Wind Replaces Coal As Main Source of Power In Germany (heise.de) 329
Qbertino writes: Heise.de, a German tech news publisher, reports that wind has replaced coal as the main source of power in Germany. From the report: "The share of renewable energies in the amount of electricity generated and fed into the grid domestically rose from 42.3 percent in 2019 to 47.0 percent last year. At 25.6 percent, wind power was the first renewable energy source to have the highest share of the amount of electricity fed into the grid in a given year, replacing coal as the most important energy source. In 2020, 5.4 percent more electricity was generated from wind power than in 2019, when the share had been 22.8 percent..." (Sidenote: Paragraph translated by deepL in seconds; [I] find it quite feasible as a German and English native speaker. Color me impressed.)
This is not much to brag about yet because Coal is still buffering large parts of the nuclear fission exit Germany is doing, but it's a good milestone. By and large, the article concludes that Germany's exit from nuclear fission is going in the right direction.
This is not much to brag about yet because Coal is still buffering large parts of the nuclear fission exit Germany is doing, but it's a good milestone. By and large, the article concludes that Germany's exit from nuclear fission is going in the right direction.
Just a small fact check (Score:5, Informative)
This is not much to brag about yet because Coal is still buffering large parts of the nuclear fission exit Germany is doing
The fourth chart on this page [cleanenergywire.org] paints a somewhat different perspective than the sentence above seems to be suggesting, namely a rapid decline of coal in the past several years.
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Yes, the sentence is misleading. Coal was never buffering a large parts of the nuclear fission exit in Germany.
One could claim that it would have been possible to exit coal faster by delaying the fission exit, but this something else.
Re: Just a small fact check (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Just a small fact check (Score:5, Informative)
Also, the funny thing is that nuclear power plants are about the least effective type of buffer you can have. Their already terrible economics is premised on them almost always generating at full capacity. If you're going to start ramping up and down nuclear in response to how much demand there is on the grid, you're going to vastly worsen their already-terrible economics.
Where the grid is actually headed, due to the ever-falling prices of wind, solar and storage, is a combination of:
* Overbuilt (2-4x) wind, relative to demand
* Overbuilt (2-4x) solar, relative to demand (wind and solar tend to run counter to each other)
* Battery storage (1-3 days - overbuilding of wind and solar mean that you rarely touch it at all except for slight dips into it on calm nights, and only use a meaningful fraction of the total capacity for 1-3 weeks per year)
* Better grid interconnects (esp. HVDC/UHVDC), allowing for timeshifting generation/demand and averaging out localized weather events
* Miscellaneous, depending on the region (existing dams as storage, pumped hydro, geothermal, etc; possibly some new storage techs in development as well)
The side effect is that for the vast majority of the year you have surplus generation - usually heavily in surplus. And it's not a temporary situation, but one that industry can rely on to recur year after year, on a semi-predictable schedule. This will result in any industries where power is the primary cost to set up to use this surplus, at dirt-cheap prices. One particularly welcome example is desalination - such a grid would render it cost-effective even for agriculture in most coastal parts of the world, vastly improving the quality of life for billions. Other examples include things like computing and (non-carbothermic) metal refining / processing.
It's important to remember that all grids - with intermittent resources or not - fluctuate. Not simply due to random "unusual" adverse infrastructure events on the generation side (e.g. power plant or major transmission line goes down), but particularly because of demand fluctuations. All grids have to have the ability to react to modeled adverse events. With a high-intermittent grid, you simply have to model for higher fluctuations. The upside is that the more capability you have to have to respond to intermittency, the more resilient your grid is against "unusual" adverse events.
Example: say you're in a place where battery storage needs mainly crop up during unusual calm periods during the winter, and you have a lot of local rooftop solar but wind is a good distance away. It's summer, so your area's rooftop solar is generating lots of daytime power, but OH NO, a wildfire took out the main transmission line to where you live, so there's no wind coming in, no timeshifting of loads, etc. But hey, your battery storage buffers the rooftop solar, when normally the buffer would have been sitting idle this time of the year.
In a traditional grid, such an "unusual" adverse infrastructure event would be a disaster. You lose the line, the lights go out. But in an overbuilt-renewables+storage+etc grid, the resilience that you had to build to withstand adverse generation events also protects you against unusual adverse infrastructure events.
