When looking at France, at a zoom level where one can see the whole country, all the green dots are located next to nuclear power plants. It's a good reminder that the french grid is mostly powered by nuclear.
It'd be nice to see the same map over summer to see if the different electric mix then gives birth to a different map.
if it wasn't for France having primarily used nuclear power decades ago, Europe as a whole would be in a much much worse state when it comes to CO2 emissions. That makes it abundantly clear that nuclear needs to be a part of the mix when it comes to non-emission generating energy production.
France has 12% of Europe's population, and its primary energy is 45% from fossil fuels and 40% from nuclear power. The effect on Europe as a whole is therefore pretty small.
Yeah, France could invest a lot more into nuclear-heat usage directly (e.g. for district heating or providing process heat to factories) without needing to convert it into Electricity first.
That wasn‘t what was mentioned, it was specifically mentioned they should use more nuclear to heat, I.e. use exceeds heat for district heating for example.
This is fairly common for coal and gas power plants, but as far as I know, not really used with nuclear power plants.
As far as I know, the French nuclear power plants aren’t exactly in close proximity to any major city, making district heating most likely not economically viable
That happens when you only build a SINGLE reactor unit after decades of building nothing. Keep improving the design (EPR2) and keep building and the costs and build times will come down.
> only build a SINGLE reactor unit after decades of building nothing
Nope.
The most recent nuclear reactor (Civaux-2) was delivered in France in 1999.
The project aiming at building an EPR in France (Flamanville) started in 2004, and it was a work-in-progress on the field in 2007. Where are those "decades"?
Moreover an EPR was sold to Finland before, and work started in 2005.
Then a pair was sold to China.
Then another pair to the U.-K.
All 6 are very late and have huge overcosts.
If those 6 are in your opinion a "SINGLE reactor" let's swap my single dollar for your six bucks.
Not to count attempts to stem other projects (even in France, at Penly) by offering it to India, Slovenia, USA through UniStar Nuclear, Czech Republic, United Arab Emirates... The prospect weren't thrilled by patent problems at then ongoing projects.
There was a tangible will. As usual this isn't sufficient to succeed.
This is completely wrong and it's exactly the other way around. Decarbonizing is about direct or indirect electrification of all of people's energy needs, thus, primary energy is the relevant number to look at.
There's nothing pro- or anti-nuclear in this argument, since primary energy consumption can be electrified with or without nuclear.
Its not at all dishonest, I would argue it is a lot more honest than not mixing it.
The current discussion around energy sources is basically always centered on electricity, which is only part of the picture. Given that in most industrialized countries industry as well as heating accounts for a substantial share of primary energy use, its dishonest to not take those sectors into account.
Having 100% nuclear clean energy doesn't help you at all when electricity only accounts for 20% of your primary energy usage. That is not intellectually bankrupt, that is just common sense.
If electrification of heating as well as mobility continues to increase, looking at renewable energy as a share of primary energy consumption will paint a way clearer picture than any other stat.
That doesn’t make sense. The goal is decarbonation, not arbitrary account. The sole reason to mix together things that don’t go together is making bad faith arguments like in this case.
If the goal is "decarbonation" then the only thing that matters is the bottom line. If nuclear truly leads to a lower net carbon output (which I'm sure it does, unless using nuclear power somehow causes people to heat their homes more or drive ICE vehicles more) then what are you worried about?
People are intentionally muddling the case to make France success looks less successful. I like how you pretend to be candid while actually making the situation worse. Always funny to observe.
> People are intentionally muddling the case to make France success looks less successful.
It’s just not true at all, lol. Even by this way more useful metric France is doing quite well, substantially better than Germany for example. People are using this metric because it’s just useful while electricity footprint is only useful when you’re talking about very specific scenarios (like, how long until a BEV emits less carbon than an ICE).
About 50% of the primary energy consumption in France is low emissions.
I think you included transportation in your stats: planes, cars, trucks and boats. The electrical mix in France includes only 8% from fossil fuels, of which 7% come from natural gas. The rest is mostly nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar. In that order.
France also regularly sells its surplus to neighboring countries.
> France also regularly sells its surplus to neighboring countries.
And in order to do that it has pretty massive lines to neighbours meaning it also acts as an exchange platform (for a profit) e.g. if there are strong winds it can buy electricity from an oversupplied german grid and sell it to italy.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/24h provides live views of the european electricity grids, and France is the only country which is consistently green (and often dark green aka under 50gCO2eq/kWh) without being blessed with enough hydro for most or all of its requirements (as Iceland and Norway are).
