Green Energy, and the German Grid, from: Kiev Is Burning

[urbanoid]

5 minutes ago, BansheeOne said:

There were? Never heard of that, and upon looking I only find that any cross-border environmental impact had to be ruled out on the German side before the EU granted subsidies from the funds which also enabled construction and economical operation of terminals and connecting pipelines in Lithuania, Croatia, Greece etc. to diversify supply.

I also don't think the problem is a lack of terminal capacities in Europe; before Ukraine, the spare capacities amounted to pretty much exactly the volume of Russian gas imports already (in fact critics used to complain the EU was uselessly pouring money into redundant terminals to subsidize import of evil American fracking gas while consumption was actually going to drop - another prediction that didn't age too well). AIUI the concern is rather that disposable global LNG supply might not be sufficient to fill those capacities in the near term.

Yeah, there were some, environment, bird habitats, yadda yadda yadda. Germany  wanted another environmental analysis after we have already completed our own, our gov was worried that it would delay both the EU subsidies and the completion of the project, in the end decided to finish even without the EU funding if it's not granted. 
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/poland-smells-german-foul-play-over-gas-terminal

[BansheeOne]

That makes sense, it's the same "more environmental impact expertises" spiral which plagues any major domestic construction project. Given that the adjacent German state is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern which was heavily invested into Nord Stream 2 with the landfall point and included Angela Merkel's home district, I could just see them happily giving official muscle to tit-for-tatting over Poland trying to obstruct the latter. The irony being that the pipes in German waters may now be repurposed to link a floating offshore LNG terminal to the national grid ...

[Ivanhoe]

Both Yurrop and the US could solve our energy problems by chaining our vast armies of bureaucrats and activists to stationary generator-bikes.

With energy prices heading towards the ionosphere, we will have no difficulty finding "coaches" to encourage said bureaucrats to pedal harder.

 

[lucklucky]

 

[glenn239]

2 hours ago, lucklucky said:

 

We're governed by ideologs.  It's not just Russia, it's everything.  Here, this idiot is saying that the future of the liberal world order is at stake?   There is no liberal world order.  There is a liberal Western order, and our leaders seem to be steering that ship towards the rocks, as if they'd rather destroy it than deal with the world as it is.

We have zealots in charge.  We need to elect practical people that want to govern, not crusade.

[sunday]

41 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

We're governed by ideologs.  It's not just Russia, it's everything.  Here, this idiot is saying that the future of the liberal world order is at stake?   There is no liberal world order.  There is a liberal Western order, and our leaders seem to be steering that ship towards the rocks, as if they'd rather destroy it than deal with the world as it is.

We have zealots in charge.  We need to elect practical people that want to govern, not crusade.

No liberal western order already, died a long ago, probably with the resignation of Benedict XVI.

There is New World Order of the kind wanted by Soros and his minions.

New World Order whose most dangerous foes are China and Russia.

[Huba]

3 hours ago, lucklucky said:

 

Germany has solution to that, though hardly applicable to the US I guess:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/20/germany-public-transport-boost-9-euro-month-ticket

[sunday]

38 minutes ago, sunday said:

No liberal western order already, died a long ago, probably with the resignation of Benedict XVI.

There is New World Order of the kind wanted by Soros and his minions.

New World Order whose most dangerous foes are China and Russia.

Case in point.

https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/07/climate-change-theory-meets-hard.html

Snippet of a quote, Utilitarianism gone bonkers:

Quote

We sometimes talk about hunger in the world as if it were a scourge that all of us want to see abolished, viewing it as comparable with the plague or aids. But that naïve view prevents us from coming to grips with what causes and sustains hunger. Hunger has great positive value to many people. Indeed, it is fundamental to the working of the world's economy. Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is a need for manual labour.

. . .

For those of us at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster. If there were no hunger in the world, who would plow the fields? Who would harvest our vegetables? Who would work in the rendering plants? Who would clean our toilets? We would have to produce our own food and clean our own toilets. No wonder people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by sunday

[Ivanhoe]

3 hours ago, sunday said:

No liberal western order already, died a long ago, probably with the resignation of Benedict XVI.

There is New World Order of the kind wanted by Soros and his minions.

Distinction without a difference, IMHO. When people like Biden talk about liberal values, they are thinking about Maoist values. The only liberty in lefties' minds is the freedom to conform and obey the Party.

