in my 34 years of life, as a European i've only experienced a blackout twice... and it was never the fault of the grid or the power producers... it was mother nature who for some unfathomable reason decided to fuck things up xD one was a storm that took out the majority of above ground cables... the black out lasted 24 hours until they rerouted power through other means... and it was only a partial blackout since parts of the town still had power... like my parents house as the only building on 3 streets with power. the other was a lightning strike... which said "fuck that transformer in particular" and whole town went dark for like... 5 five minutes.
@@Zenit_Bourg @The_Mother.s' story is the same for me here in The Netherlands. Power cuts are so rare, usually rather local and usually short-lived that you don't really need to be prepared for anything and people usually are like 'oh, no electricity for now, big deal, we'll survive.' The last very, VERY big event I know that happend was the 'Flevoland-disaster' on September 2, 2022. Not personally as my area was not affected but because of the impact it made and the fact it made national headlines: when my sister first said to really go look at a video from TV Flevoland because there's a video 'like from the US with mad arcing in a substation going on' I went to the website of said broadcaster. But there was this red banner on the website stating something like this: 'UPDATE ON DISASTROUS POWERCUT NEAR LELYSTAD: DO NOT COME TO VISIT THE AFFECTED AREA! Motorway A6 has been closed to all traffic due to powerlines hanging dangerously low! Do not go out on to the roads unless absolutely necessary! Keep roads clear for emergency services. Only call emergency services for life or death situations. Tune in to Radio Flevoland or watch TV Flevoland for further updates!' Me and my sister gazed at eachother in total disbelief and we knew something big had happened. Though it only affected 220.000 people or so, it was a historic event due to the high voltage lines on powerpylons being overloaded to such an extent that they started smoking and sag got so worse they got down to ground level (it's a miracle no one was injured or died because of it). Besides that, the lines interacted (read: arced over) to the catenary of the rail-line from Lelystad to Zwolle, killing all trackside equipment over something like 13 kilometer, got sparks shooting out of the ground over kilometers of distance, started wildfires everywhere ánd severely damaged the catenary. This left the railline without traffic for THREE MONTHS. The last, even bigger event I know and affected me personally was the March 27, 2015 powercut due to a fault that occured in a substation in Diemen if I remember it right. From somewhere like 9:30 in the morning It left 1,2 million households without power for a few hours (some got their power restored quickly, at others it took way longer), completely cripled traintransport in The Netherlands as large parts of the connections to Utrecht (the main junction in the whole network) were without power and traffic control in the province of North- and South-Holland (both provinces were the most affected) couldn't do anything due to the lack of electricity. The effects lasted well, well into the evening with overcrowded buses and total gridlock in Amsterdam (I can know, I had to get home by public transport from work that day and it took me nearly 2 hours, compared to the usual 40-minute-ish journey as trains were not running at 16:45 and buses not only got overcrowded when getting into Amsterdam, but also got extremely stuck in Amsterdam traffic. There was another rather major outage something like a month after, but as that one struck more during the evening and didn't affect that many households, the consequences weren't as bad and I don't really remember it. Since then, I can't remember of a single powercut and if it did happen it would just last an hour or so. Consumers get a compensation fee in The Netherlands when a powercut exceeds a certain set time: if the cut is restored within 4 hours, there's no compensation handed out. With a cut lasting 4 to 8 hours, you get 35 euros. Any cut longer than 8 hours will get you the 35 euro's and 20 euros for every extra 4 hours the cut latsts. Considering how cheap electricity is, I consider it a rather large fee, but hey, it's a strong incentive for the power company to deal with it as soon as possible, helped by the fact that many circuits in The Netherlands (and probably Europe-wide) are redundant: most of the feeding lines, even up to residential area level (read: last transformer before it reaches your home) are laid down in a circle. If one feeding line fails, it either automatically switches over to the other end while a notification is made that a malfunction has occured, or someone needs to go to a transformer-building and manually isolate the failed feeder and switch over to the other feeding line of the circle. Ofcourse, this means that if a second failure than hits the other feeder, nothing can be done to restore power as quickly as possible. Even our 110 kV and 380 kV grids are made this way, a reason you will only see multiples of 3 wires on our powerpylons, as we usually have 3 circuits connecting to the same sub- or switchstations, so one can be isolated for work, while the other circuits remain operational. Sorry for the story ;)
@@Zenit_Bourg nonchalantly when you have things in frige and freezer is diminishing the problem but maybe im italian and thats why i fear only for my food xD
The only "real" blackout I can remember has been when I was a kid living in a village over 25 years ago. It was after a storm and that only lasted for about 24 hours before they fixed the power lines. Nowadays (living in the city) there is like a little blackout in summer about every 2 years. Those are for scheduled maintenance though and only last a couple of hours. I only really noticed them because I have mainly worked from home since covid, otherwise I would have been at the office while the power was out for maintenance.
sure, a big job even if the last paragraf about private against public is completly wrong. imagine, you need a gaz power plant to cover a pic in demand one day/year, not profitable for a private company but essential for the grid
@ over time, we are hanging from a base load plus peaking grid to a renewables plus firming grid. My point is, that a base load plus peaking grid already had gas and other types of generation that would only run when required. They already exist. Most have probably already paid back initial build costs etc. The only issue is if more are needed than already exist, or existing ones need to be replaced before they are no longer needed. And I suspect other options will eventually replace gas generation. Storage costs are dropping, overbuilding generation produces extra electricity at other times that flexible demand will probably find useful, interconnection solves some issues, etc.
Worth noting: Germany’s regulatory agency is also investigating why exactly available power plants did barely offer extra capacity on the market, which did lead to higher prices. At worst, energy companies have been trying to trick the market either for their own profit or setting some political agenda. Germany does have reserve power plants available to cover grid instability issues, but none of those plants were generating power in December, as the grid was stable and “just” high market prices are not enough of a reason to start up those reserve plants.
Yep and a lot of their neighbors who are getting hit with those prices are calling foul and threatening sanctions over the prices and the shutting down of nuclear plants in Germany.
@@josephteller9715 They also get cheaper energy prices on days with lots of wind. Their overall energy price really goes down, German energy exports are much cheaper per kilowatt-hour than the imports (mostly down to the times of day those happen at). I don't really see how they have a legitimate reason to complain.
@@jillfizzard1018 A couple just from the commercial viewpoint: - Massive unpredictability in pricing. Companies lose money operating on days when Germany is in trouble. - Unfair competition internally. The further away from Germany a company is situated, the better their competitiveness is. As for individual consumers, we get cheaper energy during summer when it doesn't matter. And more expensive energy during winter, when it does matter. Public sentiment here in Norway moves towards shutting down existing international power lines affected by the German situation, when they would otherwise need to be upgraded (due to aging). And certainly not building any new ones.
Why is it that at school I cannot focus, but then in my free time I am hyperfocused for 15min on modeling the european power grid safety and capacity? Great video....
@@vinmen666 stop accusing adhd for everything i mean then only reason ur focused here cuz its a topic u are interested in and videos are way easier to listen too then a teacher who makes u make calculations for 3 hrs
@@daxan19diagnoses help people understand their diverse thinking and actions compared to what is seen as socially normal. Before I got my diagnosis for autism, I believed that I was going to end up in an insane asylum because I was not like my friends. 😒 Is that a positive thing? To go around believing that they are crazy? Rather than being able to know the issue and able to act upon the information and get help? What a messed up view.
I realy liked this video. The CEO of RWE was doing this to get the government drop the H2 ready requirement from the 10GW of replacement Gas plants that are going to be subsidized to cover offlining coal plants over the next 5 years. He also wanted to have the requirement for phase shifters at new gas plants droped. It was definitly very politicaly motivated.
What do you mean by phase shifter? Phase Shifting Transformer that can be used for "routing" of electricity, or inverter station(s) that would enable the power plant to also serve as terminal of HVDC or 16.7Hz power lines?
Also, RWE made massive profits during the Ukraine energy crisis. Burn coal, sell Wind energy and get it paid like gas. When Gas drops out of the equation, so do their profits. Merit order is their money mule. 😅
yes. I think the rationale behind separating these two is the handling. after you shut off a coal/gas PP, it will not produce anything and will need no attention to keep safe. a nuclear PP obviously needs to be shut down slowly and carefully. and even kept alive to some extend since all the pumps and controls need to keep running and do need quite substantial amount of power.
yup, and that's why we'll keep them operating and even build new ones in the coming years, because it's actually pretty cheap as the fuel itself costs basically nothing compared to the price of the equipment (i.e. it's expensive to build but relatively cheap to operate, while fossil fuel is cheap to build but expensive to operate). Oh and nuclear waste is more or less a solved problem, and has been for decades... we just have to implement the solutions instead of pretending they don't exist.
@@Ragnar_Oock I am so sick and tired of various political parties condemning nuclear while they should be the prime supporters. Instead countries like Germany built more gas and fossil and shut down nuclear. It will take decades till we get new plants. Our man-power is severely limited at European universities. Heck. A uni-course with 40 people is already a historic high...
@@davidbischi if you apply the same standards in radiological safety to coal powerplants as they are to nuclear plants you will be surprised that all are "massively contamintated" with radioactive marterial. Predominantly thorium and uranium from the coal ash, filter residues and exhaust gases, there however nobody cares
@@Ragnar_Oock Yeah, it's pretty cheap... If you ignore the massive upfront cost that the governments pay. And the fact that you have to store it for millions of years safely.
Thank you for the good analysis. I'm on day ahead pricing in The Netherlands, and yes the peak was very high at €1,21 per kWh (incl energy tax and VAT). Some eople here commented that the Energy Transition was failing and all that FUD. Turns out it was more of a fluke, and that we were selling a lot of energy to Germany those days. Baffling to hear that German capacity was only running at 49%. Anyway, all of November my average was €0.28 per kWh, and for December it is now at €0,26 per kWh. All of which is below the average fixed contract.
@@bilgyno1 German capacity might not have been running due to internal grid constraints, they have a lot north-south which is not reflected as its own separate market due to politicsl reasons, or by how expensive that capacity was and got priced out, such as natural gas. It was a one time thing and overall prices have been cheaper this year but it signaled the fragility of the european power system and its dependance on imported natural gas. Also, Germany has destroyed tons of demand which does not seem to be coming back.
". All of which is below the average fixed contract." Which should make sense, because fixed contracts are sold the most, the companies need them to be safe. Maybe even make some money too
My variable contract cost is at 26,7 cents in the Netherlands. So you didn't win in November. I saw fixed contracts are a couple of cents cheaper so you wouldn't win in December as well. Though you probably save a lot in the summer months.
@@dankspain > Also, Germany has destroyed tons of demand which does not seem to be coming back. Really? Energy charts says demand peaked in 2007 and has steadily decreased since. You make it sound like it drops off a cliff, which just isn't true.
@@juhajuntunen7866 calm and thinking. Solving problems with a calm voice and clear mind! Bravo from Germany 🇩🇪!! Keep being like this, neighbors! Don't listen to upstirred voices like that comment!
@@Robbedoes2 Na, he went in his outside Sauna house and made the coffee with the local fire there. Since the tree grow just next to his house, this is, over 50 years, CO2 neutral.
@@holgerschurig4430 Skandinavians drink more coffee and do more Sauna than trees regrow. By that logic oil is renewable as plants will get trapped under the earth all the time so over 10.000 years it's CO2 neutral.
i work in a BMHKW (BioMasseHeizKraftWerk), and we are burning trees, bushes old pallets other things that is made from wood that is unpainted or untreated. Also, we burn bioslack from Water treatment plants or hot it is called. Those are basically dried, dead bacteria and is pressed into pellets. We generate superheated Steam at 70bar and power a heat engine, or in simpler therms a two stage steam turbine with vacuum condenser. The steam that leaves the low pressure stage at 200°C, goes through a heat exchanger and heats up water to 107°C at 5bar and is then cooled further down to about 125°C and goes back into the boiler while traveling beforehand through three economizer stages and enters the boiler with 220′C again. We generate 20MVA at 30KV There is another type of Biomass power generation you may mean, it is called a biomass reactor. it turns biomass into natural gas and then this is burned to generate Heat, either as hot water or steam. Our plant is running at 100% constantly but actually our plant is capable of making 28MVA and we are not legally allowed to generate more than 20MVA. So technically we are at 72% capacity but legally and noted at 100%. There are many Power plants that could produce more but are not allowed to or are noted with lower power ratings. I don't know the reason, but there could be some benefits if you being in another category or something like that. I do maintenance and operating task, i have no idea what they do above me and i don't care as long they leave me alone with their silly thoughts.
