Alas, as the wind soars, so do our energy costs. Danish electricity prices have only gone up, up, up, and through the roof during the last thirty years or so, concurrent with the massive, statesponsored introduction of wind turbines. Or, to be precise, the pricetag of electricity itself hasn't really changed much since the 1930s, but has been completely buried under an avalanche of taxation, which in various guises makes up nearly nine tenths of my electricity bill. A lot of this is "green" tax, earmarked for sponsoring - you guessed it - more governmentally mandated wind turbines.
To the best of my knowledge, our Danish electricity is the most expensive in Europe.
That's the actual intended policy, though, not some undesired side effect. The public policy has been that electricity should be highly taxed, both to encourage conservation and to raise funds for making it cleaner.
It's also, like many things in Denmark, tied in with national industrial policy. Greentech in general, and wind turbines in particular, are seen as an important export sector. So Denmark has an interest in "modeling" the benefits of this technology at home, with the expectation that between Vestas, smart-grid technology, etc., the whole endeavor of associating Denmark with wind energy will not only be "green", but also net-profitable for the country.
As with most renewables (e.g., wind, solar, wave), I would imagine that just because production of energy outpaced its consumption on a given day, the same may not be true on any other given day.
It was not clear if energy capacity has recently increased but the article did state that last year on average it produced 39% from wind. That being the case, focusing on conservation seems like a good idea still...
Make sure you qualify what "most expensive" means. Here in California, we have some of the highest electric rates in the United States but also some of the lowest electric bills [1]. Saying we have "expensive" energy requires defining what that metric is; sure, CA loses on energy rates but I'll argue the rate is a questionable metric at best. I have no idea what the situation is in Denmark, of course, but there's more than the per-kilowatt-hour figure.
For the curious, California achieves this by a regulatory measure called "decoupling": a utility's profits are not connected to how much raw energy it sells. In particular, CPUC (the statewide utility regulator) lets electric utilities, both municipal (e.g. SMUD) and investor-owned (e.g. PG&E), charge higher rates if they implement energy efficiency or demand-side management measure to reduce total demand, allowing the utility to maintain about the same level of profitability but at reduced energy consumption. It's pretty cool.
[1] in 2012, from EIA data, CA paid $0.15/kWh rate and $88 average monthly bill mo whereas the national average was $0.12/kWh and $107/mo. Slides from Jane Woodward.
Yes, there is more than the per-kilowatt-hour figure. There is a fixed charge for being connected to the public grid. That connection, here in Denmark, is mandatory, by the way.
But apart from that, there's nothing more. That's the cost I see, that's the price I have to pay. And I do mean HAVE to pay. Going off the grid, producing my own electricity, will only get me into taxational hot water and possibly fines.
If you have a rural vacation house (for instance) in Denmark, and you are off the grid and ... perhaps have some solar arrays ... you would have to pay tax on the power generated ? And possibly fines ?
The thing you have to understand about Denmark is, there is no "off the grid". If you have a house that it's legal to live in, it's connected to public utilities. There are no unnamed roads or unnumbered houses here. (Or unnumbered citizens, for that matter.)
What happens if you install a solar array is that your meter stops running or runs backwards when you're generating more than you're using (and you're selling back power). Even if you don't draw anything from the grid, you're still paying to be connected.
VAT is 25%. And the tax is depending on your income. It's from about 40-51%.
However, living in Denmark I've got multiple things in return:
- Free health care
- Free schools and university (got my computer science degree for free. Only had to pay for the books).
- You get paid about $1000/month while studying to cover apartment rentals etc.
- If you loose your job, you will still get paid by the state to continue living :-)
When having got your education, and you might think that it's crazy to pay so much in taxes of your income, but remember what you've got for free to get there :-)
However, I think the whole tax-system needs an overhaul. For example there is a 180% tax on cars (+25% VAT). So many people are driving in unsafe, fuel-consuming cars. Lowering the tax on cars could lead to roads with safer and more fuel-efficient cars. Electric cars have been tax-free the past years, but it looks like it's going to change in 2016.
AND electricity is expensive by the end-users. The electricity itself is cheap, but when I buy electricity for 200 DKK, I have to pay about 800 DKK in taxes.
No, you understand correctly. Living here, you pay, or the almighty tax authority will somehow get you in the end. This goes for nearly everything.
Official danish broadcasting channel, DR, collects roughly USD 350 per year from ANYONE with an internet connection worth the name.
Highly visible on Danish roads: We drive older, smaller cars than our Scandinavian and German neighbours. Decent cars are taxed out of reach. All in the name of sustainability and latter day puritanism, of course.
Denmark is rather small (1.5x Hawaii), it has a high population density and the population is relatively evenly distributed. The area in Denmark where you could put a rural vacation house without being relatively close to an existing electrical line is almost nonexistent.
Haha, I pay $.30AUD/kWh, and that's with some discounts. I'll be looking into solar panels for next year, but alas the government prefers coal and has cut the solar rebates.
