If wind and solare power are so great then why is Germany so desperate for coal ?

[Windparadox]

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The reality here is simple; we are moving away from using coal as a combustible fuel. Slowly but surely, the world and the US are moving away from using coal to produce electricity. The renewable electric and power storage technology industry is still in its infancy, so to speak. This is going to be a major step in technological advancement but it must be done slowly.....by attrition where possible. Still, it's going to be painful unfortunately. I can understand the resistance but it is inevitable.....if not futile.

 

[Correll]

Germany is a small country, unlike the USA and China. They have no vast areas with 300 or more sunny days a year. They have no vast plains with a near constant wind, such as we see from Texas to the Canadian border. All of Germany is north of the 47th and extends almost to the 55th. So solar does not have the efficiency that it does in most of the US. In fact, all of Oregon is south of Germany.

Germany is not a small country.

 

[Old Rocks]

US #4 by size, 9,525,000 square miles Germany #63 by size, 357,000 square miles.

List of countries by area - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[polarbear]

`
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The reality here is simple; we are moving away from using coal as a combustible fuel. Slowly but surely, the world and the US are moving away from using coal to produce electricity. The renewable electric and power storage technology industry is still in its infancy, so to speak. This is going to be a major step in technological advancement but it must be done slowly.....by attrition where possible. Still, it's going to be painful unfortunately. I can understand the resistance but it is inevitable.....if not futile.

Who is "we" ? Are you? Nobody is stopping you from doing what you preach !
Every time this subject comes up Germany has been used as an example by people like you who have no clue what a power ON DEMAND grid is. It`s one (very simple) thing to generate power when the sun or the wind provides the opportunity but it`s a whole other matter to generate power when the demand for it spikes up.
Unless there are generators which are already spun up and in phase with the rest of the grid you will enter into a cascading brown-out followed by a total black-out. These stand-by (/back-up) generators must have the ability to ramp up to maintain phase, current and voltage. Wind and solar are unable to do that. The only way it can be done is by increasing the required amount of energy necessary to keep the generator rpm pinned...and pinned EXACTLY else that generator becomes a load.
With a combustion or nuclear driven process that is easily done also with hydro driven turbine generators where you increase the flow of water to get the torque it takes to maintain rpm while the load increases.
A wind turbine can not and never will be able to increase torque without dropping the rpm because you can not increase the wind speed. It is what it is at any given moment and so is solar.
You are right about the part "being painful"...that`s not a problem in a communist country like China where the people have no choice but to do whatever the government tells them to do. If it tells them they are not allowed to use any power at certain times for certain things they have no choice but to accept it.
Small wonder that idiots who have zero engineering knowledge also preach we should all submit to a similar governmental system as in socialist/communist countries like China.
Good luck with that. The resistance to that was inevitable and that is why your politically "correct" establishment has been swept from power by a groundswell of people who will never submit to your idiotic way of life. It`s also happening all over Europe, just a bit slower than in the US and some day when the Chinese had enough it will happen there as well

 

[skookerasbil]

That is the prediction of the people pushing natural gas. We shall see what the reality brings. In the meantime;

Don’t Believe the (Natural Gas & Anti-Clean-Energy) Hype

Natural Gas Filling the Gap? Not Really..
Now, a lot of folks will tell you with complete conviction that it’s primarily natural gas replacing coal, due to natural gas’s (artificially) low price these days. A lot of people will tell you this. But guess what — in 2011, renewable energy increased its share of the energy generation pie much more than natural gas did. Here are some 2011 stats (again, actually from the EIA’s own March 2012 monthly report):

• Coal decreased 113,025,000 MWH in 2011 (1,847,290K in 2010 to 1,724,265K in 2011)
• Nuclear decreased 16,743,000 MWh in 2011 (806,968K in 2010 to 790,225K in 2011)
• Natural gas increased 28,898,000 MWh in 2011 (987,697K in 2010 to 1,016,595K in 2011)
• Renewable energy increased 92,791,000 MWh in 2011 (427,276K in 2010 to 520,067K in 2011)

In other words, more than 3 times as much renewable energy generation was added (net) compared to natural gas generation! (And remember, there are 3 reasons natural gas won’t be so cheap and competitive with clean energy for long.)

Now, to get even more absurd, this same report predicts that renewable energy will account for 16% of US energy generation in 2035… despite the country already being at 12.6% in 2011 and having an annual growth rate of over 20%. Crazy. Again, does this remind you of something?

And that was 2011, six years later, the figures are even more lopsided. LOL

Yep.....real lopsided. Solar providing about 1.2% of our electricity and wind a little over 3%. C'mon now..........lets be real. Most of our electricity generation from renewables is hydro. Will be the same in 2040...........and only green energy industries see 16%. Almost every single projection has total renewable energy supply at about 11%, including Obama's Energy Information Agency report from 2016. It is well documented in these pages.

They'll be putting us in our boxes Ray and the landscape will be essentially similar to what it is now.

