Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

Anholt offshore wind farm finished in 2013
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https://youtu.be/FiMC58I5ve8
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anholt_Offshore_Wind_Farm
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$1.65 Billion. 400MW name plate. Outstanding 48.7% CF = 195MW Average. $8.50 /W is pretty good. It gets a $0.17 feed in tariff since it is replacing diesel for a large island. Let's see if these off shore monsters will really last 25 years.
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I been looking at electrictymap a bit lately and I noticed over the last week everytime the wind died down in Europe the map of Germany on this site would go grey like a country who is not providing data. I wonder if Germany behaves like children with their energy generation data on down days and just turn it off. Seems weird that poorer countries like Latvia and Estonia have no problems sharing their generation data 24/7 but the richest country in all of Europe just can't keep its energy generation stats up.
https://www.electricitymap.org/?lang=en&wind=false&solar=false&page=country&countryCode=DE

Anyway Germany is back now and I screen shotted just a few minutes ago lining up France vs Germany and you can see despite Germanys epic installation of wind and solar renewables of more than 100% of fossil fuel that they still emit almost exactly 10 times (x 10!) more co2 than France, and in Germanys very best days they are always emitting at least 5 times as much co2 as Frace, what a disgrace.
So this just shows that you can do an absolute epic investment in wind and solar and just come up a ten times FAIL on actually lowering emissions. These Facebook memes on renewables being the answer have been proven well and truly to be an epic lie.
France co2 vs Germany co2.jpg

Hillhater said:
So, the annual average is closer to 4.4 GW....from the 43 GW of installed solar ! (10% CF)
And still in winter it is less than 1GW.....of the 60+ GW demand average
I dont think that changes the point i was making...solar in Germany is not very effective by any rational assesment
It may not have been a very sunny year, but looking at the previous few years, .....neither were they !
Yeah I was just taking a deeper look at Solar in Germany and they really have installed an epic amount of solar panels and cut down A LOT OF FORESTS to produce the same average power output as a single coal power-station
38TWh of recorded solar generation in Germany 2017 total means 4452MW average output.

But look at the cost, every single solar farm in Germany is sitting where trees once sat or could sit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templin_Solar_Park
https://goo.gl/maps/iwGyCBtuDBR2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuhardenberg_Solar_Park
https://goo.gl/maps/6Ra6nNx4pBo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg-Briest_Solarpark
https://goo.gl/maps/9WjkXPrC4A72

The whole point of renewables is to save the environment and Germany has done the opposite they are quite literally cutting down forests to install solar farms.
I sometimes wonder what would be more harmful dumping nuclear waste in the ocean so HUMANS don't fish there anymore thus creating a marine sanctuary or destroying the environment so nothing lives there permanently via solar farms. If you're biased than you would prefer to see permanent death via Solar Farms because you're purely tuned to what you can stuff in your face in the form of food and don't give a crap about other living creatures.
 
sendler2112 said:
Anholt offshore wind farm finished in 2013
.
https://youtu.be/FiMC58I5ve8
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anholt_Offshore_Wind_Farm
.

$1.65 Billion. 400MW name plate. Outstanding 48.7% CF = 195MW Average. $8.50 /W is pretty good. It gets a $0.17 feed in tariff since it is replacing diesel for a large island. Let's see if these off shore monsters will really last 25 years.
.

And dont forget the HVDC system to hook them up to the grid...
How much do you think these cost ?
https://youtu.be/xx0rlBjHUGo
[youtube]xx0rlBjHUGo[/youtube]
 
TheBeastie said:
The whole point of renewables is to save the environment and Germany has done the opposite they are quite literally cutting down forests to install solar farms.
MUCH better than leveling square miles of forest to mine coal, then filling in river valleys with the overburden and tailings.
 
TheBeastie said:
The whole point of renewables is to save the environment and Germany has done the opposite they are quite literally cutting down forests to install solar farms.

Evidence for this claim, please.

Hillhater said:
Wind generators in Germany are "guaranteed" a feed in tarrif of 8€ct/kWh for 5 years, and a lower rate for the next 15 yrs.....
So who is paying the extra 4€cts ? ( hidden in taxes ?)

The same people who currently pay the subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear. Us!

sendler2112 said:
And they are near the equator and most areas never get snow. If they could adopt a factory and business paradigm that could take days off if electricity is low they would really have a flexible system. Many 100's of millions of people in India and across Africa would be much improved to even have some electric lighting in a distributed system and an ebike.

