Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

I'm impressed with what Germany has achieved in RE and also with their future plans. I'm sure that even after it has achieved its RE objectives and has demonstrated a stable grid for years, there will still be people claiming it's impossible to do so!

This isn't blind optimism - it's reasonable extrapolation from the achievements others have already made.

I've seen a few U.S. contributors mention quite cheap domestic electricity there (~4 US cents per kWh) and also the relative expensive of it in countries with a large share of RE. For what it's worth, the average cost in the UK is more like 20 US cents per kWh and most of our power comes from gas and nuclear with RE objectives well behind other European countries. So it's not necessarily RE that's making electricity more expensive - some of you guys in the U.S. are just blessed with cheap electricity (and road fuel) regardless of its source.

When something is cheap we tend to use a lot of it. Gas guzzling vehicles and large, air-conditioned, poorly insulated buildings are tolerable when energy is cheap & plentiful.

$0.039 is the cost of generation. I pay an average of 13c at the bottom of my bill when all of the transmission costs, fees, and taxes are included. Rooftop solar is being installed at $3.20/ Watt right now so it takes the 55% government rebates to make it ever pay back. Electricity pricing will go up eventually though.

Punx0r said:

I'm impressed with what Germany has achieved in RE and also with their future plans. I'm sure that even after it has achieved its RE objectives and has demonstrated a stable grid for years, there will still be people claiming it's impossible to do so!...l.

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Possibly, but we will have to wait some time , since it has yet to achieve either of those objectives.

"The Immediacy Fallacy:::: it can happen when an honest person learns so much
about an exciting or scary event they see arising in the future that it looms disproportionately
large, acquiring a counter-factual and illogical immediacy. In other words, it acquires such a
large footprint in their minds that it “feels like” it will happen very soon, even if the facts don’t
bear that out."

We have been looking at electricity generation as if it were the end all and most important aspect of the discussion. But total energy consumption is 5 times greater and dependent on liquid fuel to keep society fed and keep the debt bubble from collapsing. This is the important picture. In the case of Germany which happens to have this thread's attention right at the moment, 2016 wind and solar only accounted for 3.3% of total energy. Less than half of what was used from biomass even. Such a long way to go. So much overconfidence in solar and wind distorting our decisions.
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https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts
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And the cost issue which was not pasted from the above wiki page
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The push toward renewables has come at a price.[citation needed] According to Forbes, the IEA reports that in 2015, German prices were 17.9 cents per kwh for industry, and 39.5 cents per kwh for residential customers, versus 7 and 12.5 cents respectively in the U.S.[8]
Components Electricity Price Germany
Components of the German Electricity Price for Households Source
German households and small businesses pay the second highest electricity price in Europe for many years in a row now. In 2016 the unit price per kilowatt hour decreased slightly an average of 28,69 Cent. More than half of the power price consists of components determined by the state. These include charges for using power grids (24.6%), levies for financing investment in renewable energy (22.1%) and for other kinds of taxes (e.g. GST 16%).[8]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany
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The symantics of what it takes to stop poisoning ourselves to rapid extinction are irrelevant.

All status quo mechanism which burn things in our spaceships closed loop will end, either because nobody is left alive to re-light them or re-start them, or because we evolved out of the caveman mentality.

It really makes no difference if solar were even 10x or 1000x or 10,000x more expensive per Watt than it is today, because no matter how great of a 'bargain' you can buy barrels of poison that already are killing millions of humans a year on the ramp up to global extinction.

liveforphysics said:

The symantics of what it takes to stop poisoning ourselves to rapid extinction are irrelevant.

All status quo mechanism which burn things in our spaceships closed loop will end, either because nobody is left alive to re-light them or re-start them, or because we evolved out of the caveman mentality.

It really makes no difference if solar were even 10x or 1000x or 10,000x more expensive per Watt than it is today, because no matter how great of a 'bargain' you can buy barrels of poison that already are killing millions of humans a year on the ramp up to global extinction.

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I know exactly how you feel about fossil fuels, but what are your thoughts on sustainable wood burning? I burn excess grapevine cuttings, dead vines, harvested mesquite and old pallets, because I feel they are going to have to decompose anyways. I use an 85% efficient EPA certified wood burner and the smoke coming out of the chimney is less than what comes out of my natural gas water heater when it's hot enough to do a complete burn.

wineboyrider said:

I know exactly how you feel about fossil fuels, but what are your thoughts on sustainable wood burning? .

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It is apparently pretty bad. Many large cities have had to ban all wood burning due to poor air quality.
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https://www.transitionculture.org/2008/05/19/is-burning-wood-really-a-long-term-energy-descent-strategy/

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sendler2112 said:

wineboyrider said:

I know exactly how you feel about fossil fuels, but what are your thoughts on sustainable wood burning? .

