[luca_ing]

>> Can we focus on renewables and stop trying to sell people hazardous waste that can last for millenia?

> No one I know is opposed to renewable energy, but advocates really do everybody a disservice when they try to argue that an intermittent power source without storage is a reasonable replacement for base load power. This comic illustrates the problem: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/capacity

The comic is a bit disingenious as it implies that all renewables are intermittent.

But many renewable energy sources are base load as well, e.g. hydro or wind. Yes, they have variations, but so does the load -- from the perspective of power grid management there's nothing new.

In fact this is part of the problem: renewables and nuclear (or coal) are competing for base load. If we build a nuclear plant, we need to run it for 50 years for the investment to make sense. This means that it will economically and politically impede the installation of e.g. wind power for 50 years.

[rsynnott]

Wind most certainly isn't base load. It's highly weather dependent. Occasionally, Ireland's wind infrastructure produces the country's entire electricity demand, and they actually have to start shutting down wind turbines. Also occasionally the whole system only produces a couple of hundred megawatts for a period of about a week.

There are some locations with very reliable constant wind (though usually only for part of the year) but that's not the norm. Offshore wind does better, but is still far from base load.

[luca_ing]

> Wind most certainly isn't base load.

The German government's scientific service, for one, disagrees with you.

[rsynnott]

Do you have a link to an article on this? My impression was that Germany was trying to move away from base load as a concept entirely, using unreliable renewables plus highly responsive fossil plants instead.

[luca_ing]

Here's the link: http://www.tab-beim-bundestag.de/de/untersuchungen/u140.html

It being a German government publication it's in German unfortunately.

As far as I can tell from skimming it your impression is correct.

So I apparently misremembered the article, and my claim about base load a few posts above may be incorrect after all. Sorry, rsynnott.

[0xfeba]

They moved away from Nuclear. However, now they import power from France, etc. Which has Nuclear and fossil fuel plants.

[luca_ing]

In 2016, Germany was a net exporter of electrical energy: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/153533/umfrag...

However you're right that Germany was a net importer from (among others) France: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/180862/umfrag...

Which is surprising as I remember reading that France has tremendous difficulties satisfying their electricity demand, especially in winter (lots of electric heating apparently).

[opo]

>...The comic is a bit disingenious as it implies that all renewables are intermittent.

No, I don't think it does that.

>...But many renewable energy sources are base load as well, e.g. hydro or wind.

As user rsynnott said "Wind most certainly isn't base load." While hydro is base load power, only a few countries like China are considering building more hydro plants. We aren't going to be able to use hydro as a means to get off of burning fossil fuels.