You nicely demonstrated that the European grid in its present shape is capable of delivering maximum demand even during widespread dunkelflaute. But it would be even more interesting and important to run scenarios that integrate the unchallengeable need to phase out all fossil power generation over the next 10 to 15 years acknowledging the fact that the Paris Agreement is at the brink of catastrophic failure.
This part. Reading up what climate change and AMOC collapse are forecast to do to Europe .. you really don't want that to happen to the continent you're living on. Europe really needs to drag the rest of the world into serious effective action already.
Yes current grid obviously works, by having full fossil fuel capacity greater than demand. So we forever need to have 100% current fossil fuel power plants, and probably 400% solar and wind to rarely use the fossil fuel part. Electricity is just third of all power, to cover rest triple it all.
I don't think we should completely phase out fossil fuels as this will undoubtedly pose a threat to our security, and neither will our push towards carbon neutrality stop climate change. The only way now is to figure out how to adapt to a hostile environment and continue trying to reduce fuel use, through lowering demand wherever possible and using alternative sources of energy to not be so reliant on energy imports. Fossil infrastructure must remain a failsafe however.
@@mostlyguesses8385 The model sketched by you - keeping 100% fossil capacity as backup - is far too expensive. You did not consider storage capacities which will render the majority of fossil power plants superfluous.
Energy storage is way too costly. Actually keeping backup fossil fuel system for bad 10% of days of year, is not too costly. US kwh is $.10, Europe somehow is $.40. By definition the US cost covers fuel and equipment, so keeping backup equipment only adds under $.10 a kwh... Energy is just 5% of gdp, so we can cover a under 2% rise to have backup system... But yes power prices will be higher, 2 systems are costlier than 1. 3rd world will build just one system, probably coal....
Though you've concentrated on EU , the UK has many interconnects with EU countries - Ireland, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Norway and an interconnect to Germany underway. This geographic spread helps us all to stretch any peak demand.
They choose to leave the EU & like the video explains we have plenty of power to cover all our own needs, we don't need to buy any from the UK. Its much more likely that the UK is buying power from the EU and prices went up since Brexit 😉
Great Britain will have over 10GW of interconnectors once the German link is complete, and there are more in development. Given our location, if the whole of the EU has zero wind, it is highly likely that GB, Ireland and Norway will be off the edge of the weather system and will have wind, the bigger the grid, the less likely zero wind is.
@@tomast9034 France often pays GB to take its spare Nuclear power, so that it doesn't have to shut down its nuclear plants overnight, right now it is importing electricity from GB and paying us for it. Yes, electricity sometimes gets expensive, but that is not France's fault, the market covers the whole European grid, and overall, being connected saves us massively when the wind stops here but is still blowing hard in Denmark and Spain because they are under different weather systems. That is far more often the case than for everyone to be at low wind and the prices to spike.
@@suicidalbanananana No, "they" didn't. Roughly 22-25% of the country (mostly older and retired people) chose to drag the other >75% out of the EU against their will. If the EU has plenty of its own power, why does it need to buy in fossil fuels (natural gas and oil) to fuel power stations? The UK has plenty of cheap wind? Why prefer to buy from Russia or dodgy middle eastern countries than the UK? That's entirely illogical.
the "No body knows" category are all the very small power generation (kwh range) they are all falling in similar categories as the big produces. But some are special: - garbage dump gas, - tidal power
I wouldn't call it a true deregulated market. It's more like a protectionist market for oligopolies. For example, a tiny player (like myself) of solar power is not allowed to sell the energy to whoever they want. They can sell only to a specific 3rd party, who sells it with a huge profit without doing a thing. In my case, I have a neighbour - a small factory and I can't sell to them (legally) where only 12 m of cable is needed. I have to sell it to the 3rd party and they sell to the factory at 5x 6x sometimes 7x what I'm paid for my energy. The EU (grid) system is messed up on so many levels it's killing manufacturing and any kind of economic activities due to too much of useless and most of the time monopoly/oligopoly protectionist policies.
We have market price for small generation selling too in finland. So no such bullshit there. But we also dont ever pay out our panels with the amound of sun we get 😂
Lease them the land under solar panels at a variable daily price decided by the approximate amount of photons that fall on the solar panels calculated by the amount of electricity produced. You provide them with the cable so that they can install necessary measurement equipment [power meter]. What they do with the electricity, you don't care about since you give it to them for free. ;-)
Really well done, I wrote my bachelor thesis about the eu grid and one of the results was that running it fully on renewables was possible but with heightened demand for transmission. With current regulations and battery price estimates from a few years ago some countries could get in trouble but nothing fundamentaly unfixable. Energy prices were relatively stable as well.
I find it a really interesting topic, I think I will also do something in that direction for my bachelor, but with focus on Switzerland where given the morphology, climate change will have strong impacts on flow regimes and thus hydro power.
Poland here, my whole life all the blackouts in my area were caused by nature damaging the power grid. For example once we had a sudden drop in temperature where trees haven't had the time to pull out water from their trunks and were shattering when it froze, falling on the power lanes.
@@nukedispenser349 Same in Northern Europe, it is always nature that screws it up. In my 24 years in Sweden, I've had blackouts three times. All three during violent thunderstorms. The question is though, how often does this occur? If it occurs more often in eastern Europe than in Northern Europe, you want to look into why that is. Is there a difference in the design that makes it more prone to natural phenomena? Is there a maintenance issue (not trimming trees near powerlines)? Is it something else?
The thing is, if as it happened in November, no wind and no solar is coming in, electricity prices on EU stock marked jumpes up. This is because the backup coal power stations in Germany have not been started since this is more expensive for the energy providers than leave it to pay by the market
@@SizeMichael It also costs them money, because adding capacity reduces the market price. So they earn less with the plants that are already scheduled to run. The same happened around December 12th. They kept half of the thermal production offline and Germany's imports raised the prices of neighbouring countries energy by a massive amount.
@@Psi-StormThat is why we keep them running and turn the excess into heat. The actual price is only speculative nature. The costs for energy production are covered by the lowest price you find😉
The weather forecast is pretty on point for 3 consecutive days. Plenty time to power anything up and get the demand down😉 You always ignore that the demand can be steered as well.
Numbers help show reality. Batteries can't help grid. As example, UK yearly uses 300 TerraWH, which is 300 billion kwh, and with 30m households this is 300,000m kwh/30m so 10,000kwh annual demand per household. If deep winter has a 36 dark calm period each house needs batteries equal to 1000 kwh. This is 10 Tesla sized batteries a house needed as storage, to cover say January current grid. If we increase electric demand by 50% w EVs and heat pumps, each household needs 15 EVs. The goal is to electrify all, from steel to cement making, so 30 EVs per household.... Experts know this is unfeasible, so we will burn gas and coal plenty the weeks it's dark and still .. It's gonna be hard and costly to get much greener, I wish it werent.... Soooo we will have gas and coal plants always ready to carry entire grid weeks or even 1 month .... Batteries of people can't cover weeks or months, it's off by 15x or more..... 3rd world ain't gonna build extra plants to backup solar, so they'll do coal and claim poverty as valid excuse ... But we probably can cut 1st world co2 by half, which is something, half by huge effort, to 6 tons CO2 a person. India is now at 2. UK at 10, so down to 5 by huge effort will be helpful even if far from net zero... Sigh ... We want heating, transport, and manufacturing, that takes lots of energy, we want to live like Kings dreamed of, it ain't gonna be net zero ..
The big difference there is onshore vs offshore. Onshore can go to 0, and even does so regularly (though it rarely does everywhere at once). Offshore will drop to low production of 15 or 20 percent at times, but it doesn't really ever go to 0.
Bear, wind generator output is a cube of wind speed, so small drops in speed give a large drop in output and vice versa. That is why wind output is so spiky when looked at graphically, Americans describe it as pogo stick power.
@@iareid8255 This isn't true. Wind turbines have a small on-ramp at very low wind speeds that can look quadratic (or even cubic, on some turbines). However, in the bulk of the power generation curve, wind speed and power generation are roughly proportional.
@@jillfizzard1018 maybe basic physics from school before posting nonsense? Just because turbines are designed to pitch out from higher speed and keep power the same, doesn't mean that wind power is not cubic to speed...
I have been living 30 years on my own now , in all that time we had maybe 1 or 2 blackouts, caused locally when a power cable was damaged in the neighborhood. This is then fixed within 6-12 hours. In the whole country, it's very rare to have anything bigger, the system just runs for 99,99% of the time and has done so for decades
Likewise. Only a couple blackouts longer than a few hours, but the occasional smaller one that's solved within half an hour. Not counting planned cuts for maintenance and expansion, obviously.
You also have to consider that that capacity is not really available at all times. See how France had lots of nuclear powerplants on revision in 2024, how Romania has 50% of the large hydro on the Danuble not available for repairs, etc. On the other side, there are many battery projects in process of being built and also some gas. The system was also disturbed by the crazy guy in Kremlin and his war, as Ukraine needs electricity to replace the damaged capacity.
I saw a comment about grid capacity/congestion in the Netherlands and that's true. Currently the grid (so that would be the cables not the installed capacity) is at the limit current safety regulations allow for and new companies cannot be connected to the grid. Dutch network operators do have maps for this.
We need a clear way to explain why the marginal pricing market works. It's very easy to criticize that "10% of the electricity generation shouldn't define the entire price", but we need to explain why this system is the one garantees the CHEAPEST and MOST RELIABLE electricity supply in the long term.
Not for France lol, have cheap nuclear and pay expensivee gas price, doodoo system, all to please ret@d German who love 'green' (Russian gas) stuff but hate nuclear.
I am finnish and I work at building and renewal of industrial and power generation and my close friend works as a lineman, neither one of us has ever heard of not enough power type scenario. ps. pump storage hydro does not work as well in finnlnd as ground is so old the "mountains" are not that high. (sorry for my maybe bad english, as I am a dunk european)
Very good analysis - one note: during severe drought the nuclear plants will struggle to run at full capacity due to lack of cooling water. I'm not an expert so this is hear-say to me, but it does make sense. I don't think this will coincide with 'Dunkelflaute' though, as drought typically requires plentiful sunshine :)
Nuclear powerplants that use coolingwater from rivers or the sea might get into trouble, though ones using cooling towers should be fine, unless ALL water is restricted, which I doubt as they will secure some for critical infrastructure like Nuclear powerplants (some water is evaporated in the cooling towers so there is losses and needs because of it)
@@TheEsseboy Indeed, as I understood it's not so much too little water, but the temperature after using it merging back into the river or water basins. In drought situations the total volume is too small to handle the added heat.
Due to the huge decreases in the past year in battery pricing, we are going to see a massive increase in battery capacity in the coming couple of years in Europe. This won't just mean greater storage of renewables, but also give us even better ability to transmit it since we can spread it more out over time.
Normally 2-3 hours. However, it is not useless, since they are normally designed to cover small shifts. They dont have to run for a day. This task will be taken with other means.
@@PHRMNK A good start but if they want to switch to all renewable they need ability to store over whole seasons since summer produces more that winter.
Here in the Netherlands there was a huge power outage a decade or 2 ago when a Apache helicopter flew against some electricity poles (or whatever ya call them).
This is a great video. There should be another one like this for modeling the energy prices. Otherwise we cannot really understand what happened in the Dunkelflaute. We also have no idea if the Energiewende is financially feasible.
It is already happening, all of it, all or your requirements and obviously, it is feasible. Cost and technology wise. One week ago we had again over 100% onshore wind generation. This happens pretty often. If those fuckwiths would actually turn of the gas and coal plants, instead of letting them idle all day long, we could lower our CO2 footprint by 80% , just like that and you could spent less than 8ct on electricity on average. Look up the Bundesnetzagentur provided service SMARD. There you have an interactive graph that is usually updated every five minutes. I can't tell you why you are lied too, but i can tell to whom you listen and i can only give you the advice to stop it, because we all know to whom they are listening and it is not the German public or industry.
Wind and solar have the advantage of being very predictable, up to several days out, so there is plenty of time to start up mothballed fossil generators. East-West interconnects are also interesting because they spread out the peak moments in specific countries, and access sunrise in the east and sunset in the west. Solar installed in south, including north edge of Africa has very few clouded days resulting in very reliable solar output. The main issue there is government stability, required for investors. It's not just new battery technology, the developments in long-distance HVDC connections are an important part of the solution.
You missed out on demand steering😉 I would like you seen, having looked this up. I lately talked to a manager of Alstrom and he assured me, that the whole factory had no losses, if it would run on renewables and thus cease production, when these are not available. It is a management problem only, as the forecast is only good for a week and scheduling in, this quick, maintenance and training days, is generally disliked🤗
Well, the Dutch grid really can't take much more on most main 110 and 380kV connections. There's a huge waiting list for new businesses to be connected or to get their connection upgraded: the installed capacity isn't the problem, it's the infrastructure to transport that capacity either to the customer or back to the grid (recently, while on vacation in a small place near the German border, I heard that a company there could only get solar panels installed if they also installed a few containers full of batteries at their site, as the local grid just can't handle the huge backfeed.
