Closing all the nuclear plants and replacing them with increased coal usage, mainly. Compared to France where nuclear makes up a huge proportion of generation capacity and the UK where gas is the main source (not low carbon, but much lower than coal).
While nuclear is low carbon, it is not cheap and does not like to load follow (whereas renewables can simply curtail and shut down when there is insufficient load or transmission for their generation). If there are consistent excess renewables on a grid, it seriously impairs the economics of nuclear. France’s nuclear reactors load follow but are hard on the mechanicals attempting to do so, and France has some serious issues with reactor maintenance and refurbishment.
Coal and nuclear are the first to be driven out of the generation mix due to their poor economics (or sometimes air pollution regulation as is the case with coal), and remaining coal and natural gas will be driven out over the next decade. Natural gas competes with renewables and batteries, both of which continually decline in cost. Peaking natural gas (vs more efficient combined cycle gas turbine) is already no longer competitive with batteries, and those generators are quickly being replaced.
Tangentially, Germany has twelve interconnectors with neighboring electrical grids. They need not stand up all of this low carbon generation themselves. They also have almost 10GW of hydro storage and almost 5GW of battery storage (so far).
New nuclear isn’t cheap. Existing nuclear is cheap enough. The fact remains that the answer to OP’s question is Germany shuttered its plants and began importing dirty power.
I believe the question should be, “what is the cost of the emissions delta of early turndown of these plants vs continuing to run them until retirement (whether due to economics or longevity),” in both fiat and emissions. It is not as simple as “we should’ve run them until the doors fall off.” That is a simple idea for a complex problem.
> It is not as simple as “we should’ve run them until the doors fall off.” That is a simple idea...
It is also a straw man. The Neckarwestheim reactor, which Germany shut down this year, began operating in 1989 [1]. The average age of America's reactors is almost a fifth longer, with decades life left [2].
Renewables on the other hand definitely do not like load following: they are slow to start up and are severely impacted by regular weather conditions like night and no wind
Citations below, it really comes down to it being uneconomical to load follow when capacity factor declines below a sustainable threshold, which will surely comes as renewables scale up. You can see this today on the daily graph for France when solar production ramps over the day, pushing down nuclear generation.
> You can see this today on the daily graph for France when solar production ramps over the day, pushing down nuclear generation.
That.... is exactly what nuclear plants are literally designed to do.
As for "economics". If we don't discuss the politics of disregard and underinvestment in nuclear power plants, we can't discuss the economics. The only reason your last link exists is precisely because French government sat on its ass and did nothing to the most important energy source in their country. What do you think will happen to your renewable energy after decades of similar disregard?
If we don't discuss where to get energy on a quiet night, we can't discuss "economics". The only reason "Germany has replaced nuclear with renewables" discource exists is because Germany burns insane amounts of coal and imports energy from France and Denmark every time there's a dip in renewables (aka at least every 12 hours or so).
> What do you think will happen to your renewable energy after decades of similar disregard?
I hope it's not the governments' mistake to make next time, given how much easier it is to scale renewables anywhere from multi-gigawatt down to however many milliwatts solar powered pocket calculators were.
> given how much easier it is to scale renewables anywhere from multi-gigawatt down to
Easy to scale nameplate capacity? Yes. Easy to scale generation? No.
Right now, as I write this, in Germany:
- Wind: 66.5 GW installed capacity. Generation: 1.82 GW, or 2.74% of that
- Solar: 69.1 GW of installed capacity. Generation: 0.38 GW, or 0.55% of that
- Hydro: 9.78 GW of installed capacity. Generation: 3.09 GW, or 31% of that
So Germany is busy burning gas (generation: 7.6 GW), coal (generation: 14.2 GW), and "bio fuels" (generation: 5 GW), and importing electricity from as far away as Norway
> As you wrote that, the sun is still low (in practice) on the horizon even here in Berlin.
Exactly
> If you want to argue storage capacity etc. is up to the government
Yes, the storage capacity is also an issue.
> but not where I was going.
I don't know where you were going, but when you say "it's easy to scale renewables" and then say "oh, but the sun is below horizon and inadequate storage capacity", it's clear that it's not that easy to scale renewables.
I don't know if it will be solved by large scale government-backed mega-projects — which can be anything from grid-scale batteries, cubic kilometres of cryo-hydrogen, hydroelectric dams, or (my personal favourite) a global TW-scale power grid — or if it will be spontaneous local interest like electric cars and slightly scaled up versions of the ~kWh battery packs I see in Obi and Kaufland as home power storage.
The home battery packs are already at a level where they just about make sense financially over their working lifetime, but hardly anyone will want to spend €17k for 15+ years of grid independence, especially here where the grid is basically guaranteed to work.
