> You don't have to transition completely in decades. You can start today.
Yes, I agree. If you start today, you’ll be done in decades. The boneheaded move is to start a green energy transition and immediately start decommissioning existing nuclear power plants and stonewall creating new ones by throwing up your hands and saying “well it’ll take forever to build them.” By the way, have you ever considered why it takes so long to build nuclear power plants? It’s a political and environmental special interest problem, not a technical one.
At the end of the day, when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining, you still have to generate power somehow. Until the day that problem is solved (that’s the “decades” part), you want something like nuclear power to fall back on.
I don't know why you're ignoring my reality example. Germany is part of a EU wide market and it just works. Also it's not like you put all your wind on one spot. There is always wind somewhere for example.
The idea that it's an "political, environmental and special interest" problem while we're watching several nuclear plants being FAR over budget and over due being constructed in pro-nuclear countries proves that your argument is false.
So basically: everything you wrote there is wrong...why are you doing this?
There is always wind somewhere. But grid capacity is not free, in fact it is quite expensive. Let's say, on a given day, the only place in Europe with reasonable winds would be west of Cadiz, transporting all that power through Spain, Portugal and France to cover the needs of all of Europe, would require immensive grid capacity expansion. And even with super-high-voltage, the losses before the power reaches Estonia would be huge.
Also, if this load causes a brownout in Spain, due to improper maintaince, for instance, all of Europe could go dark, cold and stop moving (in a time after fossil fuels).
(I can imagine seeing this from space during some cold winter night around 2045, all the lights in Western and Central Europe disappear at once. Only Norway and parts of Sweden can be seen, since they have their hydro power.)
In other words, while a better grid can mitigate _some_ of the variability of renewable supply, you still need massive expansion of storage capacity when you stop using natural gas, especially when you switch heating and transportation to use electricity too.
Seen from the outside, it surely looks like the German population has been seriously misled.
> There is always wind somewhere. But grid capacity is not free, in fact it is quite expensive.
No it's not...as I said several times over: IT'S ALREADY WORKING and has been for years...
> Also, if this load causes a brownout in Spain, due to improper maintaince, for instance,
This is not the US here. We have the most stable grid on the whole planet. Countries do maintain their networks here.
> In other words, while a better grid can mitigate _some_ of the variability of renewable supply, you still need massive expansion of storage capacity when you stop using natural gas, especially when you switch heating and transportation to use electricity too.
Sure more storage is nice. Especially if you want to profit locally but it's not something which would make true green energy possible NOW. Because: as I said several times over: IT'S ALREADY WORKING. We have been "pumping" massively energy into storage in the alps. Now with NordLink we do the same in the other direction too. It's all there.
> Seen from the outside, it surely looks like the German population has been seriously misled.
This must seem so if you're completely uninformed or even misinformed as you have shown here. In fact though as g8oz says: you should be thankful for us showing the world that true green future technology can be made to work and power a high tech and densely populated country. We'll keep on showing you and those countries which WASTE taxpayer money on nuclear just that.
I live in Europe. The grid in Europe is not designed to transport 100% of electricity needs from one edge of the continenent to the other. Most energy produced in Europe is still renewable or nuclear, and it is produced relatively close to where it is consumed, for the most part.
> We have been "pumping" massively energy into storage in the alps.
The storage capacity of electricity in the alps is tiny compared to total electricity consumption.
> Now with NordLink we do the same in the other direction too.
Nordlink has is getting seriously unpopular in Norway, even if it is only 1400MW out of a total installed capacity in Norway of 37GW.
What is working in Europe is fossil fuel plants and nuclear plants, oil for transportation and, in most plases, fossil fuels for heating. Wind and solar is still a tiny percentage (around 10%) of total energy consumption in Europe. Maybe in 20 years it will be 25%.
So what's the scare? You live in a working grid already. It's the most stable one on this planet already and it's improving constantly. Those improvements are also cheaper than nuclear reactors and make the grid more flexible than a constantly running nuclear reactor. What's your argument?
> The storage capacity of electricity in the alps is tiny compared to total electricity consumption.
That's why we don't rely just on it. Just like we don't rely only on PV or only on wind. That's the great thing about it.
> Nordlink has is getting seriously unpopular in Norway
Do you know what's really unpopular in Norway? Nuclear energy. Just as in Germany.
I also don't know how this is supposed to be a valid argument now.
> Wind and solar is still a tiny percentage (around 10%) of total energy consumption in Europe.
Just because certain parts of Europe are ignorant to new technology doesn't mean that it's not working. It's working in Germany pretty well and has been for years while France is embarrassing themselves with their rotting nuclear one-way.
With the load given to it today, it is stable where I live. But the capacity is limited to serve just the current usage + a safety margin. There is not even enough capacity within the country to even out prices from North to South. (Prices in the South is now >15x higher than in the North because of exports.)
> What's your argument?
My argument is that LCOE of renewables, when including the necessary storage/and or grid expansion to make it profitable, still is much higher than nuclear (even at European prices of nuclear).
> Do you know what's really unpopular in Norway? Nuclear energy. Just as in Germany.
I know what's unpopular in Norway, because I live here. Nuclear is pretty irrelevant here, as we still have more hydro than needed to meet our supply. But because we consumpe a LOT more electricity than most countries (do to prices historically having been very low), the population is also very sensitive to price fluctuations.
One aspect of that, is that many Norwegians actually hare highly critical of Germany shutting down their last nuclear plants this year. There is a growing sentiment that Norway needs to limit net exports of electricy to make sure prices return to historic levels. I don't think the government will survive if they don't manage that by next winter.
> It's working in Germany pretty well and has been for years while France is embarrassing themselves with their rotting nuclear one-way.
To me, as an outsider who's neither French nor German, it seems like it is Germany embarrassing themselves. I suppose opinions may vary.
Yes, I agree. If you start today, you’ll be done in decades. The boneheaded move is to start a green energy transition and immediately start decommissioning existing nuclear power plants and stonewall creating new ones by throwing up your hands and saying “well it’ll take forever to build them.” By the way, have you ever considered why it takes so long to build nuclear power plants? It’s a political and environmental special interest problem, not a technical one.
At the end of the day, when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining, you still have to generate power somehow. Until the day that problem is solved (that’s the “decades” part), you want something like nuclear power to fall back on.