Very impressive analysis, but it does seem a bit strange not to include the UK, Norway and Switzerland. The UK's rapidly growing offshore wind capacity means that on a continental scale wind output never gets close to zero, and the flexibility of its market helps the aging French nuclear fleet run at a steady output. Norway and Switzerland are able to use their conventional hydro as effectively 100% efficient pumped hydro by using cheap imported electricity whilst allowing their reservoirs to fill naturally
Said aging French nuclear fleet was about to get destroyed by Macron, when war and bad timed maintenance suddenly made him realize that we needed more energy, not less, not just because we use more, but because we have to sell it to other countries. It also revealed some scandalous market dark practice about companies buying French energy for very, very cheap and selling it for triple the price if not more and yet still cheaper than what other countries pays. French energy bills, amongst other things, rose so much that during that period that people are now advocating the complete stop of selling energy like that, especially to other countries.
Experienced several black outs, living in a remote medieval village in France. Due to heavy thunderstorms (overhead electrical lines) or strikes of thr EDF. We were very well prepared; heating with a big fireplace; cooking on a special stove with propane gas and lots of water bottles. Also a pump with mountain spring water on the central square.... Wish now to have never leave; although the Netherlands are not so bad after all.
In the UK, the electricity market is designed so that the most expensive producers set the prices. Renewables and others are cheaper, however the peaker plants (Mostly gas) are much more expensive. Then the National Grid charges more for producers who are situated further away from population centres, thus the places that can produce the most renewable energy has to pay more to deliver it. (There are also massive delays in approving plants and infrastructure, leading to lead in times of 20 to 30 years.)
Both of these are normal and sensible things that most electricity markets do. There's a summary of marginal (aka pay-as-clear) pricing on-screen at 13:42. And transmission pricing signals reflect the cost (hopefully accurately) of getting power from where it's produced to where it needs to go. If an investor is considering two otherwise equivalent generation projects, then you want them to choose the one that will require less spending on transmission upgrades.
11:20 That map seems to be missing a lot of interconnects. I know the uk has interconnects to Ireland and Norway. , I assume theres interconnects from Norway to Germany/Denmark and isn't there one from Morocco to Spain also?
This map only shows the connections that are yet to be completed. The "projects" of common interest. Many more operational interconnections exist, you are correct
Would be interested in a video about limited net capacities, as I heard that there are countries in which new companies can’t be connected to the grid due to limits in net capacity. Even existing companies are promoted to limit usage on peak moments.
Impressive data crunching and interesting analysises. I admire tha work. One thing that I found here that is lacking is future decarbonisation coming soon. I was seeing similar video like that about my Polish power grid from a month ago and conclusions were "get ready to blackout" it we will keep decarbonisation - shutting off the on demand thermal power plants.
@Max24871 the problem is as in the movie, what happen when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine. If you add closing down of "on demand" power plants then it's going into a catastrophy
the water reservoir often fuction as battery, with having potencial energy stored in mass of water on higher ground, and time it can start giving back to the grid in around 30s - 1 min.
14:15 - No one would build a new gas plant because it was a one-year opportunity or keep it ready for 1 in 100 years weather event like in Texas 2021 showed. Just after Russian “operation” began and prises spiked, no one rushed to build new wells to extract more oil and gas because it was short-term. This is why in Europe some countries have capacity market i.e. Poland, UK or PJM in US. To be sure that installed capacity would meet peak demand, by offereing multi year capacity contracts for new capacity.
Since energy is just the integral of power, a sufficiently granular energy futures market becomes indistinguishable from a capacity market But you're right, energy market + capacity market is safer than just energy market alone, and I believe many more member states are looking to add capacity markets in the coming years
@@SizeMichael Energy is integral of power, but you need to meet power demand in every moment. Due to weather fluctuations peak capacities are not needed in some years, so there is no revenue for them, but fixed costs remain the same for keeping them ready for operation.
You are referring to natural gas😉 Siemens is producing gargantuan electrolysers in Indonesia right now. Those will produce all the hydrogen for these new gas plants.
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@@SizeMichaelyou're forgetting risk. A capacity market removes that.
@@SizeMichael Texas HAS an energy futures market. That's the point. It failed. It's a day-ahead market. But making it a 10-years-ahead market wouldn't have prevented that failure. It's important to understand that it doesn't matter how "granular" the market is. ANY market that is based on fiat currency that is printed out of thin air can ALWAYS fail. If you don't OWN the capacity, there's no guarantee that you're getting the energy, at ANY price.
Very interesting analysis! I thought we were in much worse shape regarding not just the capacity, but the load balancing of all those unreliable renewable sources.
Good video again. It is sort of the same discussion that solar does not do anything in winter... sure it small but all panels together still produce quite a bit. An now with plug in home batteries every home can install a small battery in seconds and use more of their own solar. One will not make a difference but with bigger numbers it starts to add up. Shaving off the top demand otherwise supplied by the most expensive option. Best solution to high prices is hight prices.
Also, even if you're charging with grid electricity, you can avoid the most expensive hours. If 10% of households suddenly go to 0 demand for a few hours, then the grid wont be strained nearly as much during those peak hours.
So nobody knows where additional 3GW of power comes from? It's the little things that small countries like we in the Baltics keep quiet about. Some of it is harvested from our Wolt Indian food delivery cyclists. Some from my pet blue whale Volodymir on a dynamo leash, who is trying to chase away Russian shadow and Baltic fleets from the Baltic sea. Only thing, every Christmas season he does a tour of coastal cities, asking people if the city he's swam into is finished developping. If the majority answers positive and that's the case, his plan is to whip up the waters and flood the city. Aaaanyway, this calming and positive breakdown of European "power" is what we needed in this dark and gloomy time (and weather). Great job. ✳Merry christmas and happy 2025 champs!♡✳ 🌲🌰🌻🎑
Additionally storage will play a huge role in the future. If our politicians manage to create a more flexible price, people will use their stored energy when it is expensive and loaf their batteries when it is cheap. This could massively help stabilizing the system and making it EV proof.
Batteries can't help grid. As example, UK yearly uses 300 TerraWH, which is 300 billion kwh, and with 30m households this is 300,000m kwh/30m so 10,000kwh annual demand per household. If deep winter has a 36 dark calm period each house needs batteries equal to 1000 kwh. This is 10 Teslas as storage, to cover say January current grid. If we increase electric demand by 50% w EVs and heat pumps, each household needs 15 EVs. The goal is to electrify all, from steel to cement making, so 30 EVs per household.... Experts know this is unfeasible, so we will burn gas and coal plenty the weeks it's dark and still .. It's gonna be hard and costly to get much greener, I wish it werent.... Soooo we will have gas and coal plants always ready to carry entire grid weeks or even 1 month .... Batteries of people can't cover weeks or months, it's off by 15x or more..... 3rd world ain't gonna build extra plants to backup solar, so they'll do coal and claim poverty as valid excuse ... But we probably can cut 1st world co2 by half, which is something, half by huge effort, to 6 tons CO2 a person. India is now at 2. UK at 10. Cold Canada 14. China now making all metal and cement for Europe is 13....
Not sure you should joke about names. My Taiwanese roommate says John is slang for gay, and my Egyptian neighbor says it means toilet. So to half the planet . . . hmm. Look at foreignors faces when you tell em your name, Jon.. My roommate told me some jokes about John which I can't repeat, wow, some people are mean they are terrible John jokes.
15:45 In Germany there are several GW of power plants (approximately 2GW lignite, 8GW hard coal, and a few GW natural gas) in reserve, that don't participate in the electricity market and can only operate if the authorities ask them to operate. There are also some gas power plants that don't produce electricity for the grid, but only for a local factory.
Just bought a 16kw battery storage system for the home We get some power issues each year and I bought a battery system that has a UPS facility The battery system I am insalling also has the ability to add 19kw of solar via 3 MPPT's
Good work on the modeling, it something more people should do before coming up with an opinion on energy systems. A few points though. DISCLAIMER: I work for a competitor developer to RWE and did some energy systems modeling at uni, so I have a certain bias. - Your model has limitations, especially regarding transmission constraints and the dispatchability of different sources. More nuance is needed to understand the implications of a dunkelflaute. Hydro storage and gas reservoirs are also not accurately modeled, as inflows and outflows are not accounted for, which usually impact market prices during extreme events. - To create hypothetical models with pricing, you could use a TIMES or similar model that allows for more complexity, including transmission constraints and technology costs. - Regarding dispatchable capacity, you assume hydro, gas, coal, and nuclear are always available and dispatchable, but this is not the case in Europe, especially for gas. Nuclear failed us in France in 2022. Our energy economics depend on gas and hydro availability, which is based on storage and demand. Generators consider opportunity costs and may not always be available. - Regarding transmission, you assume no internal market restrictions, but this is not the case. Germany has limited transmission between the North and South, which is paid for by all Germans and not reflected in the single market price. When linking the Nordics to Bulgaria, sure the frequency might be the same, and some limited flows will be in that direction. We have two major bottlenecks mainly from Germany and France. - Regarding the future of transmission, the current plans and status fall short of what’s needed for the 2030-2050 plans. While it’s better than the current system, retiring coal, nuclear, and gas requires a stronger grid. You are also assuming that all these planned upgrades will get built on time, which is a bit of an overreach. - Regarding pricing and outlook for developers, futures markets provide prices for the next few years, but they’re illiquid and not useful for developing new generation. It’s challenging to plan and sell electricity from a new 1GW power plant for 25 years at a profitable price in Europe. Partnerships with petrochemical industries are limited which could enable you to get such a big contract, so developers either risk it based on market prices, which are not looking good due to renewable cannibalization or ask for government subsidies. - Regarding RWE’s CEO comment. Germany’s energy situation is complex. Despite a decrease in demand due to the Ukraine crisis, prices reach exorbitant levels at times, making it unlikely for demand to grow again. The German government’s stubborn energy plans have exacerbated this issue. Firstly, they are doubling down on nuclear retirement, exposing the grid to gas marginal pricing. Secondly, their hydrogen plan, which supports the future dispatchable generation, makes 0 economic sense. Developers are pulling the plug on hydrogen and massive renewable projects because of it. Additionally, the government’s refusal to split the market to incentivize generation allocation based on transmission constraints further hinders development. These factors, combined with shocks like the dunkelflaute, strain Germany’s already precarious economic situation and make it difficult for new capacity to be built.
I have heard about proposal to also use Bahnstromnetz for transmission of power from north to south. Is there some new info available about that project/study?
@@MrToradragon if you are referring to using the rail traction grids present in Germany, Austria, etc with a different frequency sounds complex and like it would not help much. We are talking about 10s GWs scale of transmission capacity needed north to south, not a few 100s MW
@@dankspain Yes, i am referring to that grid. As I have wrote, I have heard that there is some proposal/study going on. Thus I just wonder whether they will just reduce strain on public grid in the south by feeding it as much as possible from the north, or whether some other, more interesting, approach will be used. I can imagine either upgrade of the pylons in such way that they would also carry 50Hz or HVDC lines or upgrade of the system so it would be able to handle much more power. For example by going for higher voltage or more pairs of wires on existing lines, which would then lead to increased capacity or both. But I would guess that upgrades would still yield only few hundred MW per line.
Run-of-the-river hydroelectricity has pretty strict requirements to not affect the river water levels too much. While this would have some impact on nature, allowing them higher margins for storing/depleting water could add up to significant capacity for smoothing generation/demand.
I'm not sure if Europe will "always" need to burn stuff because there are a lot of people working on cost effective medium/long term energy storage, and "forever" is a long time :) But it's definitely clear from this analysis that anyone trying to get subsidies to build new fossil capacity is just trying to cash in, despite the fact we have plenty of capacity already.
There are redox flow batteries in development where power and capacity are decoupled. If the storage proves stable enough (low loss over time) then we'd just need to scale capacity to adapt them to longer term/seasonal use
People are also working on using less energy. Energy efficient housing design, energy efficient appliances, work from home, etcetera - it all adds up. A well built and well insulated house uses less energy and is also more comfortable to live in.
@@stefangrobbink7760 Actually there are redox flow batteries already in commercial production and use, which, as you say, decouples power and capacity so to store more energy you just need bigger tanks and more liquid. The issue is that they currently rely on Vanadium which is rare and expensive, so the challenge lots of clever engineers are working on is to switch to something common and cheap instead. I'm sure we'll see significant cost reductions by the end of the decade.