Decoupling does not reduce the overall bill for ratepayers. It keeps the utility whole when they sell less electricity. The reasons that CA has lower bills, even though rates are high is the weather (how much air conditioning is used on the coast?), the high number of people that live together in a single dwelling, and little high energy industry.
If you live south of San Francisco you don't need a heater, and north of LA you don't need a AC. When I lived in Santa Barbara I didn't have AC or heating. And it was lovely.
In Atlanta we all need heat pumps (which are efficient) for both AC and heating. See what that'll do to your e-bill.
> To the best of my knowledge, our Danish electricity is the most expensive in Europe.
It is, when you count in taxes and VAT, which go to produce other useful outcomes. However, Ireland together with the UK has the highest energy prices excluding taxes, closely followed by Cyprus and Spain. Interestingly enough, three of these are islands.
It would be interesting to see these prices without subsidies, as the enery market is pretty global and these big differences must come from something else, I think.
In Germany, the private consumer pays for all the additional cost imposed by renewables while the industry still gets the old tariffs. Naturally, because a small fraction of consumers need to cover the whole cost, normal people see a much higher bill.
These are the costs you are paying for having a better and cleaner future not only for yourselves but also the next generation. Nothing wrong with that.
Absolutely true, but it's not being promoted right. While Denmark is building wind farms, we're have also been told to save on electricity continuously for the past 10+ years. Again there's nothing wrong with that, BUT if you save on electricity every year and still see your bill go up, due to additional taxes, and tariffs, your motivation is broken.
Saved 10% on your electricity and having your bill stay the same doesn't make you particular susceptible to future electricity saving campaigns. If you don't do anything, then sure you bill goes up, but at least it does feel like wasted effort.
The majority of an electricity bill in Denmark isn't the power you used, that's actually fairly cheap, it's the myriad of different taxes that raise your bill. It makes it almost impossible to read you bill or reduce your cost by any significant amount. It really isn't a system that promotes energy savings.
What you're saying is that you saved 10% electricity and helped the environment at no cost to you. (You might have bought some expensive LED lights, but at least they'll last a number of years.)
I also got a little annoyed this year when my energy provider informed me that the electricity costs would sink (pegged to actual marked prices) and the fixed costs would rise. That change made my electricity more expensive only because I use very little electricity. Regardless of that change though, using more electricity would still cost me more — so there is no reason to leave the lights on for good measure. The change just reflects the nature of utilities. The utility has to maintain the grid no matter how much electricity you use. If the fixed costs increase that just means the pricing is more realistic.
> What you're saying is that you saved 10% electricity and helped the environment at no cost to you.
That's not what I'm saying. We're aren't talking about just changing light bulbs, most people I know did that years ago. All the easy stuff was done years ago, it's trying to eliminate standby power consumption, turning of the oven early cooking on the residual heat, buying a new fridge and so on. Expensive and cumbersome things. Sure people want to help the environment, but it would be more motivating if all your investments and vigilance was reflected on your electric bill.
A typical Danish electric bill is:
10% transport, paying for the grid.
45% electric tax (Just a tax, not really clear what it's for).
20% sales tax
10% PSO tax, for securing electrical supply, support for green energy production and research.
15% Actual energy usage.
I'm concerned that people will stop trying to save energy, if it's not reflected on their bill. Most people will say that they want to help the environment, but honestly I don't think it's a motivating factor for remembering to turn of the light, the direct impact is simply to small.
But surely it is pretty simple to see the two separately - you pay X for electricity used (a falling amount) and Y for mandatory green tax (which everyone moans about but at least sees some social utility for)
People aren't fully rational, which can complicate issues but still, if I wanted to encourage conservation of something, raising the price is a pretty obvious place to start.
Most economists seem to favour a revenue-neutral carbon (or GHG) tax, as that let's the market work a little better, but the end result would be similar, people paying more for electricity and there being an incentive to build towards a 100% renewable/carbon free energy grid.
This is partly the problem with renewable power. You get large swings in generation where some days it's your entire demand and you may even have to pay to export the excess power and other days it's 0 and you need to fire up the gas plants in order to avoid brownouts. Building two power plants (wind and gas) results in double the cost and less reliable grid overall. It's surprising how much people seem to discount the reliability of wind and solar when discussing them as true alternatives to fossil fuels.
It's surprising just how much people seem to discount the reliability of markets to smoothly deal with variations in supply and demand.
German aluminum smelters for instance are already building their plants to be able to scale electricity with supply. They've seen these periods where electricity prices dropped almost to zero and they want in.
As always, markets often take time to adjust to new realities, so this shift won't be instantaneous.
I'm totally with this, the idea that no market for 'excess' electric will appear doesn't pass the sniff test. A paper I read discussed a pilot plant in the 50's that produced iron from sulfide ores. Certainly sounds like a process that can consume excess power without much trouble provided that situation happens frequently enough.
