> "Nuclear power mitigates storage needs, but only to a limited extent"
So you suggest we spend 10x as much to not solve Dunkelflautes.
This truly is getting quite sad. Who cares if the 1 in 36 year event is solved with fossil fuels, biofuels, synfuels, hydrogen or whatever?
We are literally talking the scenario happening once during a nuclear plants economic lifespan.
Do you build technologies which are extremely heavily weighted towards CAPEX to solve a problem happening once?
Of course not. You minimize CAPEX and accept high OPEX to solve it. Which might be rationing for a week in the 40 year period.
The study of course did not specify what level of renewables they implemented. What would a 20% overbuild lead to? 50%? It would still cost a fraction compared to new built nuclear power.
This is what is so funny with you nuclear bros. You cry about Dunkeflautes and reliability but then propose literally the worst solution for extreme events.
Take a look at France. They generally export quite large amounts of electricity. But whenever a cold spell hits that export flow is reversed to imports and they have to start up local fossil gas and coal based production.
What they have done is that they have outsourced the management of their grid to their neighbors and rely on 35 GW of fossil based electricity production both inside France and their neighbors grids. Because their nuclear power produces too much when no one wants the electricity and too little when it is actually needed.
Their neighbors are able to both absorb the cold spell which very likely hits them as well, their own grid as the French exports stops and they start exporting to France.
> This truly is getting quite sad. Who cares if the 1 in 36 year event is solved with fossil fuels, biofuels, synfuels, hydrogen or whatever?
Because it requires maintaining costly infrastructure that needs to provide more than 100% of normal generation for these cases.
And even without considering _extreme_ events, normal weather variations still require multi-day storage capacity which is _still_ prohibitively expensive.
> The study of course did not specify what level of renewables they implemented. What would a 20% overbuild lead to? 50%? It would still cost a fraction compared to new built nuclear power.
Renewables need 10x (1000%) overbuild to ride through Dunkelflaute in Germany. And that's a conservative estimate.
> But whenever a cold spell hits that export flow is reversed to imports and they have to start up local fossil gas and coal based production.
Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? We've asked you this more than once before, and we eventually have to ban accounts that keep doing this. I don't want to ban you.
The study was from 2005. I can find it, if you want.
> A few years ago ”even an hour” of storage was the impossible marker. Then it quickly became ”a day!!!” and now we are at a month without any solar or wind power.
No. The problem has been known for decades, but governments simply ignored it. That's why there's so much noise about hydrogen in Geramny. It's used to whitewash the natural gas.
LOL. Can't find any modern research can you? I love how the nuclear bro crowd never wants to step into 2025 and instead keeps living in the past.
> That's why there's so much noise about hydrogen in Geramny. It's used to whitewash the natural gas.
Nah. There's so much noise about hydrogen because the fossil and chemical industries in Germany rely on hydrocarbons. They want another complex gas based system to profit from.
We will likely keep a fleet of gas turbines around for emergency reserve duties for the coming decades. But you are trying to paint the emergency reserves as if they would be the entire grid. When they very much are not.
I quoted newer research in the next post. For your information, the article was actually from 1997.
And if you don't like the old research, the first investigation of the greenhouse effect was done by Svante Arrhenius in 1889.
> Nah. There's so much noise about hydrogen because the fossil and chemical industries in Germany rely on hydrocarbons.
And the second largest consumer of natural gas in Germany is household heating. It has to be replaced by electric heating, but it's not feasible with the current generating capacity.
> We will likely keep a fleet of gas turbines around for emergency reserve duties for the coming decades.
No. Germany will paint gas turbines in green color and then keep burning natural gas from Qatar, the USA, Nigeria, etc.
> And the second largest consumer of natural gas in Germany is household heating. It has to be replaced by electric heating, but it's not feasible with the current generating capacity.
Which is why we're expecting a large increase in grid size coming from renewables. Of course ignoring that heat pumps are amazing.
> No. Germany will paint gas turbines in green color and then keep burning natural gas from Qatar, the USA, Nigeria, etc.
Running out of arguments are you? Maybe you should read up on the ETS scheme in Europe? That is a component of why fossil gas electricity has become expensive in Europe outside of being forced to use LNG.
Here's a really nice overview: https://www.diw.de/documents/vortragsdokumente/220/diw_01.c.... (or the good old Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute#Droughts )
I love the conclusion from you overview:
> "Nuclear power mitigates storage needs, but only to a limited extent"
So you suggest we spend 10x as much to not solve Dunkelflautes.