@@tealkerberus748 Absolutely! Lots we can do in that regard. I've visited a few "PassivHaus" homes, both new build and retrofit, and they were all pretty amazing. I dream of living in one :)
Yes, they rely on electricity from Scandinavia which has a lot of hydro. Prices went sky high in Sweden because we were exporting it to Germany. Great policy
@Perbear Depends on what tariff people are on. Myvown onthly electricity cost varies substantially over the year even though my daily usage is about the same (about 10 kwh) and I avoid using it at the peak times. Domestic users who consume more electricity and do not have the option are hit with huge bills in the winter months.
@@Perbear almos everyone has fixed Prices in Germany so you just pay 0,35c per Kwh no matter what. If you one of the few who is priced peer Hour at the Marketprice then you would (In the Wost case that happend this Year) pay 2 oder more € per Kwh
Here in Denmark we do have blackouts, even if they are becoming less and less yearly. Though this is unrelated to global energy supply and because something localized happened, such as weather causing damage to the grid. We do have more and more power running through the ground though, unlike my youth where electricity ran through lines going between tall towers. Also consumption definitely matters too. My American friends elecricity bills are much higher than mine, despite them paying less per unit.
In Poland whenever we have Power Outages, they at worst last a few hours and are also local (half a neighbourhood at best), due to Substations giving out. Some places suffer more due to lack of modernization in the power grid.
In my region, the energy policy has made it impossible to supply more electricity to industries so they get denied when they request it. I would not call that a deregulated market.
I would guess that these are cases where a business plan pencils out if you can buy excess capacity on an existing power plant, but doesn't quite pencil out if you have to sign binding long-term contracts for the energy in order to convince someone to take on the risk of building a new power plant In the limit, any business can build their own gas power plant on-site, and it's not unheard of
There are also many load shedding contracts, where large users, who can stop, saw mills is a good example get paid a fee, but power companies can cut them off when required. This plays a huge part in keeping lights on
@@SizeMichael To me this rather seems like inadequate power transmission or substation capacity. The question is how big that region is, where it is located and whether there are some plants to upgrade the capacity of power lines. On the other hand as long as the industry is able to get enough fuel there (gas, propane, fuel oil...) it should be, especially those who also have high dement for heat, to operate some form of small cogeneration plants, improving power supply in given region.
The 3 GW of "nobody knows" are decentralized thermocouple generators. Mostly greenhouse heating or woodworking incinerators that produce electricity with the excess heat and dump it on the network.
They like calling the EU "Europe" because it lets them call anyone outside of the EU "not true Europe" Same thing happens with the US calling itself "America"
This seems to be mostly about producer side only. However, as a consumer, outages can also happen after e.g. a storm. In general, putting last mile cables underground, and having multiple routes above ground helps this kind of issues.
I missed the "never" in the title and was about to throw some proper shade before even watching the video... went into comments to see if someone else was faster, so had an opportunity to reread the title... dodged that one ;)
At 11:56 it says European pumped hydro is fairly built out. Is this just about run-of-river or does it include potential off-river pumped hydro? I know historically just run-of-river was built and off-river pumped hydro was usually ignored as storage was not the primary purpose.
and I always get surprised when some Americans say stuff like "there's not enough electricity or that when they make a small solar farm for their own property and try to sell the excess back to the government they were told that the grid wouldn't withstand the increased load
Nice! Since « The round trip efficiency of pumped hydro is over 100% » we have a free energy system ! Pumped hydro can’t be over 100% efficiency, and especially mentioning the round trip… Please don’t spread this statement
@@u1zha I did… It doesn’t change the matter. Did you understand my point? You understand that adding more energy into a system then what is lost doesn’t make the system over 100% efficient right ? Its like saying that my electric car is over 100% efficient because i charge it with an external power source while driving. If you value the extra energy put into the system there is no such thing as a over 100% efficiency system.
@@0xN1C0 No one is talking about thermodynamic efficiency, we're talking about the efficiency as a battery, how much energy we can get out of it compared to what we charged it with. Since we can get more out of the battery than we charged it with, it's over 100% efficient as a battery. Similar to how a heat pump is 300%+ efficient at heating or cooling, it provided a lot more heating/cooling than the electrical energy you put into it. In both situations there is a limit, obviously they are not free energy in the thermodynamic sense, no one is claiming that.
Some of them are likely to be paid to stay ready for the handful of days when they're needed for the next 10 years or so, because a 95% reduction in carbon would be better than any other sector will manage. Otherwise you'd be asking today's storage to cope with the generation of 2035, and ignoring any plans to build more storage over that period.
Yes, the guy proved Germany currently isn't without electricity. Unimpressive. Net Zero is impossible without a 20x battery price drop. But we just get videos saying nothing ..
Very informative and interesting especially for such a numbers dense video. One question came to mind watch in it; Do you have any idea what all those AI server farms would do to the (European) grid? Would it even make a dent?
We have microsecond to few minute blackouts almost everyday here in rural Finland when windy 😅 No matter that most of the distribution wires are already dug to ground as cables at great cost to consumers.
there is no such thing as a microsecond blackout, that's just a noise spike that's almost certainly too short to bother any equipment (it should get blocked by their AC filter)
2:33 could anyone please explain?? Where does this come from? Is this miscalculations in other sources of generation? Or is this home generation? What is this it’s 3GWs it’s huge I need answers and so does the laws of thermodynamics
6:20 Now, imagine that every European country did similarly idiotic decision with Germany and totally banned nuclear energy, let's see how that graph works after that!
One of the issues is that Europe plans on installing hundreds of millions of heat pumps If we do that We will need to size and deaign a grid to meet the coldest day per 30 years That means for 29.9 years you dont need that size grid but have to pay for it to sit idle For example if germany is to install 40M heat pumps. Maybe a regular winter day they use 40GW of power. But ince a generation cold day might see these heat ounps use 100GW of power So you need to build and pay for +60GW of grid infrastructure even though you only need it maybe 5 days per 30 years So you need to build +60GW of gas fired stations and pay for the staff and upkeep to not use them for 99.9% of the time
Sorry, your numbers are meaningless without a proper context. I also find hard to imagine a cold weather such that it would affect the whole of lets say the EU.
That is a misconception. We Germans won't build gas-fired power plants in excess, but we will build renewables in excess. If they produce too much electricity (= most of the time), we'll use electrolyzers to produce hydrogen. This is pumped (in gaseous form, mind you) through former natural gas pipelines that will be converted into “hydrogen highways” to the industry that needs it for green production methods, and also to the huge natural gas storage facilities we have in northern Germany that will also be converted.* AND it is used to fuel the few new hydrogen-ready gas power plants we are building to stay idle most of the time but be able to supply power for the highest demand peaks that the oversized renewables might leave in dark doldrums. * Yes, the Federal Grid Agency has already had all our pipelines and storage caverns inspected and certified as suitable for hydrogen.
@antonijaume8498 Even for an individual country, you have to design a grid and power system to power your heat pumps not for the average winter but the worst winter days So here in London the average January might be 1 centigrade But a bad winter like Jan 2010 had days of negative 15 centigrade So your grid needs to be able to power the needs of a negative 15 centigrade day. Which isn't very common but you have to design for that A home might use twice as much power on a negative 15 centigrade night vs a 1 centigrade night. And the heat pump COP will crash too such that 1KW might become 3KW For 1 home that's not an issue For 40M heat pumps that is an issue In this example it means 40M x 2KW = 80GW additional grid transmission distribution and backup firm from a CCGT/GT is required That in itself isn't a problem we can build that. The probablem is that infrastructure we might only need for 3 nights once every 30 years. So you'd need to build power stations and transmission lines and pay for them to sit idle 29 years 11 months 27 days and only be used for 3 days That isn't going to be cheap
@hape3862 Even if you make hydrogen, which isn't proven on a large scale as economic You still face the issue that you need to overbuild your grid and hydrogen fired power stations to meet the worst few days of winter per lifetime not the average winter A real world example for france Feb 8th 2024 = ~70GW peak demand Feb 8th 2012 a cold day = 102GW peak demand So while an average winter peak might be 70GW a bad winter is much higher at 102GW So in this example you need 32GW of spare gas or hydrogen or whatever to meet the needs of a bad wiinter, not an average winter
@antonijaume8498 France uses about 70GW winter peak but a bad winter exceeds 100GW some days So the grid needs to be sized to meet the worst days not Just this years winter And France isn't 100% electricity heated they have a lot of fossil heaters so this swing will be larger still when more buildings and homes electrify
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
in my 34 years of life, as a European i've only experienced a blackout twice... and it was never the fault of the grid or the power producers... it was mother nature who for some unfathomable reason decided to fuck things up xD
one was a storm that took out the majority of above ground cables... the black out lasted 24 hours until they rerouted power through other means... and it was only a partial blackout since parts of the town still had power... like my parents house as the only building on 3 streets with power.
the other was a lightning strike... which said "fuck that transformer in particular" and whole town went dark for like... 5 five minutes.
I cannot fathom living like that. Not only it is exceedingly rare, from what i take, you guys react to it nonchalantly, unlike Albertans with rats.
@@Zenit_Bourg @The_Mother.s' story is the same for me here in The Netherlands. Power cuts are so rare, usually rather local and usually short-lived that you don't really need to be prepared for anything and people usually are like 'oh, no electricity for now, big deal, we'll survive.' The last very, VERY big event I know that happend was the 'Flevoland-disaster' on September 2, 2022. Not personally as my area was not affected but because of the impact it made and the fact it made national headlines: when my sister first said to really go look at a video from TV Flevoland because there's a video 'like from the US with mad arcing in a substation going on' I went to the website of said broadcaster. But there was this red banner on the website stating something like this: 'UPDATE ON DISASTROUS POWERCUT NEAR LELYSTAD: DO NOT COME TO VISIT THE AFFECTED AREA! Motorway A6 has been closed to all traffic due to powerlines hanging dangerously low! Do not go out on to the roads unless absolutely necessary! Keep roads clear for emergency services. Only call emergency services for life or death situations. Tune in to Radio Flevoland or watch TV Flevoland for further updates!' Me and my sister gazed at eachother in total disbelief and we knew something big had happened. Though it only affected 220.000 people or so, it was a historic event due to the high voltage lines on powerpylons being overloaded to such an extent that they started smoking and sag got so worse they got down to ground level (it's a miracle no one was injured or died because of it). Besides that, the lines interacted (read: arced over) to the catenary of the rail-line from Lelystad to Zwolle, killing all trackside equipment over something like 13 kilometer, got sparks shooting out of the ground over kilometers of distance, started wildfires everywhere ánd severely damaged the catenary. This left the railline without traffic for THREE MONTHS. The last, even bigger event I know and affected me personally was the March 27, 2015 powercut due to a fault that occured in a substation in Diemen if I remember it right. From somewhere like 9:30 in the morning It left 1,2 million households without power for a few hours (some got their power restored quickly, at others it took way longer), completely cripled traintransport in The Netherlands as large parts of the connections to Utrecht (the main junction in the whole network) were without power and traffic control in the province of North- and South-Holland (both provinces were the most affected) couldn't do anything due to the lack of electricity.
The effects lasted well, well into the evening with overcrowded buses and total gridlock in Amsterdam (I can know, I had to get home by public transport from work that day and it took me nearly 2 hours, compared to the usual 40-minute-ish journey as trains were not running at 16:45 and buses not only got overcrowded when getting into Amsterdam, but also got extremely stuck in Amsterdam traffic.
There was another rather major outage something like a month after, but as that one struck more during the evening and didn't affect that many households, the consequences weren't as bad and I don't really remember it. Since then, I can't remember of a single powercut and if it did happen it would just last an hour or so. Consumers get a compensation fee in The Netherlands when a powercut exceeds a certain set time: if the cut is restored within 4 hours, there's no compensation handed out. With a cut lasting 4 to 8 hours, you get 35 euros. Any cut longer than 8 hours will get you the 35 euro's and 20 euros for every extra 4 hours the cut latsts. Considering how cheap electricity is, I consider it a rather large fee, but hey, it's a strong incentive for the power company to deal with it as soon as possible, helped by the fact that many circuits in The Netherlands (and probably Europe-wide) are redundant: most of the feeding lines, even up to residential area level (read: last transformer before it reaches your home) are laid down in a circle. If one feeding line fails, it either automatically switches over to the other end while a notification is made that a malfunction has occured, or someone needs to go to a transformer-building and manually isolate the failed feeder and switch over to the other feeding line of the circle. Ofcourse, this means that if a second failure than hits the other feeder, nothing can be done to restore power as quickly as possible.