In Denmark this is mostly managed by the interconnects with neighboring hydro-heavy grids. On calm days, Sweden releases more water from reservoirs and sells electricity to Denmark; on windy days, it closes the hydro gates and buys cheap electricity from Denmark. Fairly fortunate situation to be near large amounts of hydropower (Sweden gets about 50% of its electricity from hydro).
I remember being in Denmark a couple of years ago when there was a massive spike in the electrical price. Think it was due to low wind and that Sweden had abruptly shut down one of its power plants.
As an effect it costed the Danes more than 11-12 USD to run the clothes dryer (one time). So it can be expensive to depend on others :)
They're still not that common, at least in Copenhagen, partly because most apartments are pretty small, so space is at a premium. But in recent years I've seen combo washer/dryer units that reuse the same tumbler for both functions, so they take only the space of a normal washer.
As for the cost, well, many Danes have money to spare.
See renewables as fossil fuel saving addition to the grid. Yes, you need conventional power generation to cover the worst case scenario. Yes, it will make the power grid more expensive. No, it will not make it less stable if configured properly. Every Joule generated by a renewable source saves a Joule from fossil fuels for future use. Every Joule saved on fossil fuels means less import (for most countries). So, financially for most countries, renewables are like a savings account which pays back over the next twenty years.
I disagree with the statement that highly variable sources of generation won't make the grid less stable. The more non-dispatchable variable generation there is the more quickly dispatchable firm generation you need to make up for the power which can suddenly disappear. Electricity systems use the frequency in the short time frame to determine if more or less power is required, big changes in generation cause changes in the frequency, which is one aspect of grid stability.
The current price of fossil fuels is not sustainable, and has wildly fluctuated over the last decade. It's not really a metric that can be used for long term planning, except to say that fossil fuels are finite (in the "human scale" of time. Everything is finite if you want to get pedantic.), and therefore the cost will eventually go up if we keep relying on them.
The varying monetary cost of fossil fuels also causes huge destabilization of the world economy (See 1973 OPEC crisis etc). It would make the global economy much more stable if we could eliminate such an unpredictable variable.
Also, mathematically, something that is "renewable" will, given time, obviously provide a better ROI than something that isn't. The figure of 20 years may not be accurate, but fossil fuels will never pay back. Once used, they're practically gone for good.
>Also, mathematically, something that is "renewable" will, given time, obviously provide a better ROI than something that isn't.
Only on a global scale, but people don't act globally. The ROI for the actual entity buying the windmills will be worse if natural gas prices are almost nothing.
You do not ever have to pay to export excess power from wind turbines (or solar) because they're instantly dispatchable - you can just feather the blades if no-one is willing to pay for the power.
In Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, Canada and Washington, USA at least, I am certain that company that builds a wind farm gets a contract where some entity guarantees they will buy all of the power the wind farm will produce at a pre-determined rate(s). Otherwise nobody would put up the money to build the wind farm.
You are correct that new renewable plants never have to pay to export excess power, but conventional generation such as old-hydro, gas, nuclear, coal, etc that don't have sweetheart contracts with the government do have to contend with negative prices, and the system does have to pay someone to take that power. Then the local rate payers through some non obvious lumped in "market operating charge" or other mechanism end up paying for that power they didn't use.
You could feather the blades, but at least in the markets I've worked in they never would.
edit: Actually, the ratepayers don't pay to get rid of the energy they didn't use, the generators that generated it at a negative price have to pay for not being able to shut down.
Much as with cloud computing, as long as the grid is large enough (covering multiple weather zones) and there is an electricity market that responds to supply and demand, the storage overhead required for renewable power becomes negligible.
Within Europe, the European super grid will largely solve the problem -- at a cost equivalent to building a couple of nuclear plants.
Wind is feasible now, but efficient batteries would be a complete game changer. They would make all sorts of power generation viable (wave power, tidal power etc).
With efficient batteries, the entire concept of "the grid" changes. You have distributed energy buffers everywhere, so you don't need to worry so much about high / low loads, brownouts, high voltage line requirements, power losses over distance etc.
Sure that is a problem, now. But there is a lot of investment in energy storage solutions e.g. electric cars, molten sands, large scale batteries, smart grids.
People are very aware of the problems with wind/solar but that doesn't mean that we should continue to use fossil fuels or blindly pursue unpopular, problematic technologies like nuclear. The status quo is simply not an option.
I can't see how anyone could describe nuclear power as 'problematic'. At best you could argue that the shitty reactor designs from the 1960s don't always endure outrageous levels of incompetence and systemic corruption.
Chernobyl was an onion of layered stupidity and incompetence. (Fun fact: eleven reactors of the same core design as Chernobyl are still operational today. Eleven. Today.)
In the case of Fukushima, it took a one-two punch of the largest earthquake in Japan's recorded history and an absolutely catastrophic tsunami in order for TEPCO's incompetence to become a problem.
