France was heavily dependent on power imports from Germany during the first cold spell of this winter, despite the fact that most of the country’s nuclear reactors are back online, writes Craig Morris from the Energy Transition blog. As the US is now also investigating 17 nuclear reactors with parts from reactor producer Areva, just rescued by the French state, it shows the perilous state the French power sector is in. Courtesy Energy Transition.
In the fall of 2016, 20 of France’s 58 reactors were offline, largely for inspections. As of mid-January, most of these reactors were back online, however. The fleet’s total generation capacity is 63 GW, and RTE’s website shows an ouput level approaching 55 GW, which is near the maximum (power plants generally do not run far above 90% so they can still provide grid services, such as reactive power). EDF’s list of production by plant (zip) on January 11 seems to show that 7 reactors are still offline, which is not an especially high number (only 15 percent of the fleet).
The risk is that France gets a lot of its space heat from electric units, so a cold spell poses a challenge, as we saw in 2012, when Germany helped prevent a blackout in France.
Caption: A chart showing the level of power used for heat (red) relative to the other demand for power (blue) in France. Electric heaters can double power demand in France, as happened in 2012. (Source: RTE)
Europe got its first cold spell this winter in the first week of January. During that week, France was only a net exporter of power for three brief periods, each at around 4 am, when demand in France and neighboring countries is lowest. Otherwise, France was a net power importer, peaking at 8 GW (roughly 10 percent of around 8 am on Friday, January 6), as shown by the grey area at the top of the chart below. France has a total import capacity of 12,200 MW (in German) from all of its neighbors, so there is room for greater power imports, but four megawatts is not much relative to the potential for twenty gigawatts of greater demand to reach the record level during the 2012 cold spell.
France only has 3,007 MW of coal installed, so it’s coal fleet was also running practically full blast, along with gas, listed at 10,909 MW, just above the 9,181 MW the chart indicates above. The oil-fired capacity is much greater than the 1,100 MW generated, however, at 8,645 MW – so clearly, France has lots more generation capacity, but imports are cheaper than domestic production from oil.
Price comparison
The chart below shows the price difference between Germany and France in the first week of the year, as shown above. The gap is most striking on Wednesday for peak power, with France paying 7.2 cents and Germany 3.8 for a kilowatt-hour.
The chart below shows the power trading situation for that week’s situation with all countries bordering France. Belgium and Germany are unfortunately now lumped together (they were reported separately until last year), thereby making it impossible to say how much came from which country. But clearly, France is reliant on its neighbors during cold spells – initially, because imports are cheaper than power from oil. But the French don’t have that much reserve capacity left if the reactors cannot stay online, and the French nuclear watchdog ASN says it wants to investigate further.
The US is now also reviewing the safety of 17 reactors of 99 in operation in the country with parts from Areva, the manufacturer of the defective equipment made at the Le Creusot facility. Areva is to receive a “capital injection” to the tune of 4.5 billion euros from the French state; the EU approved the deal as compliant with state aid guidelines on Tuesday.
Editor’s Note
Craig Morris (@PPchef) is the lead author of Global Energy Transition. He is co-author of Energy Democracy, the first history of Germany’s Energiewende, and is currently Senior Fellow at the IASS. This article was first published on the Energy Transition blog of the Heinrich Böll foundation and is republished here with permission.
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Are Hansen says
About time they started insulating their houses properly. France is not all sunny Riviera! And switch from direct electric heating to heat pumps, which can give the same amount of heat for 1/2 to 1/3 of the electricity
I was surprised to see such a big part of French power is from hydro. But they need to step up their wind power, and the Atlantic coast should have good resources off shore? Also solar power has huge potential in the southerly parts of the country
George Barnett says
Importing power from Germany? Germany’s incremental power comes from coal both domestic and imported. Coal use is on the trend upwards in Germany as it chooses to shut-in nuclear power. Imported deficit power to France from Germany is serving to increase greenhouse gas emissions. Goes to show France tends to speak out of both sides of its ‘global warming” mouth?
Jan VeselĂ˝ says
Coal electricity consumption have fallen in Germany for last 3 years. Try to study some data.
jeppen says
Total fossil electricity generation increased in 2016 compared to 2015. Coal will increase until 2025 as nuclear plants are shut down, if Russian gas doesn’t increase very much to compensate.
Bas says
Present share of nuclear+renewable is 47%.
In 2025 renewable will be >50%.
So decrease of fossil incl. coal.
Just check the figures (EEG2017, etc).
jeppen says
No, EEG 2017 says 40-45% RE. Please stop the disinformation.
Are Hansen says
Most new power production now comes from renewables, as they are simply the cheapest:
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/01/24/renewables-50-new-electricity-capacity-16-energy-investment/
jeppen says
Cleantechnica has claimed so for years, and they still tell people what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.
In reality, solar pioneer countries stopped building at single digit penetrations, and wind pioneers seems to stop around 20%. Also, solar and wind doesn’t stand on their own, but needs to be bundled with fossils.
Are Hansen says
No. What we need with renewables is a system to smooth out daily and seasonal variations in output. That doesn’t need to be fossil fuels – in fact, it can’t be fossil fuels, as we are nearing the maximum amount of CO2 that we can release to the atmosphere (the Carbon Budget) and still hope for some normality in climate and weather patterns.
Instead we can use other methods. The idea of “base load” is quickly getting outdated (as also stated by Steve Holliday, CEO of the British National Grid). New methods include shifting of peak power, more interconnections on a regional scale (a stated policy of the EU), and battery park storage. Last year the estimated price of the proposed Hinkley C nuclear power plant was ÂŁ37 billion (The Guardian), a sum that could buy close to 60 GWh storage with Tesla Power Packs (~$145.000 per 200kWh). Storage saves a lot of money by reducing the need for new power plants (and its fuels costs) and costly peaker plants (currently mostly natural gas).
All this and more of the new power paradigm is well summed up in Jeremy Rifkin’s book “The Third Industrial Revolution”. Time to catch up, the world is changing fast!