Even our 110 kV and 380 kV grids are made this way, a reason you will only see multiples of 3 wires on our powerpylons, as we usually have 3 circuits connecting to the same sub- or switchstations, so one can be isolated for work, while the other circuits remain operational.
Sorry for the story ;)
US has like 2 5hour power outages per year, but saves $3000 from lower electricity prices, so basically $300/hour savings.
@@Zenit_Bourg nonchalantly when you have things in frige and freezer is diminishing the problem but maybe im italian and thats why i fear only for my food xD
The only "real" blackout I can remember has been when I was a kid living in a village over 25 years ago. It was after a storm and that only lasted for about 24 hours before they fixed the power lines. Nowadays (living in the city) there is like a little blackout in summer about every 2 years. Those are for scheduled maintenance though and only last a couple of hours. I only really noticed them because I have mainly worked from home since covid, otherwise I would have been at the office while the power was out for maintenance.
This video must have taken A LOT of work (to calculate the numbers etc behind it, as well as the presentation of the results.) Thank you.
It does seem like a dissertation in video form
sure, a big job even if the last paragraf about private against public is completly wrong. imagine, you need a gaz power plant to cover a pic in demand one day/year, not profitable for a private company but essential for the grid
@ over time, we are hanging from a base load plus peaking grid to a renewables plus firming grid. My point is, that a base load plus peaking grid already had gas and other types of generation that would only run when required. They already exist. Most have probably already paid back initial build costs etc.
The only issue is if more are needed than already exist, or existing ones need to be replaced before they are no longer needed.
And I suspect other options will eventually replace gas generation. Storage costs are dropping, overbuilding generation produces extra electricity at other times that flexible demand will probably find useful, interconnection solves some issues, etc.
@@CMDRunematti I know you are joking but with a bit more academic fluff this could easily be a bachelor's thesis.
The 'Nobody knows' could be excess solar from private sources/consumers being fed back into the grid, I guess.
Also I don't know if imports from outside the European (or EU?) grid is taken into account? It's marginal but it exists.
Quite possible
Could be selling from domestic battery storage. Indistinguishable from power generation.
Probably not because it's still on at night
@@huguesjouffrai9618 See the comment above yours. People with domestic solar have battery banks.
Worth noting: Germany’s regulatory agency is also investigating why exactly available power plants did barely offer extra capacity on the market, which did lead to higher prices. At worst, energy companies have been trying to trick the market either for their own profit or setting some political agenda.
Germany does have reserve power plants available to cover grid instability issues, but none of those plants were generating power in December, as the grid was stable and “just” high market prices are not enough of a reason to start up those reserve plants.
Yep and a lot of their neighbors who are getting hit with those prices are calling foul and threatening sanctions over the prices and the shutting down of nuclear plants in Germany.
@@josephteller9715 They also get cheaper energy prices on days with lots of wind. Their overall energy price really goes down, German energy exports are much cheaper per kilowatt-hour than the imports (mostly down to the times of day those happen at). I don't really see how they have a legitimate reason to complain.
Sweden is one of the countries that powers Germany.
@@jillfizzard1018 A couple just from the commercial viewpoint:
- Massive unpredictability in pricing. Companies lose money operating on days when Germany is in trouble.
- Unfair competition internally. The further away from Germany a company is situated, the better their competitiveness is.
As for individual consumers, we get cheaper energy during summer when it doesn't matter. And more expensive energy during winter, when it does matter.
Public sentiment here in Norway moves towards shutting down existing international power lines affected by the German situation, when they would otherwise need to be upgraded (due to aging). And certainly not building any new ones.
The less there is competition the more they can game the market system.
Why is it that at school I cannot focus, but then in my free time I am hyperfocused for 15min on modeling the european power grid safety and capacity? Great video....
I think that simply can be diagnosed as ADHD 😜
@@vinmen666 rarely and that would not be a good news for him also
@@vinmen666 stop accusing adhd for everything i mean then only reason ur focused here cuz its a topic u are interested in and videos are way easier to listen too then a teacher who makes u make calculations for 3 hrs
@@vinmen666 i don't think that can at all, seeing as most people at school don't focus well since it's boring asf.
@@daxan19diagnoses help people understand their diverse thinking and actions compared to what is seen as socially normal. Before I got my diagnosis for autism, I believed that I was going to end up in an insane asylum because I was not like my friends. 😒 Is that a positive thing? To go around believing that they are crazy? Rather than being able to know the issue and able to act upon the information and get help? What a messed up view.
I realy liked this video. The CEO of RWE was doing this to get the government drop the H2 ready requirement from the 10GW of replacement Gas plants that are going to be subsidized to cover offlining coal plants over the next 5 years. He also wanted to have the requirement for phase shifters at new gas plants droped. It was definitly very politicaly motivated.
What do you mean by phase shifter? Phase Shifting Transformer that can be used for "routing" of electricity, or inverter station(s) that would enable the power plant to also serve as terminal of HVDC or 16.7Hz power lines?
Also, RWE made massive profits during the Ukraine energy crisis. Burn coal, sell Wind energy and get it paid like gas.
When Gas drops out of the equation, so do their profits. Merit order is their money mule. 😅
@@MrToradragon sorry I translated it too litterlaraly. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser
@@alis49281 H2 is more expensive than gas, at least for the next decade.
@@copperknight4788 I wrote nothing of H2 in my comment, because burning it for power is so absurd and a waste of a resource.
Impressive data crunging and clear message!
Thank you very much for this video and all the effort you invested!
Just a quick nitpick: nuclear power plants _are_ thermal power plant. The only thing that changes is the way heat is generated.
yes. I think the rationale behind separating these two is the handling. after you shut off a coal/gas PP, it will not produce anything and will need no attention to keep safe. a nuclear PP obviously needs to be shut down slowly and carefully. and even kept alive to some extend since all the pumps and controls need to keep running and do need quite substantial amount of power.
yup, and that's why we'll keep them operating and even build new ones in the coming years, because it's actually pretty cheap as the fuel itself costs basically nothing compared to the price of the equipment (i.e. it's expensive to build but relatively cheap to operate, while fossil fuel is cheap to build but expensive to operate). Oh and nuclear waste is more or less a solved problem, and has been for decades... we just have to implement the solutions instead of pretending they don't exist.
@@Ragnar_Oock I am so sick and tired of various political parties condemning nuclear while they should be the prime supporters. Instead countries like Germany built more gas and fossil and shut down nuclear. It will take decades till we get new plants. Our man-power is severely limited at European universities. Heck. A uni-course with 40 people is already a historic high...
@@davidbischi if you apply the same standards in radiological safety to coal powerplants as they are to nuclear plants you will be surprised that all are "massively contamintated" with radioactive marterial. Predominantly thorium and uranium from the coal ash, filter residues and exhaust gases, there however nobody cares
@@Ragnar_Oock Yeah, it's pretty cheap...
If you ignore the massive upfront cost that the governments pay. And the fact that you have to store it for millions of years safely.
Thank you for the good analysis. I'm on day ahead pricing in The Netherlands, and yes the peak was very high at €1,21 per kWh (incl energy tax and VAT). Some eople here commented that the Energy Transition was failing and all that FUD. Turns out it was more of a fluke, and that we were selling a lot of energy to Germany those days. Baffling to hear that German capacity was only running at 49%. Anyway, all of November my average was €0.28 per kWh, and for December it is now at €0,26 per kWh. All of which is below the average fixed contract.
while battery capacity will help summer solar to be used in evenings, in winter it will allow coal plants to be more effectively used :)
@@bilgyno1 German capacity might not have been running due to internal grid constraints, they have a lot north-south which is not reflected as its own separate market due to politicsl reasons, or by how expensive that capacity was and got priced out, such as natural gas. It was a one time thing and overall prices have been cheaper this year but it signaled the fragility of the european power system and its dependance on imported natural gas. Also, Germany has destroyed tons of demand which does not seem to be coming back.
". All of which is below the average fixed contract."
Which should make sense, because fixed contracts are sold the most, the companies need them to be safe. Maybe even make some money too
My variable contract cost is at 26,7 cents in the Netherlands. So you didn't win in November. I saw fixed contracts are a couple of cents cheaper so you wouldn't win in December as well. Though you probably save a lot in the summer months.
@@dankspain > Also, Germany has destroyed tons of demand which does not seem to be coming back.
Really? Energy charts says demand peaked in 2007 and has steadily decreased since. You make it sound like it drops off a cliff, which just isn't true.
Thank you so much for this content, so thoughtfully and professionally presented 💪🏽
Wow, a really strong Video, i love it!
I wish you merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Thanks for your work 😁
Thanks for the comment! Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas Micheal! Hope this new year brings you all the subscribers you deserve!!
Thanks! Merry Christmas!
As European (northern one) if I ever got panic, I made fresh coffee and solve problem.
BUT YOU USED SCARCE ELECTRICITY FOR YOUR COFFEE AND EUROPE DIDN'T KNOW YOU WHERE DOING IT SO YOU MADE THE PROBLEM WORSE
jk
@@juhajuntunen7866 calm and thinking. Solving problems with a calm voice and clear mind! Bravo from Germany 🇩🇪!! Keep being like this, neighbors! Don't listen to upstirred voices like that comment!
@@Robbedoes2 Na, he went in his outside Sauna house and made the coffee with the local fire there. Since the tree grow just next to his house, this is, over 50 years, CO2 neutral.
@@Robbedoes2 You can make the so called nokipannu (soot pan ) coffee.. on fire :)
@@holgerschurig4430 Skandinavians drink more coffee and do more Sauna than trees regrow.
By that logic oil is renewable as plants will get trapped under the earth all the time so over 10.000 years it's CO2 neutral.
i work in a BMHKW (BioMasseHeizKraftWerk), and we are burning trees, bushes old pallets other things that is made from wood that is unpainted or untreated.
Also, we burn bioslack from Water treatment plants or hot it is called. Those are basically dried, dead bacteria and is pressed into pellets. We generate superheated Steam at 70bar and power a heat engine, or in simpler therms a two stage steam turbine with vacuum condenser. The steam that leaves the low pressure stage at 200°C, goes through a heat exchanger and heats up water to 107°C at 5bar and is then cooled further down to about 125°C and goes back into the boiler while traveling beforehand through three economizer stages and enters the boiler with 220′C again.
We generate 20MVA at 30KV
There is another type of Biomass power generation you may mean, it is called a biomass reactor. it turns biomass into natural gas and then this is burned to generate Heat, either as hot water or steam.
Our plant is running at 100% constantly but actually our plant is capable of making 28MVA and we are not legally allowed to generate more than 20MVA. So technically we are at 72% capacity but legally and noted at 100%. There are many Power plants that could produce more but are not allowed to or are noted with lower power ratings. I don't know the reason, but there could be some benefits if you being in another category or something like that. I do maintenance and operating task, i have no idea what they do above me and i don't care as long they leave me alone with their silly thoughts.
You nicely demonstrated that the European grid in its present shape is capable of delivering maximum demand even during widespread dunkelflaute. But it would be even more interesting and important to run scenarios that integrate the unchallengeable need to phase out all fossil power generation over the next 10 to 15 years acknowledging the fact that the Paris Agreement is at the brink of catastrophic failure.
This part. Reading up what climate change and AMOC collapse are forecast to do to Europe .. you really don't want that to happen to the continent you're living on. Europe really needs to drag the rest of the world into serious effective action already.
Yes current grid obviously works, by having full fossil fuel capacity greater than demand. So we forever need to have 100% current fossil fuel power plants, and probably 400% solar and wind to rarely use the fossil fuel part. Electricity is just third of all power, to cover rest triple it all.
I don't think we should completely phase out fossil fuels as this will undoubtedly pose a threat to our security, and neither will our push towards carbon neutrality stop climate change. The only way now is to figure out how to adapt to a hostile environment and continue trying to reduce fuel use, through lowering demand wherever possible and using alternative sources of energy to not be so reliant on energy imports. Fossil infrastructure must remain a failsafe however.
@@mostlyguesses8385 The model sketched by you - keeping 100% fossil capacity as backup - is far too expensive. You did not consider storage capacities which will render the majority of fossil power plants superfluous.
Energy storage is way too costly. Actually keeping backup fossil fuel system for bad 10% of days of year, is not too costly. US kwh is $.10, Europe somehow is $.40. By definition the US cost covers fuel and equipment, so keeping backup equipment only adds under $.10 a kwh... Energy is just 5% of gdp, so we can cover a under 2% rise to have backup system... But yes power prices will be higher, 2 systems are costlier than 1. 3rd world will build just one system, probably coal....
This is the type of content youtube exists for
Though you've concentrated on EU , the UK has many interconnects with EU countries - Ireland, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Norway and an interconnect to Germany underway.