Most countries use way more primary energy for heating and transportation than for electricity generation. It would be disingenuous not to include this.
It’s fairly disingenuous to mix both actually when they don’t mingle. Especially when you consider that both heating and transportation are going in the direction of using more electricity which is actually favorable to the French choice.
Germany’s net power grid imports are less than 5% (17% imports vs. 12.5% exports in 24H1), despite having no active nuclear power plants anymore. Around 60% of their domestically generated power currently comes from renewables (up 8% from last year). I don’t think it’s abundantly clear.
If the goal is decarbonation, using wind+solar is alright (renewables are a bigger part of the mix in Germany) but burning gas and lignite when there's no sun or wind is not.
In Germany the problem is coal (lignite): it remains a huge social and political 'asset'. Many jobs, low-priced electricity, no dependency towards fuel shipped by a foreign nation...
After Fukushima most German citizens didn't want nuclear reactors anymore:
Which political parties switched most of the nuclear plants off since Fukushima?
CDU/CSU: 14
FDP: 11
SPD: 9
Greens: 3
(source: https://x.com/HannoKlausmeier/status/1784158942823690561 )
Ah, the well loved trick of playing with statistics to make something look good.
The current carbon intensity per KWh in Germany is 526g, vs 50g for France.
The average yearly carbon intensity per KWh in Germany, is 354g.
So, either the rest 40% of domestically generated power are hyper-polluting, or the other statistics don't hold up.
Either way, with such a high carbon intensity, there is nothing to brag about.
And that's before entering the discussion about how the repercussions of the poor long-term German energy plan is currently killing their economy, and, indirectly, their social fabric.
Where do you find the current value? Since it's rather different from the yearly average, it sounds like it's (close to) live and I've been looking for live production stats (more granular than "what was it yesterday") but couldn't find it
> net power grid imports are less than 5% (17% imports vs. 12.5% exports in 24H1)
depending on when those happen. If they import French electricity whenever the wind is taking a break from blowing, that prevents craptons of pollution (including, but far from exclusively, CO2) from the massive German coal plant I live near to. If it's more random, say if it's just helping with some peaks when everyone's making bratwurst and coal currently doesn't cut it, then it's not reducing them from running
There are also times where we hear electricity prices are negative or near zero for a time, afaik usually caused by too much wind-based production. Exporting that may balance the thing out so that the net value is near zero
I'm sure it'll be some mix of those and other scenarios, but I'm not sure that looking at the net result says very much about whether nuclear electricity exports helped reduce emissions in surrounding countries like Germany. I'm more inclined to say the claim of the person you're responding to is likely correct (though I'd say "helpful to be" part of the mix, rather than "needs to be")
Net balance over long time periods isn't very interesting: it doesn't tell you what happens on the market and who needs the trade to happen. What you need to look at is whether these exports are correlated with peaks in production or peaks in usage.
What storage are you referring too? I see residential ones in houses but absolutely nothing of state-scale, which is necessary to keep industries and services running.
Materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket. We’re still to see the renewables going further than the residential proof of concept on a society scale.
The CAISO (California Independent System Operator) grid is a good example of large scale battery use (1). Texas is also seeing a ramp up of battery storage (2).
Whilst battery demand will increase it's expected costs will continue to decrease - "Innovation reduces total capital costs of battery storage by up to 40% in the power sector by 2030 in the Stated Policies Scenario"(3)
> Materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket.
We haven't even specified what kind of storage technology we're talking about yet you already state that "materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket". Are you referring to batteries? There are countless other technologies to "store" energy.
France, unusually, actually does, or at least did, use significant amounts of plutonium (a combo of decommissioned weapons and nuclear reprocessing output) in nuclear energy generation, but yeah, primarily uranium.
The data you provide quotes Germany being 50% more polluting than France per-GDP-unit, at the level France was at in 2007.
The issue with it is that dividing by GDP rather than, say, population or total energy used is kind of disingenuous. For instance, France's 2007 GDP can't be compared to Germany's 2022 GDP, so it's extremely hard to have an idea of what you're comparing.
2007 is not in the 1990s which is the point I responded to. France was cleaning up in the 1990s but Germany is still doing better than France in even 1999. As you helpfully point out they were about France's 2007 level (when they had 70% nuclear electricity, 40% nuclear power, a hair below their absolute peak 41% nuclear which they hit a few years later) in 2022, so catching up to a global leader with lots of nuclear despite phasing out their own nuclear.
You can see the per capita numbers on the same site and it's the same basic story, France had a head start but Germany is cleaning up faster (while growing GDP faster).
