Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

Cephalotus · Oct 25, 2017

Hillhater said:
From that, I assume you can understand that "bid" costs have absolutely no relation to the cost of production or the cost to the consumer.
Suppliers bid to get access to the market and to the rebates which hide the full cost

There are no rebates in Germany, so the bid price is or should be above the production cost.

and is what helps make Germanys electricity some of the most expensive in the world.

Germany installed lots of its wind and solar and biomass capacity when this was much more expensive than today, this is the high reson for the add on tarfif for RE for consumers. (industrial comsumers do not pay that).
There are also lots of taxes on electricity.
Generation cost of electricity and price for industrial users is quite low.

For me as a costumer I do not care a about few cent per kWh more or less. I earn enough money (and most people do) that the electricity price simpley does not matter. I assume that 80-90% of the average people on the street do not even know their tarrif.
For companies and industrial users electricity price rarely is a problem. Germany still is a industrial country with very high export rates. For most companies energy prices are between 1-3% of their overall costs. (there are a few exceptions)

Germany, probably wont need batteries for storage, because like most other "zones " with high % of wind and solar, it maintains a reliable power supply by utilising supporting power inports from adjoining "zones" (countries).... Or by having large amounts of surplus thermal generators available on standby ..Its not a sustainable situation.

Exchange with other countries in ENTSOE-E is common and of course not stupid if you sit in the middle of Europe and we always did it. But the amount is not huge and it is mostly exports

"After 2022 there will be 0% nuclear power. " GENERATED". In Germany"...
Germany will still be importing nuclear power when its RE sources fail to meet demand.

Some amount, yes. But is is just because other neighbouring countries have it in their mix, not because it is needed for anything.

Attached is the power trading of Germany:

You can see that Germany has become a huge net electricity exporter.

https://www.energy-charts.de/trade.htm?year=all&period=monthly&source=balance_energy

Cephalotus · Oct 25, 2017

Hillhater said:
we touched on this issue a few pages back, using the example of how to heat a city like New York with wind and solar generation and an intermittent supply.
So could you elaborate on how this hot water system would be employed in a city of that scale ?
How much water, how hot, where to store it, etc.

You can reduce the demand for heating by a factor of 2-3 with more insulation and better technology (in reality you could achive much more, this is a more practical number). Global warming at +2Ksoon will lower the heating demand by another 5-10%.

You could use geothermal heat pumps for some building which are able to make 5-6kWh of heat with 1kWh of electricity. You can quite easily store heat for at least 12-24h. So maybe 50-75% of the heat can come from electricity. For the rest use natural gas. It will be available in 2100 and you can replace it step by step with synthesized gas (at a much higher price though).
I don't know about the US, but Germany already has gas storage capacities for methane of 200TWh.

As an alternative option you could use hydrogen, too, if you don't want to mess around with carbondioxide. It's a bit more complicated then, because you need to install a new parallel infrastructure, which I assume would be quite expensive...

I wouldn't recommend burning wood for a large city.

In some cities deep geothermal heat could be a an option.

Cephalotus · Oct 25, 2017

Btw, a solar power plant is not "wasted land" or something covered with concrete or tarmac like streets.

Bewlo solar power planst the soil can recover, ground water can recover and plants an animals find much better living conditions compared to farmland...

If you wnat to uninstall them after maybe 40 years you can very easily remove the screws from the soil and after a few days you have "virgin land" again, better than it was before...

sendler2112 · Oct 25, 2017

For heat of a large city, the normal day/ night intermittency of solar is a problem but may be the lesser consideration compared to the shear scale of energy required to replace all heat which is most demanding at times when the solar insolation will be zero for days on end.

TheBeastie · Oct 25, 2017

Cephalotus said:
Germany installed lots of its wind and solar and biomass capacity when this was much more expensive than today, this is the high reson for the add on tarfif for RE for consumers. (industrial comsumers do not pay that).
There are also lots of taxes on electricity.
Generation cost of electricity and price for industrial users is quite low.

For me as a costumer I do not care a about few cent per kWh more or less. I earn enough money (and most people do) that the electricity price simpley does not matter. I assume that 80-90% of the average people on the street do not even know their tarrif.