JTurner says
We are nearing the maximum amount of CO2 that we can release? Where did you get that? How do we KNOW the maximum amount? What does that mean?
There’s HUGE debate on whether or not increased CO2 affects climate and weather patterns. Most climate models are deeply flawed.
But, hey, if you repeat something enough times, people will believe it.
Mike Parr says
I wondered when the alt-truth crowd would arrive. Apart from the deranged, there is no debate with respect to the impact of CO2 on climate. Most of the climate models are not deeply flawed. I suggest you move back to Breibart where you have clearly come from.
Are Hansen says
Thank you. I was wondering if I should comment on posts of that level at all
Now, an adult discussion can continue
doug Card says
Debate? By whom? Please give me the name of ANY climate scientist who has debated CO2 in the last 12 months. You cannot because there is no debate among climate scientist. The debate is on Faux News and inside your head.
jeppen says
Well, ÂŁ37 billion is not the “estimated price” but the total lifetime cost, including O&M, refurbishments, decommissioning and final storage. The production will be 2*1.6e6 KW * 90% CF * 24 * 365 * 60 years = 1.5 trillion kWh. That computes to ÂŁ0.025/kWh. And that’s a very conservative estimate of lifetime. It’ll probably last twice as long.
Then we have the $6 billion a piece reactors from South Korea that is installed in UAE. If they also cost about twice as much lifetime as in initial capital costs, i.e. $12 billion a piece, the calculation becomes: 1.4e6 KW * 90% CF * 24 * 365 * 60 years = 0.66 trillion kWh. That computes to $0.018/kWh.
The Tesla powerpacks that ÂŁ37 billion could buy, 20h worth of Hinkley C output, will last 15 years. So really, you could only buy 5 hours worth of batteries for the Hinkley lifetime cost, as you have to renew four times. And then there’ll be substantial degradation even during these 15 years. This truly illustrates the current economic infeasability of battery storage.
The idea of baseload being outdated is more ideological than anything else. With solar and wind pioneer countries stopping their intermittent power expansions well before reaching penetration rates that would equal the respective powersource’s CF, there’s no indication that baseload is becoming outdated.
Helmut Frik says
Which nuclear power plant managed to reach the 60 years operation so far? The average shuts downa t a age of around 40 years. But if you want there the oldest nuclear power plant in operation (OK, not working for a year or so due to problems) is for sale at 1€ in Swizerland. Maybe you want to buy it?
jeppen says
So far, 160 reactors have been shut down. The average size of those reactors is 392 MW. The average size of the operational 449 reactors is 873 MW. So you see, the reactors that have been shut down are mostly small ones. The big ones are more interesting to keep running.
It seems quite obvious that many reactors will go over 60 years of life. US regulators are now preparing for license extensions to 80 years. And that’s for reactors designed for 30-40 years. New reactors are designed for 60 years and will easily run over a hundred years.
Helmut Frik says
If you would work in the infrasrtrucre area, you would know that rising operation time means that more and more parts of the system can not be bought from the market any more but must be made and tested as expensive exotic single units, and often the engineers building them first have to learn the old technology again.
Which means your old power stations operate at ever rising costs. which is already too expensive to compete in many cases. That’s why power stations in the US close down, that’s why you can buy swiiss nuclear power stations for 1€ while being operational, and that’s why EDF gets orders to rais prices for customers to have the finances to keep its aging nuclear fleet operational.
You can keep very simple systems operational for long times, like power lines, hydro dams, bridges. This does not work for complex technical systems. The late GDR tried this and failed with it. Same is with nuclear. At some point repairing the system becomes more and more a only theoretical option. And the practical solution, stripping down the power station to the bare concrete and a few big steel parts, and reinstalling a practical new power station on the base of this, is already much too expensive. This is the way to do it at parts of infrastructure where such investment is worth the money. In case of nuclear power station such a hybrid of old and new technology would already be killed by the engineering costs. So forget about fancy operating times of 60 or more years. Even if a power station reaches such age, it does not earn substantial money to pay back any installation costs. It barely survives somehow, often with accumulation Losses like Borsele, or LEipstadt or Thiange or Doel etc.
jeppen says
90 operational commercial reactors are between 40 and 48 years old. In two years, we’ll have operational reactors above 50 years of age, moving towards 60. You do a lot of hand waving and cherry-picking to try to convince us that they won’t get there, but it simply doesn’t hold water.
Many of the oldest reactors are small and might not make it to 60, but many other reactors will.
Helmut Frik says
To get a life expectancy for a system, you need the average age of the systems when being phased out not the maximum one ever reached. You can not say the life expectancy of people is 126 years just because a single person was getting this old. Several of your 90 power stations will be retired in the comming years, not reaching a age on 50 years. Others have been retired before being 40years old. Anticipating 60 years is speculation with the existing Data.
jeppen says
As you can see in the anti-nuclear publication World Nuclear Industry Status Report, reactor age at shutdown is increasing with no sign of levelling off:
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/local/cache-vignettes/L540xH277/report-2016-figure-016-b7efd.png
Expecting that this curve will suddenly level off or take a plunge instead of keeping its upward trajectory is speculation. That large reactors will be kept online and that license extension will proceed is also speculative, but less so and more logical.
Bas says
Jeppen,
The curve is already leveling off!
Helmut Frik says
The curve is nowhere near 60 years. To talk about 60 years the upper end would have to be at 80-100 years. The curve does not level off, it is already nearly horizontal since 2000. It reached 40 year first around 2003, then fell below 40years and is in 2016 at 40 years again, with only one point above 40 years. Looks like average life expectancy is a bit below 40 years now.
jeppen says
Bas and Helmut, you guys can’t read a graph, it seems. The curve is obviously on a stable upward trajectory, approximately a straight line from the end of the cold war until now. The average age of shutdowns increase by approximately one year for every year that passes.
The outliers in 2002-2004 was due to the UK decommissioning ten tiny reactors commissioned in 1956-1962 of 48-123 MW net power each. They probably kept these little guys on for so long because they had a role to play in the UK’s military program.
