
Germany Runs Up Against the Limits of Renewables - bootload
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601514/germany-runs-up-against-the-limits-of-renewables/
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astrodust
The problem here is not renewable energy sources, it's buffering their output.
Improvements to battery technology and short-term energy storage are key to
cracking this problem.

If energy is free or even profitable to consume you'd make money pumping water
uphill during the day and using that potential energy later to produce power
through conventional hydro-electric means. This is completely insane if you
have to pay for power at conventional rates, but we're entering a new era
where time of day costs might go all over the place without arbitrage like
this to even things out.

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maxerickson
At least one of the early large scale pumped storage plants[1] was financed by
power companies to optimize their internal costs. So it's long been the case
that time arbitrage is a good idea for power production.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant)

~~~
DennisP
Pumped storage is a very cheap way to store energy, but unfortunately its
scale is limited by geography.

[http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-
stor...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/)

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ZeroGravitas
People really get freaked out by negative prices.

Even MIT outlets don't bother to explain why this is a bad thing, just stating
that a price is negative is enough to demonstrate there's a problem.

~~~
joe_the_user
It seems bizarre that industries that like low energy prices aren't taking
advantage of this. I think that's fertilizer production, aluminum production,
bitcoin mining, and I assume a lot of other things.

I assume the reason is that these "negative prices" are just fictions, only
available to a few select existing customers, ie artifacts of regulation.

But the article is actually too vague for me to understand what the actual
regulatory and political constraints of the situation are.

~~~
crdoconnor
They are. I remember reading in particular that aluminum producers in Germany
were scaling production up and down in response to renewable output.

They seem pretty press-shy about it though - possibly because this is serving
as a kind of covert subsidy that wouldn't look too good under WTO rules.

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aianus
Why would they phase out nuclear before coal??

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th0br0
Because we have got a serious issue with finding long-term storage solutions
for nuclear waste. And past commission(s) on solving this issue have often
ended in a rather public and politically bad fiasco.

~~~
spangry
Not really. France generates about 70 per cent of their power from nuclear and
don't seem to have many problems. For really inefficient solid fission, waste
disposal basically consist of digging a swimming pool in a techtonically
stable area, throwing in the spent rods, and filing it with concrete.

Heck, as long as it was properly guarded, you could store the waste in my
backyard shed without any health issues arising.

~~~
thesumofall
And who ensures that it stays there for the next centuries?

~~~
spangry
I doubt it would stay there for even the next few decades. As crazy as it
sounds, I imagine at some point it would become cheap enough to launch into
space or in to the sun. I mean, it wouldn't make economic sense. But at some
point it would be worth the cost if only so that we don't have to listen to
the irrational and ignorant braying of the so called 'green movement'.

They're like the kids in high school who decided they were avowed communists,
except now all grown up.

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mtgx
> _Because fossil-fuel power plants cannot easily ramp down generation in
> response to excess supply on the grid, on sunny, windy days there is
> sometimes so much power in the system that the price goes negative—in other
> words, operators of large plants, most of which run on coal or natural gas,
> must pay commercial customers to consume electricity._

Sounds like they need to encourage EV acquisition so that the extra supply of
energy can go to EVs, while the pollution is reduced by taking diesel and
petrol cars off the roads. They could also make use of batteries for storage
so they can retire coal plants and better handle the variability of energy
use.

> _The auction system is designed to reduce the rate of new renewable-energy
> additions and keep Germany from producing too much power. It might seem like
> an easy way to solve the oversupply issue would be to shut down excess power
> plants, especially ones that burn coal. But not only are the coal plants
> used to even out periods when wind and solar aren’t available, they’re also
> lucrative and thus politically hard to shut down. Because German law
> requires renewable energy to be used first on the German grid, when Germany
> exports excess electricity to its European neighbors it primarily comes from
> coal plants. Last fall, the German subsidiary of the Swedish energy giant
> Vattenfall started up a 1,600-megwatt coal-fired plant that had been under
> construction for eight years, defying opposition from politicians,
> environmental organizations, and citizens who want to see coal plants
> eliminated._