In Australia, there has been a large surge past the 100k mark in electricity home disconnections due to folks not being able to stretch their budget that little bit further as electricity prices have increased catching them off guard. And another 100k of households who are on special payment plans or rely on charities to pay for their electricity bill.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/energy-bill-pain-surge-in-household-cutoffs/news-story/007f79822ccfbc63b9033fd61cc9a74c
Australian Energy Regulator figures reveal almost 60,000 households are on electricity hardship payments and another 151,862 customers are on electricity payment plans.

Food handouts increasing with skyrocketing power bills in South Australia
The number of South Australians requiring assistance to access food has increased by 21 per cent over the past year, a charity says, with electricity prices largely to blame.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-16/sa-electricity-prices-blamed-for-more-food-handouts/9053426
Simply put, a lot of people do live on the edge, even if you don't, you should be thinking about them, they are real, they exist and they are suffering.

It could be that in Europe/USA allowing people to get cut off electricity is more serious (as people could freeze to death) and even main-stream-media doesn't try to manipulate the masses just because they have the power to do so and this policy and behaviour are quite different.
Maybe if local AU mainstream media played videos like this where Australians could visually see the co2 levels in the southern hemisphere is significantly lower and a large amount disappears in the Northen hemispheres summer time due to photosynthesis they might have a different feeling of urgency. But at the moment MSM makes Australians feel that if they don't get off coal in 1 years time and live off renewables they will die and kill the earth with it and its entirely if not directly their fault and the rest of the world is not to blame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1SgmFa0r04

I been looking at direct feeds of political people instead of relying on main-stream-media to give me their interpretation of what they say (something most politicians now recommend, Trump included). Looking at what these put out directly can be a lot more interesting and detailed.
For instance today they talked about Australians NEG plan and how this small bakery/coffee shop transitioned off gas for its bakery and onto pure electricity and its daily power usage was about 403KWh (0.4MWh) per day.

https://youtu.be/O5c758NlFgU (I uploaded it to YT from FB) https://www.facebook.com/malcolmturnbull/videos/10155931542126579/
[youtube]O5c758NlFgU[/youtube]

If this is the model of the future of getting off fossil fuels than there is no way this bakery/coffee shop is going to get that kind of power from his roof and I really do believe that Solar farms will be banished to only the most super ultra dead/dry parts of the world where they can't interfere with nature/co2 sequestration, (excluding roofs of course).
If its going to be half a MWh per day per bakery/restaurant/coffee shop than thats going to be about a $7million dollar 2MW wind turbine installation per premises (with 0.5MWh average power output) and then there is all the battery to smooth it out and the maintenance which seems to hide if anything the largest amount of cost.

You guys have to read these articles again, its TREES that do co2 sequestration, grass/weeds wont do anything. This is brand new scientific findings and governments around the world are now building policy based on this.
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-nature-vital-climate.html
Article quote
"The Biggest Natural Climate Solution: More Trees
According to FAO, 3.9 billion hectares or 30.6% of total land area is forest. The researchers found that trees have the greatest potential to cost-effectively reduce carbon emissions. This is because they absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, removing it from the atmosphere. The results of the study indicate that the three largest options for increasing the number and size of trees (reforestation, avoiding forest loss, and better forestry practices) could cost-effectively remove 7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually by 2030, equivalent to taking 1.5 billion gasoline-burning cars off the roads.
"
^ You know why the easiest and greenest and most effective solution will struggle to be taken up? Because there's little money to be made out of it and most peoples minds are at the whim of MSM.
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*ADD*
I have worked in a small kitchen that had an electric oven and its quite similar to this, but smaller than what the bakery oven used in that video.
If you go through to the specs section of the oven it says 34kW power.
So 10 hours of use is 340kilowatts of power used... If you are a decent sized bakery then its easy to see how you would use 403kWh in a day.

POWER 400-415V, 3P+N+E, 50Hz, 34kW

https://www.hospitalitysuperstore.com.au/rotel-bakery-oven-electric-vtl.html#tab-product-view2

sendler2112 · Oct 25, 2017

Hillhater said:
Ohbse said:

[
Solving heating issues using intermittent power sources is easy. Use PV/Heatpumps to heat large quantities of water. Circulate water to regulate temperature. Done. At some point implementing such systems becomes cheaper than purchasing NG and you'll see rapid adoption.
.