Helmut Frik says
So we should not look at the graph as it is but at a alternative facts graph where only those reactors are allowed to be included which fit to Jeppens theory?
Reality works different.
jeppen says
It’s common to explain and disregard outliers in graphs, and that’s what I did. I can’t force you to understand the graph, but I think other readers have no problem.
Btw, 2016 isn’t included in the graph. The 2016 average age of the three decommissioned reactors was 42 years. This extends the upwards trend.
Btw, three reactor shut-downs constitutes only 0.7% of the 439 operational reactors in the start of 2016. At that pace, it would take 146 years to close the 439 reactors.
Are Hansen says
As another posts here pointed out, renewables as preferred by the “merging economies”, that is China, India, Brazil, South Africa, places that now suffer from not enough power production, and increasing demand. In developed countries the (old fossil) infrastructure for power is already in place, so changing becomes more expensive – for some, as much of current investments become stranded.
It will be interesting to see who will pay for those bad investment choices, the investors themselves, or taxpayers bailing them out via cleptocratic governments.
The costs of wind and solar keeps falling, fast, and big installations can be constructed within months. By the time any new nuclear is built (typically 10 years or more in the West) the price deficiency will be even larger compared to renewables
jeppen says
China is currently deploying more nuclear than solar and wind. Korea and Russia are selling fairly cheap reactors abroad. Costs will fall in that domain too and eventually we might have to license Chinese designs.
Helmut Frik says
Hmm KEPKO just withdraw from a nuclear power procect in Finland, and Rosatom is giving everybody who does not want it blanko contract signed by Rosatom, but not by the states/utilities, declaring them as sales. Very strange business behaviour. They must be very desperate. Construction starts are very few, and as it seems getting less.
Nigel West says
Yes. Makes sense to life extend if it’s economic to do so as new build is so costly. Problem is wholesale power prices have been pushed very low in recent years in the US so justifying a life extension is tricky if the capital cost of the work is high.
jeppen says
New builds, nor life extensions, wouldn’t need to be very costly, but regulatory ratcheting has made all things nuclear tricky.
And sure, some kind of price on carbon or capacity credits might be necessary to keep nuclear going in areas of the world where cheap natgas is extended by significant amounts of subsidised RE.
Are Hansen says
Of course the PowerPacks get worn out – like everything else. But the price of storage is falling, fast, and will continue to do so as demand and mass production increases, so that replacements become ever cheaper. Whereas history shows us that parts and security regulations for nuclear gets ever stricter and more costly.
And this is only directly for $ in the market as it is now. None of the “externalities” of nuclear have been counted: eventual disassembly and decontamination, storage of highly radioactive material for thousands of years, …
That’s quite a bill to push on to our children
jeppen says
Currently, storage isn’t good enough. We are playing Russian roulette with the climate (and kill millions every year through bad air) when we gamble that everything will just work out. Nuclear has been a viable solution for many decades, but only a few European countries have used it for real.
History doesn’t show nuclear becomes more expensive. It shows nuclear costs are chosen! Some countries, such as Korea, has kept red tape reasonable and supply chains warm. The “externalities” you mention are typically not external, and very, very small. The backend is cheap.
Frank says
Nuclear needs storage about as much as wind and PV, and it costs a lot more. Nukes can follow load but you are throwing money out when you do it, and every couple of years you have to refuel it.
jeppen says
I try to be polite always, but it’s a bit difficult when I’m met with statements such as the one that nuclear requires as much storage as wind and PV. That is very similar to saying “evolution is false, intelligent design is truth”. It simultaneously reveals a thorough lack of knowledge of the subject matter and that you have been immersed in some kind of ideological mythology. You need only […] see a few graphs to know that solar and wind requires far, far more storage.
Also, nuclear power doesn’t cost more in general. It costs more in some areas of the world where supply chains have been killed off and regulatory ratcheting has been especially tough, while decent solar and wind supply chains have been subsidised into existence to the tune of a few trillion dollars. Major economies can easily do nuclear cheaply if they find it important enough.
Frank says
Well, honestly, I don’t know what the lows in wind power production look like, but I have read that about 20% of wind capacity can be considered baseload. Forecasting is pretty good, and while individual turbines may fail, I think wind farm outputs only go off line when the wind stops blowing.
The bigger the are connected, the less likely the wind stops everywhere. There have been studies on how to reach 100% renewables, and the backup needed was not onerous.
Denmark was over 40% wind in 2015. The US, and for that matter, France can add a bunch without many problems.
As to price, in the US, it’s around 19 cents for new nuclear. Wind and solar are less than 5. It’s not even close.
jeppen says
No, 20% of wind capacity is not baseload. You’ve probably read that 20% of wind _output_ can be considered baseload. That translates to 6-8% of capacity.
Forecasting doesn’t affect storage demands. The studies you’ve read on 100% RE with little storage needs must have used unrealistic assumptions in other areas, such as continent-wide grids, high DSM with fantasy help from EVs, better-than average capacity factors, high curtailment and high use of biomass.
Denmark was over 40% wind because it relies on larger neighbors’ ability to balance that through imports and exports.
Your cost estimates are cherry-picked. Even Lazard doesn’t have that extreme cost differences as it puts nuclear at 10-14 cents, lower than residential solar and on par with offshore wind. And again, nuclear costs is a choice. Streamline regulation and start building in series, and costs will plummet fast. South Korea has been building cheaply all along, and so could the US.
Frank says
I don’t see a reply button next to your post below where you complained about cherry picking while cherry picking.
You compared nuclear prices to offshore wind and rooftop solar, because “confirmation bias”. Nuclear is utility scale and needs transmission, like utility scale solar. Offshore wind is not a mature technology. The us has 30MW of it, as compared to 76GW of onshore wind, who’s price you didn’t mention because it was inconvenient?
jeppen says
Yes, I cherry-picked some, just as you did, and as, indeed, Lazard does by primarily showing costs for RE in optimal locations. Lazard’s utility scale solar is at $49-$62/MWh for the US south-west excluding integration costs.
