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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

This article seems to be trying to turn a story about unprecedented highs in natural gas prices (mirroring surging post-covid commodity prices all over) into a story about the wind sometimes not blowing.

Alternative article : https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/expensive-winter-ahe...

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Yeah, lots of spin in that WSJ article. Better article about the price surge: https://www.bruegel.org/2021/09/is-europes-gas-and-electrici... Money quote: "In our view, however, there are more fundamental reasons for high volatility and excessive price spikes. The industry knows the energy system is undergoing a profound and fast transformation. Investments in fossil assets aren’t sustainable long-term. But governments have not yet committed clearly enough to a low-carbon future. So, the energy supply-demand balance in the EU will be volatile depending on how quickly fossil fuels are phased out and green energy is phased in. Clearer commitments from governments to introduce low-carbon energy sources, for example by financing the necessary infrastructure and committing to substantial carbon prices in all sectors, could help move away from this precarious balance. As moving to net-zero will imply ever-growing electricity demand, investors will not have to worry about overinvesting in low-carbon power systems."

Since most major wind electricity project needs a complementary natural gas power plant to secure profitable long-term supply contracts, the smart move for the natural gas industry is to lobby hard for renewable.

This may explain why, for instance, in Europe, a Czech fossil-energy magnate buys[1] important shares of western european media (such as the liberal-left leaning Le Monde in France, for instance) while investing[2] in coal and gas.

[1] https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/medias/daniel-kretinsky-... [2] https://www.bfmtv.com/economie/entreprises/energie/pourquoi-...

Yeah the two things are related. You need a battery or a gas turbine if you have windmills in the energy mix. This is why ultimately wind (or any other uncontrollable energy source) is tough to integrate into any energy grid.

Or rather, as is the case in any transition, as you move to the new you still continue to rely on the old, so the entire system continues to fail if the old fails.

This stops being a problem once the transition is complete.

But that’s to a great extent the definition of a transition.

No, absolutely not.

We are never going to rely purely on wind, since it is uncontrollable.

You cannot go full renewable though, at least not if you power supply comes from wind. Even offshore fields have big periods without productions (because there is not enough wind, but also because there is too much).

I did the calculation for France a few years ago: if you wanted to run on wind + battery, on a typical year you'd need two weeks of storage! Nobody considers this realistic, and gas is expected to cover this part in the end.

Edit: I forgot the link to my model: https://bourrasque.info/images/20180116-moulins-%C3%A0-vent/...

Did you include solar energy, energy imports or demand shaping in your model?

Oops I forgot to put the link to my model.

For your specific questions:

- Solar energy: sort of, I did three variants (100% solar, 100% wind, an the current Wind/solar ration)

- energy import: I kept the same energy import profile as of today. It would have made the model much bigger (I would have needed to simulate the entire European grid instead of just the French one, making me deal with tons of different data sources, which I didn't want to). By the way, the power connection between countries are currently pretty tiny compared to the consumption of a big country (granted, that could probably be changed if needed, but I don't know by which margin).

- demand shaping not at all, and it would definitely have an impact for short periods. But for the longer wind-deprived periods (in weeks) which I was trying to measure, I don't think it would make a significant difference.

But the whole point of 100% renewables is that you rely on imports when there little domestic production. It's not true that international power connections are tiny. In the Nord Pool market which integrates the Scandinavian and Baltic countries electricity markets over 5 GW is at this moment being exported/imported.

If you rely on import for renewable, you better hope that you neighbors are not too much into the same kind of renewable… For instance, there are not that many independent wind cells in Europe so entire regions are deprived from wind at the same time. In a 100% wind scenario, you'd need to transport electricity from say Portugal, Spain and France to supply Germany, Denmark and Sweden. And we're talking about >100GW here, 5GW is tiny.

Making such electricity transfer possible would require a huge overhaul of the European links.

France regularly exports 10 GW+ to its neighbouring countries. Transnational HVDC lines is not a difficult problem.

That one order of magnitude off though… There's no technical issue, the grid just isn't designed in such way and you'd need enormous investments to get there.

It's nothing money can't buy, but it's a hell lot of money: extrapolating from existing submarine HVDC project in Europe[1], connecting great Britain to mainland Europe alone would cost a few dozen billions. Want to connect the whole Europe like this, you'd have to pay a few hundred billions.

[1]: http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JR...

>I did three variants (100% solar, 100% wind, an the current Wind/solar ration

The first two seem pointless and the third I dont really get (it'll be much higher for both).

>I kept the same energy import profile as of today.

Also a weird assumption. It should be much higher in the future. Grid interconnects are a whole lot cheaper than batteries.

Switzerland is likely to import more excess power when theres a lot of wind/sun, use less of its own hydropower and release that pent up hydropower back across the border later, for instance.

>demand shaping not at all, and it would definitely have an impact for short periods

This is probably where the biggest bang for the buck will come as the demand side reacts to electricity prices that vary a lot over the day with smarter consumption. It's already happening in the UK and Germany.

Are energy imports realistic solution if we don't go intercontinental scale?

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