The worst thing about dubbing is that it's more important for the translations to have roughly the same length and correspondence to the original mouth movements than to be accurate. So the original meaning is often altered, and you don't even know it because of course you have no easy access to the original most of the time. But unfortunately Germans are so used to dubbing that subtitles don't really stand a chance. There are a few cinemas here and there that show original-language movies with subtitles, and on TV there was one experiment that I'm aware of a few years ago (on Pro Sieben Maxx) to show TV series with subtitles, but it was cancelled after some time. AFAIK it's also more expensive to secure the rights to show English-language content compared to dubbed content.
From the article: The development comes much sooner than most industry observers expected to see this technology. The Swedish battery maker emphasized that the cells will be free from lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite.
For Europe (the continent and the EU) it totally makes sense to have a common grid - as it has already now. Nuclear in France, solar in Spain,... this diversity has served Europe well in the last decades.
But you are right. Those who are against windmills always mention nuclear as alternatives, but you can bet 100% they would be even more against a nuclear reactor in their neighborhood.
At least in Spain, the municipality that holds de radioactive waste or the reactors are very eager to have them because they get a lot of money either from the government or the electric utility. The biggest complainers are the nearby municipalities, that receive nothing but have to deal with nuclear being around.
And then you have things like Chooz plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chooz_Nuclear_Power_Plant#/map...), that is technically in France but is more in Belgic than France. Plants in the border like Gravelines, Cattenom, Fessenheim, or as far as possible from big cities like Flamanville, Paluei, Penly, Brennilis. In fact, Flamanville (one of the biggest planned plant in France) or Gravelines are closer to London than to Paris. Cattenom closer (and upwind) to Frankfurt or Luxemburg than to Paris. Fessenheim would be in Germany if it was build 1 mile/km to the east. They also built a lot of reactors in the highly seismic area of west Alps, but if something happened to any of them, the winds would carry the spicy cloud to Switzerland, Italy or Germany.
Solar with battery storage seems to have passed nuclear on price 4 years ago, when it was 2-3x more expensive than it is today and perhaps 10x more expensive than it will be before a new nuclear plant can be finished.
If that's true (and I see no reason to doubt it) Germany will make the cheapest energy in the EU by a country mile in just a few years. Unfortunately, they are bound by treaties to cover the cost of nuclear in other countries, so it won't help them as much as it could.
The main problem for solar+storage is that centralized, government-controlled energy production is a huge cash cow for the state. In the EU, the price of electricity gives the governments extra income both when they sell electricity and when they tax the consumption. They can basically drain money from the population at will.
I see this declaration as a step to keep things that way, it just makes no sense otherwise.
I was told at one point that storage in Germany is inhibited because an entity wanting to operate grid-connected storage had to pay tax on the energy used to charge the storage (and then the output would be taxed again by whoever ultimately consumed it.)
Dunkelflauten (and seasonal leveling) are covered by use of an e-fuel like hydrogen.
You can see this effect in action at the optimization/simulation site https://model.energy/
Go there, solve for Germany (2011 weather data, 2030 cost assumptions), then disable hydrogen and try again. The optimum cost nearly doubles.
Interestingly, this simulation also suggests a 95% cost increase if Germany tried to do it without e-fuel/power-to-X (which it estimates would need to cover about 8% of demand)
As it stands now it will be a disastrous experiment which will (and already has) affect(ed) the rest of north-western Europe due to the interconnected nature of the electricity network. Electricity prices in the lower half of Sweden have risen dramatically due to this and also due to the fact that our own 'progressive/green' politicos took down half the nuclear generation capacity based on ideological reasoning.
This poses a number of questions:
- will these ideologically driven apparatchiks ever be held accountable in some way or will they just glide through the promotion circus and end up in cushy positions as ambassador in some warm country, in some UN organisation or as head of some NGO or (like Schroeder [1]) in the board of Gazprom or some similar organisation?
- if Germany continues to de-industrialise due to a shortage of affordable power it will only be harder to reach that pie in the sky called the H₂-based economy - can this downward spiral be halted in some way?
- how does a country's responsibility to help stabilise the European grid interact with another country's irresponsible experimentation with that stability?
While the climate-apostles have boarded their private jets for yet another posh gathering the temperature has steadily dropped, the land is white and frozen and electricity prices have risen up to tenfold. Gas prices are still low but that does not help for those who listened to the apostles and replaced their gas-burning central heating for an electric heat pump. Solar does not help either when snow covers the panels which look out over a steely-gray snow-laden sky (source: I just looked out of the window) nor does wind (source: same the before).
In a post-fossil fuel age, Germany is fucked energywise anyway compared to sun-drenched lower latitude countries. Unless nuclear in Germany can compete with solar in these places (competing with solar in Germany is not enough), German energy-intensive industries will operate at a great disadvantage.
That is not correct. Once the energy cost goes below a certain level, it simply is no longer important compared to other factors like human resources, tax, infrastructure,... .
