[HN Gopher] 54% of Portugal's electricity is now generated by re...
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54% of Portugal's electricity is now generated by renewable energy
Author : belter
Score : 156 points
Date : 2023-09-30 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theportugalnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theportugalnews.com)
| vmsp wrote:
| I'd like to offer a more critical perspective as a Portuguese
| living in Portugal.
|
| We're a country with very severe economical, financial, social
| and health problems which have been unsolved for years. Living in
| Portugal is a hard and it's expected it will get harder and
| harder. We have tons of young people leaving the country every
| year.
|
| Our CO2 emissions are like 0.15% of the total and our per-capita
| emissions are already lower than for ex. Germany. We basically
| have no industry. If we could wave a magic wand and completely
| stop our CO2 emissions it wouldn't move the needle on global
| warming at all.
|
| Notwithstanding these facts, the government went all in on
| renewables and cutting down on emissions -- despite it not making
| any sense -- because it's a popular measure across all age
| groups.
|
| Energy companies had to invest in still unproven renewable tech
| which was very costly. As a result, energy companies then had to
| amortize this investment and now we have one the highest energy
| prices in all of Europe. Had we chosen to start investing in
| renewables more recently, like Brazil, we would be buying better
| and cheaper tech.
|
| So, we -- the Portuguese -- are worse, overall, because of these
| short sighted measures. But, hey, at least we get good press.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Had we chosen to start investing in renewables more recently,
| like Brazil, we would be buying better and cheaper tech.
|
| Brazil has been investing in renewables for nearly a century.
| For instance, the Henry Borden hydroelectric power plant is
| from 1926.
| ncruces wrote:
| We built 12 hydro power plants in the 1950s. That's not
| really what the OP is talking about, but a trend in the early
| 2000s of overbuilding wind at prices that didn't make sense
| for the next 20 years, and hardly make sense now, 20 years
| later. Building solar now (which is as much responsible for
| current results as anything else) also makes financial sense.
| sergiosgc wrote:
| Wrong take, and a prime example of the national sport of being
| overly negative and pessimistic.
|
| Portugal did go early into the wind power game. It had its
| costs but also produced know-how and a relevant industry stake
| in that market.
|
| The solar installation effort was much better timed. Solar
| being fed into the grid is a lot cheaper than other sources,
| except for hydro (built in the 60s/70s, mostly already paid
| for).
|
| The current push will create 40GW of capacity, for a country
| that uses 9GW peak. It should be enough to run the country 100%
| on renewables. That's a game changer.
|
| Remove oil/gas imports from the national trade balance, and
| Portugal is suddenly a very very rich country.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > If we could wave a magic wand and completely stop our CO2
| emissions it wouldn't move the needle on global warming at all.
|
| That stance could be held by virtually every country,
| condemning us to collective inaction.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| GP's point is that Portugal wasn't the best placed country to
| go all-in on renewable energy because it was already
| economically in trouble and that the last thing Portuguese
| people needed was higher energy prices.
|
| There are other countries that have stronger economies which
| are better placed to "go green".
| vmsp wrote:
| That's just wrong. If China (29%) and the US (14%) waved the
| said wand we'd cut down emissions by almost 50% and would be
| looking at a completely different scenario.
| regularjack wrote:
| It's so typically Portuguese to look at good news and somehow
| see it as bad news. I'm Portuguese, and I too suffer from this
| syndrome at times.
|
| Not this time. Glad to see Portugal is on the right track.
| Gys wrote:
| I am not Portuguese but live here for some years now. It
| surprises me often how happy Portuguese can be with minor
| details that work while there are so many much more serious
| problems.
|
| For example: some years ago several people mentioned the
| roads of Portugal were the best of Europe. I had a hard time
| believing because many local roads were worse than I remember
| from most countries. After the 3rd person or so I started
| wondering and looked it up. Turned out this was only for
| highways, which Portugal has only a few and build with EU
| money. Plus Portugal was actually only second, the Dutch
| highways were the best. Something I suspect at that time was
| not really frontpage news in the Netherlands. Until today
| many local roads are very bad.
| vmsp wrote:
| You missed the point.
|
| Us not polluting is, obviously, great news.
|
| What we had to do to get to get here is the bad news. We
| chose to invest cash we don't have in fixing a problem we
| don't (really) cause and to which we don't (really) have a
| solution for. This, while 1/4 of the population earns minimum
| wage. My conclusion still stands.
| dottjt wrote:
| Not to invalidate what you're saying, but surely every
| country has it's problems? While the problems you sight are
| significant, if this has been the case for a while, would
| they have been resolved if all the money had not been
| invested into renewables?
