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Power

Germany To Dedicate 2% Of Its Land To Wind Power Development (cleantechnica.com) 89

Posted by BeauHD from the bold-plans dept.
The new German government is proposing a bold new initiative to dramatically increase onshore wind power in the country by 2030. "If successful, the plan would add up to 10 gigawatts of new onshore wind capacity every year for the rest of the decade," reports CleanTechnica. "In total, 2% of Germany's land area will be set aside for wind energy generation. [T]he German government also plans to increase its offshore wind target to 30 GW by 2030." From the report: During a press conference, [the nation's new Green Minister for Economics and Climate, Robert Habeck] made it clear that wind energy, particularly onshore wind, will remain the most important source of electricity in Germany and is the key to further emission reductions, according to WindEurope. "The Energiewende is roaring again. Germany wants a huge expansion of onshore wind. And the Government fully understands that that requires faster permitting of new wind farms -- and they intend to deliver this ASAP with a dedicated new 'Onshore Wind Law.' Today's announcements mark the comeback of German leadership on renewables -- fantastisch!" says WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson.

Habeck intends to remove restraints on onshore wind development caused by concerns about radar installations for civilian and military aviation. He estimates the government plan could free up 4 to 5 GW of new wind projects currently blocked by aviation radar, and an additional 4 GW currently blocked by the military. Support for renewable energies will be paid from the state budget, reducing the burden on low income households and small businesses. The package is also said to define the energy transition as a 'matter of public interest' in order to prioritize wind energy projects over other forms of land use -- an important precondition to streamlining the permit process and finding new sites for wind energy projects.
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Germany To Dedicate 2% Of Its Land To Wind Power Development More

Germany To Dedicate 2% Of Its Land To Wind Power Development

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  • In the places that wind it practical in the US, it can provide 100% power. In other places solar. Combined with existing gas fired plants for backup, this is a proven solution to significantly cut back pollution immediately. As time goes on, if nuclear proves viable in the US, that can be added to the mix. Realistically it would be a matter of years to close all coal plants and cut back on the gas ones. It is just the politics of coal jobs that keep us from moving forward.
    • Electricity prices have been wild this winter in Finland. When typical prices are around 5cnt per KWH, now prices have averaged above 20cnt, and peaks have been over 1 euro. The issue is that during cold windless winter days no practical amount of renewables can provide the electricity needed.

      • Any practical wind power plant also includes a gas power plant as a backup.

        • Any practical wind power plant also includes a gas power plant as a backup.

          Gas plants have a place in the grid now and were key in surviving with Nuclear plants which are slow to adjust their output towards demand which is always variable, but as you get to a wind based grid, you can overbuild and use other wind plants in other locations as a backup for wind in one place. Europe already has a grid which stretches from the North of Scotland to Morocco and from Turkey to Norway. If this grid was sufficiently reinforced the need for gas support could be massively reduced.

          Gas plants

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Budenny ( 888916 )

            There are no plans for a European super grid. People have talked about it, but that is as far as it goes. Does Europe have a grid? Yes of sorts, there are links between countries.

            I notice on all these threads a total absence of any utility planners, professionals. But we have lots of people engaging in wishful thinking about (for instance) heat storage, pumped water storage, fantasies about the wind always blowing somewhere so all we have to do is put in enough transmission.

            Issues of scale and cost are

            • The European union has a unified internal energy market [europa.eu] which is so important that the UK is attempting to rejoin [reuters.com] despite Brexit. Some countries transfer much more electricity than they consume or generate [wikipedia.org] and huge countries have massive levels of transfer e.g. 36% of electricity in Germany (primarily incoming) or 20% of electricity in France (primarily outgoing).

              These are easily checked facts. The level of misinformation around power is quite astounding.

              • Germany exports far more power than it imports.
                You have to be carefully with "incoming" it could be a transit.

                The percentages change per year and season anyway greatly, so a cherry picked number of 36% and 20% might be true, but half a year later (or before) it looks completely different.

                • Germany exports far more power than it imports.
                  You have to be carefully with "incoming" it could be a transit.

                  The percentages change per year and season anyway greatly, so a cherry picked number of 36% and 20% might be true, but half a year later (or before) it looks completely different.

                  Yeah - that's definitely a fair comment. In fact the Wikipedia table I took those numbers from even has two different ways of calculating the same number with radically different results. I think, in fact, your comment shows exactly where the value is in having such a huge interconnected grid. Demand can change hugely, due to hot or cold weather. Peaks in each country depend very much on culture - people in the UK put on the kettle at the first advertising break in the evening which is completely separate

                  • Country by country trade is usually announced a day ahead (that is required by law). Or a month ahead if it is a long term contract, e.g. for an aluminium mill or steel mill, and then confirmed every day 24h ahead
                    Sudden trades to account for some misshape in a different country is rare (but it happens)
                    Every country has its own reserve power plants responsible to balance the local grid if something goes wrong.
                    Transport from country to country goes via transport grids. The grids ordinary people and small to m

            • Issues of scale and cost are never addressed,
              Sorry, which part of Germany is part of Europe, do you not grasp?