I read recently about the penetration of distributed solar in rural Africa and India. It is something of a success, but there have also been some disappointments with some early systems not living up to expectations. Generally though, there is the expected increase in demand over time: People start with a small system that can charge a phone and run a few LED lights and a radio, then they want a fan, then a TV, then a fridge. So these solar + battery systems must be capable of providing near-grid connected performance. That said, it's easy to forget in many parts of the world there is no realistic prospect of a grid connection and where it exists it is often unreliable (multiple daily blackouts).

Where I live & work there are many low-level office buildings and warehouses with more than enough roofspace for PV that would at least satisfy their electricity requirements during the day (which is generally only when the offices are used).

Hillhater said:
.......](up to) 4 billion Euro for "grid stabilisation" in the years after shutting down the last nuke is not as high as ist sounds, this is less than 1ct per kWh consumed and cost will get lower with more grid lines.
Germany builds thre new major grid lines to adress that problem: A-Nord, SuedLink and SuedOstLink. They will go online after 2025.
...? sounds like € 4 bn of wasted money to me. Who is getting rich from that ?.
And the extra costs for those new grid lines to facilitate RE integration is .....??????

Grid improvements happen anyway, regardless of RE in response to population and usage changes. Stability measures are also required (and have been) in a grid with zero RE. Load planning/forecasting, cutting off heavy users at peak times, spinning reserve, diesel & gas turbine peaker plants. The hilarious thing is that many types of RE, like hydro, wind and PV are very fast at responding to changes in demand compared to fossil & nuclear. They are also go-to sources to restart a grid following a black out.
 
Punx0r said:
Hillhater said:
.......](up to) 4 billion Euro for "grid stabilisation" in the years after shutting down the last nuke is not as high as ist sounds, this is less than 1ct per kWh consumed and cost will get lower with more grid lines.
Germany builds thre new major grid lines to adress that problem: A-Nord, SuedLink and SuedOstLink. They will go online after 2025.
...? sounds like € 4 bn of wasted money to me. Who is getting rich from that ?.
And the extra costs for those new grid lines to facilitate RE integration is .....??????

Grid improvements happen anyway, regardless of RE in response to population and usage changes. Stability measures are also required (and have been) in a grid with zero RE. Load planning/forecasting, cutting off heavy users at peak times, spinning reserve, diesel & gas turbine peaker plants. The hilarious thing is that many types of RE, like hydro, wind and PV are very fast at responding to changes in demand compared to fossil & nuclear. They are also go-to sources to restart a grid following a black out.
Sorry, but you obviously do not understand what is happening in Germany.
Much of their 50+ GW of wind farms is in the north of the country where the wind is considered more reliable (including the offshore locations. However, the majority of the population and industry is in the south so they are having to build multiple new , long distance , HV interlinks to get the power where its needed.
That was not necessary for the Nuclear or fossil power plants.
Please also note the horrendously complex and expensive HVDC facilities being installed to get the offshore wind farms connected to the onshore grid.
And as for your comments regarding the response times of Nuclear and Fossil power compared to
RE,...you seem to miss the point that Nuclear and Fossil plants are STABLE, CONTINUOUS, PREDICTABLE, sources.
Its the introduction of unpredictable, highly variable , sources such as wind and solar that has made demand responce such a critical factor ..24 hrs every day of the week !
Im happy to wait and watch and see who crashes and burns their economy first on this RE crusade, Germany or S Australia ! ..or makbe the UK can make a late charge and beat them both. !
 
For sure, RE has required more grid links than would otherwise have been required, but some would have existed anyway. Cross-country links in Europe are more common than I realised and that's between many countries with low RE.

As you say, fossil & nuclear are stable with continuous output. Sadly, demand is far from coninuous so these plants are not well suited to meeting it. We have annual fluctions based on weather, weekly ones based on unusually warm/hot days, a regular day/night cycle (see the electric companies have always tried to offload supply at night for cheap) and small fluctuations within the day (everyone putting the heating on when they get home from work, everyone putting the kettle on during the commercial break of a popular TV show). How is a coal plant supposed to respond to a 5 minute transient? It doesn't!
 
