Greece Runs On 100% Renewables For the First Time On Record (electrek.co) 104
Greece was powered entirely by renewables for the first time ever last week, according to the country's independent power transmission operator (IPTO). Electrek reports: On Monday, IPTO said that renewables accounted for 100% of power generation in Greece for at least five hours, reaching a record high of 3,106 megawatt hours at 0800 GMT: "For the first time in the history of the Greek electricity system, the demand was covered 100% from renewable energy sources. With the interconnections implemented by IPTO on land and sea, new electrical capacity is created for even greater [renewable energy sources] penetration that will make our energy mix even greener in the coming years." Reuters notes: Greece aims to attract about 30 billion of euros in European funds and private investments to upgrade its electricity grid and more than double its green energy capacity to account for at least 70% of its energy mix by 2030. It plans to have 25 gigawatt of installed renewable energy capacity from about 10 gigawatt now but analysts say Athens might reach that target sooner.
Until they need maintenance... (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Until they need maintenance... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure what you're implying. Pretty sure non-renewable energy generation requires maintenance too, possibly on weekends and/or out-of-hours...
Re:Until they need maintenance... (Score:5, Funny)
> Not sure what you're implying.
He's implying that Greek people are lazy and won't work on weekends or off-hours even if it means losing power.
Mod me down for answering the question that was asked. It's the slashdot way.
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Current power systems don't require maintenance on weekends? Ours do. They even require it sometimes at 2am after a storm. A transformer might blow on a street and require it. Greece doesn't currently have these problems now?
Re: Until they need maintenance... (Score:2)
He was commenting on the Greeks, not the technology. Kinda cringy, not agreeing with the OP but that's what he was commenting on.
Re: Until they need maintenance... (Score:3)
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They can take the money they were paying for maintenance on the fossil fuel electricity generation and spend it on maintenance for the renewable electricity generation. Surely you can see that?
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I think, although I'm not 100% sure, that the GP was just trying to get in a personal dig at his own culture rather than specifically at renewable power. He's probably an expatriate who lived in another country for a while, then visited home again and ran into all kinds of little frustrations, like the stores being closed a lot earlier and for an hour or so around lunchtime, etc. I'm not just talking about Greece here, I know it can be a bit of a shock to travel from one country where the businesses are all
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I'm first generation Iranian-American and I can attest that Iran is the same way. Not only is everyone way more lax than people over in the U.S., they're also more lazy. Some of that is probably due to motivation. Not everyone is naturally motivated and If you don't have any incentive to do a better job, then you probably wouldn't. The laziness and the lax attitude really hinders things that need to get done.
Case in point, I'm in the process of trying to get some paperwork done over there. Even though
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Please, by all that's holy, punctuate!
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EU (Score:5, Interesting)
Greece is part of the EU, has been since 1981. So they are in a good position to develop renewable resources and export them, as other EU nations will be more willing to rely on them than if they were outside the Union. We will likely see more and more integration of EU member state's grids, with renewable power flowing from where it is available to where it is needed.
If Greece can hit 100% already then it suggests that they could become major exporters. Renewable power will be the new oil for some countries, e.g. Scotland.
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They could but as far as I can tell, they're pretty far from it and in fact rely on importing energy whenever it's not particularly sunny or windy: https://app.electricitymaps.co... [electricitymaps.com]
Re:EU (Score:4, Informative)
As amazing as 100% sounds, it was 3,106 megawatt hours between 3am and 8am, from a renewable generation capability of around 10 gigawatts (according to TFS). So they achieved this when there was hardly any demand. How much do they need at peak demand or even just during a regular day?
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Specific to Texas, how much of the wind capacity is connected to the ERCOT grid? I thought the majority was used for export, but will admit I have no idea what the actual numbers are.
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Technically, DC links are isolated from the grid; frequency control is what the wider grid gives you. Capacity-wise I don't disagree. Interesting that all the wind is integrated in.