 

[lucklucky]

4 hours ago, glenn239 said:

We're governed by ideologs.  It's not just Russia, it's everything.  Here, this idiot is saying that the future of the liberal world order is at stake?   There is no liberal world order.  There is a liberal Western order, and our leaders seem to be steering that ship towards the rocks, as if they'd rather destroy it than deal with the world as it is.

We have zealots in charge.  We need to elect practical people that want to govern, not crusade.

I like to state this paradox  to strange looks from others.... Centrist Extremists are very dangerous.

[rmgill]

8 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

Both Yurrop and the US could solve our energy problems by chaining our vast armies of bureaucrats and activists to stationary generator-bikes.

 

[sunday]

[bojan]

Is it true?

If true, combined with Dutch farmer thing, "green" agenda is now definitely a suicide cult.

Edited July 8, 2022 by bojan

[Huba]

1 hour ago, bojan said:

Is it true?

If true, combined with Dutch farmer thing, "green" agenda is now definitely a suicide cult.

For what it's worth, I read that as the decision to switch them off was made a longer while ago, prolonging their use wasn't that feasible. They started burningn through most of the fuel to use it up before closure and didn't secure new, stopped maintenance procedures, safety certifications etc, terminated cooperation with subcontractors who already picked up new jobs etc. etc.

Of course they could've backtracked from all of this if they really had to, but probably calculated they don't. On the bright side, they stopped  meddling in UE and nuclear was put on the "green energy" list (together with gas🙄), so at least they won't be ruining it for everyone else...

Edited July 8, 2022 by Huba

[BansheeOne]

Yeah again, the last three plants had long optimized operations to burn off the remaining fuel rods as much as possible by year's end. Most of the short-notice plans proposed to extend them entailed generating the same total amount of power, just spread over some additional months. New fuel rods would apparently have to have been ordered by the end of May at the latest to keep them running afterwards, and as it happens the German supply of uranium also came mostly from ... Russia. Let's face it, this ship really sailed years ago, and noone bothered to stop it.

[rmgill]

1 hour ago, BansheeOne said:

Yeah again, the last three plants had long optimized operations to burn off the remaining fuel rods as much as possible by year's end. Most of the short-notice plans proposed to extend them entailed generating the same total amount of power, just spread over some additional months. New fuel rods would apparently have to have been ordered by the end of May at the latest to keep them running afterwards, and as it happens the German supply of uranium also came mostly from ... Russia. Let's face it, this ship really sailed years ago, and noone bothered to stop it.

Can't get uranium from anywhere else? France maybe? Some big super power over seas? 

[Ssnake]

It might have been possible if someone reeally had had a drive to get it done. But at the same time, electricity generation isn't the big issue. There's enough coal in Germany, and enough coal power plants, and there were but a meagre three nuclear power plants still operating. Plus, the nuclear industry received handsome compensation for shutting down the plants early after their negotiated early end of operations date was extended by Merkel, the pro-nuclear chancellor, and then cut short again by Merkel, the anti-nuclear chancellor. Extending the operation of the plants would have incurred the legal risk of having to pay back some of those nice billions into the much less deserving hands of the taxpayer, so the power plant operators weren't too eager for those proposals themselves; I suppose their May statements that new fuel rods would have to be ordered "very soon" were half-hearted, if not outright trolling of a political class that cannot make up their minds about the nuclear power thing.

Anyway, there's enough electricity in Germany, at the moment. Three nuclear power plants more or less wouldn't have changed the balance much (except for carbon emissions, and look who isn't very serious about curbing them). They can't help with the natural gas crisis as a processing agent for industry, they can't help with heating homes that have no heat pumps.

[seahawk]

Sure they could, but this would still contain many risks - from the legal risks, over the technological risks up to the risk of running the plants longer without trained personnel, as many workers are set for retirement at the end of the year and no replacement has been trained and could not be trained in the remaining months . Running the coal plants has fewer risks, as coal is widely available and the knowledge to run them is still widely available. 

[rmgill]

2 hours ago, seahawk said:

Sure they could, but this would still contain many risks - from the legal risks, over the technological risks up to the risk of running the plants longer without trained personnel, as many workers are set for retirement at the end of the year and no replacement has been trained and could not be trained in the remaining months . Running the coal plants has fewer risks, as coal is widely available and the knowledge to run them is still widely available. 