Re: Just a small fact check (Score:5, Funny)
The side effect is that for the vast majority of the year you have surplus generation - usually heavily in surplus. And it's not a temporary situation, but one that industry can rely on to recur year after year, on a semi-predictable schedule. This will result in any industries where power is the primary cost to set up to use this surplus, at dirt-cheap prices.
Too much cheap power you say...
Bitcoin mining, is there any problem it can't solve...
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Which is why that's what Germany is doing. [greentechmedia.com]
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You could probably also use the energy to extract CO2 from the air to sequester, or to make other hydrocarbon fuels. Bitcoin was obviously a stupid idea...
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Completely agree with your statements, but one small note: if you over-build for demand 2-4x that drives up the cost of power significantly. I believe wholesale LCOE for new wind and solar are around $0.02-0.05/kWh, and battery is closer to $0.07... at full utilization. If you overbuild by 2-4x, you double or quadruple that cost.
The most economical solution is focusing on local renewable generation and storage for 95% of demand, and let gas and transmission lines backstop that for the remaining 5%, with a c
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if you over-build for demand 2-4x that drives up the cost of power significantly.
Not if you find non-grid-related use of the extra power generated, such as opportunistically charging EVs nearby or generating hydrogen for producing fertilizer and plastics and other chemical products. Then you can charge competitive prices for these outputs to the benefit of all the parties involved. Overgenerating from the perspective of the grid doesn't necessarily mean that the surpluses have to go to waste.
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Nuclear is useless for buffering because if you're not paying for 100% of the maximum potential output then the cost is inverse proportionally more expensive. Or to put it another way, if you're only running your nuclear station at 50% output then you'll have to pay almost double for the electricity because the fuel is a small percentage of the cost. And nuclear is already one of the most expensive ways of generating electricity.
Nuclear proponents on one hand love to tell us how safe Nuclear power is. They
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Sorry, this is not true. I look into the data closely on a regular basis and and no time was French nuclear power relevant for Germany. (sometimes it is the other way round, e.g. during hot whether when several nuclear plants in France go down at the same time, or when they found the common flow in their plants an needed to shut down most of their fleet for inspection).
That's why you have four or five different ones (Score:5, Interesting)
> If you want to use unreliable power sources: wind and solar, beside the price, you should accept the 100% certainty of power failures.
You don't have to have unreliable power just because you use some unreliable sources. There are strategies for getting reliable power while using unreliable sources.
The first (and best) strategy is a diverse mix of power sources.
In my state, for example, 20% of the power we generate is wind.
We generate more wind power than any other state, and we're perfectly fine on days when it's windy. Because we use wind on the days when the wind is right. We also have enough natural gas power power that most days we would be okay on natural gas and nothing else. We have a couple nuclear plants. It's major national news when Texas has the kind of power outage that states like California have all the time, because it's a once-in-lifetime event for all the different power sources to be down simultaneously with record-high demand.
A strategy that fans of a particular guy like to talk about a lot is storage. Overnight storage can work. When you do the math on storage for a week or two to handle a series of large storms you realize that just doesn't work. Not even close. That's one reason you need a diverse energy mix - you use wind power when the wind is right, and other sources when it's not. Use some solar electric on sunny summer afternoons, you don't rely on entirely on solar because it can be cloudy for 10 days straight.
Wind power is awesome in a lot of ways. As you suggested, it does have one huge drawback - a little law of physics called the cube power rule. The power available in wind is the CUBE of the wind velocity. Meaning a wind of 30 kmh isn't twice as much power as 15 kmh; it's NINE TIMES as much power. Wind often provides a lot of power in the afternoon and hardly any in the morning (much lik solar). That's okay, we can use the afternoon wind to power the air conditioners and use nuclear + natural gas to make coffee in the morning.
We have a lot of power options to mix together. It would be silly not make use of that. At both different times and different places. Geothermal is great - in a few places along the Pacific rim. It's not available at all in most places. So use each when and where they are available. Just don't become totally reliant on any one thing.
Ugh, missed the word NOT (Score:2)
This sentence totally lost it's meaning because I left out the word "not". That should say:
In my state, for example, 20% of the power we generate is wind.