Hillhater said:
Wind generators in Germany are "guaranteed" a feed in tarrif of 8€ct/kWh for 5 years, and a lower rate for the next 15 yrs.....
So who is paying the extra 4€cts ? ( hidden in taxes ?)

Again you are not up to date to the real data. They have to bid for the feed in tarif price now.

Average feed in tarif for new onshore wind power plants in Germany has been:

5.71ct/kWh in 05/2017
4.28ct/kWh in 08/2017
3.82ct/kWh in 11/2017

https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/ElektrizitaetundGas/Unternehmen_Institutionen/Ausschreibungen/Wind_Onshore/BeendeteAusschreibungen/BeendeteAusschreibungen_node.html

For solar PV power plants (bigger than 750kW) average feed in tarifs have been:

6.58 ct/kWh in 05/2017
5.66 ct/kWh in 08/2017
4.91 ct/kWh in 11/2017

https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/ElektrizitaetundGas/Unternehmen_Institutionen/Ausschreibungen/Solaranlagen/BeendeteAusschreibungen/Ausschreibungen2017/Ausschreibungen2017_node.html

Compare that to Hinkley C in UK which gets several times more feed in tariff for a much longer period plus inflation compensation plus the public pays for the waste.

So what do you say:

Is a solar PV plant that is able to produce at around 5ct/kWh and produces most electricity when it is need most (during daytime) a good idea or is it that expensive, non efficient nonsese that you still think about it?

In more sunnier regions large solar PV plants can now produce electricity for less than 3ct/kWh


Much of Germanys recent wind farm projects have been offshore,

No.

Installed wind capacity in Germany at the end of 2017

onshore: 50.29 GW
offshore: 5.27GW

https://www.energy-charts.de/power_inst.htm


with generation costs 2-3 times higher than onshore.

So far there was just one bid round for wind offshore yet.

Result for average feed in tariff:

0,44ct/kWh

But it really doesnt matter if it costs 4 cts or 40 cts/kWh, it is worthless if its not available 24/7 when you need it

Neither does a PV power plant produce electricity only when you Need it nor does a nuvlear power plant only produce when you need it.


This is why both Systems Need additional power plants and this is the reason why France with its large inflexible nuclear fleet has much more blackout and brownout Problems compared to Germany.

They have problems in very hot and dry summers when cooling of their nukes is compromised (not during last years because Germany is able to export lots of solar power than) and they have problems in very cold winters when they have more than 100GW demand because of electric heating.


Renewable have higher costs for the grid and for backup, storage. This is true, but it is not as significant as most belive. Up to arond 70-80% both is not very cost critical, if done well.

Above 90% share of solar and wind things get more complicated.

Ist also difficult if you get above 80% nuclear share and nuclear is NOT a good Addition to solar and wind, because it lacks flexibility, so it is a either or option, you can't have significant amounts of both.
In the end, the last 20-30% is bets proviede by natural gas power plants and after that you can think about more storage capacity or replacing natural gas with synthetic gases made from RE.

...? sounds like € 4 bn of wasted money to me. Who is getting rich from that ?.
And the extra costs for those new grid lines to facilitate RE integration is .....??????

Who is getting rich opperation a grid in your country?

spending x Billion is a matter of Efficiency. It makes no sens e to build infrastructure that is needed only for a few hours per year. better and cheaper to shut down power plants and give them compensation and pay for redespatch than otherwise. If costs rise new infrastructue is the better Option, so you have a Business case for new grids, storage, etc...

Exactly what happens.

Obviously not always perfect during transitaion periods, but the way is clear.

There is political discussion now about raising the RE electricity share goal from 50% in 2030 to 65% in 2030, because other sectors so far lack in CO2 reductions...

Last but not least: I rather spend 1 trillion for the energy transition to renewables than spend 1 trillion for a radiocative wasteland after a nuclear meltdown or pay 1 trillion for an oil war in some Middle East country.
 
Hillhater said:
Im happy to wait and watch and see who crashes and burns their economy first on this RE crusade, Germany or S Australia ! ..or makbe the UK can make a late charge and beat them both. !

In 2017 German economy has grown by +2,2%.

The export surplus has been somewhere above 200 billion Euro

Germanies federal, regional and municipal surplus (sic!) in first half of 2017 has been 18.3 billion Euro and this is with spending docends of billions on refugees.

High energy prices are not related to a poor economy.