Click to expand...

we touched on this issue a few pages back, using the example of how to heat a city like New York with wind and solar generation and an intermittent supply.
So could you elaborate on how this hot water system would be employed in a city of that scale ?
How much water, how hot, where to store it, etc.

For heat of a large city, the normal day/ night intermittency of solar is a problem but may be the lesser consideration compared to the shear scale of energy required to replace all heat which is most demanding at times when the solar insolation will be zero for days on end.

Cephalotus · Oct 25, 2017

TheBeastie said:
It could be that in Europe/USA allowing people to get cut off electricity is more serious (as people could freeze to death) and even main-stream-media doesn't try to manipulate the masses just because they have the power to do so and this policy and behaviour are quite different."

There are always people that do not pay their bills. This has very little to do with electricity prices, most wouldn't have payed if the price would have been lower.

I see some correlation of gasoline price and the cost of cummuting to work but this is mostly a special US american problem with the "car culture, lack of alternitives, large distances and the very common love for gas sucking vehicles, especially among the "poor". If you "need" 300kWh of gasoline each day to go to work and back something is _very_ wrong imho.

Electricity prices? Girlfriend and I live in separate flats. My annual consumption of electricity is around 1500kWh and almost half of it is related to one of my hobbies (artificial lights for cultivation of carnivourous plants). I buy 100% renewable electricity since I pay for my own electricity and I don't care if it costs 5ct more or less per kWh.

My consumption includes a good washing mashine, a fridge and a freezer, electric cooking (which I only do rarely), a dish washing machine, a TV (which I almost never use), notebook, lights, several electric bikes, etc... I even have a mobile air condition system which I use for some hours in very hot years and a air drier which I use to keep humidty lower during winter time. The only thing I do not have is a dryer for clothes, amybe add 200kWh for an effective one.

To most of US Amerians this might sound like living in a 3rd world country but I don't miss anything (I just would buy if I would) and I often wonder how others waste electricity for nothing...

The only thing I did was buying efficient stuff, but some of my houshold devices are more than 10 years old and even better ones are available now.

Noone "freezes" to death if they have enough to eat. Two generations ago in old houses only one or two rooms have been heated. Durig strong frost it freezed inside the sleeping rooms and this was Zero Problem. You just use a thick comfortor and maybe a nightcap.
The "German Michel" is usually shown with such a nightcap..

Not heating most rooms to 23-34°C in winter (which people would claim to be a to high setting for AC during summer) but keeping them at still comfortable 17-18°C, wearing thicker socks and sweaters would hardly be a "disaster" but would lower your consumption for heating energy by around 50% in our region. Simple as that and this is still much, much more comfortable compared to how our grandparents lived and far, far away from "freezing to death".

wineboyrider · Oct 25, 2017

@Cephalotus: When I lived in Montabaur Germany there were a lot of rural homes that heated their homes with Kackelofen's or masonry wood stoves. I stayed at a friends house who could heat his whole house with 1 meter of wood.

Hillhater · Oct 25, 2017

Cephalotus said:
Hillhater said:

From that, I assume you can understand that "bid" costs have absolutely no relation to the cost of production or the cost to the consumer.
Suppliers bid to get access to the market and to the rebates which hide the full cost

Click to expand...

There are no rebates in Germany, so the bid price is or should be above the production cost.

..But as you pointed out for the Offshore Wind bid( $0.004/kWh), it definitely is not !
( OS Wind is approx $0.14 kWh LCOE)

and is what helps make Germanys electricity some of the most expensive in the world.

Cephalotus said:
Germany installed lots of its wind and solar and biomass capacity when this was much more expensive than today, this is the high reson for the add on tarfif for RE for consumers. (industrial comsumers do not pay that).
There are also lots of taxes on electricity......

..and the fact that Germany has had to maintain, and add to, it Thermal (coal & Gas) generators to support the variability of RE sources.
Currently, Germany has over 200GW of generation capacity, ~100GW of Wind and Solar, and ~ 80 GW of Coal +Gas,....but its maximum peak demand is never more than 70-75 GW :shock:

that means there is 100+% overcapacity and also at times 100 GW of variability to be managed..basicly by keeping thermal plants running on standby and often exporting power to other countries when they cannot be regulated down in response to RE variations..that is very costly.
this record shows why that thermal power is kept on standby, and some of those periods when RE fails and power has to be imported..lucky supporting countries are not so heavily committed to RE power at those times.