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Achieving reliability purely by overbuilding wind is something that will never make economic sense. We're going to need a way to store and transport large amounts of energy. I think it will be hydrogen. But short of that, getting to say 2/3 renewable and 1/3 natural gas in the foreseeable future isn't so bad, it's a massive reduction from mainly burning coal like we did in the past. At some point it will even be cheaper to do
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The summary doesn't have enough data to make many conclusions. Their renewable mix could contain 5GW of solar which obviously wouldn't be doing much in the wee hours of the morning. Likewise, you have no idea how much renewable energy was curtailed if demand was below 1GW.
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Modded troll? The Russian bot farm is out in force today.
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LOL cute how another troll complains about comments being moderated accordingly (and accurately).
Found the AC idiot who modded this troll. I suggest you go look up the word in the dictionary. You clearly have no concept of what it means since you've used it incorrectly twice now.
Re: EU (Score:2)
If Greece can hit 100% already then it suggests that they could become major exporters.
FFS were talking about a five hour window of time where Greece generated enough electricity to satisfy demand. Five hours. Period.
I haven't read the article, but I can almost guarantee you that during those glorious five hours, Greece still had all their fossil fuel/coal/whatever non-renewable power generators running.
What they are really saying is that during a five hour period, Greece generated 100% of its unneeded/unused (waste) electricity from non-renewable sources.
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I was here on Slashdot 20 years ago. People were predicting that electricity would become something only intermittently available. The grid would immediately collapse if too many wind turbines and solar panels were connected. Every time there was a gust of wind or the sun came out from behind a cloud, your electronics would explode as the voltage surged.
It really was batshit insane back then. It's nice to be proven right.
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I was here on Slashdot 20 years ago. People were predicting that electricity would become something only intermittently available.
The people on Slashdot 20 years ago were right. They correctly predicted the cost of electricity from renewables exclusively would be prohibitively expensive and environmentally damaging.
The grid would immediately collapse if too many wind turbines and solar panels were connected. Every time there was a gust of wind or the sun came out from behind a cloud, your electronics would explode as the voltage surged.
The low level issues you appear to be hyper focused on can be solved thru schemes like buffer storage, transmission improvements and signaling mechanisms (e.g. backoff frequency shift) they are a non-issue.
The macro issue that actually matters is how to create a grid that can reliably handle twice todays load on demand at
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The people on Slashdot 20 years ago were right. They correctly predicted the cost of electricity from renewables exclusively would be prohibitively expensive and environmentally damaging.
Oh yeah, that was the other nonsense. Turns out renewables are the cheapest form of electricity generation we have. Cheaper than gas, cheaper than coal, cheaper than nuclear. Not just a bit, but a small fraction of the cost.
Then there was all the stuff about killing birds. Turns out windmills only kill as many birds as your typical nuclear plant, and way fewer than gas and coal.
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Oh yeah, that was the other nonsense. Turns out renewables are the cheapest form of electricity generation we have. Cheaper than gas, cheaper than coal, cheaper than nuclear. Not just a bit, but a small fraction of the cost.
You are still looking at trees and unwilling or unable to notice the forest. It isn't cost as in LCOE that matters in a future dominated by intermittent renewables it's value that energy provides to the overall grid.
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The Headline is a Complete Lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Electricity is typically only 20% of a country's energy needs, which also range from transportation to agricultural.
It's nowhere near accurate to say these countries have run on 100% renewable energy. Electricity, perhaps. But not energy.
It only serves to give us an extremely distorted view on how easily solved the energy equation can be with renewables.
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There are two important things that TFA seems to have missed here.
1. This proves that a grid running on 100% renewable energy is stable and won't simply collapse as some had predicted.
2. We have a path to a clean energy future, where we replace fossil fuels with renewable electricity. Electric cars, electric heating, electric everything.
We need to build more pylons^H^H^H^H^H windmills and solar.
Re:The Headline is a Complete Lie (Score:5, Informative)
They were only running on 100% renewables for 5 hours, that's not really stable. After those 5 hours, they required energy from other sources to keep the grid stable.If you took away those other sources, it would indeed have collapsed.
It's likely that a good proportion of the greek renewable energy comes from solar, which would have tapered off in the afternoon and of course stopped completely once it went dark.
All this shows is that renewables can power the grid under ideal conditions, but without backup you will get blackouts when the conditions are not ideal.