Though it may not seem it, you can make a statistical case for nuclear power being among the safest forms of electricity production per unit of energy. Burning fuels for power kills tens of thousands of people every year. Hydro dam failure has the blood of hundreds of thousands on its hands. Workers fall off wind turbines and rooftops -- rarely, but it's statistically significant compared to the unit output.
No, I would argue that the shitty reactor designs from the 1960s (and 1950s, actually) never endure even normal levels of competence and systemic corruption. Given a long enough time horizon, those bad designs will fail. They are designed to fail.
Going further, they are designed to fail in the face of "normal accidents"[1] which we can expect to happen. Every single one of the failures will have some kind of unique dramatic human-discerned narrative, just like the two you narrated above, but they will all have their failure in common.
I think we should be in favor of nuclear power in general. I think we should be marching in the streets in protest of the standard model of nuclear plant currently deployed around the world. Like you said, there's 11 more chernobyls out there just waiting for their own "normal accident".
> No, I would argue that the shitty reactor designs from the 1960s (and 1950s, actually) never endure even normal levels of competence and systemic corruption.
That is a statistically impossible assertion. Plenty of these shitty designs managed to endure normal levels of competence and systemic corruption for the entirety of their planned life span and have been decommissioned without catastrophe.
> In the case of Fukushima, it took a one-two punch of the largest earthquake in Japan's recorded history and an absolutely catastrophic tsunami
How is this a one-two punch? It sounds like a one-punch to me; the tsunami wasn't visited upon Japan by a vengeful god. You might as well complain about the "one-two punch" of getting hit by both fingers when a guy with three missing fingers punches you.
It was an one-two punch because either one by itself unlikely would have produced the disaster: the earthquake not only produced the tsunami, it also sunk the coastline about 4 feet rendering tsunami barriers useless.
I read somewhere their tsunami barriers where just high enough to stop the tsunami but the coastline sinked. No engineer could have predicted that.
> It was an one-two punch because either one by itself unlikely would have produced the disaster
But that's what I'm saying! Tsunamis can't happen by themselves. They're caused by earthquakes (or volcanic eruptions, nuclear explosions, or other literally earth-shaking events). The odds of a record-breaking earthquake co-occurring with an extreme tsunami approach 100%. Similarly, it's not at all surprising for the coastline to sink in an earthquake.
You do realise that two fists tend to be attached to one person, right? A one-two punch can (and often does) represent two attack vectors in quick succession originating from the same cause.
Seriously, saying "this plan required two different rare events to coincide before it failed" is very different from saying "this plan required a rare event to happen before it failed". The implications are not the same.
And while a boxer may want to hit his opponent with both hands, hitting with the left definitely doesn't cause hitting with the right. Most punches are not one-two punches. Tsunamis (or, as wikipedia would have it, "seismic sea waves") are generated by earthquakes, not by some mysterious root cause that might or might not also put off earthquakes.
Earthquakes frequently do not cause tsunamis. Or the tsunami strikes an area where it does minimal damage. So yes, an earthquake WITH a tsunami that also happened to strike a nuclear reactor is a combination of rare probabilities.
I think the objection to your point was sufficiently clear. Your implication is that Fukushima was so safe that it took the simultaneous occurrence two statistically unlikely events to cause it to fail catastrophically i.e. unlikely x unlikely.
The objection was that this was actually a single unlikely event, because one was very likely to follow from the other i.e. describing someone squeezing a trigger as an independent event to the bullet leaving the barrel is incorrect.
Two independent unlikely events occurring at the same time is extremely unlikely. Unlikely events themselves are common.
I'm not trying to impart the implication you assert, I'm not suggesting that the combination of the two events is unlikely. A one-two punch isn't "two statistically unlikely events", it's the same opponent hitting you twice.
Not all catastrophic earthquakes are followed by catastrophic tsunamis in the same area. Not all catastrophic tsunamis are preceded by catastrophic earthquakes in the same area.
I'll consider it non-problematic when the nuclear liability cap is eliminated and the private sector insures it fully. Without subsidies.
If it were so incredibly safe, there wouldn't be a need to give taxpayer support.
The real reason, of course, is that it isn't actually that safe, and private insurers aren't willing to take the risk without a liability cap that is pathetically low (a few hundred million).
And, if you got rid of this subsidy: no more nuclear plants.
The problem is that the law can easily place blame for big huge accidents but can't doesn't put any blame on massively distributed harm. A lot of the dangers of traditional fossil fuel generation doesn't stick to energy companies. They increase the chance you get cancer or respiratory diseases, but there is never a direct link. You'll never know if global warming caused a forest wire that wipes out several towns.
But when a nuke plant goes belly up, you know it ruins the small town it is in.
But the liability cap is part of a government enforced insurance scheme. It's a super highly regulated industry. It's not like they can ruin your house and stiff you.