This geographic spread helps us all to stretch any peak demand.
france makes uk pay hefty money for the electricity
They choose to leave the EU & like the video explains we have plenty of power to cover all our own needs, we don't need to buy any from the UK.
Its much more likely that the UK is buying power from the EU and prices went up since Brexit 😉
Great Britain will have over 10GW of interconnectors once the German link is complete, and there are more in development.
Given our location, if the whole of the EU has zero wind, it is highly likely that GB, Ireland and Norway will be off the edge of the weather system and will have wind, the bigger the grid, the less likely zero wind is.
@@tomast9034 France often pays GB to take its spare Nuclear power, so that it doesn't have to shut down its nuclear plants overnight, right now it is importing electricity from GB and paying us for it. Yes, electricity sometimes gets expensive, but that is not France's fault, the market covers the whole European grid, and overall, being connected saves us massively when the wind stops here but is still blowing hard in Denmark and Spain because they are under different weather systems. That is far more often the case than for everyone to be at low wind and the prices to spike.
@@suicidalbanananana No, "they" didn't. Roughly 22-25% of the country (mostly older and retired people) chose to drag the other >75% out of the EU against their will.
If the EU has plenty of its own power, why does it need to buy in fossil fuels (natural gas and oil) to fuel power stations? The UK has plenty of cheap wind? Why prefer to buy from Russia or dodgy middle eastern countries than the UK? That's entirely illogical.
the "No body knows" category are all the very small power generation (kwh range) they are all falling in similar categories as the big produces. But some are special:
- garbage dump gas,
- tidal power
I wouldn't call it a true deregulated market. It's more like a protectionist market for oligopolies. For example, a tiny player (like myself) of solar power is not allowed to sell the energy to whoever they want. They can sell only to a specific 3rd party, who sells it with a huge profit without doing a thing. In my case, I have a neighbour - a small factory and I can't sell to them (legally) where only 12 m of cable is needed. I have to sell it to the 3rd party and they sell to the factory at 5x 6x sometimes 7x what I'm paid for my energy. The EU (grid) system is messed up on so many levels it's killing manufacturing and any kind of economic activities due to too much of useless and most of the time monopoly/oligopoly protectionist policies.
A not serious answer: Build the cable and keep quiet about it. Both you and the factory will be happy :😂🤫
We have market price for small generation selling too in finland. So no such bullshit there. But we also dont ever pay out our panels with the amound of sun we get 😂
@@swededude1992thats the 3rd world country way.
Lease them the land under solar panels at a variable daily price decided by the approximate amount of photons that fall on the solar panels calculated by the amount of electricity produced. You provide them with the cable so that they can install necessary measurement equipment [power meter]. What they do with the electricity, you don't care about since you give it to them for free. ;-)
Not everything is perfect.
Really well done, I wrote my bachelor thesis about the eu grid and one of the results was that running it fully on renewables was possible but with heightened demand for transmission. With current regulations and battery price estimates from a few years ago some countries could get in trouble but nothing fundamentaly unfixable. Energy prices were relatively stable as well.
I find it a really interesting topic, I think I will also do something in that direction for my bachelor, but with focus on Switzerland where given the morphology, climate change will have strong impacts on flow regimes and thus hydro power.
Hey, i would love to read this thesis. Is it available somewhere?
ok as a west European I'm clicking this to hopefully finally learn why people in the US and eastern europe have blackouts
Poland here, my whole life all the blackouts in my area were caused by nature damaging the power grid. For example once we had a sudden drop in temperature where trees haven't had the time to pull out water from their trunks and were shattering when it froze, falling on the power lanes.
@@nukedispenser349 Same in Northern Europe, it is always nature that screws it up. In my 24 years in Sweden, I've had blackouts three times. All three during violent thunderstorms.
The question is though, how often does this occur? If it occurs more often in eastern Europe than in Northern Europe, you want to look into why that is. Is there a difference in the design that makes it more prone to natural phenomena? Is there a maintenance issue (not trimming trees near powerlines)? Is it something else?
The thing is, if as it happened in November, no wind and no solar is coming in, electricity prices on EU stock marked jumpes up. This is because the backup coal power stations in Germany have not been started since this is more expensive for the energy providers than leave it to pay by the market
Yeah, turning thermal power plants on and off quickly is very inefficient. But in the future, batteries will handle this type of short duration spike
@@SizeMichael It also costs them money, because adding capacity reduces the market price. So they earn less with the plants that are already scheduled to run. The same happened around December 12th. They kept half of the thermal production offline and Germany's imports raised the prices of neighbouring countries energy by a massive amount.
@@Psi-StormThat is why we keep them running and turn the excess into heat. The actual price is only speculative nature. The costs for energy production are covered by the lowest price you find😉
The weather forecast is pretty on point for 3 consecutive days. Plenty time to power anything up and get the demand down😉
You always ignore that the demand can be steered as well.
Numbers help show reality. Batteries can't help grid. As example, UK yearly uses 300 TerraWH, which is 300 billion kwh, and with 30m households this is 300,000m kwh/30m so 10,000kwh annual demand per household. If deep winter has a 36 dark calm period each house needs batteries equal to 1000 kwh. This is 10 Tesla sized batteries a house needed as storage, to cover say January current grid. If we increase electric demand by 50% w EVs and heat pumps, each household needs 15 EVs. The goal is to electrify all, from steel to cement making, so 30 EVs per household.... Experts know this is unfeasible, so we will burn gas and coal plenty the weeks it's dark and still .. It's gonna be hard and costly to get much greener, I wish it werent.... Soooo we will have gas and coal plants always ready to carry entire grid weeks or even 1 month .... Batteries of people can't cover weeks or months, it's off by 15x or more..... 3rd world ain't gonna build extra plants to backup solar, so they'll do coal and claim poverty as valid excuse ... But we probably can cut 1st world co2 by half, which is something, half by huge effort, to 6 tons CO2 a person. India is now at 2. UK at 10, so down to 5 by huge effort will be helpful even if far from net zero... Sigh ... We want heating, transport, and manufacturing, that takes lots of energy, we want to live like Kings dreamed of, it ain't gonna be net zero ..
Wind also doesn't go to zero, at least in a 25 year study of UK commercial wind power, in which it never went to zero, over that entire period.
The big difference there is onshore vs offshore. Onshore can go to 0, and even does so regularly (though it rarely does everywhere at once). Offshore will drop to low production of 15 or 20 percent at times, but it doesn't really ever go to 0.
Not 0 but only 3.5% was very low and almost a whole week and all around Europe. Only place with wind was Sicily at the time
Bear,
wind generator output is a cube of wind speed, so small drops in speed give a large drop in output and vice versa. That is why wind output is so spiky when looked at graphically, Americans describe it as pogo stick power.
@@iareid8255 This isn't true. Wind turbines have a small on-ramp at very low wind speeds that can look quadratic (or even cubic, on some turbines). However, in the bulk of the power generation curve, wind speed and power generation are roughly proportional.
@@jillfizzard1018 maybe basic physics from school before posting nonsense? Just because turbines are designed to pitch out from higher speed and keep power the same, doesn't mean that wind power is not cubic to speed...
Epic video. This must have taken so much time to make. Loving it.
I have been living 30 years on my own now , in all that time we had maybe 1 or 2 blackouts, caused locally when a power cable was damaged in the neighborhood. This is then fixed within 6-12 hours. In the whole country, it's very rare to have anything bigger, the system just runs for 99,99% of the time and has done so for decades
Likewise. Only a couple blackouts longer than a few hours, but the occasional smaller one that's solved within half an hour. Not counting planned cuts for maintenance and expansion, obviously.
You also have to consider that that capacity is not really available at all times. See how France had lots of nuclear powerplants on revision in 2024, how Romania has 50% of the large hydro on the Danuble not available for repairs, etc. On the other side, there are many battery projects in process of being built and also some gas. The system was also disturbed by the crazy guy in Kremlin and his war, as Ukraine needs electricity to replace the damaged capacity.
2022 the revisions on nuclear powerplants in France, 2023 and 2024 everything was fine.
@p4olo537 Yes, it was fine. I am just saying that it was a period with downtimes.
RWE CEO: "don`t bother me with facts, give me MONEY! MORE MONEY!"
Bild: "THE GREEN PARTY/GREEN ENERGY IS KILLING US ALL!!! WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE!!!"
Well done with the analysis. Very clear and comprehensive, packed in less than 20 minutes!
I saw a comment about grid capacity/congestion in the Netherlands and that's true. Currently the grid (so that would be the cables not the installed capacity) is at the limit current safety regulations allow for and new companies cannot be connected to the grid. Dutch network operators do have maps for this.
this is an incredible video showing what an incredible system we have today! kudos for the amount of effort and quality put into this project!
We need a clear way to explain why the marginal pricing market works. It's very easy to criticize that "10% of the electricity generation shouldn't define the entire price", but we need to explain why this system is the one garantees the CHEAPEST and MOST RELIABLE electricity supply in the long term.
Even if true, it needs some sort of reform to avoid price spikes due to external causes, but overall its the best way to price it yes
Not for France lol, have cheap nuclear and pay expensivee gas price, doodoo system, all to please ret@d German who love 'green' (Russian gas) stuff but hate nuclear.
@@Perrirodan1 Renewables are the cheapest energy source. Nuclear really isnt cheap if you cut the massive amounts of subsidies they need.
@@rfgaergaerg1612 Because rewables are not subsidised? Renewables are only cheap if you plan to use natural gas for 60 percent of your power.
I am finnish and I work at building and renewal of industrial and power generation and my close friend works as a lineman, neither one of us has ever heard of not enough power type scenario.
ps. pump storage hydro does not work as well in finnlnd as ground is so old the "mountains" are not that high.
(sorry for my maybe bad english, as I am a dunk european)
Very good analysis - one note: during severe drought the nuclear plants will struggle to run at full capacity due to lack of cooling water. I'm not an expert so this is hear-say to me, but it does make sense.
I don't think this will coincide with 'Dunkelflaute' though, as drought typically requires plentiful sunshine :)
Nuclear powerplants that use coolingwater from rivers or the sea might get into trouble, though ones using cooling towers should be fine, unless ALL water is restricted, which I doubt as they will secure some for critical infrastructure like Nuclear powerplants (some water is evaporated in the cooling towers so there is losses and needs because of it)
@@TheEsseboy Indeed, as I understood it's not so much too little water, but the temperature after using it merging back into the river or water basins. In drought situations the total volume is too small to handle the added heat.
@@diatonicdelirium1743 Yupp, we don't wanna make the rivers go from 25 Celsius to 35 celsius, that would be devastating to the river.
I have been on tours of nuclear power plants and every plant has redundancy cooling towers which help in times of drought.
That issue is the same for all thermal plants, it is not only for nuclear plants.
Due to the huge decreases in the past year in battery pricing, we are going to see a massive increase in battery capacity in the coming couple of years in Europe. This won't just mean greater storage of renewables, but also give us even better ability to transmit it since we can spread it more out over time.
161 GW of battery storage is a useless measurement if they don’t also state GWh. 161 GW for how long!
3 hours. But they can extend the capacity regularly afterwards.
Normally 2-3 hours. However, it is not useless, since they are normally designed to cover small shifts. They dont have to run for a day. This task will be taken with other means.
@@PHRMNK A good start but if they want to switch to all renewable they need ability to store over whole seasons since summer produces more that winter.
Really interesting video! Do you have a source for the chart at 13:45 ? I'm interested in learning more about this electricity supply-demand curve.
Thank you for this video
Here in the Netherlands there was a huge power outage a decade or 2 ago when a Apache helicopter flew against some electricity poles (or whatever ya call them).
This is a great video.
There should be another one like this for modeling the energy prices. Otherwise we cannot really understand what happened in the Dunkelflaute. We also have no idea if the Energiewende is financially feasible.
It is already happening, all of it, all or your requirements and obviously, it is feasible. Cost and technology wise.
One week ago we had again over 100% onshore wind generation. This happens pretty often. If those fuckwiths would actually turn of the gas and coal plants, instead of letting them idle all day long, we could lower our CO2 footprint by 80% , just like that and you could spent less than 8ct on electricity on average.
Look up the Bundesnetzagentur provided service SMARD. There you have an interactive graph that is usually updated every five minutes.
I can't tell you why you are lied too, but i can tell to whom you listen and i can only give you the advice to stop it, because we all know to whom they are listening and it is not the German public or industry.
Very informative, thanks for taking the time to make this video👏
Wind and solar have the advantage of being very predictable, up to several days out, so there is plenty of time to start up mothballed fossil generators. East-West interconnects are also interesting because they spread out the peak moments in specific countries, and access sunrise in the east and sunset in the west. Solar installed in south, including north edge of Africa has very few clouded days resulting in very reliable solar output. The main issue there is government stability, required for investors. It's not just new battery technology, the developments in long-distance HVDC connections are an important part of the solution.