One of the anti-German memes going around is that their decarbonisation is via deindustrialization, so per GDP helps avoid that accusation and adjusts for people importing their carbon as the country with the heavy industry gets paid.
Meanwhile the USA, which has the most nuclear plants and yet is clearly worse than Germany and the EU average, somehow gets a free pass. How odd. It's as if we attack the countries (and states) that reduce carbon without nuclear rather than the ones emitting lots of carbon.
> so catching up to a global leader with lots of nuclear despite phasing out their own nuclear.
No catching up happened, because France also improved in the meantime, despite building no new plant in the 2007-2022 interval. And that's the issue with this measurement: it measures plenty of parasitic information. For instance, GDP growth between the 90's and now explains a large part of what you're highlighting.
Here's another chart from your site showing carbon intensity [1] which shows the improvement in carbon per energy generated is only a small part of the improvement shown in your graph.
And here's a chart [2] showing how GDP growth is the dominating factor for Germany's evolution in your graph.
Renewables did compensate nuclear's underproduction: without them France would have burnt more fossil fuels.
Moreover ~60% of France's final energy is obtained by burning fossil fuels => France must electrify (replace fossil fuel by electricity) => produce more gridpower => deploy new gridpower-producing equipment and such heavy industry thingies cannot be built overnight.
Upon an economic viewpoint electrifying is facilitated by the sheer availability of low-priced electricity.
It feels like you've got your answer and are looking for a way to find the fit problem.
> Renewables did compensate nuclear's underproduction
The underproduction episode in 2022 was mostly handled thanks to imports and consumer sobriety.
> Moreover ~60% of France's final energy is obtained by burning fossil fuels
Yeah, that's my point. France would be better served by electrifying its non-electric energy usages rather than trying to replace one clean production by another.
> => deploy new gridpower-producing equipment and such heavy industry thingies cannot be built overnight.
France has a healthy margin before needing to rush production, with electricity usage going down for two decades, and a significant share of its power being exported currently.
A large part of resources needed by electrification isn't needed to build electricity-producing equipment.
Producing more electricity enables us to contain its price, boosting electrification.
Starting right now to build in order to replace 40-years old nuclear plants (on average) seems adequate to me. New nuclear (Flamanville-3 EPR) isn't adequate (6x times overcostly, at least 12 years late).
> France has a healthy margin before needing to rush production,
Electrification has to ramp up, therefore if everything goes as planned it will soon be over. Waiting is dangerous.
> with electricity usage going down for two decades
> Renewables-produced electricity reduces fossil the amount -fuel-produced electricity
Why the hell would you show me the same graph I showed you earlier, but with only 3 years of history? That graph, over time, shows that fossil hovers around 10%, has been for decades now. Renewables is not decreasing fossil use here.
> A large part of resources needed by electrification isn't needed to build electricity-producing equipment.
As France is a market economy, the issue isn't resources, money is.
> Starting right now to build in order to replace 40-years old nuclear plants
Here is the issue: you don't give a fuck about CO2, all you care about is for renewables to replace nuclear, another clean energy source. All of your discourse is warped and dishonest because you want to pretend that you care about catbon emissions when, in fact, you don't.
If you cared about carbon emissions you would focus on means to lower carbon emissions: electrifiying.
I quoted it 4 days ago (see above). I propose my interpretation of it, for the objective reader to make his mind. Renewables' share is up, therefore they replace fossil fuels because without renewables France should burn more fossil fuels.
>> A large part of resources needed by electrification isn't needed to build electricity-producing equipment.
> As France is a market economy, the issue isn't resources, money is.
If in your opinion each and every resource (expertise, material...) used to deploy electricity-producing plants is 100% adequate for electrifying let's say we live in distinct universes.
> Here is the issue: you don't give a fuck
No arguments, therefore you rant about what (in your opinion) I think. This is moot.
> If you cared about carbon emissions you would focus on means to lower carbon emissions: electrifiying.
I already explained, above, why deploying electricity-producing plants is just as important and urgent. You didn't even try to counter-argument.
> Renewables' share is up, therefore they replace fossil fuels because without renewables France should burn more fossil fuels.
Once again the declining share is nuclear. Fossils are stable as the data you quote shows.
> If in your opinion each and every resource (expertise, material...) used to deploy electricity-producing plants is 100% adequate for electrifying
My point is that this is irrelevant since the bottleneck is money. We don't live in a command economy where material resources and workers are assigned by the state on a given project.
> You didn't even try to counter-argument.
Why would I try when we're at the point where you don't even acknowledge raw data?