The law is set up so nuke plants don't abuse corporate liability shields and then go bankrupt in an accident without paying for it.
Some claim it is a form of subsidy, but the government is allowed to retroactively raise rates if it turns out the risk profile wasn't accurately measured. It's really not that different from unemployment insurance companies have to pay for.
The reason it isn't just covered by private insurance is because when plants were first built, it was just impossible to underwrite. It still maybe hard to underwrite.
Insurance works on the law of large numbers. But with a low probability, catastrophically highly loss, it's impossible to insure.
If you exclude Chernobyl (and you should since modern nuke plants can't have a core explosion) there aren't any confirmed or even estimated deaths in the commercial nuclear power field. Even a super conservative estimate (no threshold radiation) would yield under 200 people world wide.
Shit, iPhones kill people than that a year (texting while driving)
>The problem is that the law can easily place blame for big huge accidents but can't doesn't put any blame on massively distributed harm. A lot of the dangers of traditional fossil fuel generation doesn't stick to energy companies.
Sure. They get this type of massive subsidy too.
They can both be consigned to the scrapheap of history if it were mandated that all new generation capacity had to come from renewable sources. This is, by the way, a very easily achievable goal given the last few years' plunge in the price of renewable energy.
>it was just impossible to underwrite. It still maybe hard to underwrite.
Which is why I'm still unconvinced about their relative safety.
As far as I'm concerned Merkel was right to adjust Germany's energy policy to favor renewables after Fukushima. There's just no point in taking the risk when the alternatives are there.
"The real reason, of course, is that it isn't actually that safe"
Perhaps you'd like to go into detail on why you think it isn't actually that safe, especially when compared with the fossil fuel energy generation ecosystem it would be replacing.
They demonstrated why it's not safe. No private insurer is willing to take the risk. If it was safe, then someone would see the opportunity to profit by insuring nuclear plants -but anybody who looks at the technology realizes they could end up having to spend on the order of a trillion+ in the event of a major disaster, and so walk away unless they have their liability capped at some small number.
Their point is very good - as soon as private insurers feel comfortable insuring nuclear power plants, then we have some evidence that nuclear energy is becoming more safe.
Renewables are more than capable of substituting the fossil fuel energy generation ecosystem and the nuclear energy generation ecosystem. I think this article makes that point pretty clearly.
And, like I said, I'll be convinced of nuclear power's true safety as soon as the industry puts its money where its mouth is and the liability cap becomes history.
After all, if it were as riskless as they tell us it is, they would be happy to see it go. Right?
"Renewables are more than capable of substituting the fossil fuel energy generation ecosystem and the nuclear energy generation ecosystem. I think this article makes that point pretty clearly."
The article makes the point that one small country which has invested extensively in the technology was able to fill its electricity generation needs on one specific day. Now, I'm not going to minimize that -- it's an impressive demonstration of what wind power can do under optimum conditions. But it says absolutely nothing about the practical replacement of fossil fuels and nuclear worldwide, including in nations that aren't nearly as well situated to take advantage of wind energy as Denmark, or which aren't wealthy enough to build and subsidize expensive wind infrastructure.
"And, like I said, I'll be convinced of nuclear power's true safety as soon as the industry puts its money where its mouth is and the liability cap becomes history.
After all, if it were as riskless as they tell us it is, they would be happy to see it go. Right?"
Why would any industry, no matter how safe, turn down a government-provided liability cap? If the government was willing to put a liability cap on Nerf guns, I guarantee you that Hasbro would happily go along with it, and most likely fight to keep it once in place.
>But it says absolutely nothing about the practical replacement of fossil fuels and nuclear worldwide, including in nations that aren't nearly as well situated to take advantage of wind energy as Denmark, or which aren't wealthy enough to build and subsidize expensive wind infrastructure.
If you think poorer countries that are too poor to build wind turbines or put up solar panels are instead going to take advantage of nuclear power you are smoking some pretty radioactive shit. The CapEx on a nuclear plant is staggering.
Cheap Chinese solar panels are getting extremely popular in the 3rd world as of the last 18 months, incidentally. Because the capex on a solar panel starts at around $200.
>Why would any industry, no matter how safe, turn down a government-provided liability cap?
They just have to say that it isn't necessary and that it can be taken away. I'm sure the environmental lobby and a few senators looking to score some points with their constituents can take care of the rest.
They are not willing to put their money where their mouth is but you are still willing to believe their protests at how safe their plants are, though. What does that say?
>If the government was willing to put a liability cap on Nerf guns
Except the government didn't put a liability cap on Nerf Guns and Hasbro didn't ask for one.
I'm sorry, but you're still missing the point. Yes, the nuclear industry could say to the government, "Please take away this policy that protects our industry." But the nuclear industry will not say that to the government, because the nuclear industry is made up of modern twenty-first century human beings who will happily rake in whatever government benefits are being offered and fight like demons to keep them from being taken away. You cannot make any conclusions about nuclear power's safety or lack thereof based on this.