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No, the claim was that if you have a 100% renewable energy grid then it would collapse because renewable energy output is variable and it's impossible to control the amount of energy entering the grid with enough precision to keep it from oscillating and the various sources getting out of phase.
That is demonstrably not true. Not just in Greece, but in other countries where at times the bulk of electricity supply is renewable.
It also disproves the concept of "base load", because plants that are supposedly su
Re:The Headline is a Complete Lie (Score:4, Informative)
I disagree: that claim hasn't been disproven by this. There was barely any demand for the period. If you have a 100% renewable energy grid, you're supplying electricity from renewables at all times of the day and year including peak demand, whereas this was apparently at one of the lowest periods of demand where they didn't even need all of their renewable capacity. This even hasn't even come close to disproving that claim.
Re:The Headline is a Complete Lie (Score:4, Informative)
That is demonstrably not true. Not just in Greece, but in other countries where at times the bulk of electricity supply is renewable.
No the claim is still true. Even a grid which is 100% renewable powered does it based on power consumed locally vs power produced. In no example to date has a grid run with all base load sources powered down. The story here is that green energy exceeded local power demand, and excess (including that from baseload plants which were still running at the time) was exported over the 8GW+ of interconnectors that Greece has with its immediate neighbours.
Additionally for your claim to hold true you not only need to power down all base load plants, but open up interconnectors since they still provide grid stability over the interconnector link.
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No, the claim was that if you have a 100% renewable energy grid then it would collapse because renewable energy output is variable and it's impossible to control the amount of energy entering the grid with enough precision to keep it from oscillating and the various sources getting out of phase.
Who is making claims about "the various sources getting out of phase"? The basic issue with intermittent renewables is availability of energy when needed not simply when convenient to produce.
It also disproves the concept of "base load", because plants that are supposedly supplying that base load go idle when there is enough renewable energy to cover them. Or as in the UK when they can't spool down the nuclear plants so they literally pay people to use electricity because there's too much of it.
The problem of constant reliable energy from intermittent unreliable sources is an optimization problem with many different variables: overprovisioning, storage, transmission scale, demand response and mixture of reliable sources. It is a complex problem requiring modeling to get right for each region. You can't jus
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They were only running on 100% renewables for 5 hours, that's not really stable. After those 5 hours, they required energy from other sources to keep the grid stable.If you took away those other sources, it would indeed have collapsed. It's likely that a good proportion of the greek renewable energy comes from solar, which would have tapered off in the afternoon and of course stopped completely once it went dark.
All this shows is that renewables can power the grid under ideal conditions, but without backup you will get blackouts when the conditions are not ideal.
No, it shows that we need to put more money into low cost grid storage development.
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As much as I appreciate seeing more solar, I'm not sure it proves much.
Greece is not a large country and its over-production of electricity can probably be absorbed easily by the EU, it won't put the grid in danger. It doesn't mean Germany or France could do the same (not considering the solar factor).
We don't have a path to a clean energy future, at least not just building solar and windmills. We're still far from having proven that they can cover our needs, even just talking about electricity.
In terms
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But for the US, you still have to transport the power from the huge areas with little to no population to the edges of the country where most people live. Not ideal.
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That's going to be less than 1400 miles for the most part depending on how the grid is designed (and yes I'm aware that it would be further from the dead center of the country to say, the tip of Florida, but the central areas we're talking about are pretty broad too, so the edges are still that close to even the furthest contiguous parts of the country). A max of about 8% transmission loss on HVDC lines. Not ideal, sure. Ideal would be 0% loss, but we're going to need better superconductors for that to be p
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You require more vespene gas.
Re: The Headline is a Complete Lie (Score:2)
No.
The grid was able for EXACTLY 5 hours to not rely on non-renewable energy, that's it.
Currently, electric vehicles are a rarity in Greece, as their car fleet includes greater and greater numbers of electric vehicles, we can't just declare that the Greek grid can run on 100% renewables because it did for 5 glorious hours... Greece would see increased demand for electricity and Greece will have to install an appropriately large storage solution to sustain electric service when the sun goes down, neither of
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The word "energy" was not in the headline, nor was "electricity".
Dumbass.
Obviously a headline like that meant: 100% renewable electricity. But thank you for spoiling good news with your nitpicking idiocity.
