Germany Targets 125,000 Megawatts Of Wind Power By 2030
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 07. 7.08
In the North Sea, the upshot of this 2030 goal would be a very large population of wind turbines, and probably a maintenance fleet made up of ex-fishing boats, supported by former fishing ports. Remarkably, the vision is to supplant the German nuclear plants which are, officially at least, slated for a phase out.
The government has agreed to honor a decision to close the country's 17 nuclear power plants by 2020 but remains divided over the issue.[Chancellor ] Merkel insists that a nuclear phase-out would hinder efforts to slash Germany's dependency on greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels. But Tiefensee, a member of Merkel's Social Democrat coalition partners, said that investing in wind farms was better than keeping the nuclear plants running.
Via::Yahoo News, Image credit::AFP/File/Barbara Sax, via Yahoo News.
And today at the G8 the German chancellor got told, that who ever takes climate-change serious has to invest into nuclear power. Guess who said that? The US speaker. I had a mighty good laugh, the US guy had the guts to point at others.
I'm afraid I don't understand. Once built, a nuclear plant has a lower cost of operation per kWh of electricity than coal, gas, or oil. Why would you close nuclear to pay for wind? Why not close the coal plants to pay for the wind farms and save even more money and even more GHG? It sounds like the paragraph above describes a false dichotomous choice based on public fears and misconceptions rather than actual information.
Still, 125GW of wind power would be great (125GW is equal to 6.25% of current WORLD electricity usage) by 2030, especially if Germany continues to also pursue solar with such zeal. I wonder how they are going to manage the intermittency of wind- even at sea there is some time when the wind isn't blowing. (Pure speculation follows) Enormous battery banks seem unlikely, so maybe they'll use excess production to make hydrogen. That could do it.
Actually we have the problem of nuclear waste, that is unsolved so far and therefor doesn't go into calculations.
Calculations (http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,564348,00.html) tell us, that we can save 50ct (EuroCent) a month if we hold on to our nuclear powerplants and that a single energysaver lightbulb will do more for us.
"I'm afraid I don't understand. Once built, a nuclear plant has a lower cost of operation per kWh of electricity than coal, gas, or oil. Why would you close nuclear to pay for wind? Why not close the coal plants to pay for the wind farms and save even more money and even more GHG?"
Germany is planing to build 26 new coal plants as they phase out nuclear.
"Still, 125GW of wind power would be great (125GW is equal to 6.25% of current WORLD electricity usage) "
No it's not. Wind power has a capacity factor of around ~1/3.
If wind power becomes more than a small fraction of total generation it will either demand storage(pumped storage and compressed air storage, the most likely candidates, are about ~50% efficient), simple cycle gas turbines(not as efficient as combined cycle plants) that can ramp up fast enough to cancel rapid variations in wind output or encourage a new kind of consumer who is insensitive to intermittency to soak up unreliable surplus power as long as you sell it cheap(battery charging? chlorine gas and lye production?).
Wind output typically shows correlation over large areas so you don't gain that much by adding long distance import/export capacity in most places. If you don't properly deal with this intermittency somehow you're going to end up with a lot of surplus power that can't be sold and possibly a shortage of reliable power if coal plants can't keep up with the demand.
On average 125 GW nameplate of wind capacity will provide nowhere close to 6% of world consumption.
"Once built, a nuclear plant has a lower cost of operation per kWh of electricity than coal, gas, or oil. Why would you close nuclear to pay for wind? Why not close the coal plants to pay for the wind farms and save even more money and even more GHG?"
You're right, the coal plants have to be closed too. The nuclear phase out was pushed by a different government 8 years ago. The government today however is in the pockets of the coal-industry, so they have no interest in pushing a phase-out of coal.
"If wind power becomes more than a small fraction of total generation it will either demand storage(pumped storage and compressed air storage, the most likely candidates, are about ~50% efficient),"
You're right, it will demand storage. But if geothermal and biomass are more developed, you will be able to provide a signifacant part of baseload power with it. Together with storage systems (you forgot to mention redox-flow-batteries and electric vehicles) there are a lot of possibilities to provide constant power supply without the need to burn coal or natural gas.
"Once built, a nuclear plant has a lower cost of operation per kWh of electricity than coal, gas, or oil. Why would you close nuclear to pay for wind? Why not close the coal plants to pay for the wind farms and save even more money and even more GHG?"
You're right, the coal plants have to be closed too. The nuclear phase out was pushed by a different government 8 years ago. The government today however is in the pockets of the coal-industry, so they have no interest in pushing a phase-out of coal.
"If wind power becomes more than a small fraction of total generation it will either demand storage(pumped storage and compressed air storage, the most likely candidates, are about ~50% efficient),"
You're right, it will demand storage. But if geothermal and biomass are more developed, you will be able to provide a signifacant part of baseload power with it. Together with storage systems (you forgot to mention redox-flow-batteries and electric vehicles) there are a lot of possibilities to provide constant power supply without the need to burn coal or natural gas.