May I suggest if you want to convince a group of grounded, knowledgeable, and technically minded people that nuclear power is unsafe, you're going to have to go with facts and figures, not "put your money where your mouth is."
>I'm sorry, but you're still missing the point. Yes, the nuclear industry could say to the government, "Please take away this policy that protects our industry."
Right, because if it's as safe as they and you say it is then it is absolutely not needed.
This would be a very clear signal of the faith that they have in the safety of their own investments.
> the nuclear industry is made up of modern twenty-first century human beings who will happily rake in whatever government benefits
According to you it is not a benefit, so they really shouldn't be all that concerned about keeping it.
But they are.
>May I suggest if you want to convince a group of grounded, knowledgeable, and technically minded people
In other words you think I should believe you, random internet stranger, over the nuclear industry's own self assessments of the danger posed by their plants.
> Right, because if it's as safe as they and you say it
> is then it is absolutely not needed.
Their shareholders will sue the shit out of them if they give up free money. I can't work out if you're being disingenuous or if you genuinely can't understand why companies don't give up free money.
"According to you it is not a benefit, so they really shouldn't be all that concerned about keeping it."
What are you talking about? Of course it's a benefit. I just said that in the exact line you quoted.
"In other words you think I should believe you, random internet stranger, over the nuclear industry's own self assessments of the danger posed by their plants."
No, I think that if you're going to assert that nuclear power is not safe you should back it up directly with information about... oh, say... how many fatalities it causes in comparison to other generation methods, instead of convoluted backwards arguments about liability caps. Since you seem disinclined to do that, I think we're done here.
> Renewables are more than capable of substituting the fossil fuel energy generation ecosystem and the nuclear energy generation ecosystem. I think this article makes that point pretty clearly.
The fossil fuel energy system is huge. I don't have the numbers to hand, but AFAIK to stop pumping out carbon we're going to need nuclear as well, ASAP. That all present nuclear is problematic (e.g. insurance, as noted) doesn't change this.
What do non-windy areas do at night for power? There is no renewable solution that currently addresses this. There might be in the future, but today, outside of specific areas with favorable wind conditions, it most definitely is not possible to replace fossil/nuclear with wind/solar.
As far as I'm aware the EU is the only jurisdiction without a liability cap for airlines. Presumably you think that's because planes are dangerously unsafe too?
Airlines have liability caps as well. Your argument is pointless. Liability caps are because of the potential size of the black swan events, not because they are frequent.
I don't think this is relevant honestly. ( I'm assuming you want to compare the costs with other energy sources )
This reminds the question about How much energy are we spending today to build an electric/hybrid card versus a petrol one? (By comparing the factory emissions for example) Currently petrol cars are cheaper to produce because of the decades of investment, usually no one has in consideration in the equation, but on the long run eco tech wins the race. We should also expect new discoveries in Material Engineering that would help to reduce the cost and/or improve the efficiency.
I don't think it's a fair to compare the cost of producing versus the cost of petrol solutions until the planet's crust isn't a source of energy.
Depending on the answer to my question, it is totally relevant.
> but on the long run eco tech wins the race
Fine, but if some cleaner alternative is developed over the carbon repayment period, we could in fact be better off sticking with the current technology until then.
The comparison to cars isn't relevant because cars aren't expected to produce energy. If a wind turbine couldn't cover it's own energy costs, the entire thing would have been a complete loss. It would mean they are just an inefficient way to convert fossil fuels into energy.
He is wrong, but so everybody who thinks that wind generated energy by itself is the future.
The electrical grid has some very serious limitations that most of the people are not aware of. For example you cannot recover from a blackout scenario without electricity. Only very few power plants are able to do that, the most common types are nuclear plants.
Another lesser known fact is that any windmill you put in your system requires a fossil based turbine as well to be able to control the surges and dips in the power production.
On the top of that, most of the windmills are not suitable for being placed for human population based on the frequency of sound they produce.
I think the future is clean nuclear power and some renewable sources.
Hydro-electric plants are also very often Black start-capable, even more so than nuclear plants. Basically you only need someone to go up to the upper reservoir and open the hatches manually.
Same holds for dips and surges, you can ramp a pump storage very quickly, same order of magnitude as a fossil plant. Additionally you don't need to have it running on base-load. That's why this mode of operation is currently not feasible for many gas-fired power plants. Gas prices vs electricity prices are so bad (at least in Germany) that you will always loose even in the most modern and most efficient plants if you try to provide control reserve. If you don't run on maximum efficiency you'll loose all the time, if you do, however, you cannot control dips in the power production as the point of maximum efficiency is often near maximum load.
You can run solely on renewables if you have enough hydro plants (see Norway).
Sure, Norway is especially suited since because of its terrain and essential emptiness. My point was that you can provide the support for wind power using other renewables.