On the contrary energy is extremly cheap in Venzuela. When I had been there in 2015, 100 liters of gasoline did cost 4 USct.
 
TheBeastie said:
The whole point of renewables is to save the environment and Germany has done the opposite they are quite literally cutting down forests to install solar farms.

There is another big reason to build out alternative energy which is to replace a group of finite fossil fuel resources that will leave 11 Billion people cold and hungry with no functioning economy when there is no longer enough. And we need to use our current energy wealth to build these big things before we are strapped by prices too high to do anything about it.
 
Cephalotus said:
In more sunnier regions large solar PV plants can now produce electricity for less than 3ct/kWh

I see these numbers repeated here constantly but there is never anything to back them up other than many biased articles in solar trade magazines. A solar install at $2.50/ W in the USA at an astounding 30% in a desert will return $0.08/ kWh over 30 years assuming no additional ongoing operating costs, land leases, taxes, repairs, ect. Germany's panels are averaging 11%. How can they be $0.04/ kWh? Are they assuming a 100 year service life and $1.25/W facility price?
 
sendler2112 said:
I see these numbers repeated here constantly but there is never anything to back them up other than many biased articles in solar trade magazines. A solar install at $2.50/ W in the USA...

In Germany the investment cost for large solar PV is around 0.65 Euro/W

I assume that it is cheaper in some other regions of the world with lower cost in labour and lower cost for the land.

I don't know why you pay 2.50USD/W in US. Even small rooftop systems cost only 1.00-1.50 Euro/W in Germany
 
TheBeastie said:
Yeah I was just taking a deeper look at Solar in Germany and they really have installed an epic amount of solar panels and cut down A LOT OF FORESTS to produce the same average power output as a single coal power-station

Germany has lots of forest (around 30%) and afaik only very, very few solar PV power plant in Germany have ever been constructed on formerly forest area. The only projects I know have been forest regions of former (Russian) military use with lots of contamination from ammunition and the solar investment was used to clean that area which otherwise nobody else was willing to pay for.

For wind there is discussion about that, because wind power plants are now so large that they rotate above the treeline.
 
TheBeastie said:
But look at the cost, every single solar farm in Germany is sitting where trees once sat or could sit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templin_Solar_Park
...located at the former Templin military Airport

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuhardenberg_Solar_Park
... located at the former Neuhardenberg military Airport

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg-Briest_Solarpark
... located at a former military airfield in Brandenburg

The whole point of renewables is to save the environment and Germany has done the opposite they are quite literally cutting down forests to install solar farms.

I'm not sure how it is in your country/world, but in Germany airfields are not forest and have quite few trees on them for obvious reasons.

Those being military airfields in former East Germany they had problems with contamination and the solar park Investors there payed for the clean up of former invironmental hazards.
 
TheBeastie said:
Anyway Germany is back now and I screen shotted just a few minutes ago lining up France vs Germany and you can see despite Germanys epic installation of wind and solar renewables of more than 100% of fossil fuel that they still emit almost exactly 10 times (x 10!) more co2 than France, and in Germanys very best days they are always emitting at least 5 times as much co2 as Frace, what a disgrace.
So this just shows that you can do an absolute epic investment in wind and solar and just come up a ten times FAIL on actually lowering emissions. These Facebook memes on renewables being the answer have been proven well and truly to be an epic lie.

No doubt about that looking at nuclear vs lignite/coal.

We have to get rid of our coal power plants after shutting down the nukes.

If you want to compare the effect of RE you have to compare to countries using mainly coal and that would be Germany vs Poland. Germany has built 38% RE, Poland has not. Both use lots of coal otherwise.

I'm sure you will finde the data available on that site, too.

Comparison with other countries (data from 2010, maybe someone can provide a chart based on newer data)

electricitynationality.gif
 
Cephalotus said:
I don't know why you pay 2.50USD/W in US. Even small rooftop systems cost only 1.00-1.50 Euro/W in Germany

Grid tie roof top with no storage in NY USA is $3.30/W, 2.74 Euro. But we have 30% federal rebate and a $0.03 feed in tariff for grid scale installations and an additional 25% NY state rebate. And electric utilities are forced to let the net metering on solar roof top homes "run backwards" when generating and bank kWh's for the whole year at the equal rate of $0.13 or whatever you usually pay which negates line fees, taxes, everything. Very generous. Still very few takers in NY since solar grid scale cannot compete head to head even with the feed in tariff with $0.04/ kWh wholesale price of new gas due to our poor sun.
 
sendler2112 said:
Grid tie roof top with no storage in NY USA is $3.30/W, 2.74 Euro.