 

[skookerasbil]

Oh........and if coal is so expensive, why is China building 2-3 coal plants/month?? And China will be increasing coal production by 50% by 2050!!!

 

[Old Rocks]

Because they have 1.3 billion people are are busy moving into both the 20th and 21st Centuries at the same time. And that is down from more than one a week. Yes, China's emissions are a problem, and they have a larger problem than we do. For only about a third of their population has thus far had a part of the enormous increase in wealth in China. So they are trying their best to meet expectations, knowing that is what their continued ability to rule depends on.

 

[Windparadox]

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China is also heavily dependent upon coal to produce electricity. Their polluted air attests to that.

 

[leftwinger]

China good. Obama bad.

93.5 TWh 2016/

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

If wind and solare power are so great then why is Germany so desperate for coal ?

Because wind and solar suck, especially in the winter.
It's unbelievably stupid to phase out their nuclear power plants, if their goal is reduced CO2.

 

[rightwinger]

Why are conservatives so intimidated by wind and solar?

 

[IanC]

US #4 by size, 9,525,000 square miles Germany #63 by size, 357,000 square miles.

List of countries by area - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Old crock doesn't understand the difference between square miles, and square kilometres.

 

[leftwinger]

US #4 by size, 9,525,000 square miles Germany #63 by size, 357,000 square miles.

List of countries by area - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Old crock doesn't understand the difference between square miles, and square kilometres.

The USA is listed in km^2 also? in Wikipedia
9.5Mil / 0.37Mil ~= 25X larger

1. United States: 9,631,418 km2 (3,717,727 mi2)

 

[Old Rocks]

• Total
357,168 km2(137,903 sq mi) (62nd

Germany - Wikipedia

LOL You definately got me there. So Montana is bigger than Germany. A small nation that is definately a powerhouse. And one of the technical leaders of the world.

 

[Old Rocks]

Why are conservatives so intimidated by wind and solar?

Because the CEO's of the big energy corporations have told them to be.

 

[rightwinger]

Why are conservatives so intimidated by wind and solar?

Because the CEO's of the big energy corporations have told them to be.

Drill baby drill......

 

[polarbear]

Why are conservatives so intimidated by wind and solar?

" intimitated "? Hahaha how funny. That`s like saying a nerd on a scooter is intimitating a semi which would not even notice the impact should he choose to roadkill him.
Conventional power turbines are rated in Gigawatts:

And wind turbines in mere Megawatts:

Which is not any more power than 3 modern mini-vans or a single diesel engine which fits on a utility trailer can put out....and costs a tiny fraction of this toy- "power plant", trailer included !

 

[skookerasbil]

Why are conservatives so intimidated by wind and solar?

Because its expensive as shit asshole!!!


duh


Costs never matter to progressives.........its fascinating.

 

[Old Rocks]

COST COMPARISON OF ENERGY SOURCES 2017

While raw forms of energy are both free and practically infinite, the equipment and materials needed to collect, process, and transport the energy to the users are neither one. Currently, the RE costs are generally higher than that of fossil-based and nuclear energy. In addition to this, unlike well-established conventional designs, the advancement in different RE technologies still requires substantial investments. The economists often use so-called levelized energy costs (LEC) when comparing different technologies.
The LEC represents the total cost to build and operate a new power plant over its life divided to equal annual payments and amortized over expected annual electricity generation. It reflects all the costs including initial capital, return on investment, continuous operation, fuel, and maintenance, as well as the time required to build a plant and its expected lifetime. This table compares the US average levelized electricity cost in dollars per kilowatt-hour for both non-renewable and alternative fuels in new power plants, based on US EIA statistics and analysis from Annual Energy Outlook 2017. Note, that the numbers for each source are given for a different capacity factor, which complicates direct comparison. Notwithstanding, I believe these figures are useful in comparing different power generation methods. Also note that the values shown in the table do not include any government or state incentives. In other words, they represent the actual cost to the society. We can see that at present natural gas, geothermal and coal are the most economic fuels. However, in future the price of coal-based electricity can nearly double due to government imposed cost on CO2 emissions. Photovoltaic systems are still more expensive than fossil-based ones. The values in the chart represent just the cost of electricity production- the retail prices of course are always higher.


Power Plant Type Cost
$/kW-hr
Coal $0.11-0.12
Natural Gas $0.053-0.11
Nuclear $0.096
Wind $0.044-0.20
Solar PV $0.058
Solar Thermal $0.184
Geothermal $0.05
Biomass $0.098
Hydro $0.064
Adapted from US DOE2

Renewable Energy Sources: Cost Comparison

Almost everything cheaper than coal. Wind cheapest of all. Natural gas matched by Geothermal and Solar PV, Solar Thermal highest, Coal next highest. So, we need not build solar thermal, and start shutting down the coal plants as we add grid scale storage.

 

[Old Rocks]

And the costs of both wind and solar pv continue to decline. Soon, natural gas will not be able to compete.