Cephalotus said:
Exchange with other countries in ENTSOE-E is common and of course not stupid if you sit in the middle of Europe and we always did it. But the amount is not huge and it is mostly exports
Attached is the power trading of Germany:

You can see that Germany has become a huge net electricity exporter.

indeed, but what that chart also shows is how much surplus generation is available as i mentioned, and its mainly the result af having to keep the coal ( and Nuclear) plants running for those morning and evening peaks when solar isnt available and the wind may not blow..
And ..again as i said, this is only workable because other supporting countries do not have the same amount of RE generation.
As a final point, all of the above costly change to RE has so far resulted in Wind supplying 12% of all electricity used last year, and Solar 6% ...and remember that is from 100GW installed for a 75GW peak demand ??? :shock:

...and NO reduction in CO2 emissions !
....but the highest Electricity cost in Europe.

sendler2112 · Oct 25, 2017

Renewable energy isn't a replacement for fossil electricity. It is and extender to help it last longer.

Punx0r · Oct 26, 2017

sendler2112 said:
For heat of a large city, the normal day/ night intermittency of solar is a problem but may be the lesser consideration compared to the shear scale of energy required to replace all heat which is most demanding at times when the solar insolation will be zero for days on end.

I'm pretty sure the sun rises in most (non-polar) places at least once per day...

New York already has a distributed hot water (steam) heating system.

Cephalotus · Oct 26, 2017

Hillhater said:
( OS Wind is approx $0.14 kWh LCOE)

Why wind offshore "costs" 0ct/kWh in Germany:

https://energytransition.org/2017/04/germany-to-get-free-offshore-wind-wait-what/

There are some special factors in that case, but Overall truth is that it has become quite cheap in recent years

Your numbers seem to be outdated.

and is what helps make Germanys electricity some of the most expensive in the world.

Not for the industry.

Currently, Germany has over 200GW of generation capacity, ~100GW of Wind and Solar, and ~ 80 GW of Coal +Gas,....but its maximum peak demand is never more than 70-75 GW
that means there is 100+% overcapacity and also at times 100 GW of variability to be managed..basicly by keeping thermal plants running on standby and often exporting power to other countries when they cannot be regulated down in response to RE variations..that is very costly.

Yes, that's the nature of solar and wind as you already have explained many times in this thread. 1GW of solar power does not equal 1GW of contionous solar power, but only around 0,11GW in case of cloudy Germany with her long and dark winters.

So you need to build a significant amount of "overcapacity" and you have to throw away some of it during Peak produtiion. In 2016 this was around 4TWh or almost 1%, but it was reduced when a new grid connector went online. Or main Problem is to get power from the wind parks in the North to the industry Centers in the South. This is not a technical problem, but mostly a nimby problem of people not wanting new grid lines...

It also has effect on the electricity export.

this record shows why that thermal power is kept on standby, and some of those periods when RE fails and power has to be imported..lucky supporting countries are not so heavily committed to RE power at those times.

Truth is that France with all ist unflexible nuclear reactors and widespread electric heating has significant problems meeting demand during cold winter days and sometimes during heat waves in summer when cooling water is a problem, while Germany so far does not have those problems. We Import/Export electricity for price reasons, not because we desperatly need to. France on the other side is a huge net exporterbut on some days depends on imports and pays huge prices, because otherwise they would experience brownouts.

indeed, but what that chart also shows is how much surplus generation is available as i mentioned, and its mainly the result af having to keep the coal ( and Nuclear) plants running for those morning and evening peaks when solar isnt available and the wind may not blow..

Partly true. For most coal power it is cheaper to export for very low prices than to throttle the output, which is technically not so easy in some of those old power plants. With higher cost for CO2 coal would quickly be replaced with gas power plants which are much more flexible, but CO2 prices are very low at the Moment.
Germany builds a new government and today the started coalition talks about the future of the "Energiewende".
We will see...

And ..again as i said, this is only workable because other supporting countries do not have the same amount of RE generation.

Partly true. There is not need to export wind and solar energy, you could just throttle them down and there is also no desperate need to import, we do it because it is cheaper at that time. Grid flexibility and electricity exchange to other countrys is a good thing that benefits both sides, nothing that is bad and has to be avoided. The larger the grid the better, this is why there is a large single grid running at the same frequency from South Italy to Northern Sweden.