Australia has a lot of coal (no need to import raw material).
Australia has coal mining companies (no need to import technology).
CO2 is only a global problem, the coal which Australia burns won't make a big dent in the effects and the cost is shared globally.
So, financially it totally makes sense to use up the local resources first. At least in the short term until these resources get scarce.
In the long term, saving resources may be the wiser option. E.g. have coal plants on standby most of the time while solar and wind supply the grid. Then you can export some of the coal or save it for future generations.
Coal plants don't really do "standby" well though. They are much better at providing constant output. Gas turbine plants are better at handling rapid changes in supply and demand. Possibly pulverized coal could be used in a turbine but I don't know how well that works.
This article reminded me of an interesting structural problem in eastern Germany, right next door to Denmark. The many wind farms there give a net surplus of power, but there's no easy way to route it to western Germany, where most of the demand is. Maybe a fellow commenter will remember the details better than I do.
The problem is mostly discussed in Germany in context of north vs. south - the north with the coast and all its wind parks, and the energy-hungry, industry-rich south. Right niw the solution is to build new power lines, but that spawned a huge political debate (NIMBY). Power lines are about as unpopular as new freeways, and there is a risk of court cases dragging on for years, stalling the energy transition program. The compromise right now is to spend more tax money and use underground cables in densely populated or otherwise sensitive areas (e.g. nature reserves).
The question never was can wind generate enough power - just build more windmills. The question is can it be reliably integrated into a stable electrical system?
Unfortunately, largely no. At least not still. Without getting into technical details note that in jurisdictions with a legal mandate to prefer windpower (when available) and large installed windbase the price of power goes negative. That is, there are situations when power companies pay to have anyone dump their power. Otherwise they'll damage their equipment.
I agree the grid issues are a major constraint on new wind turbine. But is there actually evidence that they cannot be reliably integrated in the grid? Is Denmark's grid actually unstable?
At least in the UK the grid operators simply refuses connections if their is not enough grid capacity in the locality of a proposed wind farm. It is surely a problem, but one that is well understood. And paying people to dump power is a method of maintaining the grid in unusual conditions; it is just a bit unpleasant. Excess capacity is an unintended consequence of having free fuel!
Before I rant; I dunno the specifics about Denmark, but as a maritime nation they have a unique advantage for windpower. Off-shore windpower is far less stochastic than on-shore windpower (see last paragraph for why). So all the problems below are significantly mitigated.
In power engineering we're not talking about switches that readers in this forum are more acquainted with (in computer architecture). Currents are in the thousands of amps, not nano, and volts are in the hundreds of thousands (or millions in one Soviet era line).
Furthermore the grid is very strict with quality. The frequency must be within a certain tolerance at all times, and no more than a maximum allowed of phase shift in a period of time. The sinusoid must be quite pure, with strict maximums allowed of harmonics. The voltage has to be right. The power has to flow out, not in.
Keep in mind that the grid is unforgiving with the python philosophy of asking for forgiveness. A mistake costs millions.
Every time you add or remove a load/source the frequency changes, the voltages change, the flows change. To stabilize the grid you have a bulldozer (the throttle) and a little scalpel (capacitor banks). A few jurisdictions are blessed by the engineering gods and have an instrument that works in-between (hydroelectric storage).
Now imagine you don't have to slowly integrate a single large and lethargic source in the middle of the night when ppl are sleeping. Instead you have thousands of stochastically generating sources being integrated and removed as the load is changing.
The proof are in the prices. Wind power is expensive, but ironically the spot price sometimes drops to negative!
Wind power needs a storage revolution. Then most of these problems go away.
There is one cavet to all of this, off-shore wind. Since maritime flows are very constant and the relative speed at an interface is zero, offshore wind power if far more reliable and useful the on-shore.
In this kind of discussion I think most of us would assume that "instability" means a threat to continuity of supply. High prices are hardly evidence of that.
I understand that balancing supply from numerous turbines is difficult, but is that a solved problem? Is there evidence of customer supply problems or not?
Why not just feather some or all of the windmills when the supply exceeds the demand? Those adjustments should be possible in a matter of minutes. In the USA I have often driven through wind farms where only a fraction of the windmills are actually turning.
In Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, Canada and Washington, USA at least, I am certain that company that builds a wind farm gets a contract where some government-backed entity guarantees they will buy all of the power the wind farm will produce at a pre-determined rate(s). Otherwise nobody would put up the money to build the wind farm.
So while they could feather the blades they have no incentive to.
In Ontario if they were forced to not generate they would still be paid for the power they weren't allowed to produce ("being constrained off").
That is the reason why there are currently huge North-South power lines planned to go through Germany. As you would expect, from the German states to small villages everybody is fighting over where they will be build. Germany has a huge generation of fit retirees and it has become a meme that they engage in citizens initiatives to fight power lines. Then there is our special child Bavaria, for whom these lines are primarily build, who wants them to go through Hesse.
