Germany’s new Economy Minister Katherina Reiche on Friday called for the rapid construction of new gas-fired power plants in the country to support the country’s energy supply when renewable sources are unavailable
She said it was important to “quickly move to tender at least 20 gigawatts of gas-fired power plants to maintain energy security.”
Reiche ruled out a return to nuclear energy
"This means we need to conclude the relevant free trade agreements with Chile, Mercosur, India, Australia and Mexico. And I explicitly say, we also need the United States of America," Reiche said.
Let’s not only go back to increasing reliance on fossil fuels but also increasing reliance on some unstable geopolitical actors. A double whammy.
20 GW? This is crazy.
No, that’s a rather conservative estimate. My federal state alone has more than 20GW in total capacities. And the backup for the rare days when neither solar nor wind produce relevant amounts needs to be able to cover the demand.
The actual point is having those power plants yet in the end never using them aside from those few days a year. And then producing the gas for them climate-neutrally with reneawable overproduction from the remaining 98% of the year.
PS: That the positive thing about solar and wind prices nowadays. They are actually so low that other production methods simply can’t compete and won’t be used more than actually needed.
PPS: That also the actual economic reason why nuclear is a bad idea. You also need enough production capacities for a cold winter night without solar and wind… but then producing less the remaining time of the year doesn’t actually save you money because fuel is a miniscule part of nuclear costs. Have you never wondered why the two countries in the EU pushing for a properly scaled green hydrogen market are Germany and France? Because both models only work economically with peak-burners based on greenly produced gas.
But there are a lot of gas power plants in Germany already. If you want them just as back up, it would be easier to just convert coal power plants to biomass. For 2% it should be fine.
That’s the point. The backup needs to produce (close to) 100% of the demand 2% of the time.
And coal plants are incredibly bad at quickly reacting. It takes a day just from ignition to working temperature, several days to establish the transport chain constantly providing the huge amounts of fuel needed (bonus points for a lot of them being ship-based and possibly suffering from low water levels).
Also there is a lot of industry that will already need climate-neutral gas produced by green energy as their only valid way for electrification. And in the end it’s also a cost issue. If the industry already needs huge amounts of gas and the transport network anyway (of which a lot already exists - refitting natural gas networks for hydrogen has already started) the state doesn’t need to pay much than just the power plants. And they are comparably cheap (the exact opposite of nuclear where constrution is expensive but fuel and operation are cheap).
There are currently plans for over 226GW of grid sized battery storage in Germany, so a bit of lead time is possible. Weather forecasts are a thing as well, so the grid operators will have a good idea, about how much power is available at any given time.
Network operators got requests to connect 226GW, which is a completely different thing. The bulk of those is not even going to have fleshed out financing plans. Also that’s connection power, which might not be how much power the batteries can realistically deliver for more than seconds before overheating, much less over a whole day.
Generally speaking current battery tech isn’t suitable for longer-term storage. Synthetic fuel is, which is why those gas plants were planned for from the very start of the energy transition and they’re all going to be able to run on pure hydrogen without expensive modifications.
Network operators got requests to connect 226GW, which is a completely different thing.
So why would you request to connect a battery storage plant, without having any sort of plans for them? It needs to be realistic enough to invest the resources to look into it. Peak load was 75.775GW this year, so 226GW is roughly three times peak load or a lot more then needed. Usually they have an hour or two of storage capacity. So you do not need the power plants to meet peak load, but just enough to have them run 24/7 and then meet peak demand with batteries. So for a winter week Germany consumes about 9500GWh of electricity. So you need 56.5GW of power plants to run all the time to produce that. As of right now Germany has 36.7GW of gas, 6.4GW of hydro and 9.2GW of biomass. That means 4.2GW are missing. That is presuming no wind and solar generation at all and no grid connection with other countries.
Honestly just built hydrogen power plants right now. No need to make them methane gas powered in the meantime.