Coal plants are also so wide spread, they're highly efficient and have fewer gotchas. I almost bought a technical textbook on coal fired power plants. It was about 2" thick and had details on a range of North American Coal burning power plants. I spent about 20 minutes looking through it. Interesting stuff. 

Best way to make power, boil water, spin turbines. The turbine/water/generator part is interchangeable. Even the cooling tower system for the water to re-circulate it is simple. The question is HOW you boil the water and if you need a just a primary heat/water loop or a secondary loop/exchanger system. 

[seahawk]

And the coal plants can work as a back-up emergency power source for a long time. As they can be turned on or off with relative ease. Much easier than a nuclear plant for sure. You can even easily store a reserve of coal to feed them. The infrastructure for that is still in place or could be put back into use with ease.

[jmsaari]

17 minutes ago, seahawk said:

And the coal plants can work as a back-up emergency power source for a long time. As they can be turned on or off with relative ease. Much easier than a nuclear plant for sure. You can even easily store a reserve of coal to feed them. The infrastructure for that is still in place or could be put back into use with ease.

"Ease" is not something i would use to describe turning any kind of steam power plant on or off.. we're talking about 12-24 hour operation to get to maximum continuous rating from cold start, whether coal, nuclear, or smoething else. (As opposed to 5-15 mins with gas turbines and reciprocating engines, or less with hydro)

If you want to get fast ramp-up with coal or nuke, you need to keep the boiler or reactor hot and enough steam to keep turbine turning & cooled, in other words wasting fuel... Been told this is being done with some coal plants in GER, but not sure how common & with how many boilers usually.

[Huba]

6 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

Yeah again, the last three plants had long optimized operations to burn off the remaining fuel rods as much as possible by year's end. Most of the short-notice plans proposed to extend them entailed generating the same total amount of power, just spread over some additional months. New fuel rods would apparently have to have been ordered by the end of May at the latest to keep them running afterwards, and as it happens the German supply of uranium also came mostly from ... Russia. Let's face it, this ship really sailed years ago, and noone bothered to stop it.

Earlier in this thread I posted a breakdown of German NG usage, and AFAIK about 20% was used for electricity generation, to balance out the renewable sources. So can Germany do without it, by burning crapload of coal, and redirect this NG to the industry, or just reduce the usage? That is a considerable amount, around 40% of what is imported from Russia AFAIK.

[Colin]

When doing the permits for the Site C Hydro dam, the BC Hydro engineers said they needed to go from zero to full operation in .4 seconds to accommodate the windfarms to the South dropping off the grid when winds reach either the minimum or maximum airspeed. The are always discharging water, but not always through the nozzles that point at the impellers. The water for this dam will be mostly water already used 2x previously for hydro generation.

[Colin]

On a call right now about high flows from a reservoir. One comment is that they are producing as much electricity that the transmission lines that can handle, which is the limiting factor.

[Huba]

38 minutes ago, Colin said:

When doing the permits for the Site C Hydro dam, the BC Hydro engineers said they needed to go from zero to full operation in .4 seconds to accommodate the windfarms to the South dropping off the grid when winds reach either the minimum or maximum airspeed. The are always discharging water, but not always through the nozzles that point at the impellers. The water for this dam will be mostly water already used 2x previously for hydro generation.

 

14 minutes ago, Colin said:

On a call right now about high flows from a reservoir. One comment is that they are producing as much electricity that the transmission lines that can handle, which is the limiting factor.

I'm not an engineer (software engineering is usually not "true engineering"), but from what I understand about wind/ solar (in moderate climate) it is more of a problem than it's worth, from a grid managment perspective at least. On a smaller scale - my brother in law has a nice set of solar panels on his house. The way it works, apart from supplying immediate usage, the energy is being bought back by the electricity company and pushed into the grid, and for this to happen, it needs to be at slightly higher voltage then the grid itself. A side effect is an increase in the voltage of the local grid of course, as it balances out. Worked fine, until every neighbor got a set of solars too - now nobody is able to push anything into the grid (and get the money back), as it is operating locally at maximum allowed voltage all the time.

Reading how large windfarms need to be balanced (by gas turbines mostly, around here anyway) makes hair on my neck stand up. Really, just building the crapload of nukes French style sounds like the best solution - and it is scalable to support all that teleportation devices we're going be using in the future

Edited July 8, 2022 by Huba