|
| It sounds like culturally, those problems would still exist
| today i.e. due to corruption, but at least you have the
| renewables in place, as opposed to not have them.
|
| I feel like you're looking for an ideal version that
| doesn't exist in reality.
| fwungy wrote:
| You made the politicians who signed off on this very wealthy.
| Government programs mean big contracts, and the people who
| decide on those contracts always get their slice.
|
| If they were serious about decarbonization they'd be pushing
| next gen nuclear to the point that electricity was so cheap
| that fossil tech couldn't compete.
|
| What we're doing now is subsidizing cheap oil for China, while
| soaking American and European consumers, but the politicians
| are getting their slice, so why not?
| grecy wrote:
| It is good that _something_ has been improved, and now you have
| concrete proof that change in the right direction is possible.
|
| Now that renewables are on the rise, the same effort can be put
| into other things that need improvement. It's a great start!
| ifdefdebug wrote:
| > and now we have one the highest energy prices in all of
| Europe
|
| I hear that over and over again but... looking at my last EDP
| bill I find that I pay EUR0.15/kWh so what am I missing?
| dubcanada wrote:
| A few things
|
| > If we could wave a magic wand and completely stop our CO2
| emissions it wouldn't move the needle on global warming at all.
|
| Some people completely ignore the fact that it does help, it
| may not help the ozone above China, but having a country that
| is not pumping out ash and other byproducts into the air does
| make it citizens healthier. They live longer, they have less
| health issues, they pay more taxes (potentially longer job life
| span), and they are happier. So regardless of the short sighted
| "we are too small to do anything" statement. It does help.
|
| > Notwithstanding these facts, the government went all in on
| renewables and cutting down on emissions -- despite it not
| making any sense -- because it's a popular measure across all
| age groups.
|
| Another interesting statement, should it not make sense for a
| government to do what it's citizens want?
|
| > Energy companies had to invest in still unproven renewable
| tech which was very costly.
|
| Solar is fairly new, but wind is certainly not new in any
| fashion, along with water it is one of the oldest forms of
| energy generation that exist. If anything coal/nuclear are
| newer than wind. And tidal assuming a stable tidal pattern is
| also an easy engineering issue to solve. I am not sure beyond
| solar you can argue "unproven renewable tech".
|
| > Had we chosen to start investing in renewables more recently,
| like Brazil, we would be buying better and cheaper tech.
|
| You can't really say that, if that's an argument then nobody
| would ever buy anything, because it could always be better and
| cheaper later.
|
| I get the reasoning for your statement, because investing in
| natural gas or other oil methods like that can provide more
| faster for the general populace. But there is no reason that
| renewable cannot ALSO do that, it's just nobody has an example
| of such case. And there are plenty of examples with gas.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Another interesting statement, should it not make sense for
| a government to do what it's citizens want?
|
| Nope, not always, and this is why direct democracy is pretty
| inefficient. People aren't experts, are often shortsighted
| and thinking at the micro level: many government policies and
| choices need long term thinking and expertise at the macro
| level. Take a look at Switzerland - "green" measures such as
| a carbon tax, which is considered by many experts as one of
| the best policies to reduce CO2 emissions, was refused by
| voters, because they're thinking about the impact it will
| have on them personally, now, and not about all the negative
| things which will be reduced with such a tax.
| fwungy wrote:
| It would cost them a lot of money and have no impact on CO2
| levels. Chinese and Indians will not magnanimously
| sacrifice their money to lower their CO2, and if they don't
| then it doesn't matter.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The rest of the world can encourage China and India with
| economic sanctions if they won't come along for the
| renewables and EV ride. With that said, China at least is
| an example of moving to EVs and renewables rapidly.
| belorn wrote:
| Could we explore a bit in how it would cost them money.
| Taxes in general get back into the economy unless the
| government stockpile the revenue or invest them over sea.
| It would increase costs for companies doing exports,
| raising costs on mining (29.9% of total exports), and
| maybe organic chemicals exports. Switzerland second
| largest export is Pharmaceuticals, but I am unsure how
| much a carbon tax would impact that industry.
|
| If they also applied it to imports then countries with
| high CO2 would have a harder time to export to
| Switzerland. Having less access to cheap products with
| high carbon footprint would add a costs to citizens, as
| alternative products will likely cost more, but then it
| would also encourage industries in China/India to produce
| products with lower footprint in order to compete on
| markets with carbon taxes/tariffs based on carbon
| footprint. It might even encourage local productions
| which can be a boon for the economy.