Re: The Headline is a Complete Lie (Score:2)
This is the headline:
Greece Runs On 100% Renewables For the First Time On Record
It's a non-se social, meaningless statement, akin to "America runs on Dunkin".
Does the headline include airplanes, boats, or cars? Did the coal power plants all shut down? No. For 5 hours Greece generated a lot of excess electricity by burning non-renewables, they didn't shut down anything during those 5 hours.
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No. For 5 hours Greece generated a lot of excess electricity by burning non-renewables, they didn't shut down anything during those 5 hours.
Of course.
Are you an idiot? Why would anyone shut down a coal plant when he perfectly knows he needs it again in ~5h
No idea against what your hate spread was directed, though.
Re: The Headline is a Complete Lie (Score:2)
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Is that something that happens a lot in your parallel dimension? LOL
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No, it only distorts the autists. No one reads that headline with the expectation that Greece is using renewable for all primary energy consumption, especially since power is mentioned in the first line.
Please calm down a bit.
I trust it (Score:5, Funny)
If there is one think Greece is known for within the EU, it is impeccable, accurate, truthful, diligent and responsible accounting, taxation and record keeping!
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If there is one think Greece is known for within the EU, it is impeccable, accurate, truthful, diligent and responsible accounting, taxation and record keeping!
Yeah, well, it's no worse than most countries in that regard, especially if you ignore the German propaganda that was intended to shift the blame for the 2008 crisis onto Greece and avoid any attention being given to the fact that Germany broke more fiscal rules for longer in the run up to the collapse, and to the fact that German banks managed to wangle it (partly due to the propaganda) that they were protected and rewarded while the PIGS got slaughtered to pay for Frankfurt's rule-breaking.
Re:I trust it (Score:5, Informative)
According to all Greeks I've talked to, Greece is worse than other countries in the EU in that regard. The 2008 crisis (and blame) actually had a positive effect on the country, and COVID helped as well, as it gave the government the power to force the population to sanitize their accounting if they wanted any government help.
That's why you can pay pretty much everywhere with a credit card now in Greece which was not the case just a decade ago, where all the cash would be unaccounted for to avoid paying taxes. Also, unfinished buildings (with a few metal rods on the roof) was a norm in the past to avoid paying housing taxes; now they pay taxes as soon as they've got electricity and water.
All that being said, I'm 100% with you on the German/Greece situation in 2008 where German banks benefited from the crisis as all EUR investments shifted from Greece (and Italy, Spain, Portugal) to Germany and other north countries. Germany has been dictating the European Central Bank policy for a long time to suit their needs, putting the economies of south European countries in trouble, then blaming them for basically not having the same needs. But it's a winner-loser game: Germany's economy works well also because the economy of other European countries don't. So instead of helping southern countries improving develop their economy, Germany is often burying them even further.
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Germany has been dictating the European Central Bank policy for a long time to suit their needs, putting the economies of south European countries in trouble
That is not how central banks work. Facepalm.
But it's a winner-loser game: Germany's economy works well also because the economy of other European countries don't.
That obviously makes no sense. An Economy is not working in isolation. Either all work well, or none is. Dumbass.
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Germany has been dictating the European Central Bank policy for a long time to suit their needs, putting the economies of south European countries in trouble
That is not how central banks work. Facepalm.
But it's a winner-loser game: Germany's economy works well also because the economy of other European countries don't.
That obviously makes no sense. An Economy is not working in isolation. Either all work well, or none is. Dumbass.
You don't really understand how the EU, and especially the Eurozone, works, do you?
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You don't really understand how the EU, and especially the Eurozone, works, do you?
Actually I'm certain, I do.
But if you want to explain a mistake, feel free to do so.
Re:I trust it (Score:4, Insightful)
That is not how central banks work. Facepalm.
Please educate me. Germany has been pushing for a strong neoliberalism stance, against deficit and money creation in the Euro zone. That is screwed in many ways, but more importantly, benefits Germany so there is little reason for saying anything different.
An Economy is not working in isolation. Either all work well, or none is. Dumbass.