Almost unbelieveable super expensive.

Well, maybe that's why Tesla beleives it will be able to sell their super exensive solar roof technology in the US?

https://energytransition.org/2015/05/solar-twice-as-expensive-in-us-as-in-germany/
 
sendler2112 said:
Grid tie roof top with no storage in NY USA is $3.30/W, 2.74 Euro. But we have 30% federal rebate and a $0.03 feed in tariff for grid scale installations and an additional 25% NY state rebate. And electric utilities are forced to let the net metering on solar roof top homes "run backwards" when generating . . .
Yep. IMO would be a lot better just to repeal a lot of the regulations/zoning requirements and save money that way. In the EU installations are running under $2us/W due primarily to simplified permitting and inspection requirements. Basically you install it, certify you did it to code and are done.
 
sendler2112 said:
DIY just for the parts for a 9kW grid tie roof top with no storage is $1.70/ W from the best mail order outlet.

c-Si modules cost 0.50-0.60€/W for small systems, small inverters cost 0.15€/W, rest depends on your roof and length of cables needed. You usually do not have to pay VAT for your home PV system. (and you don't get VAT for the electricity you sell to the grid)

Installation usually takes less than one day and paperwork is minimal.
 
Cephalotus said:
c-Si modules cost 0.50-0.60€/W for small systems, small inverters cost 0.15€/W, rest depends on your roof and length of cables needed. You usually do not have to pay VAT for your home PV system. (and you don't get VAT for the electricity you sell to the grid)

Installation usually takes less than one day and paperwork is minimal.
Is your government giving a big rebate to the sellers right at the point of sale?
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Apparently a big sale right now at WholesaleSolar.com to include a free inverter(s). Enphase micro inverter systems are popular since they minimize shadowing and line losses from partial snow or bird poop.
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https://www.wholesalesolar.com/1894332/wholesale-solar/complete-systems/9.44-kw-grid-tied-solar-system-with-enphase-iq6-microinverters-and-32x-solarworld-295w-panels
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https://www.wholesalesolar.com/1894236/wholesale-solar/complete-systems/9.72-kw-grid-tied-solar-system-with-enphase-iq6-microinverters-and-36x-astronergy-270w-panels
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There are also dc/ dc converter systems which accomplish similar.
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https://www.wholesalesolar.com/1891545/wholesale-solar/complete-systems/9.72-kw-grid-tied-solar-system-with-solaredge-and-36-astronergy-270-watt-panels
 
sendler2112 said:
Is your government giving a big rebate to the sellers right at the point of sale?
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There is zero involvement from government.

The EEG law gives you the right to connect your PV power plant to the grid, to feed in solar energy and the law gives you a guaranted price for 20 years. The difference to the normal electricity price is payed from the electricity consumers.

No rebates or anything.

There is some subsidies for solar PV battery systems that need to meet certain criteria.
 
I guess if I wanted to quote the sale price and include the 55% federal and state rebates I could go around saying roof top grid tie in NY is currently $0.65USD, 0.54 Euro / W for the parts all included.
 
Punx0r said:
...... How is a coal plant supposed to respond to a 5 minute transient? It doesn't!
It does, and has been doing so quite effectively for 100+ years.
This is the whole point of having a "grid" of interconnected power generators and consumers.
Fluctuations in one area can be adsorbed by compensating in another.
There is a process known as "Rolling Reserve" where generators have surplus extra capacity that can be added on minutes, and likewise unloaded generators can adsorb surplus power quickly.
This is happening almost constantly, even on grids with mostly coal generation.
 
I'm talking about nationwide fluctuations in demand, so it seems you have to have a few coal plants idling alongside your inflexible baseload coal plants to take up the peaks (and presumably you still need to predict the peak well in advance to feed the boiler and raise sufficient steam).

Doesn't that seem rather inefficient? And reminiscent of the faulty argument that coal plants must be kept idling to back up RE generators?

Seems like grid battery or idling wind turbine or PV sat in the sun would be able to respond near-instantly and much more efficiently.
 
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