I wonder if taking energy (sun, wind, water) from the earth make any damage in long term to it - let's say fields that not going to get sun they got used to, or clouds wont move the way they otherwise would - thus causing unpredictable climate changes. Just a thought
But that hill, if there, could cause a variation in climate. Just because an equivalent hill could be there doesn't mean the hill's presence would have the same effect as its absence.
And if we're talking hundreds of thousands of hills across the globe, there could be a larger systemic effect in aggregate.
This seems highly unlikely (without further evidence) to have a global effect anywhere on the level of climate change, and if it's part of the solution to that problem, I'll take it.
Whatever the effect, it is (very probably) not zero.
By using "renewable" energy sources, we are in fact depleting the Earth from one form of energy (wind, solar, ...), producing some work (mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, ...) and, usually, dissipating heat. There are some directly affected climate processes. For example, if you cover a big area with solar panels, the ground does not get heat up, which can have an effect in water reservoirs or whatever.
So, this is happening when we use renewable resources. I assume we can agree on this.
But there are a couple of caveats:
- probably the scale at which we are currently affecting the environment with renewable energy sources is reaaally small, specially compared to the effect that non-renewable energy sources have. But anyway, exponential growth based on renewable energy sources will at some point start having a big effect on climate too. This is probably very far way, and we can probably compensate for this somehow (terraforming Earth, so to say). As long as we are using up a small fraction of the sun energy, we have room for maneuver. An even then, nuclear energy can help further, so the ultimate limit is the amount of matter we have at our disposal.
- it is difficult to say how Earth adjusts to this tampering: is it able to dissipate the heat produced by human processes (not talking about CO2 here)? Is it able to absorb more sun radiation, since the "equilibrium situation" has been affected? I mean, if we "slow down the wind" with a wind-turbine, maybe there is a new complementary process which takes care of putting sun energy in the wind again.
Personally, I was often curious how much of 'global warming' is due to human energy generation (30%~40% efficiency), which all ends up as heat anyway.
Also, the average temperature in cities is way way higher than it is in more natural locations.
It shouldn't be significant because GW is all about how bad Earth is in dissipating energy into space (in comparison to black body), rather than how much energy flows through. Nevertheless, let's count: according to Wiki, 2012 World energy consumption is 5.6*10^20J; this means we were producing at an average rate of this/seconds in year/area of Earth, which is 0.034W/m^2. Solar input (and thermal radiation output, since Earth is roughly in an equilibrium) is 340W/m^2, making our input 0.1%, about the same as variations due to solar cycles.
It is a question worth asking. The biggest risk I see in energy extraction is deep ocean thermal. Where deep cold water is used against shallow warm water, effectively siphoning off a thermal reservoir that has taken hundreds of years to accumulate.
Human structures have modified the environment for millennia. You could probably put together a theory to say that the desert around Giza has been changed by the pyramids.
Do you consider that cities also block the sun on fields?
That is actually a very valid point, even if the article specifically says electricity. Denmark is frequently running 100%+ wind power, that's nothing new. We also almost always burn coal or waste at the same time.
Most house (in the cities) are heated and have hot water provided by either large coal burning power plants, or smaller local gas or waste burning plants.
I believe that the politicians have finally allowed excess wind power to be used to produce heat at local heating plants. Previously they needed to pay a CO2 tax for the power they would consume (even if it came from wind mills), that ruined the business case and the excess power was sold or given away to neighboring countries.
That's why it says electricity. Also, when you can produce this much electricity (already), it makes it possible to fill electric cars' batteries with 100% renewable energy.
Denmark isn't currently geared to use electricity from wind mills to recharge electric cars. Well you can fill your battery of cause, but you can't choose to do it at specific times at reduced cost or by wind only. We really do need to get a system in place that can have variable rates.
You will need to burn a whole lot of fossil fuels to make batteries for every car on the road. Thats always ignored by proponents of electric cars who conveniently ignore the fact that batteries manufacturing processes are very dirty and use a number of toxic materials.
You also need a lot of energy to make a car, or to build a combustion engine. Yes, battery driven cars are particularly polluting to produce, but a couple tanks full of gasoline will make up for the difference.
My (implied) point was that for every engine / machine that runs on gas / coal, there's an electric alternative. If the goal is to adopt 100% clean / renewable energy, we should count the electricity needs as the current electricity consumption + the electricity we need to run the replacement engines / machines. And that number is going to be significantly higher than wind can deliver.
Hydro (and geo-thermal) are good, but not universally available. Nor California, nor Israel would find it as an option. In opposite, both are desalinating the water using fossil fuels, just to cover basic needs.
Solar sounds much better; and its potential crop is much higher than wind.
Also, I am not saying that clean/distributed energy system is impossible. I am saying that the metric used in the article is misleading.
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To the best of my knowledge, our Danish electricity is the most expensive in Europe.