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How much solar/wind can you really install in the area covered by a nuclear station?
by exe34 6mo ago
How much solar/wind can you really install in the area covered by a nuclear station?
- lxgr 6mo agoThat's not the problem; Germany has enough space to build solar and wind capacity to satisfy its consumption – on average. The problem is storage.
- happosai 6mo agoMost definitely not true. Maybe enough area to cover current electric usage, but to truly decarbonize society a lot more renewable energy is needed - for transport, heating, iron industry, chemical industries, fetilizers etc. Massive amounts of electricity is needed unless you export your industries to china.
- lxgr 6mo agoWhy not? Germany's total energy consumption is estimated to be around 1-2 TWh/y. This could be generated by photovoltaics covering less than 5% of its land surface. There are significant problems around rolling out that much capacity quickly enough, and I also don't think nuclear should have been shut down that hastily, but I don't think "only nuclear can cover long-term energy needs" is true in any way.
- happosai 6mo agoWtf are your numbers from, but they are wrong. It's over 2200TWh per year. And it you truly want to be renewable, the numbers go up. Upcycling waste to plastics or using hydrogen to make steel is more energy intensive than using fossil fuels. https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/indicator-final-energy-consumption https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/indicator-final-energy-con...
- lxgr 6mo agoGermany uses “,” as the decimal separator.
- reitzensteinm 6mo agoBut this document does not. Note it says 12.5%, not 12,5%. 1 TWh on the scale of a country is very little - a 1 GW nuclear plant operating continuously would generate over 8 TWh a year. Nevertheless the back of the napkin math of land requirements for solar check out, so it was probably just a typo and OP meant to say PWh.
- lxgr 6mo agoYeah, seems like I got a wire/SI prefix crossed there. The land use should fit in terms of orders of magnitude, though.
- locallost 6mo agoThose are total energy numbers, which includes fossil fuels, but those are famously misleading because replacing those with electricity reduces the number of Wh needed. An electric car needs roughly 15kWh for 100 kilometers, a gas powered car typically at least 60kWh for the same distance.
- tzs 6mo agoThe number Lxgr gave, 1-2 TWh/year, is simply completely wrong. Germany's annual electricity use alone is around 500 TWh/year. 1-2 THw/year would be the electricity use of 300-600k average German houses.
- moi2388 6mo ago5% of the entire German landmass? That seems feasible and desirable to you?!
- lxgr 6mo agoI have my doubts about short and medium term feasibility, and much more importantly storage and adapting carbon-based industrial processes. But yes, if all it took was 5% of landmass (which also doesn’t get permanently unusable nor polluted), I’d say that would be a pretty good deal, yeah. This is significantly less than what’s used for livestock farming, to put it into perspective. Realistically, I don’t think we’ll solve storage fast enough to be able to afford zero nuclear power in Europe.
- MandieD 6mo agoAnd of course, you can combine those things sometimes - I've seen cattle munching on grass under solar panels in Baden-Württemberg (state just west of Bavaria).
- Ringz 6mo agoYou can install solar panels over areas that are already developed — rooftops (lol), parking garages, highways, and so on. Some agricultural land even benefits from being covered by solar panels. This has great potential and was first researched in the United States. China is covering water reservoirs with solar panels, which has the additional positive effect of reducing evaporation. And then there is the incredibly large amount of energy that the North Sea, far from any beaches or islands, could provide in consistent wind energy.
- Glaklloo 6mo agoHeating can also use heat from the ground. Also the market should be seen more holistic with water energy from the north and sun from the south.
- KptMarchewa 6mo agoGround heat pumps still use electricity.
- Glaklloo 6mo agoYes but the major energy consumption of a household is heating than transport than utility. Using ground heat (deep ones) reduces the electricity need sign. Also if a heat pumpt creates 3-6 the energy from 1kwh, its even more efficient to burn oil and gas to make energy out of it and remote heat than just burning it locally in your burner.
- chopin 6mo agoThat's prohibitively expensive. And not possible everywhere. And Germany's grid is not ready for heating with electricity.
- _ph_ 6mo agoHeating with heat pumps is highly efficient and already the cheapest way of heating your home. The grids are ready for it - especially considering the amount of residential solar.