Onshore wind at $32-$62/MWh, again excluding integration costs, but in the souteast $51-$77.
Nuclear is put at $94-$132/MWh. (The Finns go for $50 for their new Hanhikivi NPP and that’s a reasonable LCOE also for the UAE quadruple.) However, nuclear needs scale to be cheap, just as wind and solar. Solar and wind has been built to the tune of 30 GW and 80 GW fairly recently, which is the equivalent of 30 reactors or so. Build 20 reactors in series within a decade and then check costs again.
Nigel West says
Not true. It’s back-up generating capacity that is used, not storage.
A fleet of nuclear stations needs enough reserve to cover for the loss of the largest generator. In the UK nuclear capacity is 8GW. Grid only needs to hold about 1 GW of spare capacity to cover the risk of a nuke tripping.
Whereas Germany’s 80GW renewables fleet is backed up by around 50GW of coal capacity.
Nigel West says
Refuelling every two years can be done in under 14 days and essential maintenance on the conventional parts of the plant undertaken at the same time. Affect on availability is less than 2% so not an issue.
Frank says
Unless something goes wrong, like in my backyard. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis–Besse_Nuclear_Power_Station
It took 2 years to restart.
Helmut Frik says
Average worldwide avauilability of nuclear power stations is 75%. Because always something else than refueling happens too.
jeppen says
The US runs a pretty tight ship with 92% average capacity factor in 2015. Japan kept most of its fleet offline for a close to 0% capacity factor.
Nigel West says
Not new ones after any commissioning issues are resolved. Availability is > 90% for decades.
Remains to be seen whether off-shore wind can maintain good availability in very hostile environments for decades.
Bas says
Nigel,
Saw figures of 80%-85%.
Of course that implies there are situations with 90%, but those are not the rule.
Also shown by the proud statements of pro-nuclear folks when 90% is reached somewhere.
Are Hansen says
http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2016/02/17/not-even-china-likes-the-hinkley-epr-nuclear-reactor/
jeppen says
What’s your point, Are?
Nigel West says
All new nuclear stations have to fully fund their back end decommissioning costs. Governments now insist on this and the money is held at arms length from the operator so there is no bill for out children to worry about.
Math Geurts says
Propably base load is outdated. But both the UK and Germany will stay winter peaking countries as it comes to “all energy” consumption. Uncomfortable for solar. Very uncomfortable.
rural energy user says
With reference to 60 GWh of storage in batteries, the UK consumes very roughly 1,000 GWh or 1 TWh per day of electricity.
So many ÂŁ billions worth of battery storage appears to cover UK electricity consumption for some two hours.
Do tell me if I’ve made an error.
Frank says
Ok, and how does that compare to what is actually needed? Storage is one of several ways to balance the grid. The most efficient way usually involves a combination.
Nigel West says
Ari, to deal with renewables intermittancy it has to be fossil fuels actually to deal with the long periods in northern Europe when the sun is negligible and the wind doesn’t blow. There is no technology that is economic to deploy that could store enough renewable energy to get through winter periods in northern Europe.
Existing grid scale pumped storage capacity in the UK is tiny at about 0.032 TWh. 0.11 TWh costs about ÂŁ2bn. So just to shift 50 TWh (UK electricity consumption is 300 TWh/year) from summer to winter using pumped storage would cost ÂŁ1 trillion. It’s not feasible either as the locations are not available in the UK.
To do it with Lion battery storage would cost about ÂŁ12 trillion. Based on ÂŁ100k for a 400kWh battery module.
Even if it was affordable there is just no point trying to build storage at such huge cost and on the vast scale needed when CCGTs will do the job.
Karel Beckman says
Nigel, how do you know the future costs of battery storage? Bloomberg reported the other day that three huge battery plants have gone online in California in a short period, built by Tesla, AES and Altagas. They are the largest plants in the world and they fully aim to bring the cost down and the volume up. So your assumptions may be quickly outdated.
Nigel West says
Karel, the cost of Tesla’s large scale 400kWh battery module is known. There are other suppliers too.
I agree battery costs should fall and that will be good news for EV’s and other applications that these new factories intend to supply.
However for grid scale electricity storage, if battery storage costs fell to one tenth of their current cost 50TWh of storage would still cost over ÂŁ1trillion which would not be affordable for UK consumers.
jeppen says
So what if ÂŁ12 trillion for the UK is “quickly outdated”? The distance to feasibility is so huge that we can reasonably expect li-ion never do seasonal storage.
Math Geurts says
Good luck for California. Of course (also) batteries will become cheaper, but where winter is the problem, like in France, solar + batteries will not be the solution.
Bas says
The Germans concluded long ago that Power-to-Gas will probably be the cheapest solution for long periods without wind or sun. So they have major pilots since 2012 and are expanding PtG fast. Full roll-out in 2025 when renewable share reach >50%.
jeppen says
Pipe dreams. 2025 will see 40-45% RE according to plans and PtG is too inefficient and expensive to go very far.
Bas says
Yes. Official target is 40-45% ren. in 2025. But:
– history shows Energiewende surpasses such targets greatly;
– extrapolation of av. transition speed in past 6yrs deliver 53%.
So 50% is a more accurate estimation for 2025.
jeppen says
Energiewende surpassed targets in the early days. Last few years, substantial targets, especially in solar, has not been met and in 2016, wind and solar production went down compared to 2015.
There is now an acknowledged “climate gap” in Germany:
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-climate-targets
Bas says
The target for 2020 was 35%.
In 2016 ren. supplied 32%.
So the 2020 target will be surpassed easily.
You look at fluctuations. Try to look at trends.
jeppen says
Bas, there’s a new trend, supported by the EEG 2017 law.
You claim RE share will be >50% in 2025. So what do you think the mix will be? Today we have 4% hydro, 9% biomass, 7% solar and 14% wind. To get to 50%, you need to distribute 16% on these sources.