We generate more wind power than any other state, and we're perfectly fine on days when it's NOT windy.
We use a lot of wind power, and we're fine when that wind isn't available.
For Texas to have a widespread outage, you need all th we things to happen at once:
Our wind power shuts down, or nearly so
One or both of our nuclear plants shut down
Many of natural
Re:Ugh, missed the word NOT (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Ugh, missed the word NOT (Score:5, Informative)
This important point is that whenever you produce power by wind you save the fossil fuels. Yes, you need backup for the time there is no wind production. But still Germany did not substantially increase gas use in recent years:
2010 -> 2020
coal + lignite: 262.9 GWh -> 134.3 TWh
nuclear: 140.6 TWh -> 64.3 TWh
gas 89.3 TWh -> 91.6 TWh
renewables: 105.2 TWh -> 254.7 TWh
(source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen... [ag-energiebilanzen.de])
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There is a reason, but it is not electricity production. Most gas is used for industrial purposes. Germany is highly reliable on gas and domestic supplies are nearly depleted. Having a direct gas pipelines to Russia would mean to be less susceptible to political issue in eastern Europe. (of course, still dependent on Russia but not on other third parties, also Germany imports from other countries too, so is not fully dependent on Russia). The only domestic power sources are coal (which Germany wants to get
Re:Ugh, missed the word NOT (Score:5, Insightful)
Some points for consideration from a German POV:
And even the saner people there seem to be all for applying mob tactics to force Germany into making the US their only option.
So you can't really rely on the US being an ally anymore - or even rely on to act rational when doing business. With Russia, Germany can at least rely on Russia needing western money as much as Germany needing energy. And the evil people who control both the country and the oil having lots of that money flowing directly into their own coffers.
So from Germany's point of view, Russia isn't the only devil it has to deal with.
And which of the two devils is more evil can seemingly change from day to day:
Russia might put pressure on Germany by threatening its energy supply.
The US already is doing so, basically squeezing Germany's right ball, promising to stop if Germany would only add the left ball as well.
So if Germany is "desperate", it's mostly due to the unreliability of their business "partners".
I can't really blame Germany's decision to want more options by at least addressing one source of unreliability,
i.e. wanting to be able to route the gas around the political instability in Eastern Europe, in case troubles pop up there at the same time as the US deciding to do coke or needing a diaper change again.
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While nat gas is still a smaller percentage of Germany's generation, it has steadily increased during energiewende transition, and will continue to as the need for dispatch-able reliable sources other than coal will grow.
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You need to have *generation capacity* as backup, but how much you then have to use it depends on many different factors. Experience in Germany shows that you add a huge amount of renewables without actually burning much gas over the year.
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This true to some extend, but exaggerated. You need dispatchable power anyway to match the demand curve and to have a backup in case plants in case plants go down unexpectedly. So yes, with renewables you need more, but it is not terrible.
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Isn't Germany & Europe (Score:2)
Re:That's why you have four or five different ones (Score:5, Insightful)
It's major national news when Texas has the kind of power outage that states like California have all the time,
Very misleading.
The power outages in CA are a business decision related to liability, not a grid that cannot handle weather conditions; so the newsworthiness of the events are hardly comparable.
because it's a once-in-lifetime event
Negative. The big portion of the criticism Texas is receiving is because this is in fact, not a once-in-a-lifetime event.
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t's major national news when Texas has the kind of power outage that states like California have all the time, because it's a once-in-lifetime event for all the different power sources to be down simultaneously with record-high demand.
Texas had storms like that in 2011. If they didn't have outages like these then, it's because they got lucky.
Re:Unreliable energy sources = power failures (Score:2)
If you want to use unreliable power sources: wind and solar, beside the price, you should accept the 100% certainty of power failures.
Places like Texas are havens for fossil fuel but they have plenty of power failures.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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"But the story of.."
The story is being told as it unfolds no less, and keeps getting better.
Re: Unreliable energy sources => power failures (Score:3, Interesting)
Hiâ"Texan here and Iâ(TM)ve recently become something of an expert on unreliable power sources. It is true that solar doesnâ(TM)t work at night and can be impacted by clouds and wind blows only intermittently. Thatâ(TM)s why battery (and other types) storage is important for those power sources.