Beautiful, high effort analysis.
You missed out on demand steering😉
I would like you seen, having looked this up. I lately talked to a manager of Alstrom and he assured me, that the whole factory had no losses, if it would run on renewables and thus cease production, when these are not available. It is a management problem only, as the forecast is only good for a week and scheduling in, this quick, maintenance and training days, is generally disliked🤗
really high quality analysis, love it :)
Every time we see an ignorant comment about the grid being at breaking point, let's drop them a link to this video :)
Well, the Dutch grid really can't take much more on most main 110 and 380kV connections. There's a huge waiting list for new businesses to be connected or to get their connection upgraded: the installed capacity isn't the problem, it's the infrastructure to transport that capacity either to the customer or back to the grid (recently, while on vacation in a small place near the German border, I heard that a company there could only get solar panels installed if they also installed a few containers full of batteries at their site, as the local grid just can't handle the huge backfeed.
Hi MIchael, very cool video, explaining the details very well. You must have spent a lot of time running all this simulations. Thanks for this
Very impressive analysis, but it does seem a bit strange not to include the UK, Norway and Switzerland. The UK's rapidly growing offshore wind capacity means that on a continental scale wind output never gets close to zero, and the flexibility of its market helps the aging French nuclear fleet run at a steady output. Norway and Switzerland are able to use their conventional hydro as effectively 100% efficient pumped hydro by using cheap imported electricity whilst allowing their reservoirs to fill naturally
Said aging French nuclear fleet was about to get destroyed by Macron, when war and bad timed maintenance suddenly made him realize that we needed more energy, not less, not just because we use more, but because we have to sell it to other countries.
It also revealed some scandalous market dark practice about companies buying French energy for very, very cheap and selling it for triple the price if not more and yet still cheaper than what other countries pays. French energy bills, amongst other things, rose so much that during that period that people are now advocating the complete stop of selling energy like that, especially to other countries.
Experienced several black outs, living in a remote medieval village in France. Due to heavy thunderstorms (overhead electrical lines) or strikes of thr EDF. We were very well prepared; heating with a big fireplace; cooking on a special stove with propane gas and lots of water bottles. Also a pump with mountain spring water on the central square.... Wish now to have never leave; although the Netherlands are not so bad after all.
In the UK, the electricity market is designed so that the most expensive producers set the prices. Renewables and others are cheaper, however the peaker plants (Mostly gas) are much more expensive.
Then the National Grid charges more for producers who are situated further away from population centres, thus the places that can produce the most renewable energy has to pay more to deliver it. (There are also massive delays in approving plants and infrastructure, leading to lead in times of 20 to 30 years.)
Both of these are normal and sensible things that most electricity markets do.
There's a summary of marginal (aka pay-as-clear) pricing on-screen at 13:42.
And transmission pricing signals reflect the cost (hopefully accurately) of getting power from where it's produced to where it needs to go. If an investor is considering two otherwise equivalent generation projects, then you want them to choose the one that will require less spending on transmission upgrades.
Paying more for longer transmission is… sensible.
Great video! Thanks!
11:20
That map seems to be missing a lot of interconnects.
I know the uk has interconnects to Ireland and Norway.
, I assume theres interconnects from Norway to Germany/Denmark and isn't there one from Morocco to Spain also?
This map only shows the connections that are yet to be completed. The "projects" of common interest. Many more operational interconnections exist, you are correct
@@SizeMichael although it's probably old version, 2nd PL-LT will be AC on land not DC via Baltic sea
Would be interested in a video about limited net capacities, as I heard that there are countries in which new companies can’t be connected to the grid due to limits in net capacity. Even existing companies are promoted to limit usage on peak moments.
great video as always
Interesting to hear your thoughts. However I would have liked to hear about countries energy reliability, resilience and energy independence.
Impressive data crunching and interesting analysises. I admire tha work. One thing that I found here that is lacking is future decarbonisation coming soon.
I was seeing similar video like that about my Polish power grid from a month ago and conclusions were "get ready to blackout" it we will keep decarbonisation - shutting off the on demand thermal power plants.
Well that stupid, if they're on demand anyway then they shouldn't be running if they're not needed?
@Max24871 the problem is as in the movie, what happen when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine. If you add closing down of "on demand" power plants then it's going into a catastrophy
the water reservoir often fuction as battery, with having potencial energy stored in mass of water on higher ground, and time it can start giving back to the grid in around 30s - 1 min.
14:15 - No one would build a new gas plant because it was a one-year opportunity or keep it ready for 1 in 100 years weather event like in Texas 2021 showed. Just after Russian “operation” began and prises spiked, no one rushed to build new wells to extract more oil and gas because it was short-term.
This is why in Europe some countries have capacity market i.e. Poland, UK or PJM in US. To be sure that installed capacity would meet peak demand, by offereing multi year capacity contracts for new capacity.
Since energy is just the integral of power, a sufficiently granular energy futures market becomes indistinguishable from a capacity market
But you're right, energy market + capacity market is safer than just energy market alone, and I believe many more member states are looking to add capacity markets in the coming years
@@SizeMichael Energy is integral of power, but you need to meet power demand in every moment. Due to weather fluctuations peak capacities are not needed in some years, so there is no revenue for them, but fixed costs remain the same for keeping them ready for operation.
You are referring to natural gas😉 Siemens is producing gargantuan electrolysers in Indonesia right now. Those will produce all the hydrogen for these new gas plants.
@@SizeMichaelyou're forgetting risk. A capacity market removes that.
@@SizeMichael Texas HAS an energy futures market. That's the point. It failed. It's a day-ahead market. But making it a 10-years-ahead market wouldn't have prevented that failure.
It's important to understand that it doesn't matter how "granular" the market is. ANY market that is based on fiat currency that is printed out of thin air can ALWAYS fail. If you don't OWN the capacity, there's no guarantee that you're getting the energy, at ANY price.
Very interesting analysis! I thought we were in much worse shape regarding not just the capacity, but the load balancing of all those unreliable renewable sources.
Good video again. It is sort of the same discussion that solar does not do anything in winter... sure it small but all panels together still produce quite a bit. An now with plug in home batteries every home can install a small battery in seconds and use more of their own solar. One will not make a difference but with bigger numbers it starts to add up. Shaving off the top demand otherwise supplied by the most expensive option. Best solution to high prices is hight prices.
Also, even if you're charging with grid electricity, you can avoid the most expensive hours. If 10% of households suddenly go to 0 demand for a few hours, then the grid wont be strained nearly as much during those peak hours.
So nobody knows where additional 3GW of power comes from? It's the little things that small countries like we in the Baltics keep quiet about. Some of it is harvested from our Wolt Indian food delivery cyclists. Some from my pet blue whale Volodymir on a dynamo leash, who is trying to chase away Russian shadow and Baltic fleets from the Baltic sea. Only thing, every Christmas season he does a tour of coastal cities, asking people if the city he's swam into is finished developping. If the majority answers positive and that's the case, his plan is to whip up the waters and flood the city.
Aaaanyway, this calming and positive breakdown of European "power" is what we needed in this dark and gloomy time (and weather). Great job.
✳Merry christmas and happy 2025 champs!♡✳ 🌲🌰🌻🎑
Another excellent video Michael. It's Christmas Day here and we had a nice solar power cooked Turkey. Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas!
We dont have blackouts we just have extreeeeeeeeeeemeeee electricity prices
Not that extreme tbh. Ask Australians :)
Hello from coal powered Bulgaria... where we had blackouts for 2 hours every 2 hours during the holidays.
Additionally storage will play a huge role in the future. If our politicians manage to create a more flexible price, people will use their stored energy when it is expensive and loaf their batteries when it is cheap. This could massively help stabilizing the system and making it EV proof.
Made it tax free and it do sread like weed.
EVs could even help with that, if we increase the adoption of smart charging and V2G.
Batteries can't help grid. As example, UK yearly uses 300 TerraWH, which is 300 billion kwh, and with 30m households this is 300,000m kwh/30m so 10,000kwh annual demand per household. If deep winter has a 36 dark calm period each house needs batteries equal to 1000 kwh. This is 10 Teslas as storage, to cover say January current grid. If we increase electric demand by 50% w EVs and heat pumps, each household needs 15 EVs. The goal is to electrify all, from steel to cement making, so 30 EVs per household.... Experts know this is unfeasible, so we will burn gas and coal plenty the weeks it's dark and still .. It's gonna be hard and costly to get much greener, I wish it werent.... Soooo we will have gas and coal plants always ready to carry entire grid weeks or even 1 month .... Batteries of people can't cover weeks or months, it's off by 15x or more..... 3rd world ain't gonna build extra plants to backup solar, so they'll do coal and claim poverty as valid excuse ... But we probably can cut 1st world co2 by half, which is something, half by huge effort, to 6 tons CO2 a person. India is now at 2. UK at 10. Cold Canada 14. China now making all metal and cement for Europe is 13....
@@mostlyguesses8385 lol, your username is appropriate 😂
Not sure you should joke about names. My Taiwanese roommate says John is slang for gay, and my Egyptian neighbor says it means toilet. So to half the planet . . . hmm. Look at foreignors faces when you tell em your name, Jon.. My roommate told me some jokes about John which I can't repeat, wow, some people are mean they are terrible John jokes.
15:45 In Germany there are several GW of power plants (approximately 2GW lignite, 8GW hard coal, and a few GW natural gas) in reserve, that don't participate in the electricity market and can only operate if the authorities ask them to operate. There are also some gas power plants that don't produce electricity for the grid, but only for a local factory.
Just bought a 16kw battery storage system for the home
We get some power issues each year and I bought a battery system that has a UPS facility
The battery system I am insalling also has the ability to add 19kw of solar via 3 MPPT's
Please don‘t mix units for capacity and power. Your battery storage is 16 kWh. 😉
@@achenarmyst2156 He mixes units because he is a bad electrician...
Thanks for informing :D
Good work on the modeling, it something more people should do before coming up with an opinion on energy systems. A few points though.
DISCLAIMER: I work for a competitor developer to RWE and did some energy systems modeling at uni, so I have a certain bias.
- Your model has limitations, especially regarding transmission constraints and the dispatchability of different sources. More nuance is needed to understand the implications of a dunkelflaute. Hydro storage and gas reservoirs are also not accurately modeled, as inflows and outflows are not accounted for, which usually impact market prices during extreme events.
- To create hypothetical models with pricing, you could use a TIMES or similar model that allows for more complexity, including transmission constraints and technology costs.
- Regarding dispatchable capacity, you assume hydro, gas, coal, and nuclear are always available and dispatchable, but this is not the case in Europe, especially for gas. Nuclear failed us in France in 2022. Our energy economics depend on gas and hydro availability, which is based on storage and demand. Generators consider opportunity costs and may not always be available.
- Regarding transmission, you assume no internal market restrictions, but this is not the case. Germany has limited transmission between the North and South, which is paid for by all Germans and not reflected in the single market price. When linking the Nordics to Bulgaria, sure the frequency might be the same, and some limited flows will be in that direction. We have two major bottlenecks mainly from Germany and France.
- Regarding the future of transmission, the current plans and status fall short of what’s needed for the 2030-2050 plans. While it’s better than the current system, retiring coal, nuclear, and gas requires a stronger grid. You are also assuming that all these planned upgrades will get built on time, which is a bit of an overreach.
- Regarding pricing and outlook for developers, futures markets provide prices for the next few years, but they’re illiquid and not useful for developing new generation. It’s challenging to plan and sell electricity from a new 1GW power plant for 25 years at a profitable price in Europe. Partnerships with petrochemical industries are limited which could enable you to get such a big contract, so developers either risk it based on market prices, which are not looking good due to renewable cannibalization or ask for government subsidies.
- Regarding RWE’s CEO comment. Germany’s energy situation is complex. Despite a decrease in demand due to the Ukraine crisis, prices reach exorbitant levels at times, making it unlikely for demand to grow again. The German government’s stubborn energy plans have exacerbated this issue. Firstly, they are doubling down on nuclear retirement, exposing the grid to gas marginal pricing. Secondly, their hydrogen plan, which supports the future dispatchable generation, makes 0 economic sense. Developers are pulling the plug on hydrogen and massive renewable projects because of it. Additionally, the government’s refusal to split the market to incentivize generation allocation based on transmission constraints further hinders development. These factors, combined with shocks like the dunkelflaute, strain Germany’s already precarious economic situation and make it difficult for new capacity to be built.
I have heard about proposal to also use Bahnstromnetz for transmission of power from north to south. Is there some new info available about that project/study?
