and you are down to really marginal wind areas where ROI falls, big time. Which leaves solar, and that is a totally different level of variability and amount of lands it will take, skyrockets (if you want to reliably supply all of Germany for all it's final energy consumption with solar alone, having "only" 24-hour battery storage, all of land surface of Germany will not be enough).
- ben_w 11mo ago
  > In the latter case, i can't see how it can happen because no new nuclear can be politically built, no new hydro can be physically built, and wind potential is rather limited - increase wind output 2x and you are down to really marginal wind areas where ROI falls, big time. Which leaves solar, and that is a totally different level of variability and amount of lands it will take, skyrockets (if you want to reliably supply all of Germany for all it's final energy consumption with solar alone, having "only" 24-hour battery storage, all of land surface of Germany will not be enough). Nuclear, perhaps. Hydro comes in two flavours, damming a river and damming a valley. You dam a river to get a constant power from the watershed, you dam a valley if all you need is a battery-equivalent; we're only short of rivers, there's a lot of valleys. Wind, you're way off. The UK's estimated wind potential is about 2.2 terawatts, which would be almost enough to double global electricity production by itself. This is because the North Sea is amazing; Germany also has some access to the North Sea. Solar, again, you're way off. The worst parts of Germany are around 1000 kWh/m^2/year as per https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Germany_GHI_Solar-resource-map_GlobalSolarAtlas_World-Bank-Esmap-Solargis.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Germany_... which I believe doesn't account for cell efficiency, which we can say is 22% at this point given what the cheap modules on my patio do; the area of Germany is 357,022 km^2 = 3.57e11 m^2, so "all of land surface of Germany" is 3.57e11 m^2 * 1000 kWh/m^2/year * 22% ~= 8.9 TW, which isn't just enough to fully-electrify all of Germany, it's enough to fully electrify all of continental Europe, by a factor of a bit more than 3.8 (given https://www.iea.org/regions/europe/energy-mix https://www.iea.org/regions/europe/energy-mix). Germany's 2023 consumption of primary energy (as a reminder, that's everything not just what's currently electricity) was just under 11 exajoules, averaging 342.2 gigawatts — if Germany was trying to convert itself alone (i.e. becoming weirdly isolationist), using just PV alone as the source (why?), with cheap modules (not the best), using the worst regions as the average for the whole country (low-balling the result), even without the boost you get from electrification because e.g. primary energy consumption is the full energy in ICE fuel tanks before the thermodynamic losses that BEVs don't have, it has 26 times as much land as it needs for that task. That's more than enough of a margin for a surprise climactic shift causing continuous all-year-round Dunkelflaute, even with just 24 hour storage (battery, or as per previous point, hydro). Germany's land area, by itself, even despite the location, is only insufficient if you want to use it (alone) to power more than half of the entire planet. Which of course Germany shouldn't be doing: if humanity created a power grid sufficient to do that (it is doable but only by China right now) there's plenty of better places to put the PV, enough so that no batteries at all would be needed.