OMG, is it a joke? Consumption is stable, OK? Nuclear produced less, OK?
Therefore renewables compensated for nuclear declining production, OK?
Therefore burning more fossil fuels was not necessary, OK?
Therefore renewables replaced them, OK?
> the bottleneck is money
My point is solid even given this perspective: the way public money is used is of paramount importance: government recently ordered new nuclear reactors, and also subsidizes renewables in order to compensate past huge subsides to nuclear. More money here, less money there.
> We don't live in a command economy where material resources and workers are assigned by the state on a given project.
Read above.
> you don't even acknowledge raw data
Raw data, as explained, shows that renewables enabled France to avoid burning more fossil fuel. This is a fact, like it or not.
Nuclear is not down for intrinsic reasons, it is down because it comes after renewables in merit order, and therefore when renewables are available, it is scaled down.
In low renewables availability episodes, there isn’t more fossil production, we simply ramp nuclear up.
You didn't watch or understand them. The first thread referenced, on x.com, offers a link towards https://www.youtube.com/live/xP4jL4b_Nnk?si=P4X_qMV9vtkpVD7z...
This guy is RTE's official representative. Please listen to what he says, and let me know whether you persist to deny or reckon.
> merit order
A technical merit order, established to optimize and therefore to prefer the most adequate (overall) source. It is enforced for ages and for all sources, it isn't some arbitrarily established rule aiming at hurting poor nuclear lil'baby. If nuclear cannot compete it will disappear. The processus already started.
I have no clew how come the difference on what's usually said on this forum and the situation in Europe.My only understanding is that the US as whole is more sunny that gives a better ratio solar panel and produced electricity.
Maybe also it's a provider thing ? From country to country, you can always have things that seem randomly more expensive. Germany is more renewable but more expensive than France, is it because of their national company is benefiting citizen properly or is it because the remaining gas part drives up the cost ?
Germany may use more renewables in volume, but it is absolutely dirtier than in France. Their electrical mix makes use of lots of natural gas and lignite coal, the worst kind, both expensive and very dirty.
Rome wasn't built in a day and I find it hilarious to advocate for nuclear power instead, if the average construction time (not even taking into account the prior mountain of bureaucracy) is over a decade. Not a single nuclear power plant built in past 15 years in Europe has been on time or on budget. Not even close.
I think this graph from Wikipedia is better, as it goes back to 1990 [1].
Renewables have increased significantly, but much of that is displacing nuclear power. The remainder, plus a small increase in natural gas, his displaced hard coal and a small amount of lignite. Presumably hard coal is more expensive.
The overall trend is coal is reducing, but it's a poor show compared to Great Britain [2].
Yeah, Germany did have hard coal mines but they closed a few years back as they've gotten too deep and difficult to access to be economically viable (and it was subsidised until 2018), so Germany imports hard coal. Meanwhile germany is either #1 or #2 lignite producer.
Strategically speaking, Europe lacks the natural resources to build renewable, wind turbines and solar panels have to be imported, most of them from Asia.
Nuclear is still a bit cheaper per Watt and less carbon intensive, as it involves less infrastructure, logistics and batteries overall. It's also somewhat more reliable, as it doesn't depend on sun or wind (the former of which France often lacks).
Also, I am hopeful that nuclear power plant construction delays will only improve in the near future, as Europe rebuilds its expertise in nuclear engineering, which it lost after the past decades of anti-nuclear waves.
Finally, I don't see fossil fuel usage going down much in Germany in the link you gave, if at all. Which is the only thing that matters, ecologically speaking.
LCOE [1] of nuclear power in Europe and the USA is roughly thrice that of solar or wind [2]. In China it is about even. If you do not trust the Deutsche Bank report, the World Nuclear Association comes to roughly the same conclusion but assumes a lower discount, thus making nuclear power more attractive. [3]
Is this based on cost per Watt without the expenses related to keeping the grid perfectly synchronized or not?
A significant and stable base load is important and it has shown that wind/solar makes it substantially more expensive to keep the grid stabilized, which is of course a no brainer if you don't want a blackout.
> Is this based on cost per Watt without the expenses related to keeping the grid perfectly synchronized or not?
It's the LCOE, you can read what it encompasses in the link I provided.
> A significant and stable base load is important and it has shown that wind/solar makes it substantially more expensive to keep the grid stabilized, which is of course a no brainer if you don't want a blackout.
