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New German economy minister wants more gas-fired power plants | dpa international (dpa-international.com)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by schizoidman@lemm.ee to c/europe@feddit.org
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Germany's new Economy Minister Katherina Reiche on Friday called for the rapid construction of new gas-fired power plants in the country to support the country's energy supply when renewable sources are unavailable

She said it was important to "quickly move to tender at least 20 gigawatts of gas-fired power plants to maintain energy security."

Reiche ruled out a return to nuclear energy

"This means we need to conclude the relevant free trade agreements with Chile, Mercosur, India, Australia and Mexico. And I explicitly say, we also need the United States of America," Reiche said.

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[–] Melchior@feddit.org 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Because it’s a bunch of paperwork you need to get in order to see whether what you have in mind is practical. One of the cheaper parts of the whole process so you do it first.

So the problem is money, which again can be fixed, with for subsidies. Like the subsidies paid to gas power plants.

Basic load generally fluctuates between 40 and 60GW so we’re missing at least 4GW more plus safety buffer.

With battery storage it is possible to charge up batteries, when you only need 40GW and then power the grid, when you need 60GW. So storage reduces the amount of peak power plants needed. Btw peaks in summer are lower, as a good number of consumers use rooftop solar, lowering grid demand, so 40-60GW is too little.

They’re quite literally the same thing.

Hydrogen and methane are not the same thing and especially when you plan for a mix of the two, you need two sets of pipelines. We are talking years until they are finished. Again might as well built hydrogen first. That creates demand for hydrogen, expands that grid making it easier for chemical companies and the like to connect to it as well. With a connection to the electricity grid, those sites would also be prime sites for electrolysis units.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

So the problem is money, which again can be fixed, with for subsidies. Like the subsidies paid to gas power plants.

Money is never the problem. Not in the current climate where money is looking for safe havens. It's also about production and building capacity. These are project firms, funds managers etc. trying to find way to sink money. With "fleshing out the plans" I didn't mean "try to scrounge up money" but "put ink on paper that says who gets how much".

With battery storage it is possible to charge up batteries, when you only need 40GW and then power the grid, when you need 60GW.

And how many GWh do those batteries store.

Hydrogen and methane are not the same thing and especially when you plan for a mix of the two, you need two sets of pipelines. We are talking years until they are finished.

Germany already has a complete natural gas network, the hydrogen network already exists in patches and is going to be connected up... any year now. Most of it is re-using existing pipelines (they're often doubled up, if not even triple or quadruple), some of it is new construction. Have a look at a map, page 42, that's the core network. With the exception of the very south everything can be connected up using existing pipelines (solid lines), that thing won't have proper transmission capacity but it's already perfectly suitable to transmit the initial, lower, volumes.

Initial hydrogen demand is coming from steel smelters, they can't use methane. Dunno about hydrolizers going online in Germany on a grand scale, but we're certainly shipping them to Canada and Namibia.

This is Germany. The problem isn't that noone has done the maths, the problem, for the longest time, has been the CDU ignoring the maths that has been done. They seem to be finally getting on board though, not in the least because the energy giants told them to get on board as they've already switched over their investments.

[–] Melchior@feddit.org 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You need something like 200-250GWh of storage to do that. Germany already has something like 39GWh of pumped hydro storage. So roughly 160-210GWh of new battery storage. China added 91GWh of grid scale batteries to its grid last year alone and they can be added very quickly. So this is actually realistic.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

250GWh, at 50GW draw, last five hours. You're off by at least an order of magnitude if you want the backup to last two days.

[–] Melchior@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

When do I need 50GW? I do have the already built methane, hydro and biomass power plants to give me a sort of baseload. Then I modulate on that using batteries to meet peak demand. So I only need enough to meet the difference between that baseload and the actual load. In the case of no wind and solar I charge at night, when load is low and power the grid at day, when the load is high.

Doing that a grid can use less flexible power plants, like biomass power plants converted from coal power plants and it means I only need enough power plants to meet average daily demand and not peak demand. It is also possible to predict, when those plants are needed using a weather forecast.

Batteries are incredibly useful anyway for say summer nights without wind. Just store some solar electricity from the day, for the night. That is actually the more likely situation.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago

When do I need 50GW? I do have the already built methane, hydro and biomass power plants to give me a sort of baseload. Then I modulate on that using batteries to meet peak demand.

You're right, brainfart.

So I only need enough to meet the difference between that baseload and the actual load.

Nope you need more because transmission capacity isn't infinite, you cannot serve local demand spikes with far-away sources. those 60GW max are still an average. I don't have access to data of that level of detail, if it's public, then I don't know where.

All in all we're at the point where, for one of us to have an argument better than the other, we'd have to run an analysis over the actual market data taking all those various factors into account. The nitty-gritty.

So what I'm going to say instead is that that analysis has been run, and the Greens never had an issue with building these plants. You can say a lot about the Greens, but not that they're be bought by big fossil fuel, including Russia or the US.