@@MrToradragon if you are referring to using the rail traction grids present in Germany, Austria, etc with a different frequency sounds complex and like it would not help much. We are talking about 10s GWs scale of transmission capacity needed north to south, not a few 100s MW
@@dankspain Yes, i am referring to that grid. As I have wrote, I have heard that there is some proposal/study going on. Thus I just wonder whether they will just reduce strain on public grid in the south by feeding it as much as possible from the north, or whether some other, more interesting, approach will be used. I can imagine either upgrade of the pylons in such way that they would also carry 50Hz or HVDC lines or upgrade of the system so it would be able to handle much more power. For example by going for higher voltage or more pairs of wires on existing lines, which would then lead to increased capacity or both. But I would guess that upgrades would still yield only few hundred MW per line.
Run-of-the-river hydroelectricity has pretty strict requirements to not affect the river water levels too much.
While this would have some impact on nature, allowing them higher margins for storing/depleting water could add up to significant capacity for smoothing generation/demand.
I'm not sure if Europe will "always" need to burn stuff because there are a lot of people working on cost effective medium/long term energy storage, and "forever" is a long time :) But it's definitely clear from this analysis that anyone trying to get subsidies to build new fossil capacity is just trying to cash in, despite the fact we have plenty of capacity already.
There are redox flow batteries in development where power and capacity are decoupled. If the storage proves stable enough (low loss over time) then we'd just need to scale capacity to adapt them to longer term/seasonal use
People are also working on using less energy. Energy efficient housing design, energy efficient appliances, work from home, etcetera - it all adds up. A well built and well insulated house uses less energy and is also more comfortable to live in.
@@stefangrobbink7760 Actually there are redox flow batteries already in commercial production and use, which, as you say, decouples power and capacity so to store more energy you just need bigger tanks and more liquid. The issue is that they currently rely on Vanadium which is rare and expensive, so the challenge lots of clever engineers are working on is to switch to something common and cheap instead. I'm sure we'll see significant cost reductions by the end of the decade.
@@tealkerberus748 Absolutely! Lots we can do in that regard. I've visited a few "PassivHaus" homes, both new build and retrofit, and they were all pretty amazing. I dream of living in one :)
The way you explained the graph at 4:15 - 4:50 - chapeau. A nice colored picture, a pointing stick and a well structured narrative...
Yes, they rely on electricity from Scandinavia which has a lot of hydro. Prices went sky high in Sweden because we were exporting it to Germany. Great policy
How much did that price peak influence the total monthly electricity cost ?
@Perbear
Depends on what tariff people are on. Myvown onthly electricity cost varies substantially over the year even though my daily usage is about the same (about 10 kwh) and I avoid using it at the peak times. Domestic users who consume more electricity and do not have the option are hit with huge bills in the winter months.
@@Perbear almos everyone has fixed Prices in Germany so you just pay 0,35c per Kwh no matter what. If you one of the few who is priced peer Hour at the Marketprice then you would (In the Wost case that happend this Year) pay 2 oder more € per Kwh
@@PerbearVery little, people are whiny tbh.
You would whine if your bill was much higher than usual.
It is true that the wind may not be blowing where you are but it is blowing somewhere else. So that’s why we have an electricity grid.
5:30
This is why I'm pro-nuclear
You really worked this. Great video, and a pleasure to watch.
Here in Denmark we do have blackouts, even if they are becoming less and less yearly. Though this is unrelated to global energy supply and because something localized happened, such as weather causing damage to the grid. We do have more and more power running through the ground though, unlike my youth where electricity ran through lines going between tall towers.
Also consumption definitely matters too. My American friends elecricity bills are much higher than mine, despite them paying less per unit.
In Poland whenever we have Power Outages, they at worst last a few hours and are also local (half a neighbourhood at best), due to Substations giving out. Some places suffer more due to lack of modernization in the power grid.
Thanks for the great analysis❤
In my region, the energy policy has made it impossible to supply more electricity to industries so they get denied when they request it. I would not call that a deregulated market.
I would guess that these are cases where a business plan pencils out if you can buy excess capacity on an existing power plant, but doesn't quite pencil out if you have to sign binding long-term contracts for the energy in order to convince someone to take on the risk of building a new power plant
In the limit, any business can build their own gas power plant on-site, and it's not unheard of
There are also many load shedding contracts, where large users, who can stop, saw mills is a good example get paid a fee, but power companies can cut them off when required. This plays a huge part in keeping lights on
@@SizeMichael To me this rather seems like inadequate power transmission or substation capacity. The question is how big that region is, where it is located and whether there are some plants to upgrade the capacity of power lines. On the other hand as long as the industry is able to get enough fuel there (gas, propane, fuel oil...) it should be, especially those who also have high dement for heat, to operate some form of small cogeneration plants, improving power supply in given region.
The 3 GW of "nobody knows" are decentralized thermocouple generators. Mostly greenhouse heating or woodworking incinerators that produce electricity with the excess heat and dump it on the network.
EU = Trade agreement, Europe = Effing continent.
They like calling the EU "Europe" because it lets them call anyone outside of the EU "not true Europe"
Same thing happens with the US calling itself "America"
Weird how a trade agreement takes precedent over your country's constitution.
@@foetusdeletus6313 it suck's, that's what it does
This seems to be mostly about producer side only. However, as a consumer, outages can also happen after e.g. a storm. In general, putting last mile cables underground, and having multiple routes above ground helps this kind of issues.
I love facts and you summed up a lot of them nicely! Thank you for your excellent video 👍
Love your numbers.
I missed the "never" in the title and was about to throw some proper shade before even watching the video...
went into comments to see if someone else was faster, so had an opportunity to reread the title...
dodged that one ;)
At 11:56 it says European pumped hydro is fairly built out. Is this just about run-of-river or does it include potential off-river pumped hydro? I know historically just run-of-river was built and off-river pumped hydro was usually ignored as storage was not the primary purpose.
Huh, Russia has cut a power cable from Finland to Estonia. It seems they're aware and want to put on pressure
and I always get surprised when some Americans say stuff like "there's not enough electricity or that when they make a small solar farm for their own property and try to sell the excess back to the government they were told that the grid wouldn't withstand the increased load
I think the only reason for not having blackouts in Germany is our neighbors having nuclear power plants. Why did we shut ours down?
Nope. Germany has sufficient power plants.
Great video!
What is the source for the Battery storage map? there seems to be a surprising amount listed in Ireland I would love to research it more!
The round trip efficiency of pumped hydro is over 100 % because most of them are placed in the high alps and they are fed by melting water.
Glacier melt water is however going to decline as glacier masses rapidly dwindle due to global warming.
Nice! Since « The round trip efficiency of pumped hydro is over 100% » we have a free energy system !
Pumped hydro can’t be over 100% efficiency, and especially mentioning the round trip…
Please don’t spread this statement
@@0xN1C0 You did watch the video, didn't you? At 3:00 the words "over 100%" were said and explained.
@@u1zha I did… It doesn’t change the matter.
Did you understand my point?
You understand that adding more energy into a system then what is lost doesn’t make the system over 100% efficient right ?
Its like saying that my electric car is over 100% efficient because i charge it with an external power source while driving.
If you value the extra energy put into the system there is no such thing as a over 100% efficiency system.
@@0xN1C0 No one is talking about thermodynamic efficiency, we're talking about the efficiency as a battery, how much energy we can get out of it compared to what we charged it with. Since we can get more out of the battery than we charged it with, it's over 100% efficient as a battery.
Similar to how a heat pump is 300%+ efficient at heating or cooling, it provided a lot more heating/cooling than the electrical energy you put into it.
In both situations there is a limit, obviously they are not free energy in the thermodynamic sense, no one is claiming that.
I just came here to say that I do have blackouts... Had several at Mallorca during Christmas. All lasted less than a minute.
But the whole point of solar and wind is to replace everything fossil (coal, oil, gas) so all that would go away.
But it isn't yet, and it won't be until the capacity is there.
Some of them are likely to be paid to stay ready for the handful of days when they're needed for the next 10 years or so, because a 95% reduction in carbon would be better than any other sector will manage.
Otherwise you'd be asking today's storage to cope with the generation of 2035, and ignoring any plans to build more storage over that period.
Yes, the guy proved Germany currently isn't without electricity. Unimpressive. Net Zero is impossible without a 20x battery price drop. But we just get videos saying nothing ..
Pumped reservoirs are usually a lake, which gather rain and snowmelt, so its not surprising that it's >100% efficient 😂
I think there's a lot of growth potential in the "nobody knows" category. Germany is betting big on it :-
Very informative and interesting especially for such a numbers dense video.
One question came to mind watch in it;
Do you have any idea what all those AI server farms would do to the (European) grid? Would it even make a dent?
We have microsecond to few minute blackouts almost everyday here in rural Finland when windy 😅 No matter that most of the distribution wires are already dug to ground as cables at great cost to consumers.
there is no such thing as a microsecond blackout, that's just a noise spike that's almost certainly too short to bother any equipment (it should get blocked by their AC filter)
2:33 could anyone please explain?? Where does this come from? Is this miscalculations in other sources of generation? Or is this home generation? What is this it’s 3GWs it’s huge I need answers and so does the laws of thermodynamics
Look at the comment with ''nobody knows'' in it. In that discussion you will find some possible explanations.
These are sources that cannot be attributed to a category, like gas expansion turbines or water turbines in pipelines.
6:20 Now, imagine that every European country did similarly idiotic decision with Germany and totally banned nuclear energy, let's see how that graph works after that!
Nice analysis. Did you notice any stability constraints, which could derate the maximum available capacity?
One of the issues is that Europe plans on installing hundreds of millions of heat pumps
If we do that
We will need to size and deaign a grid to meet the coldest day per 30 years
That means for 29.9 years you dont need that size grid but have to pay for it to sit idle
For example if germany is to install 40M heat pumps. Maybe a regular winter day they use 40GW of power. But ince a generation cold day might see these heat ounps use 100GW of power
So you need to build and pay for +60GW of grid infrastructure even though you only need it maybe 5 days per 30 years
So you need to build +60GW of gas fired stations and pay for the staff and upkeep to not use them for 99.9% of the time
Sorry, your numbers are meaningless without a proper context. I also find hard to imagine a cold weather such that it would affect the whole of lets say the EU.
That is a misconception. We Germans won't build gas-fired power plants in excess, but we will build renewables in excess. If they produce too much electricity (= most of the time), we'll use electrolyzers to produce hydrogen. This is pumped (in gaseous form, mind you) through former natural gas pipelines that will be converted into “hydrogen highways” to the industry that needs it for green production methods, and also to the huge natural gas storage facilities we have in northern Germany that will also be converted.* AND it is used to fuel the few new hydrogen-ready gas power plants we are building to stay idle most of the time but be able to supply power for the highest demand peaks that the oversized renewables might leave in dark doldrums.
* Yes, the Federal Grid Agency has already had all our pipelines and storage caverns inspected and certified as suitable for hydrogen.
@antonijaume8498 Even for an individual country, you have to design a grid and power system to power your heat pumps not for the average winter but the worst winter days
So here in London the average January might be 1 centigrade
But a bad winter like Jan 2010 had days of negative 15 centigrade
So your grid needs to be able to power the needs of a negative 15 centigrade day. Which isn't very common but you have to design for that
A home might use twice as much power on a negative 15 centigrade night vs a 1 centigrade night. And the heat pump COP will crash too such that 1KW might become 3KW
For 1 home that's not an issue
For 40M heat pumps that is an issue
In this example it means 40M x 2KW = 80GW additional grid transmission distribution and backup firm from a CCGT/GT is required
That in itself isn't a problem we can build that. The probablem is that infrastructure we might only need for 3 nights once every 30 years. So you'd need to build power stations and transmission lines and pay for them to sit idle 29 years 11 months 27 days and only be used for 3 days
That isn't going to be cheap
@hape3862 Even if you make hydrogen, which isn't proven on a large scale as economic
You still face the issue that you need to overbuild your grid and hydrogen fired power stations to meet the worst few days of winter per lifetime not the average winter
A real world example for france
Feb 8th 2024 = ~70GW peak demand
Feb 8th 2012 a cold day = 102GW peak demand
So while an average winter peak might be 70GW a bad winter is much higher at 102GW
So in this example you need 32GW of spare gas or hydrogen or whatever to meet the needs of a bad wiinter, not an average winter
@antonijaume8498 France uses about 70GW winter peak but a bad winter exceeds 100GW some days
So the grid needs to be sized to meet the worst days not Just this years winter
And France isn't 100% electricity heated they have a lot of fossil heaters so this swing will be larger still when more buildings and homes electrify