Yeah, like Germany is so much better at managing its economy and that's why it's doing great when Greece and others aren't. Nice internal propaganda, but the reality is more complex. Yes, Germany is doing great in terms of exports and that's not something I'm questioning. And obviously there is the world economy. But the EUR market is working in isolation. If you have Euros and you want to invest them somewhere, but Greek companies are in danger of going down due to a trust panic which Germany refuses to mitigate for political reasons, you're going to invest in German companies which are safe.
Sure, there were reasons for the trust erosion in Greece. But Germany decided to made the crisis worse, until Greece had no chance but to accept whatever condition Germany imposed. All in all, what I meant was that Germany is making itself looking better than it really is, just because it is currently in pretty good shape, and pretending anyone following its model would do as good. Except a singificant part of its success is not because of its inherent value but because of the demise of other EU countries.
Just like NL and IR are playing a tax game, sucking money from other countries, they can always blame southern states for their sloppy management, but their success is also in large part thanks to those countries. There are winners and losers within the Euro zone and the EU is not doing enough to make sure the countries fates are tied so that your "Either all work well or none is" is true. It's not. Smartass.
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but more importantly, benefits Germany so there is little reason for saying anything different.
Perhaps you should educate is, and explain why that benefitted Germany?
Sure, there were reasons for the trust erosion in Greece. But Germany decided to made the crisis worse,
Germany did not decide anything. But perhaps you have an example of something you think:
a) Germany decided
b) harmed Greece
?
All in all, what I meant was that Germany is making itself looking better than it really is, just because it is current
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especially if you ignore the German propaganda that was intended to shift the blame for the 2008 crisis onto Greece and avoid any attention being given to the fact that Germany broke more fiscal rules for longer in the run up to the collapse
That is nonsense.
The Greek crisises are all greek made.
The rest is even more nonsense, but thanks for the anti German propaganda. You might server your purpose, pawn.
"Mayday Mayday, we have an emergency!"
"What is the emergency about?"
"Our beer is empty!!"
"Grave emergency
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Right well, thanks for that. Hope you feel better soon.
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As long as idiots like you claim Germany has any influence on Greece idiocity: no, UI do not feel better.
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Yeah, well, it's no worse than most countries in that regard
LOL WTF. Greece and to a lesser extent Italy and Spain are infamous in this regard. It's not German propaganda. It's a fact that goes back many decades and has been called out by pretty much every western nation at some point or another including international groups like the IMF, and the ECB.
There are entire books written about the unsustainability of the Greek's approach to accounting and taxation.
Re: I trust it (Score:2)
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If there is one think Greece is known for within the EU, it is impeccable, accurate, truthful, diligent and responsible accounting, taxation and record keeping!
True, the only thing less trustworthy than lies, damn lies and statistics is lies, damn lines and Greek statistics.
Five hours! (Score:1, Insightful)
"On Monday, IPTO said that renewables accounted for 100% of power generation in Greece for at least five hours..."
Only 8,755 more hours to achieve a year, then! Let's hope the wind keeps blowing and the sun shining (although, come to think of it, the chances of that happening at night are pretty low).
Re:Five hours! (Score:5, Informative)
Let's hope the wind keeps blowing and the sun shining (although, come to think of it, the chances of that happening at night are pretty low).
The wind doesn't blow at night where you live? Weird.
PS: Greece has about twice as much wind as solar and wind is growing much faster.
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The wind doesn't blow at night where you live? Weird.
Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't! You can have many, many nights in a row when the wind is at like 5% capacity factor. Check the last week or so for example here: https://www.rte-france.com/en/... [rte-france.com]
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Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't! You can have many, many nights in a row when the wind is at like 5% capacity factor.
Fascinating.
It is almost as if certain types of power generation are better than others depending on the location and its particular circumstances.
This is truly a profound insight. You should tell someone of importance. I am sure they have not thought of this.
They probably still think that hydroelectric power generation is the best solution in the Sahara desert.
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The wind doesn't blow at night where you live? Weird.
Not weird at all. It's actually common in most of the world that wind tapers off with temperature. Peak average windspeed across the year typically occurs around 16:00, and is generally quite still by around 22:00 and stays that way until around 09:00.
No the wind really doesn't blow at night (on average).