I assume you mean the utility frequency [1] when you say "base load", because you said "synchronized" and "stabilized". The frequency indeed has to be stable with a rather small margin of tolerance. Today that's mostly a job for gas turbines, though. One can hope that we find ways to store all the surplus regenerative power soon, so that we can retire those, too. Nuclear power plants, in any case, are too slow for that purpose.
Just in case you really meant load, load has no requirement to be stable. The power demands at any time can be met by dispatchable power plants, but utilities like to plan long-term, so they use some averaged load over time to determine a "base load" and buy accordingly on the electricity market. That's prudent business practice, but there is no technical reason to run low-variability power plants because of that.
In France, the most recent report [1] by the Cour des comptes, our official accounting organ, still gives nuclear power as slightly cheaper than solar and wind.
I trust your data, but the situation here is different, most reactors are already built, and "only" need maintenance and fuel replacement.
I still stand by what I said in my previous comment about emissions per watts, etc.
This report is about the cost of production of AMORTIZED nuclear plants (moreover the real cost of France's nuclear fleet of reactor, including public money is a matter of debate). Comparing it to the total cost of new renewable is meaningless.
> Germany is more renewable but more expensive than France
No, germany is more renewable but it's also more coal, any time there's no wind the coal plants start up. And they burn lignite (because that's what in germany e.g. that's what the Baggers strip mine).
It's not as bad as Poland which basically runs entirely off of coal, but it's absolutely at the bottom of the european barrel.
Also electricity storage still isn't much of a thing (and while germany has two pumped hydro station they have very little capacity), so in periods of high winds germany actually pays its neighbours to take electricity off its grid so it doesn't collapse (at this point it has hundreds of hours of negative spot prices every year).
Which is getting problematic because increase in wind generation in said neighbours means the issue is spreading as they too need to get rid of their wind production at those times.
The comment I replied to is comparing germany to france. The map I linked literally tells you that in 2024 Germany generated 370g CO2 equivalent per kWh, where France generated 32, that's an objective number you can straight up read.
Yes Germany is 58% renewable versus France's 28 (something the map also tells you), but then 30% are gas and especially coal, the link you provide agrees with that. Coal is insanely polluting, especially because Germany mainly uses lignite which is the least energy rich coal (so even more emissions for the same production), coal represents >3/4th of its emissions.
Meanwhile gas is a minor component of france's electricity mix (pretty much just peaking plants and a few combined cycle district heating plants) and coal is a rounding error.
That article is extremely loaded. It bemoans every factor that made building nuclear a sensible choice, as if these factors were unfair and shouldn't have existed (with that logic, I guess Norway should never have built dams, and it's unfair that they have all these mountains). It also insists that France should have added a lot of burdensome process, which reminds me of CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Also bonus point for complaining about the Tennessee Valley Authority. I've read many articles about pricing the French nuclear fleet, but this was a first.
For people interested about a real inquiry discussing the price of the french nuclear program [1] which is actually exhaustive and well documented.
You can say whatever you want when discussion the cost of nuclear in France because of the structure of its nuclear industry. Part of it comes from the government’s budget, so depending on your point of view it can be accounted for differently. Then, there are externalities (pollution, greenhouse gases, etc). And then there are strategic aspects and associated costs. The alternative in the 1970s was skyrocketing oil, which is much more costly at the planet’s level, and was on track to be much more costly at the country’s level as well. And in the meantime, consumers got reasonably cheap and clean electricity for decades.
Skimming your source, I would not trust it very much.
New renewable installations are getting cheaper, but are still far from being numerous enough to overcome their terrible load factor and enable switching off some baseline production plants. And storage at a grid level is pretty much inexistant, except for a couple of pumped hydro plants.
There is a significant mismatch between reality and the kind of headlines we see in tech-focused media. These hype future products as if they were already widely available, which creates a false idea of the actual situation in the real world.
Do you realise that German government, European Union and independent third parties have all published scientific estimates as to how much storage is needed and no, it’s not for weeks?
You don’t use lithium for long term energy storage. You just have very shallow understanding of issues at hand.
Let's see... nuclear power is super expensive, relies on finite uranium resources and there is no safe solution to store the waste. Do we really want to rely on this?
That is debatable, nuclear power can be really cheap when managed correctly. See for example Ontario, Canada or France during the 70s-90s.
Many nuclear power plants can have life times of more than 8 decades and only the initial build and licensing is the expansive part, so if you average the cost over the total life time it is rather cheap.
If its so unsafe, why has there not been a single major accident with used fuel from civilian nuclear power plants? We have been using hundreds of NPPs for decades, yet not a single fatality.
The truth is, nuclear waste can be and is managed safely.