So why would you request to connect a battery storage plant, without having any sort of plans for them?
Because it’s a bunch of paperwork you need to get in order to see whether what you have in mind is practical. One of the cheaper parts of the whole process so you do it first.
So for a winter week Germany consumes about 9500GWh of electricity. So you need 56.5GW of power plants to run all the time to produce that.
That’s not how the maths works demand changes by hour of the day. Basic load generally fluctuates between 40 and 60GW so we’re missing at least 4GW more plus safety buffer. And that’s Germany’s load, we also export electricity and when the lot of Germany has issues with renewable generation then it figures that Poland isn’t likely to be in any better shape. If you catch a large enough geographical area then you’ll never have trouble in all places at the same time but to capitalise on that we’d need network connections we don’t have, and won’t have for some time.
Add to that increased electricity demand as companies are switching from gas to electric. Things like glass smelters, things you can’t even shut down: You either have 1600C in there or a very expensive write-off.
Honestly just built hydrogen power plants right now. No need to make them methane gas powered in the meantime.
They’re quite literally the same thing. Burner nozzles might be different but that’s not the expensive part, and it’s not like making them able to burn all kinds of hydrogen/methane mixtures would be rocket science (it’s turbine science).
Unless you mean fuel cell plants but those don’t run on biofuel and municipal utilities have sewage to ferment (those produce methane). They also don’t produce (much) heat which thus couldn’t be put towards district heating which TBH we should have a whole lot more of.
Then there’s yet another factor, and that’s inertia: Gas plants have big heavy spinny things that act as dampeners on frequency fluctuations, buying operators precious time to increase or lower production to match demand without the whole network crashing. Yes you can regulate frequency in other ways, like capacitor banks or flywheels, but if you already have a flywheel why not accelerate it with a turbine?
20GW is way too much. Peak coal this year was 22GW and there is a huge wave of battery power plants coming as well. Seriously if you have to, just keep coal plants connected to the grid, in case of an emergency.
Fuck the US. We should buy from anyone but them. Canada would be the next best option from that direction.
I want Nuclear.
Edit- thanks to the people who educated me in a mature manner, I’ve changed my opinions.
Nuclear is a fairy tale told by lobbyists. Those working in nuclear and those trying to keep fossil fuels active as long as possible by inducing constant idiotic discussions.
Worldwide solar/wind/hydro made up ~86% all newly constructed energy production (and rising… those where numbers of 2023, I expect >90% for 2024 but haven’t seen newer data). Renewable deployment as well as battery storage is growing exponentially because no other method of production can actually compete with those low costs anymore.
Nuclear is an option for all the countries that already have massive capacities build (so basically France, that’s it). Or for those with a demand increasing so rapidly that they use all available options in parallel anayway (see: China, but even there nuclear is in regards to capacity a tiny fraction compared to renewables).
For every other country it’s basically a choice between starting to lower your emissions now and steadily over the next 1-2 decades via renewables or doing nothing for at least the same time period while nuclear power (that also needs all the costs upfronted now btw) is build. (PS: Nuclear also doesn’t work without long-term storage via produced gas btw… That’s the reason France is the other country in the EU beside Germany pushing for a scaled up green hydrogen market. In fact hydrogen production via electrolisation is the only reason their nuclear plans work economically, because that production gets better economically with a more constant power supply compared to a pure renewable setup - see RTE’s study about power production in 2050).
To late.
When they start now renewable will be viable when they finished and then they need to switch again.
Better to invest in renewable now so that the infrastructure is there when the technology is capable enough.
Maybe you can build one?
How much money do you have?
Sure if we can build it in your backyard with no one around for 100km.
Modern Nuclear isn’t a big scary dangerous prospect. I am German and I’d have no problem with it close by. So many Germans are afraid of Nuclear like it’s so scary boogeyman
So we found an Endlager in your backyard? Nice
Nuclear is more expensive than renewables.