Okay, that's just stupid. This is nothing but a short term problem that could
be easily solved with batteries. Anything else seems to be a political
problem, not a technical one.

~~~
jacquesm
> This is nothing but a short term problem that could be easily solved with
> batteries.

Easily? The engineering challenges in doing this at utility scale are
formidable.

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ArkyBeagle
Congratulations on getting rid of nuclear. So coal? Or gas?

One's (much) filthier than nuclear ( but without the 1950s sci fi horror movie
aroma ), the other belongs to Vladimir Putin.

Enjoy. Now don't say fracking,, don't say fracking, don't say fracking....

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merb
What we (Germany) did was a joke.

There are just soo many factors why the 'Energiewende' failed. It's because of
the politics made. Eventually we would've running green already but once in a
while Angela Merkel just stops a already running process, but then Fukushima
happened and she made the decision to go 'all in' into green. But! She didn't
actually. Most 'bigger' companies didn't even pay a cent more for the green
energy, only the consumers or the main pillar (our middle industry) needed to
pay the 'Energiewende'. That was freaking akward since the bigger Companies
would've probably paid the biggest pillar of the 'Energiewende'.

The next part is storing energy or producing energy by yourself. Even if you
bought a big sun collector you __NEED __to pay taxes for your energy produced
(not just for the collector), also for the energy you will produce and use for
your own goods and storing the energy will costs you taxes as well.

While maybe a lot of people can live with that, there was another thing, which
is that building energy plants is regulated by our government. If you maybe
are a rich guy and want to do something good, you can't since the plants are
going through a really painful and akward regulation like a planned economy.
Innovation won't win here since the government won't ever shutdown the last
coal power plants since there is so much lobby going on when it comes to
energy that even if you have a good idea how to solve the last problems (i.e.
by innovating into battery grids or some other stuff) you won't succeed. The
german government has their own plan, even when they need to raise taxes for
all the consumers, they don't even care what happens with the prices on the
market since the german consumer market is totally regulated.

~~~
outworlder
> Even if you bought a big sun collector you NEED to pay taxes for your energy
> produced (not just for the collector), also for the energy you will produce
> and use for your own goods and storing the energy will costs you taxes as
> well.

So, they own the sun now? Ridiculous.

~~~
noonespecial
I think it comes from a more collectivist mindset. To an individualist, this
seems pretty foreign. I think it goes something like "If you're able to do
lots of stuff for yourself, you should have to do something for your less able
neighbors as well". The danger is as pointed out, if the burden becomes too
high or feels to intrusive, you'll get "well screw it then, I'll just be like
everyone else".

~~~
Houshalter
Intentionally or not, taxes are a way of discouraging an activity. If you tax
solar, then there is less economic reason to use it. At least until the
benefits become higher than the taxes.

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lispm
The article is mostly misleading.

> In fact, Germany is giving the rest of the world a lesson in just how much
> can go wrong when you try to reduce carbon emissions solely by installing
> lots of wind and solar.

Germany did much more than that. But: the purpose of the Energiewende was not
to reduce carbon emissions first. The purpose was to get rid of the nuclear
power plants asap. Phasing out coal is the next goal. Getting rid of nuclear
had several advantages (for example one can stop early investing even more
billions into a failed and costly technology. Nuclear is only provided by
large monopolistic utilities, which had to get out of the way. The
Energiewende is as much an experiment in getting a much more diverse landscape
of energy producers and opening up the huge monopolies for competition from
companies of all sizes). Getting rid of coal is also politically difficult,
since coal production and usage has a long tradition in Germany and it
employed a lot of people and local politicians block closing coal production
where they can. But the coal phase out is already starting.

So already the description of the goal of the Energiewende is wrong.

> And in Germany, which is phasing out its nuclear plants, those other plants
> primarily burn dirty coal.

"Is phasing out." But hasn't yet. There are several nuclear power plants
running.

> The country is now the world’s largest solar market. Germany’s carbon
> emissions in 2014 were 27 percent lower than 1990 levels.

Which is already basically half from US carbon emissions per capita.

> Because fossil-fuel power plants cannot easily ramp down generation in
> response to excess supply on the grid,

Actually fossil fuel plants can. But those who can are not profitable
currently.

> on sunny, windy days there is sometimes so much power in the system that the
> price goes negativ

That's because there is not enough grid capacity to transport the electricity
to South Germany. The grid is being expanded to do so, but this is taking
time.

> Germany’s Parliament is expected to soon eliminate the government-set
> subsidy for renewable energy, known as a feed-in tariff, that has largely
> fueled the growth in wind and solar.

It is expected that local government in Germany will block this.

> But not only are the coal plants used to even out periods when wind and
> solar aren’t available, they’re also lucrative and thus politically hard to
> shut down.

Actually coal power plants in Germany are no longer lucrative and many many of
them are losing money. Energy companies are threatening to close those. The
mentioned Vattenfall coal power plant is a dinosaur planned long ago. It
doesn't fit into the current energy landscape and is a very costly investment
which looks like a huge failure.

Doesn't look like the author did its homework...