“Super expensive” for who builds them, or "super expensive" for the end user paying their electricity bill?
Also, there are safe solutions to store nuclear waste. They are not 1.0e31% secure, but many other kinds of power plants carry significant risks [1] [2] [3]
It's either expensive to the person paying the bill or to the person paying tax to subsidize it.
That's what "super expensive" means.
And yeah, most of it comes from the cost of building them. But they are barely competitive with solar + batteries if you count only the costs of operating them.
Keep in mind that we should be comparing "super expensive" with climate adaptation consequences, as well as factoring in that e.g. Europe could collaborate and drive down reactor costs with economies of scale where we don't all need to independently reinvent how to build these things
I'm happy for any energy (not just electricity) mix that ends up with a reasonable total cost, adding up current investments needed and future adaptation measures. The problem with ruling out a clean and safe energy source for irrational fears is that it delays net zero (higher future adaptation costs) and requires spending more on alternative solutions to guarantee a steady power supply (higher current investments)
Wind and solar are currently much cheaper per kWp (opportunistic production) and so it seems like the quicker way to net zero, and during the first bit (where we are currently at) that's definitely true. The problem shifts when we want to actually stop using things like gas to make up the difference. Afaik we need to go quite a way beyond what cost-effective pumped hydro locations can supply in most of Europe, so we need to look beyond 2030 and think what power sources we need to have ready by, say, 2040 or 2050, start making specific plans, and break ground on whatever solution is the best compromise
(I'm expecting some people to object to saying nuclear is not rationally dangerous. Please, prove me wrong! I'm happy to update my opinions based on non-cherry-picked data. I've previously looked into the cost in human health (not just deaths) of different energy sources, including dependencies such as uranium mining which is among the worst aspects. The only reliable data I've been able to find shows fission on par with renewables — iirc tending towards being safer, but probably not beyond the error margins due to the low percentage of nuclear energy)
Edit: on the other hand, I'm afraid that this nuclear discussion (especially with germans, I say that as a foreigner living in Germany so I've heard different perspectives) only serves to divide the people who at least understand there is something we should be doing about climate change. I'm happy to compromise if that lets us finally settle on a concrete plan that'll land us in a place we want to be
France being about 1% of world's population, any effort won't make a huge dent in a global phenomenon. Also, that 1% pollutes a lot more than the average, so the efforts made on the electricity front are offset by other issues.
someone could calculate the savings in CO2 emissions over all the power generated by nuclear energy each year in France, since the power stations were built, vs coal plants (which would have been the alternative at the time)
> The math behind it is real, and it uses the same calculations that real grid operators use to keep the lights on. However, the amount of power that each power plant actually produces depends on the price they offer. This price varies wildly from hour to hour, and neither the price nor the power amount is publicly available.
> Instead, pypsa-eur makes assumptions on prices for solar, wind, coal, nuclear, etc. based on historical averages, and then runs an optimisation algorithm to cover all consumption for the least cost of production.
Also the name of the power plants is missing, on top of the fact that the data is outdated. For example after a little check I see that the Fessenheim PP (France) is still represented, although it's not producing anymore.
two different things; electricitymaps.com is a much more macro view, nice for looking at inter-country flows, whereas this one is great for looking at individual generation points and flows
Copper Sushi doesn't load for me, but I'm wondering how it is going to beat the awesome electricitymaps. They have all the data and quite a good viewer.
It shows a much finer grained representation of the whole transportation network. So you have much better idea of where is electricity produced and consumed within each country.
When it comes to figuring out what the electricity mix is made of, electricitymaps is clearer.
They don't show the same thing. Electricity map is mostly focused on showing public market data about electricity and co2 emissions, while that site is a showcase of how a power flow works to calculate how electricity flows in the grid (not using real data of course, as the type of data used isn't public).
Both are interesting, I understand the site displayed in this article aims to show the complexity of the underlying system, which isn't shown by electricitymap.
I get irrationally angry when a map is skewed in this way and there is no way to change it. The more you zoom in, the worse the distortion is made to be. Even zooming all the way out does not eliminate the angular distortion. This took actual effort on some programmer's part! Who ever thought that this is a good idea?!?
It's like those navigational mini maps (car or computer game) that won't keep north pointing up... only worse.
Don't get angry so much over minor things, your older self will thank you. Somebody did something for free, gave it to you for free, and so they did not do a perfect job. There are worse things in life.
On a bit slower computer it took me a few minutes to locate my capital - found some tiny cities around it, yet still had no idea what direction I am looking at. Lack of major city names (until zoomed far) or that grey map (especially combined with screen "night shift" mode) style didn't help as well. Or the lack of a few important power plants around me.
