As usual a bunch of morons who don't even have a clue what a
power ON DEMAND grid is are mouthing off pretending to know better than power engineers what it takes in order to have power available at any time it is needed. Neither wind nor solar can perform this function. At best both will always only be a supplement source of energy because they can not be ramped up like all the other power plants which are able to increase what they draw from a (power) source reservoir. The idiots who argue otherwise are unable to wrap their warped little minds around the fact that wind and solar power plants are in principle an engine that has no option to increase the power output like all the other power plants that are needed to supply power on demand.
That's a fact which no amount of political rhetoric can sweep aside whenever this subject is debated.
You can't debate with a generator when the Amps go up and the Voltage + the cycles/sec are dropping.
At any time the only option is to increase the power output of the turbine or engine that turns the generator.
With solar that engine is the sun and with a wind turbine it's the airflow through the area swept by the blades.
Neither one can be increased as needed so in both cases you now need to draw on a reservoir.
The dementocrats offer no solutions to that problem other than claiming that some time in the future battery technology might achieve the breakthrough to back up the power grid and not just a tiny fraction of a residential area in a district where those who unfortunately have to rely on amateur engineering live.
The rest of the world is hooked up to a power on demand grid where the control systems simply open the turbine wicket gates, increase the turbine torque, maintain rpm and Volts as the Amperes increase.
When the demand drops these power plants throttle down to standby and/or idle.
With wind and solar you either spend a giga- budget on a facility that can store the power they produce when it is not needed or you take it off grid and have billions of $$$ worth of wind turbines and solar panels sitting there and do nothing.
If there was any other way then it would have been done in Europe already..
..but:
France and Germany Turn to Coal
Germany’s plan is to shutter all of its nuclear units by 2022 and to have renewable energy provide 40 to 45 percent of its generation by 2025 and 80 percent by 2050[ii]—up from 30 percent in 2025. Replacing nuclear power with renewable energy has proven difficult, however, mainly due to the intermittency of wind and solar power. When wind and solar are not available to generate electricity, German power buyers turn to coal. In fact, Germany opened over 10 gigawatts of new coal fired power plants over the past 5 years.[iii]
Germany has over 20 gigawatts of lignite-fired electric generating capacity operating as of the beginning of 2015,[iv] generating about 25 percent of its electricity last year.[v] Lignite, also called brown coal, has the highest carbon dioxide emissions per ton when burned–a third more than hard coal and three times as much as natural gas.[vi] It is Europe’s most abundant and least-expensive domestic fuel, especially when located close to power plants. Germany also uses hard coal, which generated about 18 percent of its electricity.[vii]
Germany’s coal-fired generation last year declined by just a half percent and because its electricity demand remained essentially flat, the relatively inexpensive coal-fired power not needed domestically was exported–mostly to Austria, the Netherlands, France and Switzerland.[viii] Germany’s plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions includes renewables replacing coal as well as its nuclear power, but its coal-fired generating industry refuses to go away.
In France thanks to nuclear it's less fossil fuels for the time being but not for much longer:
Many of France’s nuclear units are down for inspection. As a result, coal and natural gas generation has more than doubled. Last month, generation from fossil fuels was the highest in 32 years in France and nuclear generation was the lowest since 1998. As a result, French month-ahead power prices escalated to near the highest levels since 2009.
Conclusion
Coal is not going away in France and Germany as both countries need it to keep the lights on when nuclear units in France are down for inspection and as Germany’s energy transition brings in intermittent renewable energy to replace its retiring nuclear units. Coal, particularly lignite coal, is indigenous to Germany and supplies the majority of its power despite the dramatic growth in Germany’s wind and solar power industry.
duh