Example: If the kWh/h costs 2 cent in Germany and only 1 cent in country X, that 100% difference would not matter, even for the most energy hungry industries.
Renewable energy has to get cheaper than it currently is before it becomes less of an economic input than fossil fuels currently are, for many industrial processes. For example, in production of iron renewable energy is competing against the raw chemical energy of coke.
> In a post-fossil fuel age, Germany is fucked energywise anyway compared to sun-drenched lower latitude countries
Assuming that the 'greens' either get the boot or a revelation which leads to new nuclear power stations being built in Germany I'd say they'll be more than fine at night while during the day they'll be able to use their installed and yet to be installed solar capacity in addition to their base load capacity.
If and when the long-term energy storage problem is solved in an actually useable way [1] this can change but until that time any country or region intent on going 'fully renewable' will need a backup base load capacity for those times the sun and wind are absent. The former happens predictably every night and less predictably when the skies are overcast, the latter is as predictable as the weather. That base load can - assuming that 'non-renewable/non-nuclear' sources are out - be nuclear or (possibly pumped) hydroelectric. If the geography allows for (pumped) hydro and if the local 'greens' do not get laws (re)written to block the establishment of such infrastructure that would offer a long-term solution. Realistically speaking most places which allow for large-scale hydroelectric facilities probably already have them. This leaves nuclear power... which is expensive to establish but cheap to run. This combination of facts makes nuclear a good base load provider since running a nuclear power plant at or near maximum capacity does not add much to the expenditures but means the investment in building the plant and the related processing/waste storage facilities is recuperated sooner. Adding solar and wind to the mix will lead to an excess in power during the times these sources produce which will necessitate lowering the output of the nuclear plant which in turn means the investment in building it will take longer before the investment is recuperated.
[1] something like 'e-fuels' using captured CO₂ and generated H₂ to create synthetic hydrocarbons - possible but extremely energy-inefficient - or some yet to be developed process
The proposal I've heard for using CO2 to make e-fuels for grid storage would work like this:
1) Electrolyze water to H2 and O2.
2) Store the O2 (either as compressed gas or LOX).
3) Use the H2 with CO2 to make hydrocarbons or other fuels (methanol?).
4) The fuel is eventually burned in Allam cycle turbines, using the stored oxygen to burn the fuel in compressed CO2 (oxyfuel combustion). The produced CO2 of combustion comes off with water and is easily separated for storage for use in step (3).
This still has storage (oxygen, CO2, and the produced fuel) but these may be easier than storing hydrogen in locations without suitable geology.
Green H2 is projected to get cheap enough that a combined cycle plant running as a base load source on green hydrogen would be economically superior to a new construction nuclear power plant. Of course, a 100% RE grid needn't operate any hydrogen plant in base load mode, only to fill in gaps not covered by direct use of solar, wind, and batteries. Very little H2 is actually needed to cover dunkelflauten; somewhat more might be useful for seasonal leveling.
Visually a very nice UI! From a feature point of view, is there a difference to existing open-source web automation tools like selenium ide or ui.vision?
The Lufthansa offer is no greenwashing via CO2 compensation. It is CO2 neutral fuel ("SAL"). This is the way to go. The downside is that it is a (currently) very expensive option.
Then again, if I would be a movie star or the like, I would check this box every time I fly.
I am surprised that anyone still thinks this thing is legit. I mean, I wish it was true, but the publication, the approach and the infights in the team do not instill confidence.
To me, it seems they can not recreate the "effect" themselves. Otherwise they would be shipping their samples around the world by now.
I'm not necessarily saying I believe it's real, I'm still on the fence, but if anything, the in-fighting for credit from the researchers almost makes it more credible for me. Why would they be so desperate for credit if they knew their findings would be disproven in a week or two? It seems obvious they're vying for a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, I believe the researchers believe what they published is true.
Don't really get this extreme sensitivity to downvote. I mean - it seems what it seems. May be it seems really promising and trustworthy to some, good for them.
That apart - it seems low hanging fruits in the nature are almost over. Scientific progress might not be as rapid and consistent as in past in coming decades especially when world seems to be heading towards multiple (avoidable) conflicts.
25 years is just what they guarantee, it probably lasts much longer.
My solar roof (not Tesla, of course) is meanwhile 21 years old, and works almost like on day 1. Since I dont expect a sudden failure in 4 years, my guess it that it will last another 10-20 years.
For the record, I had 4x some small panels (165W) from a reputable company that shall remain nameless. They had a 10 year warranty.
Turns out that (a) the 10 year warranty actually meant "generating at least 90% of rated capacity in full sun after 10 years, but pro-rated across 10 years if not" and (b) they fell under this level after less than 5 years.
This is what I'm curious about. There seem to be really large differences between panels. Got two 150W panels for 78€ each this year. Peak output so far was around 240W, if performance stays like that for about five years I might break even in about 5 years for the full setup.