At least major power lines were there - that was actually very cool. The whole thing is great, but readability is just bad.
Something I've wondered for a while: if the whole continent is on a synchronized grid, how can countries tell to or from whom they're exporting and importing electricity. I can see how they can measure their total imports or exports by comparing generation to consumption, but how do they figure out which neighbour they're getting electricity from / sending it to?
(Russia is another big chunk of Europe but not included in the above map, though I think it may be the same grid with the Baltics)
For the question, measuring the flow of electricity is just normal power engineering, your home electricity meter does it as well. It's not so much the countries doing it though.
You can measure the flow of power by calculating the vector product of the current and voltage in the power line. EEVblog has a very good explanation video how this is done in an (analog) domestic watt-hour meter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_3DXcB9-xE
And it's not the same, so sometimes there is just "transit", although transit here should I guess be understood very loosely. I also assume they just know who paid for what.
Edit: although upon re-reading I think you probably asked something else. Sorry in that case.
Disclaimer: I'm working for an actor in the electricity market, although not on the business side so I don't know everything about it.
They do know who paid for what. And actually anyone is able to know. It's a very regulated market, and most of its data is published, although I have to admit that if you don't know how to fetch it and read it, it's a bit hard to figure out by yourself.
Each country works as a free market (inside a rails defined by their national agencies), where energy providers aim to offer a price low enough to be among the cheapest to cover the energy consumption forecast.
For those countries connected, those providers can participate in other markets. France power plants can sell energy to Spain, but not to Portugal.
The trick here is that the price each opperator's offer is somewhat calculated based on opportunity cost. Wind turbines has no opportunity cost, since not selling the energy generated from the wind now does not make them able to sell it in the future (that energy can not be stored at industrial level). Then, all the accepted offers for a given forecast are paid at the price of the most expensive offer among them.
There are five synchronous areas in Europe, the largest one being the synchronous grid of continental Europe [1].
Each national grids has interconnections with other grids and you can measure the flow of power through these interconnections to know who is sending electricity or getting electricity from neighbours.
> how can countries tell to or from whom they're exporting and importing electricity.
In terms of market deals, TSOs can't really do that. What can be done is measure the power flowing in lines connecting two grids, and summing them you get the total power exported from one grid to another.
Seeing current flow through switches isn't the same as seeing specifically where your power is coming from.
Like, if power from several different sources flows into a single substation before it goes to your home, you know exactly which source created the electricity you're using?
And if I purchase power from a 100% renewable company, is it always only electricity from their generators, never ever mixed in with power from other grid sources during downtime?
No, it's just best estimates based on generation, consumption and flow.
That's like taking a bucket of water out of the ocean and saying you know where it came from. Sure, it might have come from the nearest estuary, but odds are it got mixed in with water that originated somewhere else.
Electricity transmission is a bit like water pressure and distribution. You're not going to get the same electrons (or water molecules) that you subscribed to from various producers in the distribution network put in, the flow causality and the physical embodiments of production are different though related things.
If you are a regular HN reader who is (or was until this post) unfamiliar with Back to the Future, I'd love to know three more random facts about your life. In my world view, you are part of a fascinatingly small group of people.
Part 3 came out in 1990. So, anyone born after (less than 34 years old) who didn't bother to go back and watch it, would be sufficient? I'm familiar with the series' existence, but had no idea what 1.21 reference was. AMA, hah.
I’ve been on the BTTF ride at… wherever in Florida it is, and I loved that as a teenager. The films just never really appealed though for some reason. I guess one related fact would be I have a lot of gaps like that in the movies I have seen. For instance, people are often shocked that I’ve never see any of the Indiana Jones movies (also loved the rides!); but Star Wars I could probably recite the scripts of.
I don’t think I have any other facts that are very interesting, but then again I didn’t think not having seen BTTF was all that interesting either. For the record I was familiar with 1.21GW and what it related to… I don’t live under a rock!
I have kids that are in their late 20s. They never watch older movies unless someone forces them to. There is so much new media coming out that they don’t feel the need to watch older movies, even if everyone is telling them it is very good.
Couldn't you put that media on when they were kids?
I know movie nights are not a thing every family does but I'd imagine having one day modern movie, one day oldish from 80-90a, another day a classic from the 40s, etc.
Wouldn't that have worked if you started from when they were young?
I'm just thinking as that is my plan for when/it I have kids: mix older media with new one and just enjoy it with them. If it is truly good and not just nostalgia, they should be enjoyable even as a rewatch.