However, as Iâ(TM)ve just experienced, the reliability of natural gas power isâ¦ahem⦠overstated. Despite our neanderthal governor blaming wind, the primary culprit of th
A tale of two horses (Score:2)
There is one horse that is a stalwart that pulls hard under all circumstances and in all weather.
A second horse can pull hard when it has a mind to do so but cannot be counted upon.
The second horse is a favorite of its owner because reasons, so it gets pampered and the first horse goes on short rations.
A great blizzard comes upon the land, and the second horse cannot be coaxed out of its stall. The first horse is no longer a favorite of its owner but is kept around because it can be hitched to the w
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Your story is completely divorced from reality in Texas.
The reality is the natural gas wells and pipelines froze, because they were not winterized. So gas generators ran out of fuel.
In addition, there were coal plants that had to shut down due to their cooling loops freezing. And a nuclear plant that shut down when sensors said its coolant loop was close to freezing (it wasn't, the sensor wasn't in the coolant flow so it was reading low).
All of that was due to Texas not requiring their generators to winte
Re:Unreliable energy sources = power failures (Score:3)
The German grid is one of the most reliable in the world and tends to be even a bit better than in the past. SAIDI in 2019 was just 12 minutes which is excellent.
https://www.bundesnetzagentur.... [bundesnetzagentur.de]
Compare this with the US which is about 5 hours:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]
But don't let your political opinion be swayed by facts....
I was "with you" (Score:2)
until that last sentence of snark.
Re:Unreliable energy sources = power failures (Score:2)
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Consumption vs. German Production (Score:5, Insightful)
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but ignore energy imported in the form of oil, gas and electricity generated outside the country.
1) Since this is about electricity, oil imports are not relevant here.
2) Gas as a source is already included.
3) Electricity imports are practically inconsequential when total amounts of generated electricity are considered, and Germany is a net exporter anyway.
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depict energy generated in Germany
No, they depict electrical power generated in Germany. (Hence your confusion, perhaps?)
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"German energy sources' share in primary energy consumption"
Primary energy consumption and generating electricity are two VERY different things. Germany can have 100% green power, and 0% imported electricity and their primary energy consumption would still list things like oil and gas, which Germans consume regardless of if they use electricity or not.
Coal is an anachronism . (Score:5, Insightful)
Coal is more expensive, more polluting, more dangerous, and generally dumber energy source than just about anything else.
It's no surprise, financially or otherwise, that it's being quickly replaced.
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2019: 0,3043EUR / kWh. But only half of that was generation and grid fees. There's also a renewables surcharge that makes up a fifth of the bill (e.g. 70% with it included), although it's starting to be phased out now because renewables are now so cheap that they pay for themselves. The remaining 30% of the bill is various taxes and surcharges.
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Thank you, that is useful information, albeit somewhat out of date.
For comparison, our latest household cost was 11.6c/kWh total, including sales tax and a 0.1c/kWh add-on to promote renewable energy. This is for the south-eastern USA in local currency.
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Re:Coal is an anachronism . (Score:5, Insightful)
You ask that because you're not interested in the actual generating costs, you'd prefer to talk about prices inflated with many government fees and taxes. You want to then harp on about renewables being expensive because one country in the world has high electricity prices because of those fees.
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I'm sick of the stupid argument that because one country charges people a lot of taxes on electricity that by extension all renewables are expensive, that's a non sequitur.
Energy generation and anti-renewables talk is full of fallacious bollocks.
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What is the price of electricity in Germany for industry and households?
Less than what it was when the grid was mostly coal and nuclear. Unfortunately the government has increased taxes. Though, unlike the USA you actually get something other than weapons for your tax dollars in Europe so it's not actually unfortunate at all.
Main => Largest (Score:2)
"Main source of power" infers that it meets 50% or more of the power requirements. I think a more accurate verbiage is "Largest source of power".
Re:Main = Largest (Score:3)
Re: Main = Largest (Score:3)
For what it's worth I interpreted "main" as "over half". I actually thought "wow Germany is over half on wind power?!", until I read the summary.
I think there's ambiguity in the word "main" that would be eliminated if they used "largest"
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You can eliminate all of Germany's wind and they can still supply their needed electrical generation. They really can't shut any coal down without adding gas.