              Who the fuck cares about cost in Europe? We are rich, and not a third world country.

              I notice on all these threads a total absence of any utility planners, professionals.
              Who cares? It is a forum for nerds. If you want to talk to "utility planners" go into an professional energy forum. There are plenty.

              This is fantasy fiction, its not serious thought about how to run an electricity system or how to

          • Europe already has a grid which stretches from the North of Scotland to Morocco and from Turkey to Norway.
            Actually Europe is also integrated in the North-Eurpean-Panasian supergrid, from Ireland via Russia, Kazakhstan etc. to Mongolia.

        • Any practical wind power plant also includes a gas power plant as a backup.
          Usually, nope.
          They are backed up by other wind plants.

          Gas power is used for dispatching/balancing. We have ten times more wind power in Germany than gas.

      • That's interesting. Are there discussions of solutions? Can you do much hydro? What about geo-thermal? Seems like solar isn't any help during these periods, so just wondering what's being discussed.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fermion ( 181285 )
          Given part of climate change is variable rainfall, hydropower is not the solution it once was, although it can be used in conjunction with solar to reduce variability. I donâ(TM)t know why geothermal has not been commercialized to a greater extent.

      • The idea of European wide and maybe transcontinental power networks is that Finland can still get power from wherever it's windy or sunny. There's plenty of sunshine somewhere, most of the time

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fermion ( 181285 )
          There has been numerous power cuts that are a result of grid failure if we are looking at five or six nines uptime, grid expansion is not a solution.

  • Not only due wind only, but due our world basically running on em.
    A good enough battery basically solve all the power problems we have.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xlsior ( 524145 )
      Keep in mind that there are other ways to store power than traditional batteries. You can also store potential energy by creating temperature differentials or doing things like pumping water up high and then harvest their potential energy again by it running turbines on the way down.

      For an example consider concentrated solar power collector plants, which use the suns rays to super-heat molten sodium to temperatures of 1,000F or so. At night after the sun goes down, the molten sodium contains enough residu

      • You can also store potential energy by creating temperature differentials

        That is extremely inefficient. Round-trip efficiency of thermal storage is about 40%.

        or doing things like pumping water up high

        Few places have the appropriate geography for pumped storage.

        For an example consider concentrated solar power collector plants

        Thermal-solar is a dead technology. A few projects were built a decade ago in Spain and California, but the falling price of PV panels has made thermal-solar obsolete.

        which use the suns rays to super-heat molten sodium

        No, thermal-solar uses molten salt, not metallic sodium, for obvious reasons.

        • or doing things like pumping water up high

          Few places have the appropriate geography for pumped storage.

          But almost everywhere has appropriate geography for drilling deep holes and moving large weights up and down.

          • But almost everywhere has appropriate geography for drilling deep holes and moving large weights up and down.

            Sure, if money is no object. But in that case, you can just burn money.

        • Thermal-solar is a dead technology. A few projects were built a decade ago in Spain and California, but the falling price of PV panels has made thermal-solar obsolete.

          There is plenty of technology development in thermal solar. That's a really valuable technology in Morocco which generates huge amounts of PV electricity and sells it to Europe. The thermal plants can store energy for when it's dark and then use the transmission links built for the PV basically for free or cover for times when wind is low and they need energy locally. A 0.8GW (!!) plant is currently being built [solarpaces.org]. They use thermal solar to pre-heat salt and then heat it further with excess energy from PV.

          • This is a definite problem but the fact is that there's still huge underused potential in Canada, in Norway and in China.
            Actually basically everywhere, unless your landscape is like Netherlands or Denmark.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The best way to store thermal energy is to then use it as thermal energy. For example, cool your house at night by an extra couple of degrees, so that you don't need to run the AC during the day.

          In China they have deployed municipal A/C that makes use of thermal storage. Water is chilled and pumped around a big loop, serving businesses in the city. Naturally they make use of cheap overnight electricity to reduce the daytime load.

          • There is cogeneration: Since only 33% of the heat of a thermal power plant is converted into electricity, it is very tempting to use the heat for heating homes and for industry. There are even a few example of municipal heating which use that principle. Big potential energy savings.

            But i am being told the main obstacle to this is the cost of the pipes. Sad. I hear the same things to explain why the are so little insulated buildings: It makes senses technically but it is expensive and there are not enough pe

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Z80a ( 971949 )

              If you created a market that allow selling this heat somehow, i bet the pipes etc would just "appear out of thin air"

      • Don't forget sleds. If you have a nice mountain or hill you can simply move a large enough mass up the hill when power is abundant, than when you need power using a controlled release, you harvest the energy from the shed. This has trade-offs with pumpted hydro. I think the amount of concreate needed is much less and you don't have to deal with evaporation. I think it's a bit more limited though in geography.

    • We are more likely to get fusion power than a battery that can cheaply fuel a city overnight.

    • This is a good read: https://www.greenbiz.com/artic... [greenbiz.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vakuona ( 788200 )

        I am sure that eventually, humans could find ways of storing electrical energy in batteries etc.