This truly is getting quite sad. Who cares if the 1 in 36 year event is solved with fossil fuels, biofuels, synfuels, hydrogen or whatever?
We are literally talking the scenario happening once during a nuclear plants economic lifespan.
Do you build technologies which are extremely heavily weighted towards CAPEX to solve a problem happening once?
Of course not. You minimize CAPEX and accept high OPEX to solve it. Which might be rationing for a week in the 40 year period.
The study of course did not specify what level of renewables they implemented. What would a 20% overbuild lead to? 50%? It would still cost a fraction compared to new built nuclear power.
This is what is so funny with you nuclear bros. You cry about Dunkeflautes and reliability but then propose literally the worst solution for extreme events.
Take a look at France. They generally export quite large amounts of electricity. But whenever a cold spell hits that export flow is reversed to imports and they have to start up local fossil gas and coal based production.
What they have done is that they have outsourced the management of their grid to their neighbors and rely on 35 GW of fossil based electricity production both inside France and their neighbors grids. Because their nuclear power produces too much when no one wants the electricity and too little when it is actually needed.
Their neighbors are able to both absorb the cold spell which very likely hits them as well, their own grid as the French exports stops and they start exporting to France.
> This truly is getting quite sad. Who cares if the 1 in 36 year event is solved with fossil fuels, biofuels, synfuels, hydrogen or whatever?
Because it requires maintaining costly infrastructure that needs to provide more than 100% of normal generation for these cases.
And even without considering _extreme_ events, normal weather variations still require multi-day storage capacity which is _still_ prohibitively expensive.
> The study of course did not specify what level of renewables they implemented. What would a 20% overbuild lead to? 50%? It would still cost a fraction compared to new built nuclear power.
Renewables need 10x (1000%) overbuild to ride through Dunkelflaute in Germany. And that's a conservative estimate.
> But whenever a cold spell hits that export flow is reversed to imports and they have to start up local fossil gas and coal based production.
Why are Greens always lying? https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20240118-france-reclaims-title-...
France had a rough 2 years when they took offline multiple plants due to deferred maintenance and bad luck. Now it's back to normal.
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Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? We've asked you this more than once before, and we eventually have to ban accounts that keep doing this. I don't want to ban you.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
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It's not ok to post like this. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45021995 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45021981.
The study was from 2005. I can find it, if you want.
> A few years ago ”even an hour” of storage was the impossible marker. Then it quickly became ”a day!!!” and now we are at a month without any solar or wind power.
No. The problem has been known for decades, but governments simply ignored it. That's why there's so much noise about hydrogen in Geramny. It's used to whitewash the natural gas.
> The study was from 2005
LOL. Can't find any modern research can you? I love how the nuclear bro crowd never wants to step into 2025 and instead keeps living in the past.
> That's why there's so much noise about hydrogen in Geramny. It's used to whitewash the natural gas.
Nah. There's so much noise about hydrogen because the fossil and chemical industries in Germany rely on hydrocarbons. They want another complex gas based system to profit from.
We will likely keep a fleet of gas turbines around for emergency reserve duties for the coming decades. But you are trying to paint the emergency reserves as if they would be the entire grid. When they very much are not.
> LOL. Can't find any modern research can you?
I quoted newer research in the next post. For your information, the article was actually from 1997.
And if you don't like the old research, the first investigation of the greenhouse effect was done by Svante Arrhenius in 1889.
> Nah. There's so much noise about hydrogen because the fossil and chemical industries in Germany rely on hydrocarbons.
And the second largest consumer of natural gas in Germany is household heating. It has to be replaced by electric heating, but it's not feasible with the current generating capacity.
> We will likely keep a fleet of gas turbines around for emergency reserve duties for the coming decades.
No. Germany will paint gas turbines in green color and then keep burning natural gas from Qatar, the USA, Nigeria, etc.
> And the second largest consumer of natural gas in Germany is household heating. It has to be replaced by electric heating, but it's not feasible with the current generating capacity.
Which is why we're expecting a large increase in grid size coming from renewables. Of course ignoring that heat pumps are amazing.
> No. Germany will paint gas turbines in green color and then keep burning natural gas from Qatar, the USA, Nigeria, etc.
Running out of arguments are you? Maybe you should read up on the ETS scheme in Europe? That is a component of why fossil gas electricity has become expensive in Europe outside of being forced to use LNG.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Tradi...
But you seem to prefer putting the blinders on to working in reality.