If we put all additions on wind, which seems to be the EEG 2017 aim, then we need 30% wind. How will that work?
Have a look at week 51, 2016 in Germany and compare December 19 with December 25 and imagine how a doubling of wind will look. You better get that PtG going…
Nigel West says
Cheapest – only if one skews the economics by excluding CCGTs running on natural gas, and new nuclear, from the equation.
Bas says
Nigel,
German scientists concluded long ago that PtG has the potential to cover potential long winter dips (wind doesn’t stop in winter) cheaply.
So they develop major PtG expansion: 2GW in 2022 and full roll-out in 2025. Have already 30 MW scale pilots running as you can see at this roadmap with interactive project map.
There is enough cheap gas storage capacity in earth cavities. NL and Germany do it already many years.
Nigel West says
It makes more sense for Germany to export any surplus renewables generation to Poland or the Czeck Republic to displace their coal fired generation in terms of cutting CO2.
The cycle efficiency of Power to SNG to Power is around 35%. To that needs to be added the not insignificant cost of building the process plants.
The problem is it is very inefficient as 2/3rds of energy is lost in this process. For the economics to work very cheap electricity must be available at times for conversion to SNG. Excess renewables could drive down wholesale electricity prices to low enough levels at times, but who would pay for the then loss making solar and wind capacity? The bill is likely to fall on consumers paying even more subsidies to renewables.
Helmut Frik says
Thats why germany does two things at the same time: expanding grids and interconnection, to be able to smooth out vairability over large regions so maybe PtGtP or similar will never be neccesary. And in paralell resarch and develop on PtG, which is also sable to produce raw materials for the chemical inustry, or hydrogen to replace coal in steel production. Ant PtGtP, if Grid expansions by some cause do not work in the dimension wanted. This solution would be the more expensive, but not, or not significant more expensive that a conventional power supply according to Fraunhofer. Which is sufficient for a Plan B or C.
Nigel West says
There is evidence available showing that when wind generation for different regions is overlaid the issue of wind intermittancy is not smoothed out, in fact it becomes more peaky.
Just recently over the week 15th to the 22nd January wind generation was negligible in the UK and temperatures were very low driving high electricity demand. This coincided with Germany having little wind generation too. Fortunately the UK has enough conventional plant to cover those periods and Germany a big coal-fired fleet.
On Fraunhofer, their assumptions are questionable. E.g. that German energy consumption will fall by 40% between now and 2050. They also forecast the near doubling of the cost of energy by 2050 under the transformation. Not pleasant for German consumers already faced with the highest electricity prices in Europe.
Helmut Frik says
Nigel West developing a altenative Mathemathics here for statistical functions….
If you take a look where the majority of UK wind turbines are located, and where they are located in germany, you get exactly the expected behaviour. Korrelation of wind drops from 1 (same location to about 0,05 (seasonaliy of wind remains the same as long as you remain in the westwinddrift zone of climate) a a distance of 1500km. Distance between UK wind generation and German wind generation is roughly 750km Correlation between wind power generation in U´K and in germany in 2016 was 0,247 in the first eleven Months. The data for 20 othe countries fits exactly onto this curve, which was also found in many studies. korrelation of 0,5 means that the distribution of lulls between germany and UK is not random (so if a lull has a 10% lekelyhood by definition, a lull in both regions would have a likelyhood of 1% in both regions at the same time) but the likelyhood is significant above average in UK when there is a lull in UK. But there is also not always a lull in germany when there is one in UK. There is alrady some smoothing happening. With spain the correlation is 0,14 at a distance of 1400km, so the behaviour is already random. Ther remains a possibility that there is a lull in both regions (no anticorelation) but it is becoming much less likely. Add more countries which are further away, and the likeliehood to see a lull is decreasing ever further.
Nigel West says
Never mind statistics, much better to look at actual wind generation data for the UK and Germany. I’ve given you hard facts and the period in the last month when wind generation was negligible in the UK and Germany at the same time. On the coldest days too in the UK this winter when demand is highest.
Persist with statistics if you like, but facts are irrefutable.
Nigel West says
A super grid would not deal with wind intermittancy – see:
http://euanmearns.com/wind-blowing-nowhere/
jeppen says
For once, I agree with Helmut. Wider grids does help a bit. But of course, if you add two uncorrelated stochastic variables, you’ll still get low and high results sometimes, just less often. And there is some correlation within Europe too. So the gain should not be overestimated – wider grids isn’t a silver bullet.
Bas says
Nigel,
euanmearns.com
excluded me when my comments showed the weak points in their anti-renewable rant….
Helmut Frik says
The Euan mearns document does not show anything like a supergrid, it just shows some western european countrys, a small part of europe. But already in these documents you can see how lulls vanish, or at least become less long and less deep With every country you add this effect becomes stronger. You are aware that it is possible to exchange some (few) GW of power already from Vietnam to UK?
If a big power station trips in the European Grid with 3 GW (the size of trip for which the grid is designed) about 1,1 GW instant response comes from the GUS grid, stretching till Wladiwostok, wich again gets some MW response from the chinese grid and other neighbouring grids.
Helmut Frik says
@ Jeppen, it works as a silver bullet, because you conventional power stations also fail so also produce a stochastic outputs with highs and low. So you have to have backup, and you have to a certain remaining likelyhood of a blackout. Power plant fauilures often happen without being known in advance, so backup has to jump in within milliseconds. Lulls and dark times are known hours and days in advance, so reserves can be ramped up slowly, and loads can be ramped down slowly. It’s a different way to do things, but the same amount of reliability can be reached at same or lower costs.
jeppen says
Intermittent RE requires or give rise to more storage, more grid expansion, more DSM, wilder price fluctuations, more fossil bundling, more subsidies, more effort and worse health consequences than nuclear. Buth other than that, intermittent RE is great.
Nigel West says
The economics of power to SNG and back to power are unproven. The cycle efficiency is very poor as 2/3rds of the energy is lost.