As a final point, all of the above costly change to RE has so far resulted in Wind supplying 12% of all electricity used last year, and Solar 6% ...and remember that is from 100GW installed for a 75GW peak demand ???
...and NO reduction in CO2 emissions !
....but the highest Electricity cost in Europe.

Cost for consumer is high (not the highest) not only because of RE integration but because of signicant taxes and CO2 emissions have been reduces significantyl despite already shuting down more than half of the nuclear power.

So we are not even Close to finish the "Energiewende". but we have come a significant way so far. High costs for old PV, old offshore wind and biomass power plants will only have to be payed for maybe another 5-15 years and after that costs for RE Integration will be lower again...

Average CO2 emissions in Germany electricity generation:

Future cost for RE feed in tarifs:

You can make your own calculation with your own numbers with that tool (for Germany):

https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/data-tools/

Keep in mind that paying 50ct/kWh for solar power and 25-30ct/kWh for some Kind of biomass power and up to 20ct/kWh for offshore wind is something that Germany and ist electricity consumers pay to get that Technologies mature and much cheaper. Noone has to pay similar prices now.
But without the Gigawatt installatrions in Germany, Japan, Spain when PV has been very expensive we wouldn't have the option of cheap PV now, so Africa, India and China would built much more coal power planst than they do now. so it depends if you think this is/was a stupid idea or not.

This is a study from 2017 about future electricity costs in a RE path and a conventional path for Germany:

https://www.agora-energiewende.de/fileadmin/Projekte/2016/Stromwelten_2050/Agora_Gesamtkosten-Stromwelten-EN_WEB.pdf

(there is no nuclear option which is a very good thing, imho, but if other countries want to try that path I will not argue against it, especially if they are some thousand km away)

Keep in mind that Germany is densly populated with much worse wind and solar ressources than many other countries. So what we do would/should be much easier and cheaper in the US.

Punx0r · Oct 26, 2017

Wow, I had no idea Germany was powered by some much renewable energy!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany

Germany has been called "the world's first major renewable energy economy".[1][2] For a brief period beginning on Sunday 15 May 2016 at 14:00, renewables supplied nearly all of Germany's domestic electricity demand.[3] Monthly generation from combined wind and solar power compared to total generation reached an all-time high of over 74% in April 2014,[4] while wind power saw its best day ever on December 12, 2014, generating 562 GWh.[5] More than 23,000 wind turbines and 1.4 million solar PV systems are distributed all over the country's area of 357,000 square kilometers.

Cephalotus · Oct 26, 2017

85% in May 2017:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-renewable-energy-record-coal-nuclear-power-energiewende-low-carbon-goals-a7719006.html

But this are only short periods.

Obviously sooner or later the RE share will be more than 100% for short times and you have to "throttle" the production. This already happend in smaller countries or regions...

But this is not a technological problem, you have to deal with "overproduction" in a system with a high amount of solar and wind power, but it adds to the cost, because value of such electricity is zero. (can be even negative in lignite and nuclear power planst, when trottling is more expensive than giving away the electriicty for free)

sendler2112 · Oct 26, 2017

Cephalotus said:
85% in May 2017:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-renewable-energy-record-coal-nuclear-power-energiewende-low-carbon-goals-a7719006.html

But this are only short periods.

The headlines are very misleading giving the impression that this 85% is a steady base load percentage of contribution.. It takes immense storage to ever get near zero thermal electricity. Too bad there is no currently available effective way to make liquid fuel from the brief but increasing RE excesses.

billvon · Oct 26, 2017

sendler2112 said:
Too bad there is no currently available effective way to make liquid fuel from the brief but increasing RE excesses.

Here in San Diego there's a very effective way to make water from RE excesses. We have a desalination plant that supplies about 10% of our water - and since it's RO based, it can be throttled pretty easily to run when power is cheap (or free.)

As real time pricing is implemented, more and more industries will take advantage of cheap (or free) power by having processes that can run intermittently, like water filtration (and eventually fuel creation.)

Cephalotus · Oct 26, 2017

sendler2112 said:
The headlines are very misleading giving the impression that this 85% is a steady base load percentage of contribution..

