I’m guessing that the combined cycle gas plants were being forced to reactively operate in the less efficient/more expensive simple cycle. This should have been better clarified because combined cycle gas plants operating at steady state (I.e. base load) are at about the peak of thermal efficiency.
Excellent piece Robert on the insanity of renewables in Europe. Timely along with the pieces linked below: Koonin and Mills on wastefulness of "climate insurance" and environMENTAL substack on the grift of climate finance at COP29. Hopefully Chris Wright and Doug Burgum will will keep us from pursuing similarly stupid policies.
CA et al need to be forced to learn this lesson. You can’t do away with all your reliable baseload power expecting your neighbors to help you when yours proves incapable of providing your needs. They should be forced to bear 100% of the price increase caused by emergency draws from neighboring grids, and then only if they have spare power. The prepared providers should charge their connected users the same price they would if CA weren’t drawing from them.
Take away the socialized cost of green energy, and no one would deploy it on any large scale.
The problem the western world has with energy usage, including so-called renewable energy and electric vehicles, is that it is largely controlled by politicians, and the politicians by voters, who are almost always grossly ignorant of the engineering basics of the subject. We have, for example, politicians faced with wind and solar intermittency whose response is to advocate for more wind and solar in the mistaken belief that this will cure the problem rather than make it worse. Ultimately the general public will be hit in the face by the absurdity of it all when industry flees, old people are dying of cold, and EVs are largely unusable because the electricity supply is woefully inadequate to keep all of them charged. When this occurs there are likely to be revolutions at the ballot box and extremist governments may be elected. What happens next may not be very pretty.
Thanks, Robert, another great article. That the Germans would shut down the nuclear, KNOWING that wind and solar are part time was just stupid. A certain kind of stupid. That having lived through the past few years of skyrocketing energy prices resulting in a collapsing economy they can’t bring themselves to bring sufficient baseload energy online is an act of economic AND, ultimately, societal suicide. While it’s rather comical to watch, it is sad that so many supposedly intelligent people could keep making such stupid decision.
As Robert Louis Stevenson once said, “ Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
Who will be the last one to turn out the lights in Germany when it closes down?
Another great piece, fortunately our new administration isn’t dedicated to destroying America, rather to MAGA ! But it will still be a tough fight and many states will be fighting to turn in to lil Germany or UK. We will win with facts, human flourishing energy policies and common sense!🗽🇺🇸👊 DOGE too🤞
Thank you Mr Bryce! The UK too has had a dose of Dunkelflaute this past week with wind's contribution to the grid around 2GW while combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) generation has been 25GW or so. Solar has flown south for the winter.
The El Pais report stating that gas generation is expensive, misleads I believe, by being superficial. In the UK, the only place I can comment on, albeit with a limited understanding of the labyrinth that is the energy "market", generators are "called" onto the grid, starting with wind and solar (nuclear base generation being steady (most of the time apart from maintenance). As different sources of energy enter the grid, they are paid a higher price, which ALL generators then get. Gas is added and priced high as a "distress purchase". So gas generation is made expensive by a rigged market, not by wholesale gas prices (currently six times lower than in August 2022 for example), nor the cost of running the plant, elevated though it is by not being allowed to generate continuously.
Finally, the UK wholesale price of gas is just over four times that in the US, so enjoy the big energy advantage!
Robert - you're a car guy so here's my theory on things...
The decision makers are so far off base it really isn't funny. It's like they are driving a car and the transmission falls out and it's making a lot of noise! Normal people would stop, pull over and look under the car.
My question is why can't they hear the "noise" of the transmission falling off? Is it because the radio is too loud or that they are being chauffeured around?
If only the climate minister’s in Oz would read this .... but even if they did they are so blinded by ideology. I’d lock in a Generax except they want to phase out gas too ...
It’s quite clear that even though they haven’t said it out loud the Germans have made their decisions on the assumption that French nuclear and Norwegian hydro will be there to save them, they have been incredibly irresponsible in all of this.
I’m betting the upcoming election will mirror the USA in that the polling will (deliberately?) undercount the support for the AFD in the attempt to manipulate things but will fail.
There was also a thing I read about, the German govt asked for a report from the utility to give them guidance on whether to close their last 3 nukes, and some green politicians altered the report to say it would not be an issue.
Great piece, sir. Thank you. "It’s a shitty situation" brought a smile to my face as it sums up the past four years in a quite tidy and elegant phrase.
I’m guessing that the combined cycle gas plants were being forced to reactively operate in the less efficient/more expensive simple cycle. This should have been better clarified because combined cycle gas plants operating at steady state (I.e. base load) are at about the peak of thermal efficiency.
Great post, Robert. And title. Just won't let "Dunkelf**ked" go, will 'ya?!
Like "Energiewende" for us. In our post this a.m, we quipped:
....“Energiewende,” a term which roughly translates to “a too smart by half, self-inflicted energy suicide.”
Pro-tip to German "leaders": this stuff is great for Robert, Doomberg and us. For Germans, not so much. Course correct. Fast
It amazes me that we are still talking about and experiencing the disaster of W&S.
It’s the definition of insanity. …. doing the same things and expecting better results.
Process performance theory says you need 3 things for a high-performance process (to do anything.)
Capability, Flexibility and Reliability
Here is the W&S score card..