Since the franchise hasn't been rebooted like so many others, it hasn't seem the $$$ marketing that would introduce it to new generations.
Like The Princess Bride or Labyrinth, BTTF currently remains a phenomenom of the 80's and 90's -- familiar to most from that time and deeply treasured by some, but not refreshed and sustained the way the Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel/DC, etc brands have been.
And if you're an HN reader and already know and love Back to the Future, then the Captain Disillusion's 2 part YouTube video about how the visual effects used ground breaking computer control of cameras to advance the state of the art is a good recommendation:
This visualization is super strange, you'd think the thickness of the lines would scale with Watts, but that doesn't seem to be the case? What does it represent then? Super confusing and pretty misleading.
A specialty in austria (in the middle of the map) is pumped-storage hydroelectricity. Since there are so many mountains and valleys, lakes are used as giant batteries. Water can be pumped up in times of excessive supply and released to produce energy when there's higher demand.
This keeps the power lines stable and compensates for factors like lack of wind in wind power stations, startup/shutdown times of thermal power plants, differing consumption patterns because of colder weather etc.
Pumped hydro is great but it requires very specific topologies (you need a large lower reservoir or a high flow river below the dam to have water to pump back up), it’s even more rare than good hydro locations, and completely artificial PHS à la Taum Sauk county are nearly unique.
Worldwide, Switzerland is the main user and beneficiary of PHS relative to its electric capacity. Total it’s China, Japan, and the USA, they’re the only countries breaking 2 figures (in GW of generating capacity).
One observation I could make from the visualization is that major cities have very big power generation centers, despite that they seem to be drawing power from surrounding areas. It is very apparent near London. I guess it is obvious that bigger cities have more demand from both industrial and residential consumption.
This is super cool. Found myself learning a few things about the power grid and of my country, and I spent some time looking in to the energy market off the back of this
> TL;DR: we can delete most of the emissions of the developed world today by switching heating & car and truck transport to electrical - if we make sure we generate all electricity with near-zero emissions. Just building more renewable generation won't solve it though, as you still need to make sure it covers all consumption everywhere. This map intends to show why that's a complicated problem, and why we should also be smart about where we build renewable generation so that most of the generated energy can also be used and not thrown away because the grid can't handle it.
This is what I wonder about when I drive through West Texas and see massive wind farms in the middle of nowhere.
"In 2022, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid manager for most of Texas, curtailed 5% of its total available wind generation and 9% of total available utility-scale solar generation. By 2035, however, we project wind curtailments in ERCOT could increase to 13% of total available wind generation, and solar curtailments could reach 19%."
This map is incomplete. We have 1 GW capacity of hydro chained in 3-4 power plants on just 20-30kms of river near our city, its nowhere to be found on this map.
Heating and transport are the easiest in that regard. Most trucks drive during the day have the driver resting during the night. At night there's little demand, but wind and nuclear continue generating, so from a grid standpoint that's the perfect time to charge all the trucks. Cars can similarly be mostly charged during the night, as that's when they are at home. Heat demand is more variable, but heat is much easier to store than electricity itself. Everyone with a boiler already has a heat store at home. If you make the boiler a bit larger you can configure it to only heat when there's excess electricity (typically the night or at peak solar power around noon). And that's before you start with more efficient heat storage devices, like heating sand instead of water.
All of those solutions require infrastructure investments and smarter grids (likely with real-time pricing to incentivize consumers to use power when there's an excess, and an API so devices like chargers and boilers can act on this information without user input). But they don't require power storage at the grid level.
Impressive - Norway and Sweden are exporting ~6GW right now with Finland throwing in for another GW.
Probably contributing to the high percentage of EV sales. In Finland 90% of new vehicle sales are EVs. Sweden and Norway are at ~%60, and have a greater share of PHEVs.
"EVs, they're gonna be a bloodbath" and "they don't work in the cold", indeed /s
Never seems to occur to people that "I don't ever have to stand outside in the cold pumping gas into my car" and "I can have my car warmed up by the time I get in to go somewhere" are really popular features.
Also, they didn't build out their EV charging infrastructure via legal settlement, leading to having chargers owned and operated by a company ambivalent about maintenance and repair.
Europe as a whole is 24%, rising at a good clip. Also surprising is Romania - ahead of everyone except the Scandinavian countries and way, way ahead of all the former soviet states.
Thats why the more decentralized the more resilient. No single point of failure, redundancy in routing. Ahh, yes. just like the internet used to be :-)
It'd be nice to see the same map over summer to see if the different electric mix then gives birth to a different map.
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