That's obvious

It takes immense storage to ever get near zero thermal electricity.

depends on what you think is "immense". I gave a link to a study above for a 95% RE scenario in Germany and there is an option with 9GW of pumped storage plants (which we already have built) and another option with around 30GW of battery storage capacity. (we maybe have 0,5GW now ? But this is just starting...)
In both scenarios a significant amount of gas turbine and CCGT power plants need to be insatlled and they will probably run on hydrogen oder synthetic methane.

Too bad there is no currently available effective way to make liquid fuel from the brief but increasing RE excesses.

It's alread a possibility to make synthetic methane from RE, AUDI has built such a small facility: http://www.powertogas.info/power-to-gas/pilotprojekte-im-ueberblick/audi-e-gas-projekt/

Problem is, that natural gas is much, much cheaper and it makes littel sense to make methane from RE in one facility and burn methane to make electricity some km away... It's more a technology for the future.

There is a company sitting just one km away from my home that makes synthetic fuel from RE.

It's more a demonstration of the technology rather than a commercial product: http://www.sunfire.de/en/

At the moment there is no need to make such fuels, it's easier and better to transform 50% of the "easy" cars to electric vehicles than to try to make expensive synthetic fuel, but the tehcnology is available and will be needed someday to power planes, maybe ships, tractors or trucks...

Well, efficiency is usually somewhere around 50-60% (kWh to kWh) to make carbon based fuels out of electricity, CO2 and water. If the alternativ is to just throw away the electricity it could still be an option. But those fuels will cost much more than oil and gas taken from fossil fuels.

First step is to transform the electric grid to more renewables and you have to strengthen the grid. Parallel you have to make a large amount of vehicles to run on electricity, because it is the best and most efficient option. Paralell you have to built efficient buildings that consume only little energy for heating and colling and there should be an option to do it with electricity in times when theer is plenty of wind or solar.

Storage capacities, power2x, trucks and planes are the next step. You don't need them for a long time.

sendler2112 · Oct 26, 2017

Free energy for intermittent Desalination would be a big bonus all across the Middle-East where water is precious. Liquid ammonia might be a convenient way to ship hydrogen out to the farm fields and mines for the big machines if carbon is not available to make Methane. Cargo ships should as soon as possible begin to retrofit to nuclear.
.
Unrelated but interesting high tech solution for transporting large or heavy items without the need for roads would be giant, lighter than air craft which could carry complete shipments of parts for several giant wind turbines, completed and certified factory assembled modular reactors, ect.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Aeros_Corp#Aeroscraft
.

Punx0r · Oct 26, 2017

Replacing the power source for global shipping is a huge challenge but perhaps the answer is to use it less. We currently routinely manufacture in one country and ship goods halfway around the world because it is very cheap. If shipping weren't so easy/cheap we might see a return to more localised manufacture.

Airships are perhaps seeing a bit of a renaissance. Some seem to think they have a role in the future. There's a ship being developed in the same hanger that made the massive R101 in the 1920's: http://cardington.weebly.com/

I don't know if it will catch on, but it's suited to being covered in solar panels with battery storage and electric thrusters and slowly lumbering long distances.

sendler2112 · Oct 26, 2017

Gigantic lighter than air ships are perfect for transporting exceptionally long items like turbine blades and towers. Also for heavy items like gas turbine assemblies. But we will have to find a way to insure safety when used with hydrogen if we build more than just a few of them. We have a turbine factory near me and every time the transport one it is done on a ridiculous trailer that travels at walking speed since it is so heavy.
.
.

.
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Turbine blades go down the highway one at a time on special over length wheel sets and the towers go 1/4 section on a trailer. Very inefficient. It would be much nicer to just pick these things up and fly with them so as not to use any roads.
.
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Hillhater · Oct 26, 2017

Cephalotus said:
Why wind offshore "costs" 0ct/kWh in Germany:

https://energytransition.org/2017/04/germany-to-get-free-offshore-wind-wait-what/

There are some special factors in that case, but Overall truth is that it has become quite cheap in recent years
Your numbers seem to be outdated...