It is the same issue, and pretending that it isn't is disingenous at best. What's the point of "quickly scaling renewables" if they can provide 0.55% of their nameplate capacity?
> I don't know if it will be solved by
Indeed, no one knows how this problem will be solved (and if it can be solved), but it doesn't stop you from statements like "how much easier it is to scale renewables anywhere from multi-gigawatt down to however many milliwatts". Germany has easily scaled renewables to gigawatts. And yet even now, during the day wind is at 2.38% capacity, solar is at 43% capacity, and 15 GW has to come from coal even though if you look at numbers only, there's 67 GW of wind installed.
> especially here where the grid is basically guaranteed to work.
Currently the only reason is working is that countries burn copious amounts of coal and gas to keep up with demand. Even Denmark which is covered in wind turbines currently only utilizes 9.6% of installed wind capacity, and has to import 34% of its electricity from Norway.
But sure do tell me how easy it is to scale renewables without accounting for the actual reality we can observe literally right now?
> What's the point of "quickly scaling renewables" if they can provide 0.55% of their nameplate capacity?
If you're doing that bad on average over the year, you put them in the wrong place.
Fortunately the actual number for PV is about 10%, and even given that capacity factor the world is currently on the path to that alone being sufficient by the early 2030s.
> no one knows how this problem will be solved (and if it can be solved)
It definitely can be solved.
Any of the things I listed, alone or in combination, are sufficient to solve it.
They're almost certainly not the only options, and I'd be surprised if lil' me can pick the best, but they all work.
> Currently the only reason is working is that countries burn copious amounts of coal and gas to keep up with demand.
"Currently".
That's like saying your car is "currently" only as fast as a bicycle while you're in a 20 zone and have yet to reach the autobahn, but then trying to use this fact to conclude cars are incapable of higher performance rather than just you've not done it yet.
And if everyone running the grid were to say "we're not having a grid any more", Kaufland and Obi both sell kWh-range battery packs at low enough prices that, given the way they wear over use, they'll already be cheaper over their lifetime. That lifetime is longer than most people care to invest for, hence why it's not common, but it is already there.
Thing is, industries don't operate on "average energy". Neither do services and people's homes. They don't care if you have 100% energy tomorrow if today you get 0%. Yes, on average you will get 50%. But in practice you'll have complete disruption.
When the sun is down, it's down not just for a singe country or a city. When the wind is not blowing, it's not just a local phenomena for a single country/city. Etc.
> the actual number for PV is about 10%, and even given that capacity factor the world is currently on the path to that alone being sufficient by the early 2030s.
So, riddle me this: if you want to account for days when wind and electricity produce only 1-3% of their installed capacity, how much capacity (and storage) needs to be installed to provide full energy needs?
> That's like saying your car is "currently" only as fast as a bicycle
False analogy
> And if everyone running the grid were to say "we're not having a grid any more", Kaufland and Obi both sell kWh-range battery packs at low enough prices that, given the way they wear over use, they'll already be cheaper over their lifetime.
How many of those battery packs you will need for "no grid"?
> hence why it's not common, but it is already there.
Of course it's nowhere near "there", wherever there may be.
Indeed, but we don't need it everywhere — between transmission lines and that most of the good sites in Germany are pretty close to the major industry and population centres (except Berlin and Brandenburg, which is basically marsh and nature reserves, leading back to the transmission lines).
> Indeed, but we don't need it everywhere — between transmission lines and that most of the good sites in Germany are pretty close to the major industry and population centres
1. Not everywhere, but you need quite a lot of them. You significantly underestimate how much power modern civilisation consumes
2. You can't build a hydroelectric plant/storage in the marshes. You can't build it willy-nilly in any river you want, either. You can't just build it on any lake or in any mountains you like.
> I might be overestimating power lines or people's willingness to have transmission lines near them.
The question isn't about power lines. The question you started with is "Hydroelectric is generally counted as a renewable, and it's also a storage system."
The problem is that yo uneed to build a lot of them, and you can't just build them abywhere you want.
> What's the ampacity of a typical high voltage line?
Zero. The storage capacity of a high voltage line is zero.
> The question isn't about power lines. The question you started with is "Hydroelectric is generally counted as a renewable, and it's also a storage system."
Needless pedantry as everyone uses transmission lines so that power creation and storage aren't in the same physical location as the end use.
If you've got a 5 GW line going from Berlin to, say, the Czech border (where there's currently already a 1 GW hydro plant, I make no claims about environmental capacity for more even though it seems plausible at first glance), then you've got hydro storage keeping the lights on in the city even though it's 215 km away because there's nowhere here to put any hydro storage.
That's why it matters what the amp-acity of a HV line is.
UK is a varied mix so hard to say the main source. gas, coal and oil (almost entirely gas) together are about 40% of generation. The other 60% is imports, biomass, wind, solar, hydro etc.
