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by tjansen 1732 days ago
You can't compare 1/3rd of all plants being down with the volatility of wind power.

On November 3, 2015, German wind power generated only 0.2 GW. Its power rating at that time was over 40 GW. How do you want to compensate for that?
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_ph_ 1732 days ago
By having other power sources as well. Starting with offshore wind, then of course, solar cells. Build up more storage (both biological gas and synthetic gas, water, batteries), strengthen the European networks. The chance is very good that on windless days in Germany, there will be quite a bit of wind in France. Same with solar. A 1 GW DC line to Norway was put into operation just recently. And of course, we can keep all those gas power plants in reserve for those few days per year when nothing other is sufficient. The goal should first be, not requiring them to run on a day to day basis.
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Seanambers 1732 days ago
Yeah.. Lets base a large amount of our energy generation capacity on a resource that require a large amount of space and has a non zero chance of not producing anything, and lets back that up with excess power generation capacity which can mitigate this and does not exhibit this flaw.

Windmills are f.king stupid for anything other than local production.

Solar, Nuclear + Gas and grid storage seems like a way better approach.

Not to mention the fact that in wintertime windmills needs to be de-iced with the same chemicals they use on airplanes in colder climates.

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wcoenen 1732 days ago
Wind turbines that need to deal with ice typically have an internal de-icing system, with electrical heaters[1].

The meme about de-icing with chemicals was spread by oil and gas consultant Luke Legate. The picture he shared was actually showing a helicopter using plain hot water to de-ice a wind turbine in 2015[2]. This is sometimes used as a backup de-icing method.

[1] https://www.iqpc.com/media/1001147/37957.pdf

[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/02/18/fac...

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_ph_ 1732 days ago
It is stupid not to have windmills in the mix. In Germany they contribute more electricity than solar cells. Especially at night, in the winter. So one should have both solar and wind, the mix depending on the local conditions. In southern Germany there is more solar, in the north more wind, especially near the coast. Wind power also doesn't require much space, you can farm or grow forests below them.
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