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Cheap energy being framed as some kind of problem is a great demonstration of why we need a free press that isn't solely owned by billionaires
They could always just close their coal power plants. Idk why they don't.
My guess is that in a climate like Germany's, solar isn't consistent enough to provide the steady baseline power that coal plants can.
One of the complexities of power infrastructure is that demand must be met instantaneously and exactly. Coal and solar typically occupy different roles in a grid's power sources. Coal plants are slow to start, but very consistent, so they provide baseline power. Solar is virtually instantaneous, but inconsistent, so it's better suited to handle the daily fluctuations.
So, in a place like Germany, even in abundance, solar can't realistically replace coal until we have a good way of storing power to act as a buffer. Of course, nuclear is a fantastic replacement for coal, but we all know how Germany's politicians feel about it...
We also know building nuclear takes 20 years and costs more than building thrice the capacity in renewables + Germany has no long-term nuclear storage, only temporary one's a la Simpsons.
Germany had 17 active nuclear plants in 2011 and decommissioned them all by 2023.
Well it is a problem, sort of. It's a failing of the market.
But it does open up another market for energy storage so it will save itself through regular marker forces.
But we absolutely want energy suppliers to make money off solar (over a year) or they will simply stop building more of it. I'm not sure if the German state is losing money on this though, in which case they absolutely need to build more storage.
I'm getting really worried about how energy is going to be generated in winter once solar and batteries completely dominate energy production in the summer.
I mean... Good? Shouldn't that be the goal, electricity at no cost to the people?
Won't someone think of the poor capitalists who can't love better lives then those around them!
/s, just in case.
No. That’s like saying the UK has too much wind power because our prices occasionally go negative. What Germany might not have enough of is battery and other storage
Did you know that the best way we currently have to store energy are dams? In most dams you can install a pump to take water and store it higher, then when energy is needed you simply open the turbine.
The problem with dams or pumped storage is it only works in specific places where you have a higher place to put lots of water.
Oh no, it's too bad Germany isn't surrounded by other countries it could sell that excess power to!
Germany has lots of grid connections to other countries, and are pretty surely selling off what they can get rid of, but France has nuclear, Sweden and Norway have hydro, Denmark has wind and solar. All these markets are also currently negative. We've had negative prices for almost 14 days now, but somehow they went into plus today here in Denmark, although we (personally) had lots of sun and could sell 61,9 kWh from our solar panels.
I just checked, and the prices are near identical between: Germany, Belgium, Poland, Austria, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
~~Oh no, it’s too bad Germany isn’t surrounded by other countries it could sell that excess power to!~~
Your sarcasm is misplaced.
Fuck that title. No such thing as too many solar panels. The only thing that is bad is how the energy is used or if it's wasted. Free energy should mean algae production which would mean carbon negativity. Negative energy price should mean negative carbon emissions, get on it.
You are right, this is BS.
I recently researched this and Germany's grid is quite "smart" (the oldest technologies involved, such as DECABIT or VERSACOM over PLC, very much predate the term "smart grid" but whatever) and power plants and households are connected for production and load control. Power plants are required to participate but households can use a load management system for water tank heating (the basic premise is that specific frequency impulses are sent over the power grid for primitive (originally relay-based!) logic in DECABIT meters to switch depending on the assigned device group, and meters count in lower-price mode while the load is activated for a guaranteed number of hours each day; you can manually override the switch for expensive on-demand water heating) and/or HVAC (here, a smart thermostat is usually used that gets real-time energy prices and decides based on its temperature range settings if it saves money to run heating/cooling).
People in Texas apparently hate this (muh freedom), and look how reliable their grid is!
Anyway, solar, unlike coal or nuclear, is absolutely capable of going off-grid if necessary. There is an MPPT system in their inverters that usually works to operate the panels at the optimal voltage & current so that it can suck the most power out of them but it can be overridden to work at below 100% efficiency, or even 0%. This will cause the panels to run with no current draw and get about 20% hotter but they are designed to withstand this. Similarly, wind turbines can be braked, water can be passed outside turbine shafts and so can pressurized steam if you really need to cut production quickly. Still, this is an emergency condition, it is preferred to use pumped hydro (responds in 1 minute, limited capacity) or batteries (respond in seconds, very limited capacity) or lower coal/gas-based production (responds in 3-20 minutes for as long as you wish) or load-side management to regulate the grid, as it wastes no power.
The system is very complex and robust, the frequency (the variable most dependent on production/load balance) only dips below 49.8 Hz about once per a few years (the emergency value that was reached in February 2021 in Texas and can only be sustained for minutes before total blackout is -1% from nominal (49.5 or 59.4, respectively) and has never been touched in Europe's modern history).