High capability… OK…W&S has got less expensive per unit of full load output.
High Flexibility…. Poor… Has no controllable relationship to real demand
High reliability…. Very Poor … only when the wind blows and the sun shines.
So 2 out of these 3 factors will never improve.. forget this technology other than very narrow uses.
Think…There are solid reasons why we went from sailing ships to steam and from washing tubs and lines to washing machines and dryers!
Excellent piece Robert on the insanity of renewables in Europe. Timely along with the pieces linked below: Koonin and Mills on wastefulness of "climate insurance" and environMENTAL substack on the grift of climate finance at COP29. Hopefully Chris Wright and Doug Burgum will will keep us from pursuing similarly stupid policies.
https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2024/12/13/the_paris_accords_as_climate_insuranceunaffordable_and_unnecessary_1078413.html
https://envmental.substack.com/p/bakus-beaucoup-boondoggle?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=573775&post_id=153140077&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2jvin&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Let us not repeat this stupidity here.
I find it shocking that Germany can be making such an obvious, stupid mistake.
CA et al need to be forced to learn this lesson. You can’t do away with all your reliable baseload power expecting your neighbors to help you when yours proves incapable of providing your needs. They should be forced to bear 100% of the price increase caused by emergency draws from neighboring grids, and then only if they have spare power. The prepared providers should charge their connected users the same price they would if CA weren’t drawing from them.
Take away the socialized cost of green energy, and no one would deploy it on any large scale.
The problem the western world has with energy usage, including so-called renewable energy and electric vehicles, is that it is largely controlled by politicians, and the politicians by voters, who are almost always grossly ignorant of the engineering basics of the subject. We have, for example, politicians faced with wind and solar intermittency whose response is to advocate for more wind and solar in the mistaken belief that this will cure the problem rather than make it worse. Ultimately the general public will be hit in the face by the absurdity of it all when industry flees, old people are dying of cold, and EVs are largely unusable because the electricity supply is woefully inadequate to keep all of them charged. When this occurs there are likely to be revolutions at the ballot box and extremist governments may be elected. What happens next may not be very pretty.
Thanks, Robert, another great article. That the Germans would shut down the nuclear, KNOWING that wind and solar are part time was just stupid. A certain kind of stupid. That having lived through the past few years of skyrocketing energy prices resulting in a collapsing economy they can’t bring themselves to bring sufficient baseload energy online is an act of economic AND, ultimately, societal suicide. While it’s rather comical to watch, it is sad that so many supposedly intelligent people could keep making such stupid decision.
As Robert Louis Stevenson once said, “ Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
Who will be the last one to turn out the lights in Germany when it closes down?
Another great piece, fortunately our new administration isn’t dedicated to destroying America, rather to MAGA ! But it will still be a tough fight and many states will be fighting to turn in to lil Germany or UK. We will win with facts, human flourishing energy policies and common sense!🗽🇺🇸👊 DOGE too🤞
Thank you Mr Bryce! The UK too has had a dose of Dunkelflaute this past week with wind's contribution to the grid around 2GW while combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) generation has been 25GW or so. Solar has flown south for the winter.
The El Pais report stating that gas generation is expensive, misleads I believe, by being superficial. In the UK, the only place I can comment on, albeit with a limited understanding of the labyrinth that is the energy "market", generators are "called" onto the grid, starting with wind and solar (nuclear base generation being steady (most of the time apart from maintenance). As different sources of energy enter the grid, they are paid a higher price, which ALL generators then get. Gas is added and priced high as a "distress purchase". So gas generation is made expensive by a rigged market, not by wholesale gas prices (currently six times lower than in August 2022 for example), nor the cost of running the plant, elevated though it is by not being allowed to generate continuously.
Finally, the UK wholesale price of gas is just over four times that in the US, so enjoy the big energy advantage!
Robert - you're a car guy so here's my theory on things...
The decision makers are so far off base it really isn't funny. It's like they are driving a car and the transmission falls out and it's making a lot of noise! Normal people would stop, pull over and look under the car.
My question is why can't they hear the "noise" of the transmission falling off? Is it because the radio is too loud or that they are being chauffeured around?
If only the climate minister’s in Oz would read this .... but even if they did they are so blinded by ideology. I’d lock in a Generax except they want to phase out gas too ...
It’s quite clear that even though they haven’t said it out loud the Germans have made their decisions on the assumption that French nuclear and Norwegian hydro will be there to save them, they have been incredibly irresponsible in all of this.
I’m betting the upcoming election will mirror the USA in that the polling will (deliberately?) undercount the support for the AFD in the attempt to manipulate things but will fail.
There was also a thing I read about, the German govt asked for a report from the utility to give them guidance on whether to close their last 3 nukes, and some green politicians altered the report to say it would not be an issue.
Maybe Robert can look at that too
Great piece, sir. Thank you. "It’s a shitty situation" brought a smile to my face as it sums up the past four years in a quite tidy and elegant phrase.
Agree.
I wonder how that sounds in Norwegian
Det er en dritt situasjon.
Germany’s energy policy reminds me of this joke:
A professor is driving on the highway when he hears a warning on the radio:
“Attention! There’s a car driving the wrong way on the highway!”
The professor, looking around confused, mutters to himself:
“One? There are dozens of them!”