Baseload is about supplying demand. It'll not go. And to supply it reliably you need firm power. The 500gw statement contains both overlapping bids and just intentions to "think" about deployment. Still, germany would need at bare minimum 3TWh of storage to ditch fossils firming per last winter and deploy even more renewables to charge it. It remains a question how govt will protect investors from cannibalized generation- offshore is already facing problems
The proof is looking at open generation data past winter. Sadly energy charts gives only gwh/day but you can still do some inference about how much fossils were used/how much imported
There's no such thing as baseload power plant. If solar were able to supply the demand with some bess you'd call it baseload. What matters is firm power.
And yes, Germany plans to expand gas plants. It's sad they didn't opt out for BWRs that can modulate faster, at 1%/sec
Now you want a firming nuclear plant? First it needs to be reliable, we can't have a system collapse when 45% is offline like happened in Sweden in October and May this year.
Then it needs to be dispatchable.
Nuclear power when it runs at 100% 24/7 all year around except a tiny maintenance window costs ~18 cents/kWh.
Are we looking at a 50% capacity factor? And not collapsing when 50% are having outages?
So ~60 cents/kWh?
I love how new built nuclear power becomes completely farcial when put into real world constraints.
For generation data, go to https://www.energy-charts.info/index.html?l=en&c=DE , pick any 4 day interval in each month from dec to feb last year. Look how much twh was generated from fossils and imported. That's what you need to replace
I love it when 45% having an simultaneous outage is acceptable for nuclear power but dealing with renewable variability is a dealbreaker.
The logical inconsistencies are amazing.
You do know that a 90% averaged capacity factor and simultaneous outages of 45% doesn’t have to be a disjoint set?
Yes. Way way easier, cheaper and faster using renewables and maybe all storage.
Or are you suggesting that we should stave off renewable implementation, continuing with the current emission, and wait until the 2040s for new built nuclear power to come online?
I suggest do both.
45% in sweden was 2 units going offline? I even doubt that's 45%. And for most part outages were planned. But that's maybe why swedish govt wants to go with smaller bwrx units. This way you can schedule easier annual maintenance for each unit
Just like during the energy crisis Sweden had another 7 month outage. With the worst week of all with the winter peak consumption happening with 2 reactors having outages.
But it is much easier to pretend that the capacity factor over the lifetime applies and then cry about renewables eating their lunch.
Hahahaha if that ever happens. The government seems to like the idea of nuclear power but not politically bearing the costs of tens of billions in handouts.
Now they’ve soon spent four years dallying without any real progress and the next election is coming up in September.
The question you need to answer is:
Why should a home owner with rooftop solar and a home storage buy 18 cents/kWh + backup (you know, 2 out of 6 reactors having outages when needed the most) when their rooftop solar or home storage delivers?
