None of these options are “that hard”, but until some storage is built on the multi-gigawatt scale, any conjecture on real build cost is a waste of time.
What about decentralized storages, e.g. a battery in your home in conjunction with solar power, or using your car battery? A lot of the arguments against renewable energy comes from demanding the electricity grid to follow the same principals as it did under fossil fuels. But a fully renewable grid can be governed by different principles.
For home use, sure that distributed model may work. For industrial use, it won’t. The power demands are too high. Especially if you want to cut out the emissions from things like steel production.
Steel production is an example of an industry that has many activities being best suited for a base load. Many industries and also some activities in steel production would be suitable for load balancing approaches.
We currently have a demand driven grid. We should shift the paradigm to a supply driven grid. This of course runs into problems with capitalism, as a main profit driver is the externalization of the costs for damages. If we adequately price the damages into the energy provided, it will drive industries to take a flexible production approach.
In a sufficiently large grid you will always have wind and in a global grid you’d also reliably have solar as base load.
Furthermore the base load can be reduced significantly with smart sheduling of energy usage.
Finally nuclear is no gurantee of baseload coverage. Nuclear power plants require a lot of water for cooling, like all thermal power plants do. With climate change the reliability of rivers providing enough water and the water being cool enough to not cause an ecological desaster downstream is becoming less and less reliable.
Many nuclear power plants at supposedely stable rivers had to be partially or fully shut down in the last summers. Nuclear power under climate change is not a stability factor. It is a risk factor to the grid.
In a sufficiently large grid you will always have wind and in a global grid you’d also reliably have solar as base load.
Yes, except even with an interconnected European grid we’re still not there. While I can’t speak for how much landmass needs to be covered, we need to expand the capacity of the grid quite a bit. I’m not sure where the bottleneck in Germany is now, but a few years ago Danish wind power couldn’t be exported much further than Hamburg. Since then the Bundesnetzagentur seems to have been handing out expansion permits left and right, but a grid expansion just across the EU sounds like a fever dream.
Furthermore the base load can be reduced significantly with smart sheduling of energy usage.
Sure, and we’re being “motivated” by paying a larger transmission fee during the evening peak in Denmark. But still I haven’t heard of people doing much more than not running their dryer during peak or maybe scheduling their EV’s charging later. For smart grids to actually work we need distributed energy storage. People still need heating during peak. And as I’ve stated elsewhere in this thread, storage is expensive. What I wrote about was almost going off-grid, which is insanely expensive, but storage will still be too expensive for most and impractical for many. So most people will just pay the increased price for the power, and not make the huge investment in storage.
Finally nuclear is no gurantee of baseload coverage. Nuclear power plants require a lot of water for cooling, like all thermal power plants do. With climate change the reliability of rivers providing enough water and the water being cool enough to not cause an ecological desaster downstream is becoming less and less reliable.
Firstly, that depends on the implementation. You mention rivers, and your instance is a “.de”, which explains your argument. But in a country like Denmark we have enough coast to build nuclear power there. Which was what was proposed back the 70s and early 80s.
Secondly, the time when we require the most power generated by power plants is during winter. As you yourself pointed out, the shutdowns occurred during the summer.
Don’t let the deliberate sabotage by german politics distract from the necessity and ability to change the grid.
In a well interconnected European grid with extensive use of Offshore Wind potentials we can easily get there. It is not a lack of viability but a lack of political will. If you look at Germany, the largest donors to political parties are usually property investment groups and fossil (including nuclear until recently) power companies.
Putting nuclear plants at the cost comes with it’s own can of worms. Corrosion, Floodings, Coastal stability… And in regards to the grid you run into the same issues like with offshore wind. Finally with the increase in temperatures through climate change the energy demand in summer will also rise, with the need to actively cool houses more and more. In the southern US, the grid usually fails in summer, not in winter.
I mean that we have solutions that don’t have it’s history of cost and schedule overruns.
I’d reserve judgement on that until they start building grid level battery storage on a scale an order of magnitude bigger than current setups.
I won’t, because nuclear already proved it can’t do it, so we look elsewhere.
Flow batteries are not that hard to ramp up.
None of these options are “that hard”, but until some storage is built on the multi-gigawatt scale, any conjecture on real build cost is a waste of time.
Why do we need gigawatt grid level storages?
What about decentralized storages, e.g. a battery in your home in conjunction with solar power, or using your car battery? A lot of the arguments against renewable energy comes from demanding the electricity grid to follow the same principals as it did under fossil fuels. But a fully renewable grid can be governed by different principles.
For home use, sure that distributed model may work. For industrial use, it won’t. The power demands are too high. Especially if you want to cut out the emissions from things like steel production.
Steel production is an example of an industry that has many activities being best suited for a base load. Many industries and also some activities in steel production would be suitable for load balancing approaches.
We currently have a demand driven grid. We should shift the paradigm to a supply driven grid. This of course runs into problems with capitalism, as a main profit driver is the externalization of the costs for damages. If we adequately price the damages into the energy provided, it will drive industries to take a flexible production approach.
Which of those solutions are presently available for large scale implementation, and guarantees baseload coverage with no significant CO2 emissions?
In a sufficiently large grid you will always have wind and in a global grid you’d also reliably have solar as base load.
Furthermore the base load can be reduced significantly with smart sheduling of energy usage.
Finally nuclear is no gurantee of baseload coverage. Nuclear power plants require a lot of water for cooling, like all thermal power plants do. With climate change the reliability of rivers providing enough water and the water being cool enough to not cause an ecological desaster downstream is becoming less and less reliable.
Many nuclear power plants at supposedely stable rivers had to be partially or fully shut down in the last summers. Nuclear power under climate change is not a stability factor. It is a risk factor to the grid.
Yes, except even with an interconnected European grid we’re still not there. While I can’t speak for how much landmass needs to be covered, we need to expand the capacity of the grid quite a bit. I’m not sure where the bottleneck in Germany is now, but a few years ago Danish wind power couldn’t be exported much further than Hamburg. Since then the Bundesnetzagentur seems to have been handing out expansion permits left and right, but a grid expansion just across the EU sounds like a fever dream.
Sure, and we’re being “motivated” by paying a larger transmission fee during the evening peak in Denmark. But still I haven’t heard of people doing much more than not running their dryer during peak or maybe scheduling their EV’s charging later. For smart grids to actually work we need distributed energy storage. People still need heating during peak. And as I’ve stated elsewhere in this thread, storage is expensive. What I wrote about was almost going off-grid, which is insanely expensive, but storage will still be too expensive for most and impractical for many. So most people will just pay the increased price for the power, and not make the huge investment in storage.
Firstly, that depends on the implementation. You mention rivers, and your instance is a “.de”, which explains your argument. But in a country like Denmark we have enough coast to build nuclear power there. Which was what was proposed back the 70s and early 80s.
Secondly, the time when we require the most power generated by power plants is during winter. As you yourself pointed out, the shutdowns occurred during the summer.
Don’t let the deliberate sabotage by german politics distract from the necessity and ability to change the grid.
In a well interconnected European grid with extensive use of Offshore Wind potentials we can easily get there. It is not a lack of viability but a lack of political will. If you look at Germany, the largest donors to political parties are usually property investment groups and fossil (including nuclear until recently) power companies.
Putting nuclear plants at the cost comes with it’s own can of worms. Corrosion, Floodings, Coastal stability… And in regards to the grid you run into the same issues like with offshore wind. Finally with the increase in temperatures through climate change the energy demand in summer will also rise, with the need to actively cool houses more and more. In the southern US, the grid usually fails in summer, not in winter.