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Wind only exists on the grid because coal and gas and other sources can provide reliability
"Mammoths were not the main source of food for mammoth hunters because *occasionally* they hunted deer." Do you see how ridiculous that claim sounds?
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Wind only exists on the grid because coal and gas and other sources can provide reliability
"Mammoths were not the main source of food for mammoth hunters because *occasionally* they hunted deer." Do you see how ridiculous that claim sounds?
I see how you entirely miss the point of my statement.
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This is a simple concept.
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There's nothing wrong with wind, people tend to get all worked up when we point out the facts that we need other sources in order to enable the use of wind to begin with.
Don't you just fix that (Score:2)
Isn't this just making it someone else's problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
Apologies if this is really dumb, but I don't really "get" the push for declaring wind as the end to fossil fuel power generation. Let me explain and perhaps someone can tell me why I'm wrong.
So wind is unreliable, it blows sometimes, not others so you need a base load. AFAIK this is simple fact. Therefore the more wind generation you have either you need a base load that can turn on a dime or you need to have a grid that lets you import and export power rapidly to someone else that can take your peaks and
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mrfaithful, I fear you are labouring under a misapprehension.
The argument you have stumbled into is not to do with science, technology, or even public policy.
It is essentially religious.
Re:Isn't this just making it someone else's proble (Score:5, Interesting)
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Discussed here [slashdot.org]. Also, the word you're looking for when you write "baseload that can turn on a dime" is "peaking" - although the cheaper wind, solar, and storage get, the less it's actually needed, and if current trends hold will be entirely unnecessary by the end of the decade.
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"It blows sometimes"
Small scale yes, large scale no.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#... [nullschool.net]
With a big enough grid there won't be much variation. But still other methods are needed such as having 100,000,000 electric cars in Europe that can charge up depending of current electricity price and sell some electricity back to the grid if the owner wants to allow that. Pumped hydro has a lot of potential, How much pumped hydro energy storage could we get if we went for a project as big as the channel tunnel?
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How much pumped hydro energy storage could we get if we went for a project as big as the channel tunnel?
I could get behind wind if the breathless stories of massive rollouts also included paragraphs saying "and it will be partnered with hydro/battery/etc. to store the excess which could provide N hours of full load in the worst case." Instead it's all about selling it on the grid. I'm probably just getting a false impression from the media. There's a strong probability that the people who know what they are doing have a sensible plan but the meat is being lost in the translation to political point scoring in
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Renewables are the only form of energy that are long term sustainable, it makes the most sense to invest in that especially given how clean and cheap they are and costs are still dropping.
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Therefore the more wind generation you have either you need a base load that can turn on a dime or you need to have a grid that lets you import and export power rapidly to someone else that can take your peaks and help you ride out your valleys. All good so far? My problem is that doesn't this imply that they are just exporting their problems with their wind farms? Germany has lots of green power but they do so at the expense of say, France, who are providing them nuclear when they need it and helping them consume wind power when they don't. And so in reality it's just a race to get the most "green" power you can and try not to be the bag holder for the bulk of the dirty base load generation that enables all these "green" nations.
Nuclear power can't turn on and off on a dime. It has the slowest switching time of any of the fuel-consuming resources.
Nuclear is basically green isn't it? i.e. hardly polluting. I thought the ideal was to have a combination of nuclear and renewable energy sources.
Who cares if the wind is in the North of the country and nuclear is in the South? or if the wind is in the central part of Europe and the nuclear in the West? I don't understand why your analysis cares about Germany vs France.
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I don't understand why your analysis cares about Germany vs France.
Germany stopped nuclear for political reasons, my assumption is that someday France will want to do the same. That's it, that's the lynchpin of my argument. If that never happens then it's just down to economic factors about how much each nation charges the other for whatever power they need and making sure the generator of last resort doesn't abusively raise prices.
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The baseload myth [reneweconomy.com.au]
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So wind is unreliable, it blows sometimes, not others so you need a base load.
The larger the geographic surface area, the more constant the production becomes. Switching to a larger degree of renewable sources requires strong interconnections across the entire continent (and if possible even beyond, like Northern Africa; geopolitical issues come into play then though, although we've never been reluctant to buy their oil).