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It is apparently pretty bad. Many large cities have had to ban all wood burning due to poor air quality.
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https://www.transitionculture.org/2008/05/19/is-burning-wood-really-a-long-term-energy-descent-strategy/

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This article addresses wood burning from a total heating source. I feel it is useful as a supplemental heat source and know I can save a lot of money in the long term by burning more efficiently I am extracting more energy by using less wood.

Hillhater said:

..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
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.

...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.

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sendler2112 said:

We have been looking at electricity generation as if it were the end all and most important aspect of the discussion. But total energy consumption is 5 times greater and dependent on liquid fuel to keep society fed and keep the debt bubble from collapsing. This is the important picture. In the case of Germany which happens to have this thread's attention right at the moment, 2016 wind and solar only accounted for 3.3% of total energy. Less than half of what was used from biomass even. Such a long way to go. So much overconfidence in solar and wind distorting our decisions.
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https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts
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And the cost issue which was not pasted from the above wiki page
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The push toward renewables has come at a price.[citation needed] According to Forbes, the IEA reports that in 2015, German prices were 17.9 cents per kwh for industry, and 39.5 cents per kwh for residential customers, versus 7 and 12.5 cents respectively in the U.S.[8]
Components Electricity Price Germany
Components of the German Electricity Price for Households Source
German households and small businesses pay the second highest electricity price in Europe for many years in a row now. In 2016 the unit price per kilowatt hour decreased slightly an average of 28,69 Cent. More than half of the power price consists of components determined by the state. These include charges for using power grids (24.6%), levies for financing investment in renewable energy (22.1%) and for other kinds of taxes (e.g. GST 16%).[8]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany
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These are two great recent summary posts..
Have to say I am impressed to see these accurate conclusions on RE put together by others who dig deep into the more accurate data.
Its always been the long general rule of thumb summary I have used and that is you need to build around 1,000% capacity in wind and solar to replace conventional generation capacity. And that would still need battery backup or something of that nature for it to really work, all that use of biomass is really cheating as just like hydro-electricity its really unique to the specific area.
Did anyone see 60minutes Australia's report on renewable energy? It was pretty amusing and disturbing on how misleading it was, very well presented, someones already uploaded it to youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g8DD01B89g
Its a great window into the mind of how the average Australian sees it as they are stuck in the "main-stream-media The Matrix" vs us in the real world with real-world data and information.
The thing to remember about Australian commercial TV is they get the TV spectrum basically for free and abuse it to manipulate people on a hilarious level, often what is normally the most respected "seemingly normal free to air news" is later played back as a paid sponsored advertising on Facebook as both Channel 7 and Channel 9 have financial interests/investments in retail electricity.
https://www.facebook.com/onebigswitch/videos/10214335656488000/
Or general dubious activities on free to air TV in Australia https://www.facebook.com/ABCMediaWatch/videos/1843115182429619/
https://www.facebook.com/ABCMediaWatch/videos/1833515063389631/
^This is one just like Alex Jones Infowars special nutrients adverts but because its better more professionally presented on local TV it's fully absorbed my most folks as well respected nutrition.

So basically all main-stream-media are sucking clueless Australians dry on powerbills while looking like they are their best friends. Its basically the same as deliberately marketing McDonalds to people with heart problems in the 80s and suggesting it could cure their heart disease, which is now in this modern day and age of course greatly frowned upon, all the renewable energy subsidies etc have twisted the darkest of behaviour out of big business in Australia and I guess it will take a many years (sadly) to drill through the latest wicked activities.

Of course, ABC aren't angles either this is the kind of stuff they love to constantly bombard folks with https://youtu.be/hTkBg7JJBo0 https://youtu.be/httd_avViEE , I think I kind of know what its like to live in North Korea where they have a radio in every household that can't be turned off but just turned down that bombards them with propaganda about how great their government is. Because the ABC constantly do reports on how great wind and solar is and how doomed we are if we don't 100% transition to it.
The funny thing is that 100% tax payer funded ABC is that it has an impartiality charter. But has fully thrown out the impartiality charter out window and is now so "gone rogue" that they even refuse to make public how much money their top TV presenters get paid, its been fought out in the government to make a law to brute force the ABC to merely tell the taxpayer how much the people at the top of the ABC get, but they are holding out till the very end it seems.
http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/abc-sbs-forced-to-reveal-salaries-for-stars-earning-over-200000/news-story/b3f75d2451a3873102b63d62fca432e8

The crazy reality is that Australia would undoubtedly and quite literally be better off having its TV spectrum given to a nutjob like Alex Jones/Infowars.com and pounded them with their brand of "real world" information. I was listing to some infowars yesterday and it was just hilarious.

sendler2112 said:

wineboyrider said:

I know exactly how you feel about fossil fuels, but what are your thoughts on sustainable wood burning? .