Thanks, that proves the following..
1) bid prices bear absolutely NO relation to the REAL cost of generation
2) One bid of 6c above market price was accepted !..effectively (11-12c/kWh )
3) the bids at 0c/kWh are simply wanting access to the market , and intend to bid for spot prices ( 20+c/kWh ?)
4) Those 0c bidders fully expect higher market price opportunities in the future ...not cheaper power !
5) The 0c bidders still have the option until 2021, not to build at all. !

The $14c/kWh is not my number ,..
... its the US eia.gov official ECOE cost for OS wind power forecast for 2022 start up.

and is what helps make Germanys electricity some of the most expensive in the world.

Cephalotus said:
..Not for the industry.

no, because if it was , it would cripple Germany's industry base and destroy the economy .
Its better to load the costs onto domestic consumers via taxation etc, and give industry the tax break to keep it viable.

this record shows why that thermal power is kept on standby, and some of those periods when RE fails and power has to be imported..lucky supporting countries are not so heavily committed to RE power at those times.

Cephalotus said:
...... We Import/Export electricity for price reasons, not because we desperatly need to.

it you look again at the chart i posted, you will see the imports occur at the am/pm peak hours when solar is not available and the wind has died..its a peak such that the thermal generators cannot respond fast enough, ( they already pulled back the power they were exporting) hence the NEED to import.
Why else would you import with plenty of thermal capacity standing idle ??

Cephalotus said:
..
Cost for consumer is high (not the highest) not only because of RE integration but because of signicant taxes

and the power is taxed highly because.... ???? :roll:

Cephalotus said:
..
Average CO2 emissions in Germany electricity generation:
https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/5_abb_entw-spez-co2-emi_2017-05-24.png....

most of Germany's RE (Wind + solar) has been installed since 2000.
that chart shows that since 2000 to date, the 100GW of RE installed has resulted in a <5% reduction in CO2 ...!

Cephalotus said:
..
Keep in mind that Germany is densly populated with much worse wind and solar ressources than many other countries. So what we do would/should be much easier and cheaper in the US.

Unfortunately not.
other countries that are installing high % of Wind / solar are also seeing escalating electricity prices...and power reliability problems in some cases.

Hillhater · Oct 26, 2017

sendler2112 said:
Gigantic lighter than air ships are perfect for transporting exceptionally long items like turbine blades and towers. Also for heavy items like gas turbine assemblies. But we will have to find a way to insure safety when used with hydrogen if we build more than just a few of them.
.

great idea, but it will need some "big mutha"s , to shift the new turbine units..
Generator heads are 100+ Tonnes already, and the rotor blade assemblies even more.
The Lockheed airship has a max lift capacity of 20-25 tonnes !
I know bigger ships are proposed, but that has been a ongoing dream for many years

Hillhater · Oct 26, 2017

Cephalotus said:
85% in May 2017:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-renewable-energy-record-coal-nuclear-power-energiewende-low-carbon-goals-a7719006.html

But this are only short periods. ..

yes ..very short periods !
Only a few hours (18 ?) before that 85% record ...( actually only 45GW because it was the lowest power mid day load of the year !) .. at about 6 pm o the 30th , they were importing power because there was no wind, no solar, and the thermals had been wound down in anticipation of the low weekend demand .
and yes the prices were heavily negative..i guess meaning Germany was paying other countries to take the surplus power during daytime...!
its those types of issues that adds to higher power costs eventually.

wineboyrider · Oct 26, 2017

A tractor trailer hauling one of those blades just wrecked in my town.... :?:

Cephalotus · Oct 27, 2017

Hillhater said:
Thanks, that proves the following..
1) bid prices bear absolutely NO relation to the REAL cost of Generation

They are lower, because companies want to earn money running those RE power systems

2) One bid of 6c above market price was accepted !

That's the one exception for a small windpark, all others ended at 0ct/kWh. That's why the average price is 0,44ct/kWh

..effectively (11-12c/kWh )

???

3) the bids at 0c/kWh are simply wanting access to the market , and intend to bid for spot prices ( 20+c/kWh ?)

Thy want access to the grid and access to the location. None of those winning comapnies (Dong and ENBW) Need Access to the market.

Of course they do NOT aim for spot Prices, those offshore wind turbines produce around 6000kWh per year and 1kW installed.

Baseload price in Germany is around 3ct/kWh.

4) Those 0c bidders fully expect higher market price opportunities in the future ...not cheaper power !

Yep. Maybe 4ct/kWh.