In addition, you indeed need baseload and buffers. The VITO (Flemish Institute for Technical Innovation) made this excercice for Flanders in 2012, to transition to 1
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Overrated.
> Germany has lots of green power but they do so at the expense of say, France, who are providing them nuclear when they need it
Germany provides France with power when they have to shut down their nuclear power plants in summer, again, because the colling water is too hot. This happens frequently and it will happen more frequently because of climate change.
We have an European grid to support each other.
Germany can do anything it sets it's mind to. (Score:2, Informative)
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You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don't care for him.
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And it was actually close!
It wasn't actually close.
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Wind Power (Score:2, Funny)
Why didn't we do this ages ago? (Score:2)
diversify (Score:2)
The key to minimizing your losses in the stock market is to diversify.
One day, there will be no wind and no sun for a whole week, and no fission nor coal nor gas nor oil power. Germans can stay warm though on smugness.
the hidden thing here (Score:3)
is that they needed to add tons of methane peaker plants, which went from 20% to 29% according to https://www.cleanenergywire.or... [cleanenergywire.org]
Why would anyone want to close fission reactors? (Score:3)
Unless dangerous old design of course. Otherwise, we are already incurring significant harm from climate change and any unnecessary carbon emission will make it even worse. Just build whatever new carbon neutral capacity makes sense in your area - solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, biogas. Once again, pointless drama and political posturing gets in a way of solving serious problems.
Re: Don't tell Americans fission is a bad thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there a reason why you're picking on America's 20% reliance on nuclear when France is 71% and Belgium is 48% reliant on nuclear?
The US may produce the most nuclear power in raw MW, but I certainly wouldn't argue that it's drinking the nuclear koolaid. If anything it's drinking the "methane is the 'transition' to clean energy" koolaid.
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Slashdot has a bunch of very vocal but terminally learning-impaired nuclear shills.
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Yeah, we had the third worst nuclear disaster in history. It killed ZERO people.
Not nearly so bad as the second worst nuclear disaster in history, which killed ONE person.
Mind you, the WORST nuclear disaster in history killed a couple hundred fire-fighters. Maybe. A lot of those guys would have been just as dead fighting a fire like that at a coal plant....
Note that, collectively, the three worst nuclear disasters in history killed about as many people as died in rush hour auto accidents THIS MORNING.
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Nuclear is the largest source of clean energy in the United States. It has saved 2 million lives. [acs.org]. That is a good thing.
8 million people die annually from fossil fuels. Nuclear only makes up 4% of world energy supply. The logical consequence is that the antinuclear movement is responsible for 10's of millions of deaths.
Nuclear is good. Antinuclear is evil.
Re: Don't tell Americans fission is a bad thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Europe as a whole is ensuring that there's sufficient storage and peaking capacity, and transmission capability to move power around, to deal with the renewables transition. It's not just "build and pray" (and never has been).
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What happens when france doesn't want to be Europe's nuclear base load whipping boy anymore? When Germany is giving itself green good boy points for replacing stable fossils with unstable renewables, France's politicians are going to want some of that political capital for themselves and it's only a matter of time before every nation has more unstable generation and not enough places to soak it up during the peaks and not enough sources to cover the troughs.
In other words, I'm of the opinion that wind/solar
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"What happens when france doesn't want to be Europe's nuclear base load whipping boy anymore?"
Norway and their hydro plants will provide any of the missing MW that is missing from the grid. Seems like you have no idea in how many ways national grids in Westerrn Europe are interconnected.
There are even auction houses to buy and sell energy in grids. Most companies have software that can reliably predict usage patterns for any given period. The same software can also predict in what ways different types of en
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You forgot the biggest one, Bird Deaths from Humans [weforum.org]: over 50 billion annually (mostly chickens)
That's not even counting Bird Deaths from Buildings. Reportedly, "Scientists estimate that at least 100 million and maybe as many as a billion birds die each year in the US when they collide with buildings."
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Did the birds die from covid or with covid?
The birds were already sick and going to die anyway.
More birds die from suicide and lack of jobs.
The President doesn't have the power anyway, the Governors killed all the birds.
Did I miss any?