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It is apparently pretty bad. Many large cities have had to ban all wood burning due to poor air quality.
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https://www.transitionculture.org/2008/05/19/is-burning-wood-really-a-long-term-energy-descent-strategy/

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That article is a joke. Indoor smoke! LOL

I burn wood. Lots of it. Much Better than composting it. IMO much Better than using electricity for significant amounts of heat. In our rural area, it can be sustained easily just from what falls and dies on its own and cleans up the place in the process. Produces virtually no nitrogen dioxide and the particulates and ashes are good fertilizer. In big cities, it makes no sense at all. What gets repeated here is that heat production is a big issue. It is not. Most heaters are extremely efficient and relatively clean. Tightening up the homes is where we should put our efforts in this regard. Ice cars and trucks are the low hanging fruit as are poor industrial processes and facilities.

speedmd said:

That article is a joke. Indoor smoke! LOL

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3 Billion people worldwide have as the only means of cooking or heating available from indoor open burning of biomass. Not really a laughing matter. It's a big world out there. More people need to learn about things so that they can look past their own front yard.
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http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/
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The Caribean Islands are all still a mess after the recent big storms. Too bad there is no money to just rebuild with futuristic home designs and a less diesel reliant grid. Instead of just trying to put it back like it was. How much more prosperous would Puerto Rico be with just 1 nuclear generation plant. If we had a small modular design that could be factory built and certified and shipped in for final assembly. GenIV designs run on depleted uranium or high level waste. MSR doesn't even need expensive hardened containment. Check out the SSR.
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https://youtu.be/R4GSDRqah-0
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https://youtu.be/4iRF6pilm3s
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Solar and wind farms on the North of the island were completely destroyed.
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https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/weathermatrix/nexrad-radar-wind-turbines-solar-farms-destroyed-in-puerto-rico/70002879
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So you want to lump it all together? 20th century Burning of wood with a day 1 indoor camp fire? I keep asking. Who are you working for? Seems pretty obvious.

speedmd said:

So you want to lump it all together? 20th century Burning of wood with a day 1 indoor camp fire? I keep asking. Who are you working for? Seems pretty obvious.

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One day? What are you talking about? Billions of people burn biomass indoors in open fires every day for basic survival because that is the best they can do with their impoverished standard of living.

Answer the question sendler. Who are you working for? Answer it, or STFU! I am sure all those poor folks are asking for nukes to power the electric ranges and microwaves they will never have. I am Sure they will all be glad to stop burning dung when you get to build that new plant.

Why do you think I have to "working for somebody". I am a blue collar line tech at an Auto dealer in Syracuse NY. Who is well educated and pragmatic in forward thinking and cares about the future.
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Solar and wind are too intermittent and lack the density to do it alone. They are fossil fuel extenders. Not replacements They need something non-intermittent to go with them. And the scale of total energy consumption of civilization is immense. Energy is GDP. And the credit bubble requires constant 2% minimum growth indefinitely to service it until we can come up with some steps to get us down off of the growth based social system to something that can withstand negative growth without collapsing. Either in steps or in a crash due to cascading failures as fossil energy sources get more and more remote.
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"other renewables" which incorporates solar, wind, and wood, wood apparenty even being the majority, stood at 2% in 2015.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
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Everthing around you is made of huge amounts of energy. And a small amount of dwindling raw materials which are harvested and refined with huge amounts of energy. World energy consumption will certainly double again by 2050 just to service the debt we have right now. Solar and wind cannot do this alone. We are using 150 Million years of stored sunlight which created incredibly dense and transportable fossil fuel. Which lasted us only 300 years. Wake up! Be pragmatic. It's not even a question of how much oil we will turn our backs on. We will eventually go after every spec of it that can be grabbed affordably to keep all of these plates for a soon to be 10 Billion human population spinning.
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Crude oil prices will begin oscillating between $100 and $200 on a long platue of more and more expensive availability by 2040. Try running the farm machines in the breadbaskets which feed the world with no liquid fuel.
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We need to use all that we have left in a focused effort against mid future starvation and poverty to build out what we will need to replace it. Which will include using our second primordial energy gift of nuclear fuel to build an energy bridge of a few hundred years to get the population back down to where the sun and the wind can sustain it with more human muscle replacing many of the big machines we rely on today.

sendler2112 said:

Too bad there is no money to just rebuild with futuristic home designs and a less diesel reliant grid. Instead of just trying to put it back like it was.

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Fortunately people are stepping up to rebuild with futuristic designs.