5) The 0c bidders still have the option until 2021, not to build at all. !

They have to pay a high panalty if they don't build them.

The $14c/kWh is not my number ,..
... its the US eia.gov official ECOE cost for OS wind power forecast for 2022 start up.

And it's far from what offshore wind power generation costs in Germany. Some outdated forecast of a fossil fuel lobby vs. actual reality.

Cost for grid connection is a different story, I don't have the numbers here.

no, because if it was , it would cripple Germany's industry base and destroy the economy .
Its better to load the costs onto domestic consumers via taxation etc, and give industry the tax break to keep it viable.

You have to keep that in mind if you want to compare electricity Prices it is not only about household tarrifs.

Also high electricity prices are not a problem per se. Our industry is usually quite competitive on a global perpective, the price of electricity doesn't matter much (with very few exeptions like aluminium production which is the reason why more than 90% of aluminium produced in Germany is made from recycling). Industry itself invests in renewable energy, too. BMW built 4 wind power planst in ist Leipzig facility where they build the i3, Daimler builds a large solar roof in its new battery factory in Kamenz just to mention two projects from the electric vehicle sector.

it you look again at the chart i posted, you will see the imports occur at the am/pm peak hours when solar is not available and the wind has died..its a peak such that the thermal generators cannot respond fast enough, ( they already pulled back the power they were exporting) hence the NEED to import.
Why else would you import with plenty of thermal capacity standing idle ??

If importing is cheaper than producing you import. There are also grid restrictions and there are long term contracts.

It's much, much more complicated than you think or your picture Shows.

We have the BNetzA to provide Information what is needed for grid stability in Germany. The stuff is written in German (obviously), this is for excample the analysis of your electricty supply after shutting down the last remaining nuclear power plants in 2022.
As you can see / imagine this is not done without knowing what will happen.

https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Sachgebiete/Energie/Unternehmen_Institutionen/Versorgungssicherheit/Berichte_Fallanalysen/Langfristanalysen_UeNB_2016_LF.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2

Btw, grid stability in Germany is very good and improved over recent years despite higher solar+wind share, as you can see on the SAIDI index:

For comparison SAIDI index for France is significantly higher (=worse)

Cephalotus said:
..

and the power is taxed highly because.... ????

This is a result of tax reforms ca. 15 years ago when there was a decission to lower taxes on work but increase taxes on energy consumption.

Maybe there is some need for clearification: In Germany taxes on electricity / energy have _nothing_ to do with solar and wind power, financing them is an entirely different system (Umlageverfahren). (the exeption is that you pay VAT on the EEG Umlage). You see the cost of the EEG on your electricity bill, but this is _not_ a tax.
So government could lower the taxes on electricity any time without compromising solar and wind financing.

most of Germany's RE (Wind + solar) has been installed since 2000.
that chart shows that since 2000 to date, the 100GW of RE installed has resulted in a <5% reduction in CO2 ...!

Not so bad, isn't it? RE was able to replace most of our nuclear power plus adding some extra electricity to the mix in just a few years! Who would have believed that back in 2000?
RE will replace all of our nuclear power plants plus most of our coal power plants in another 17 years plus providing electricity for new electric cars.

Cephalotus said:
..
Unfortunately not.
other countries that are installing high % of Wind / solar are also seeing escalating electricity prices...and power reliability problems in some cases.

We don't have power reliability problems.

I personally also do not have a problem with electricity prices, too. For a typical German houshold Prices are still low enough that they simply don't matter. If the price of electricity would double (which is very unlikely) I wouldn't care much. I think this woul be a small price to get rid of the fossil and nuclear power plants.

My electric bikes consume 0.3-0.5 kWh/100km, my speed pedelec (45km/h) consumes around 1.0-1.5 kWh/100km and an efficient electric car like the Hyudai Ioniq consumes around 13kWh/100km. So 25ct/kWh is perfectly fine and even 50ct/kWh (which will not happen) wouldn't hurt me either.
I just wouldn't buy a Tesla S that consumes 20kWh/100km (but for those willing to pay 100,000 Euro for a car that wouldn't matter either)

On the other hand:
Breathing those ICE car emissions while cycling in my city or the still significant risk of a nuclear reactor melting down are of MUCH higher concern to me. I want to stop that. ASAP.

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