UK once ran pilot plants to produce gas from coal. Nothing came of it as it wasn’t economic.
Bas says
It’s clear that German scientists (Agora, etc) and investors conclude differently.
You forget the major improvements regarding PtG in recent years. Even MIT research contributes.
Nigel West says
It’s not clear at all. Unless a new process is invented, PtSNGtP wastes about 2/3rds of the input energy – that is based on Frauhofer data too.
The only way the economics work is if the input energy cost is very very low, i.e. below production cost so subsidised by consumers. Off-shore wind at ÂŁ50/MWhr is not low enough in price to be make PtSNGtoP economic.
Helmut Frik says
Well there is one point missing in your argumentation. To keep any grid stable, you need to have alwaysignificant more production units in the grid than there is demand. In germany this additional capacity is and always was about 20-30% at peak imen, and naturally much more at most of the other times.
This will not change with the switch from conventional power generation to renewable power generation. With conventional power generation these units, as far as they are operational, are in cold standby, because there is no use to waste fuel. With wind and solar power generation there is no fuel neccesary, so these surplus generation capacity, which is in cold standby today can deliver power whenever someone is willing to pay more than their short time variable costs. Which are very low. (below 0,5ct/kWh) Naturally this capacity has to be payed somehow by the customers, but this is also the case with the cold standby conventional generation.
Math Geurts says
Unfortunately the cold standby of wind and solar is sometimes really very cold and can not be started on demand.
Nigel West says
Actually to run a grid it needs reactive power and frequency responsive synchronous generators. Providing that solely with asynchronous wind generators is unproven and may not be possible.
Helmut Frik says
Another fairy tale especially spread by euan mearns. reactive power of inverters is faster than synchronus generators, and also all other grid services can be provided as good or better with inverers with energy storage before, either in form of rotating masses (wind), similar to synchonus machines or in form of Condensors and batteries (wind+ solar). I can show you the tests shown to the students of electric engineering showing this in the University of Stuttgart. But any reference to such basics of electric engineering gets deleted on such alternative facts sites. There was also some nice document of VDE towards that topic but it is too old now and not available online any more, because that’s a none topic today. It’s just something which has to be done, a softare (wind) or hadrware (Solar) feature which has to be ordered.
Helmut Frik says
Which is, why you’d have some level of Backup. E.G. germany already has about 20GW of Diesel generator backup, which show up in no statistic, but just need a signal to start runnin within a minute.
They are used as backup for local system, and for island operation they need huge reserves, but they can be used as grid backup in parallel, since they should make test runs twice a year any way. In earlier times it was not economic possible to include them in grid operation, toray this is done with some already (minute reserve, primary reserve). There are plenty of systems where additional diesel generators are nearly worth their cost, but not completely. A bit contribution from the task of grid backup could change this and add many more GW backup capacity for very slamm money (150-200€/kWp is the usual cost for 0,5-1MW diesel backup in our tenders, so a fraction of this money would be required. E.g. a one time spend of 50€/kWp could already move a lot. Would be 50 Million€/GW or 20GW/billion€ Invest once in 30 years. If tis is neccesary to feel safe. Fuel can be synfuel, biodiesel etc. Also old power stations can be kept as operational technical museum. German coal power stations nearly all could be changed to wood fireing with little changes, and germany produces about 100 TWh thermal of Wood per year for heating today. Some of this can be stored for backup. Plenty of low cost options to make sure everything works.
Nigel West says
Helmut, fleets of standby diesels are not a good solution long term. The UK Grid operator has reserve contracts with about 2GW of purpose built diesel farms which they may call on for a limited number of hours running a year. Because the diesels are cheap they are unabated on emissions so their running hours are capped.
As renewables capacity grows and the annual running hours required of reserve plant increases significantly to deal with intermittancy, investing billions in building new diesel farms is not the solution needed. Fast start CCGTs running on clean gas is the best solution.
Germany continues to build large gas-fired power stations.
Helmut Frik says
Here the Diesels have to fulfill exisiting emission stndards, and we prefere to contract existing diesels, which brings down costs and removes the requirement to spend billions on new capacity. If more than 20 GW will be needed, financing will still come in the mayor part from providing backup power for different facilities. And they are needed just a limited number of hours per year. The form of the power supplied by variable renewables tells that – depending on grid size in the exact numbers – ther ie a backup need for a significant amount of GW for a very few hours once in a year or once in ten years or even less. The mayor part in residual Energy is needed with relatively few GW, and can be procvided easily by existing hydropower + Storages, and Biomass systems, within the limits of todays use of biomass. Reisual power and residual energy are different topics here.
Math Geurts says
Rainer Baake does not like PtG. “Einigen der Wege, fossile Energien indirekt durch Ă–kostrom zu ersetzen, steht die Bundesregierung gleichwohl erkennbar skeptisch gegenĂĽber. Mithilfe von Power-to-Gas erst Methan oder Wasserstoff herzustellen und diese dann wieder in Gaskraftwerken zu verstromen, sei wegen der enormen Umwandlungsverluste von 50 Prozent zu teuer, erklärte Baake. Die Regierung werde hier schon jetzt Fehlentwicklungen verhindern und findigen Geschäftsmodellen vorbeugen …. “
Helmut Frik says
As I sayed, PtGtP is consicered as Plan C in Germany, nevertheless this path is reserached too and it is taken care that equipent is available and roll out can be ramped up when neccesary. It is a working solution, but expanding grids does the same job but cheaper. In parallel this research also allows a non fossil raw material supply for the chemical industry and a non fossil fuel supply for aviation. So the spendings are never wasted.
Nigel West says
Expanding grids will not allow a 100% renewable energy solution no matter how integrated they become and how far the grid spreads in Europe..
Also I know for sure that the UK would not take such a risk with security of electricity supplies being out of the UK’s control.
Poland and the Czech Republic are placing equipment at the border with Germany to stop wind generation flooding their network.
This all indicates a vast supergrid is not sensible, and is not needed either.