        The current electricity generation capacity in the world is on the order of 10,000 GW. The total battery manufacturing capacity is expected to get to 2,000 GWh in 2028 (was 290GWh in 2018). To put that in perspective, to store 1 hour of the world's current generation, you would need the equivalent of 5 years' worth of the projected battery production capacity in 6 years time. To have a day's storage will require

  • We dedicated the entirety of our government to generating warm wind!

    What do you mean that isn't the same?

    • We dedicated the entirety of our government to generating warm wind!

      I believe you can also generate and burn methane from bull-shit and burn it. Whilst it still generates CO2, it's much better than releasing the output into the world.

  • This has scuppered high potential wind projects in the uk for decades. always at the 11th hour of the planning process.
    Maybe the Germans have ugraded from cold-war era radar.

  • Forget two percent. If the US dedicated just one percent of its land to solar, say in the deserts of Arizona, California, New Mexico or Texas, we could surpass the entire US energy demand. Reference: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy08... [nrel.gov]

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Budenny ( 888916 )

      No, we could not. Obviously we could not.

      Yes, we could produce huge amounts of electricity, but only when the sun is shining. So we could not even supply the US electricity demand.

      As for supplying the entire US energy demand, that is even more fanciful. You might be able to generate that much electricity, but there is no way you could use it to meet the demand that there is, when and where it happens.

      Realistic thinking about this needs to take account of two prime considerations.

      One, the rest of the world,

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        The idea that solar not generate at night (the so-called dunkelflaute problem) rules it out as a major part of the long term solution is overblown. The technology exists now to solve that problem -- grid storage -- it just has to get much cheaper (which it is about to [intelligentliving.co]). The fact that you "waste" energy in storage losses isn't the real practical problem. It doesn't matter if you lose a joule of energy whose marginal cost was zero. The real challenge is economic. You need to get the cost of operating the

      • Look at the positions of China and India as prime examples. They are just not buying into the concept of a climate emergency, and they are consistently refusing to consider lowering emissions. They will do some token gestures, they will install some wind and solar. But they will burn as much coal as is needed to supply their increasing demand for electricity, and they are not making and will not make any serious attempts to limit ICE vehicles.
        You seem to be extremely out of the loop.

        Who again is world's le

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Budenny ( 888916 )

          How much wind and solar they install doesn't show anything. The best evidence of what they think about climate is what they do.

          Think about it like this. The Chinese live in a flood prone country which is highly at risk historically of untoward weather events affecting food production. If the more extreme predictions of disasters from climate change come about, China will have a far worse time than most countries. The very low lying ones will perhaps be worst off, but China's disaster will be on a gigant

          • German wind turbines have nothing to do with what the rest of the world is doing.

            And your pseudo pro nuclear rant is not thought out well.

            What the funk is the difference if we produce 100% of our power with wind and solar versus with new reactors? None, obviously. At least regarding CO2 emissions at production side of the electricity.

            Regarding China: I would suggest to look on a map.

            All regions are flood prone? Hah hah ha ha!

            But they seem to be serious. I wish people who think along these lines could explai

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        Did you copy that directly from the Heritage Foundation newsletter or did you just get the runs after swallowing it?

  • ...Germany will become an awful place to visit, with all those wind towers scattered around what once was a lovely landscape.

    • Germany will become an awful place to visit, with all those wind towers scattered around what once was a lovely landscape

      Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm sure there were complains about the old windmills for milling wheat or water pumping, and now they are tourist attractions.

    • ...Germany will become an awful place to visit, with all those wind towers scattered around what once was a lovely landscape.

      I take it you only visit Germany for the farmland? Must be because ultimately that's where these things are going. If you want to really see a lovely landscape go visit one of the many national parks, you know, places where they won't be putting windfarms. But hey if farmland is what tickles your fancy then more power to you.

  • Remember coal has killed more people this hour than non-soviet nuclear ever has. Killing innocent people is a Nazi/German trait. Fuck Nazis
  • Is this power used for the Germans, or to power US data centers?
    That is the question. If this power will go the Germans, that is perfect, but if it will go Americans, that might not be the best use of German land.

  • https://www.iea.org/reports/el... [iea.org]

    Just read the summary.

    "After small drop in 2020, global electricity demand grew by 6% in 2021. It was the largest ever annual increase in absolute terms (over 1 500 TWh) and the largest percentage rise since 2010 after the financial crisis. Around half of the global growth took place in China, where demand increased by an estimated 10%. Global electricity demand was boosted by a rapid economic recovery, combined with more extreme weather conditions than in 2020, including a

  • Has PLENTY of wind power. Why not fit a turbine on the lederhosen.

  • https://www.solar.sheffield.ac... [sheffield.ac.uk]

    By the way, anyone who thinks solar is a real contributor to emission reduction should look at this.

    It not only varies from day to night. It varies from day to day. Not predictably.

    This is not fit for purpose as a source of electricity generation for an industrialized economy in the north. Maybe for low power small lighting provision in poor countries in very sunny parts of the globe. But not to power homes for cooking, heating, EVs and for powering industry.

    By the time

  • the nation's new Green Minister for Economics and Climate

    It would be so fitting if Germany's climate policy was being set by Little Green Men.

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