(You'd think it would be voltage what falls in case of too little power but it can be readjusted quite easily with switched transformer taps and, oddly enough, reactive power management (connecting a few capacitor/inductor banks to mains) when necessary, however frequency control is the difficult part.)
It gets even more absurd. The southern states blocked building large power lines to transport cheap wind energy south. Now they struggle because the chea renewable energy cannot go there. So while there is plenty of renewables in the north the south still runs coal plants to provide local energy. But then the people in the north have to pay for "network fees" because the South couldnt take their energy.
Because of this it was suggested to split the German energy market in two, where the south which fought against renewables would have to pay the actual electricity costs instead of leeching of the North that properly build up renewables. This was fought teeth and nails because the South of Germany is like Texas but with an even worse superiority complex.
Physicists are warry about splitting atoms; historians are warry about splitting Germany.
Too much clean energy that is nearly free sounds like a much better type of problem to solve than most.
Sounds like Germany can start exporting said energy and make even more money. How is this a bad thing?
This is why the US is working so hard to stop renewables. Rich people don't make any money when power is free.
Good. Cheap electric will help more transition from more polluting energy types. Electric cars, ovens, steel, etc.
Oh no! What about the executives yachts? Are they safe?
Solar powered citizens: "Fuck you, pay me."
Germany pays Denmark money to stop creating wind energy when the prices get too low
Imagine having so much energy that you'd rather spend money not to harvest it, instead of maybe using it to make hydrogen or storing it on other ways
Germany has been building some really big battery installations already with a lot more to come. These things take time.
Power being priced negative is awesome. We need more of it imo, make energy so abundant that it makes processes that were previously too energy-intensive viable, and enables a massive increase in both residential and grid storage capacity.
My opinion is that Na-ion batteries are the way for bulk grid storage and apartment/home storage nya.
They use hyper abundant materials and are now reaching the point of decent endurance, and if you arent bothered by them being heavy (as is the case for grid and residential storage), they're fairly comparable to Li-Ion without the usage of relatively rare Lithium.
Leave it to the business world to wet-blanket this because of money. Really helps the cause, public opinion, and such.
Does that mean Germany will have the exotic negative energy that makes constructing a wormhole possible?
The only issue is they have not enough storage capacity for the excess.
That's a global problem unfortunately.
We do not yet have effective and economical means of storing energy in grid scale quantities that are readily deployable near where that power is consumed.
It's a huge problem actually, the biggest one facing renewables like solar.
Nice. Now work on storage solutions to cover nights.
It's pretty funny. The article says that this is where money is being spent next (it implies it's government funded), but the author acts like that's a bad thing.
Unless new installations are spurred on by subsidies or power purchase agreements, oppressed profitability could eventually halt Germany's solar expansion, Schieldrop said.
Instead, focus is likely to move onto improvements that will make more use of the energy produced, such as investments in batteries and grid infrastructure.
It's wild. This guy is suggesting that they subsidize solar installation, in the exact same article where he's saying there's too much solar. Either the article is disingenuous or he's an absolute idiot.
Imagine if we had this for housing. Sometimes it feels like we're close to post-scarcity if we just wanted to.
This is a clear social good.
If it threatens economic hardship on solar power producers then it'd be extremely rational for the government to subsidize those companies.
This was expected. When solar panels were expensive, you had to optimize for output. When you get the same rate for any kWh, you optimize for output. Now that PV is cheap as fuck, of course, there's going to overproduction.
Now the dynamic will change. Instead of facing south, it becomes attractive to orient east/west. This generates more output on mornings or evenings. As a next step, you add batteries to the mix. Yes, they said they were expensive, need rare materials, and yadda yadda; except with lower prices every month, solar batteries are thing now.
Also "overproduction" is relative. Most of our heating and transport is fossil. There's a long way to go.
This is the entire reason why countries like China are investing hard into ultra-high-voltage transmission lines.
While regions like Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia have immense wind and solar potential, getting that electricity to the population centers is challenging.
Selling electricity to Eastern Europe, to Northern Africa, hell even to the Middle East is an option if Europe is truly operating an electricity surplus.
More from the same author:
Starvation and malnutrition plummet as crop yields increase. Unfortunately a new industry of storing food must be created to ensure the excess is preserved for times of need.
Free time skyrockets as menial labor is offloaded onto AI and machines. Unfortunately a new self-actualization industry must be created for people to learn intellectual and creative skills they didn't have time or money for.
Higher education rates increase as governments help fund students and enact laws to keep for-profit-education from price gouging. Unfortunately untold new industries are created as unnoticed talent is given the opportunity to cultivate it.
What? The energy prices are above average here in Germany...
There's a big difference between what consumers pay and what companies pay the producers
Someone along the supply chain is verarsching us.
Cheap renewable energy? This is devastating! How will we ever recover from this?