I think Germany needs to accept that the rest of Europe will not be trying to switch fully to renewables.
jeppen says
Nigel, rather I think debaters here need to accept that Germany will not be trying to switch fully to renewables.
They are doing what politicians usually do: making some grand proclamations, then proceeding to kick the can down the road.
Helmut Frik says
Jeppen, Facts proove you wrong. There is a continuous build out of renewable generation, and a ongoing sequence of closures of conventional power generation. PRoblems in germany are with traffic and building sector.
jeppen says
No, Germany has more or less stopped building more RE plants and the EEG law also lays out tiny progression in the coming years. German RE production in 2016 was the same as in 2015.
However, Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia will be complete in 2019. That’s kindof speaking for itself.
Math Geurts says
Unfortunately Rainer Baake (formerly Agora) does not like PtG anymore.
jeppen says
Post seems a bit desperate in its anti-nuclear spin. The EEG fee of 7 cents should be remembered. So Germans, every hour of the year, pays as much _extra_ for its 30% RE content as France pays for peak power in winter when its nuclear fleet has some rare troubles. On top of that, Germany has to pay the wholesale price of power.
And of course, France’s electricity is virtually fossil free since the late 80-ies, while Germany is dreaming of being 80% fossil free in 2050, i.e. a worse outcome more than 70 years later, at almost immeasurable costs. But in reality, Germany seems to have given up and won’t even reach the 2050 goal. For instance, solar production in 2016 was _lower_ than in 2015.
Jeffrey Michel says
The German approach to an energy transformation was presaged decades ago by the service manuals I used to translate for consumer electronics companies in the Black Forest. The instructions typically began with a detailed procedure for unscrewing the cabinet enclosure to gain access to the inside of the unit, followed by a final sentence reading: “Before beginning, pull out the power plug from the wall socket.” Televisions and radios were customarily delivered with an instruction manual inside the cardboard carton, with the first page of the manual dedicated to opening the carton.
This didactic DNA has been inherited intact by a new generation of scientists and analysts. Germany’s latest WWF coal & lignite phase-out plan (Zukunft Stromsystem. Kohleausstieg 2035) contains eight “strategic elements” for retiring the country’s entire fossil solid-fuel power fleet by 2035. Yet only does element number 8 recognize “the need to conduct comprehensive analyses on the regional economic and social impacts of an accelerated phase-out of coal-fired electricity generation and the creation of necessary compensation mechanisms (from the expansion of renewable energies, through location policy to infrastructure expansion)”. In other words, decide first to get out of coal and lignite, and only then examine the ensuing effects on the economic and social infrastructure. Failure is implicitly not an option, even though this WWF proposal has clearly been motivated by Germany’s continuing failure to implement effective climate policies in the coal and lignite sectors.
Helmut Frik says
Well then you should also include the bail outs of the french state for EDF and Areva in your calculations, as well as the rising power prices in France.
The “disadvantage” of the EEG is that costs are not hidden anywhere in 50 parts of the states budget, or in debts piling up uncontrolled somewhere, but being visible as a single sum of money.
But that’s not the topic here. Here the topic is that france has a too small fleet backup power plants for it snuclear fleet, and preferes to rely on the beackup of the german and other neighbours grids, which have to carry the costs for that backup.
The grid expansions done in germany so far foe “Energiewende” help france in this case, since power is also drwn from the Swedish and Polnish grid indirectly.
As far as I remember France did not want to negotiate with ENBW to expand grid connections over the rhine (today the import capacity of France is restricted when Cattenom and Fessenhime produce at full capacity) when being asked some years ago, but I do not have a reference to this (I think this happened when ENBW planned the upgrade of the rhine corridor where legacy 220kV lines were replaced with 400kV lines) MAybe it’s time to reconsider this. Like it might be a good idea to reconsider the non expansion of exchange capacities towards Spain.
jeppen says
“Here the topic is that france has a too small fleet backup power plants for it snuclear fleet”
No, they don’t. The post states they have ample capacity.
“preferes to rely on the beackup of the german and other neighbours grids, which have to carry the costs for that backup.”
France does what is cheapest, certainly, but it does pay. So France carries the cost of drawing power from neighbor grids (that it usually exports to, at a profit).
Helmut Frik says
France exports at lower prices than it imports power.
And peak demand of france is 20 GW higher than it was this winter so far, with only some GW of Oil capacity still being idle.
The predicted demand in France was 10 GW higher (It did not get as cold as the long term weather forcast first looked like), which would have eaten up all reserves for france, but still would have remaind below peak demand of 2012.
German utilities adjusted fuses at the power lines to france upwards, to avoid any line being switched off due to overload and causing a european blackout, prefering a temporary overload of the powerlines, and maybe loosing n-1 redundacy temporary. They did not do that just for fun.
jeppen says
Germany also exports at lower prices than it imports. Both countries usually has net exports, enough that it affects their trade balances positively. However, France’s net exports gives the country meaningful trade profits, while Germany exports at a net loss considering the huge subsidies.
Again, France didn’t have any problems with meeting demand. Nuclear is a bit inflexible, but France has smaller problems at 80% nuclear than Germany has at 21% solar+wind. I remember when Germany had to do a costly retrofit of curtailment equipment for their meager solar fleet.
Helmut Frik says
Well destroying strawmens?
Germany exported till 2015 at higher prices than it did import, only cince 2016 import prices are a tiny bit higher than export prices.
German exprot prices are significant higher than French export prices.
The 50,2 Hz problem was a problem of thinking at the utilities, not of the generation modes. They wanted to have the “toys” of wind and solar power production to be out of the grid in case something happens, and let the “real” power produces deal with it without interference from the “toys”.
This was a stupidity, becaus wind and solar is far away from being toiys. In most cases a softwareupdate did the job, but nevertheless it was a expensive stupidity. Today Utilities accept that wind and solar can provide all kinds of grid services – and have to do so with rising amounts of wind and solar power in the grids. but providing it, beside positive momentan and minute reserves, is not a cost factor.
jeppen says
Sure, Helmut. Except, then, that Germany for some reason has given up on solar and isn’t building more than token amounts. Strange, eh?