Re: Five hours! (Score:2)
So Greece is running on Wind turbines? Is that their plan to 100% power the island? I wasn't aware they had that much open space on the island...
It takes 3/4 of an acre per megawatt generated [sciencing.com] - how many night-time megawatts will Greece need? Oh, they want to install a storage system, big enough to 'run' the island for up to 12 hours/day? That sounds expensive, but I'm sure with the full financial backing of all their EU members the Greeks can do it for just 200% of actual cost!
Complete lie (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.energy-charts.info... [energy-charts.info]
The total load in Greece is about 5000 MW. Out of it, on the mentioned period, they were producing about 500 MW from lignite and about 1100 MW from natural gas, and still importing about 200 MW from neighbors. As usual they probably meant "household demand" or "almost all".
It's a pity they did not said that just the next day (11th of October) starting from 6PM for about 12 hours the renewables produced no more than 10% of the demand. It's nice to have power from sun and wind, but it will not give you a constant and reliable output (a nuclear power plant will).
Re:Complete lie (Score:4, Insightful)
Also states that at some times, renewables accounted for less than 10% of load. People still want to use electricity when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, so you need to cater for this worst case scenario.
What solar does seem to be doing however, is reducing the need for gas (likely russian) during the daytime peak period.
Re: Complete lie (Score:2)
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It's also true that a lot/most Greek homes have solar hot water (perhaps some have a grid backup?), and there's not a great deal of central heating (and not that much A/C either, although I suspect they don't use even that much at this time of year). As such, the Greek "profile" for domestic energy usage is considerably different from most other countries.
That, and the misleading title/TFS/TFA aside, any such achievement is worth something. It shows that (whatever it is) is possible to do - that we don't al
Re: Complete lie (Score:2)
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Every time a small milestone is reached, all the naysayers come out to downplay the result. Many of them seem to think only in binary terms that since Greece is not on 100% renewables 100% of the time right now that small milestones over time do not matter. 10 years ago Greece would not have achieved 100% renewables for any amount of time. Greece is going to add more capacity in the future so this is not the end.
For me the cynics seem to forget that change takes time and that small milestones matter. For ex
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Why lie? Your link seems to confirm the headline: From 10/07 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM renewables produced more electricity than was consumed in Greece. There fossil plants still running, but exports were higher (> 1000 MW) than production from fossil plants ( 1000 MW) during that time.
not even true ... (Score:1)
source [entsoe.eu]
and COAL (Score:1)
don't forget to mention the COAL plants that were also running during that time.
Looks like total bullshit to me (Score:1)
Source [entsoe.eu]
Re:Looks like total bullshit to me (Score:5, Funny)
All their vehicles are electric already? (Score:2)
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They're in a pretty good position to do it because they've got a small, hilly country (EVs really make good in hill country due to regen) and a bunch of islands.
"Renewable" as in clear cutting forests? (Score:1)
Watch "Planet of the Humans."
Excellent! (Score:3)
Certain conservatives, politicians, oil company executives and other sociopaths will not be happy!
framing (Score:2)
All depends on how you frame the statistic.
China's "Great Leap Forward" where everyone was reduced to near-Medieval conditions and heating their houses with woodburning stoves, one could argue they were running "100% renewables!" too.
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I am also 100% renewable.... (Score:1)
I have a larger solar panel, good for about 400 watts. It charges two LiFePO batteries. I can run the house on these at night when I don't draw hardly any power for 4 to 5 hours.
I guess by this criteria, I run my house on 100% renewable, even though I draw power from the grid for over 20 hours a day.
So... bullshit.
Except Russian Oil (Score:1)
Earlier today... (Score:3)
Earlier today while driving to work, I turned off my engine and coasted downhill for two miles. For those two miles I used ZERO fossil fuels! Now, if I could just move my house to top of that hill and get my employer to relocate to the bottom of the hill, I could commute to work without burning fossil fuels... of course, I'll burn fossil fuels going home, but I'm certain Science can figure that out in the next few years...
Meh. (Score:2)
Five hours? Big deal.
Call me when Greece can shut down all their coal, natural gas, or other non-renewable power sources for 24 hours, then I'll be impressed.
Scale (Score:2)
So how would this scale up to much larger countries with larger power systems and demand?