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Tesla delivers solar power to Puerto Rico hospital
Brett Molina, USA TODAY
Oct. 27, 2017

More than a month after Hurricane Maria hit, Tesla has restored power to the Children's Hospital in Puerto Rico.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed the solar project Thursday.

The hospital "is the first of many solar+battery Tesla projects going live in Puerto Rico," Musk wrote on Instagram, along with an image of a series of solar panels. "Glad to help support the recovery."
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Shipping is by far the biggest transport polluter in the world. There are 760 million cars in the world today emitting approx 78,599 tons of Sulphur Oxides (SOx) annually. The world's 90,000 vessels burn approx 370 million tons of fuel per year emitting 20 million tons of Sulphur Oxides. That equates to 260 times more Sulphur Oxides being emitted by ships than the worlds entire car fleet.
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Oddly enough there is never any mention of alternative power sources such as nuclear power. Nuclear marine propulsion has been in widespread naval use for over 50 years starting in 1955. There are 150 ships in operation that use nuclear propulsion with most being submarines, although they range from ice breakers to aircraft carriers. A Nimitz class supercarrier has more than twice as much power (240,000 hp, 208 MW) as the largest container ship diesel engines ever built and is capable of continuously operating for 20 years without refueling (some French Rubis-class submarines can go 30 years between refueling). The U.S. Navy has accumulated over 5,400 "reactor years" of accident-free experience, and operates more than 80 nuclear-powered ships.
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https://newatlas.com/shipping-pollution/11526/
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sendler2112 said:

speedmd said:

That article is a joke. Indoor smoke! LOL

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3 Billion people worldwide have as the only means of cooking or heating available from indoor open burning of biomass. Not really a laughing matter. It's a big world out there. More people need to learn about things so that they can look past their own front yard.
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http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/
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High efficiency rocket stoves are the answer for the less industrialized world. I don't feel at all guilty that I burn wood from tree pruning and scrap wood. In fact, I feel really good about lessening my dependence on fossil fuels.

TheBeastie said:

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Did anyone see 60minutes Australia's report on renewable energy? It was pretty amusing and disturbing on how misleading it was, very well presented, someones already uploaded it to youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g8DD01B89g. ....

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Yes, and at least they managed to highlight the precarious situation of power supply in Au currently
.. But the big reveal for me in that, was the look on Musks face when he was told the price of electricity in Au, and that so many people considered it a "luxury" item, often having to choose between food and warmth, in order to pay power bills.
He was like the proverbial "deer in the headlights" ..totally caught at a loss for words. !
How could someone responsible for the biggest Utility battery storage experiment in the world, not be aware of the key financial details of the problem he is trying to solve ?

Hillhater said:

TheBeastie said:

.....
Did anyone see 60minutes Australia's report on renewable energy? It was pretty amusing and disturbing on how misleading it was, very well presented, someones already uploaded it to youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g8DD01B89g. ....

Click to expand...

Yes, and at least they managed to highlight the precarious situation of power supply in Au currently
.. But the big reveal for me in that, was the look on Musks face when he was told the price of electricity in Au, and that so many people considered it a "luxury" item, often having to choose between food and warmth, in order to pay power bills.
He was like the proverbial "deer in the headlights" ..totally caught at a loss for words. !
How could someone responsible for the biggest Utility battery storage experiment in the world, not be aware of the key financial details of the problem he is trying to solve ?

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It's not really a key financial detail. Australia's energy prices when corrected for purchasing power are mid pack, cheaper than many european nations. The fact that uneducated bogans opt to fail to feed their children so they can pay the power bill is hardly Elons problem. People also constantly bitch and moan about petrol prices in Australia, despite them being 25% lower than in NZ and average Aussie earning 25% more. Perception is the problem, not reality...

That said, your energy prices are higher than they need to be. Unfortunately that one's squarely on the governments shoulders.

@Aussies? Whatever happened to this great find? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...worth-of-oil-found-in-Australian-outback.html
Going to listen to Midnight Oil to soothe the leftie in me....LOL

There is clearly no need for Nuclear power which has been a disaster on many levels. Solar energy is getting better at an astounding rate and is already cheaper than fossil fuels in places with a lot of sun. check this out: https://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/solar-graph-so-wicked-its-titled-welcome-terrordome.html

Yes, we have more oil than we can use , more coal than we could ever burn, more Nat Gas than we know what to do with, and we have hills made of Uranium, steel and Lithium ore....but we have banned Nuclear power, gas extraction, and are shutting down our coal fired generators in the same way we shut down all our oil refineries !! ( we import our gasoline !..err, and all our cars !)
So dont be surprised to hear we have a electricity supply crisis and costs have trebbled in the last 10 yrs.
Industry is leaving the country like rats on the sinking ship, making the economic future very hazy.
And yes, as ohbse said, its mostly a political problem, stemming back 20+ years.