Helmut Frik says
Not stange. GW is still not “Token amonnts” unless you accept that nuclear is negible, and it is not political target, so conditions are already changing again. Similar to the situation with Wind in 2004-2008. Wind poer additions are around 5GW in 2016, also “token amounts”?
jeppen says
1 GW solar is certainly a token amount for Germany. Germany added so little solar last year that a bit worse weather made solar generation lower in 2016 than 2015. It has been stuck at 6% for years.
Germany is adding decent amounts of wind, yes, but has given up on everything else.
Helmut Frik says
Wind is far above plan, solar is below. Target is 35% renewables in 2020. in 2016 it was already 33%. So as far as the power sector is concerned things run ahead of schedule.
Another question is if the planned share should be rised. When it was choosen many years ago it was considered unreachable high by people like you. Today most people in germany would appreciate it if the proposed persentage would be rised, to accelerate things. But politics did not decide in this direction yet.
jeppen says
Helmut: “Wind is far above plan, solar is below. Target is 35% renewables in 2020.”
The commonly quoted target is 40-45% RE in 2025, and 0% nuclear. In 2016, there was 48.6% RE+nuclear. So Germany is planning to increase the share of fossil generation from 51.4% to 55-60% in the next 8 years.
“When it was choosen many years ago it was considered unreachable high by people like you.”
That’s just a strawman argument. Germany is doing fairly tame amounts of RE still, and will keep doing that until 2025. Going for 20% wind, 7% solar is not very impressive and there’s no reason anyone would call that unreachable.
“proposed persentage would be rised, to accelerate things. But politics did not decide in this direction yet.”
True, it seems to decide the opposite, actually. And that’s because politicians are briefed about the difficulties and costs, while parts of the rest of society lives in an information bubble believing it’s easy. And no politician wants to be the first to burst that bubble, because the messenger will be not be treated very well…
Bas says
German target was 35% renewable in 2020, until EEG2014.
As it was in 2014 clear that they would supersede that target greatly (=bad planning), they replaced it with 45% in 2025.
Expect similar for the 2025 target.
If renewable expansion speed continue with the av. speed of past 6 yrs, renewable will be above 50% in 2025.
Helmut Frik says
Now that the amounts are reached, suddenly they are easily reachable. I can show you advertisements of Utilites from th early 1990’s wher they claimed that more than 1% is unreachable fro renewables. Thein it was 5% thats unreachable, then 10%, then 20%, now 35%.
The “increase” of fossil fuuel power production in your calculation only happens because share of renewables is above plan. If you estimate that the share growth will reduced enough to get inpo plan again, this would result in such a increase. If it would be now according to plan, renewables would fossil fuel share would be higher today, but ther would be no potential riseo of share later on.
That the renewable share will be in the corridor is not to be expected, because the build out corridors written in the law already lead to a higher renewable share according to projections in 2020 and 2025. Main Problems in German today are emissions from the transport and building sector, they are well behind plan, traffic is having rising emissions. Nuclear does not help anything with this.
jeppen says
Yes, Helmut, please show us the advertisements. I’m unable to take your word for it.
Doesn’t matter how you try to explain it, Helmut. Fact remains that current German planning and energiewende law has the fossil share rise the coming decade. That is not a good testament to renewables’ scalability and true costs. RE advocates go on about how RE is cheaper around the world, but it still doesn’t go anywhere without subsidies.
Germany has CO2 emissions of some 0.22 kg/gdp-$, whereas France comes in at 0.13 kg. The main difference lies in Germany’s reliance on coal, lignite and Russian gas. The difference would be even higher if Germany didn’t have some remaining nuclear.
jeppen says
Bas, in 2016, German renewable penetration gained a mere 0.4 percentage points. There are no indications that the energiewende will return to the average of the last six years. On the contrary, the curves point the wrong way and the law has low targets that the government seems to try to undershoot.
A little bit more wind, that’s all we can expect in the coming years. Perhaps we should be happy if solar additions balance with the degradation of the existing fleet.
Helmut Frik says
With 5 GW additional wind just a balance with degradation? OK, how is the planet called on which you are living? By the way solar additions in December 2016 were above 400MW in germany. As predicted market is accelerating again.
jeppen says
Helmut wrote: “With 5 GW additional wind just a balance with degradation?”
You should upgrade your reading comprehension. I talked about solar. Wind doesn’t degrade.
“By the way solar additions in December 2016 were above 400MW in germany. As predicted market is accelerating again.”
The market in 2017 will be as lousy as 2016.
Bas says
The new EEG2017 targets substantial increased wind+solar expansion.
So we can expect >50% renewable in 2025, hence decreased fossil consumption.
jeppen says
No, the EEG2017 does not. It targets insignificant solar expansion and some wind. The target is still 40-45% renewables in 2025, hence increased fossil consumption.
Helmut Frik says
Jeppen, go to a typical german newspaper, ito the Archive, and look threw the erly 1990’s there you will find that advertisement very often.
Math Geurts says
“when Germany helped prevent a blackout in France” means “when Germany’s hard coal power plants helped prevent a blackout in France”‘
jeppen says
France wouldn’t go for blackout. If there was such a risk, they would have timed their inspections differently.
Helmut Frik says
They brought most reactors back online in a haste, and shifted inspections….
Mike Parr says
Oh come on Math – since when are electrons labelled with “wind”, “coal”, “PV” etc.
Math Geurts says
Mike – it is not about labelling. Additional demand from France means that Germany has to produce additional power. In most cases this will be coal power (ev. natural gas) as renewables get priority anyway.
Germany calculates its renewables as “share of consumption”
Helmut Frik says
Exactly. Mor export from germany to other countries mean higher CO2 emissions in germany, lower CO2 emissions in the other countries. The cheapest way to lower their emissions for them.
Karel Beckman says
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