| dubcanada wrote:
| With that attitude, nobody is going to do anything.
| flamedoge wrote:
| >> Notwithstanding these facts, the government went all in on
| renewables and cutting down on emissions -- despite it not
| making any sense -- because it's a popular measure across all
| age groups.
|
| > Another interesting statement, should it not make sense for
| a government to do what it's citizens want?
|
| "and now we have one the highest energy prices in all of
| Europe."
|
| 'want' is an evolving metric. I'm sure they want low energy
| prices now.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Had we chosen to start investing in renewables more recently,
| like Brazil, we would be buying better and cheaper tech."
|
| Yeah, everyone could just wait, until the magic revolutionary
| renewable tech comes around the corner and everyone implements
| it at once. Except progress usually does not work like that.
|
| People do not learn to install solar panels or wind turbines
| over night. You want a solid growing workforce that can do
| that. And if not enough people are buying it, no one will
| produce those panels, can install or maintain them, or develope
| better ones.
|
| And if this doesn't happen, then we will soon really learn,
| what a migration crisis looks like.
| rlpb wrote:
| By being early, I hope that you have acquired expertise that
| you can now export.
| conjecTech wrote:
| Something like 80% of Portugal's solar has been installed since
| 2018[1], when solar was on-par with if not cheaper than any
| other form of electricity generation. And that's from aggregate
| perspective, the economics are definitely better for Portugal.
| There were PPA being signed in similar geographies for 3c/kwh
| that year. I wouldn't be surprised if the defrayed cost from
| lower fossil fuel usage just since the start of war in Ukraine
| has fully offset the cost of the installation. I'm not sure why
| you think this has been so costly for average citizens.
|
| [1] https://www.pv-tech.org/portugal-installs-more-solar-pv-
| in-2...
| Jamustico wrote:
| Portugal Caralho
| Raed667 wrote:
| > January 2022, 4085 GWh of electricity were generated, where
| 63.64% came from renewable:
|
| - 31.27% wind
|
| - 17.78% hydro
|
| - 6.99% bioenergy
|
| - 3.80% solar
|
| - 3.80% pumping
| locallost wrote:
| Germany also clocked in at 52% for this year [1] until now.
|
| [1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-
| covers-52-perce...
| formvoltron wrote:
| In the south there are many people living on land which is off
| grid because legally they aren't allowed to really live on that
| land.
|
| So, counting them maybe the rate goes up a little.
| ThomPete wrote:
| Which basically means that 10% of their energy comes from
| renewable energy and that includes burning wood bricks, trash and
| a bunch of other CO2 emitting sources.
|
| Electricity is only around 20% of a countrys energy need. In
| developing countries even less.
|
| So it sounds great but it's completely misleadning of course.
|
| Globally wind and solar combined might be around 2%
|
| This is the mouse and the elephant all over.
| Symbiote wrote:
| You can easily find real numbers rather than invent some.
|
| In Portugal electricity was 25% of total energy in 2021,
| renewable energy covered 30.6% of gross final energy demand in
| 2019.
|
| https://www.iea.org/reports/portugal-2021
| ThomPete wrote:
| Sorry but those numbers aren't really contradicting mine.
|
| Renewable energy in Portugal is mostly bioenergy and waste
| (Page 20)
|
| So yes lets look at the actual numbers.
|
| https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/a58d6151-f75f-4cd7-.
| ..
| mcbrienollie wrote:
| There are a couple of points in here to discuss:
|
| - Geographical advantage for renewable enegry - Regulation on the
| energy consumption.
|
| There are a lot of countries which are importing energy already
| from external sources. Even some of the countries does the same
| thing, they cannot reach into this potential.
|
| However, we have to accept the truth that this is a big
| achievement for Portugal no matter what. At least, some of the
| folks think about climate change.
| jackjeff wrote:
| Is there some kind of practical limit to renewable electricity
| production due to how difficult it is to store and its
| intermittent nature. My intuition tells me it can never quite be
| 100%. How wrong am I?
| worik wrote:
| Not wrong.
|
| Some renewables are consistent particularly geothermal, hydro,
| and biomass
|
| Geothermal is not available everywhere with current tech
|
| Hydro ditto, (must have mountains) it is hugely destructive,
| and is intermittent on an actual scale (dry years)
|
| Biomass is expensive and hungry for land.
|
| So it is not simple.
|
| It is doable, and essential if we are to continue lifestyles
| anything vaguely like what we have, but it requires careful
| planning and cooperation
|
| The current "Big Capital" model is not well suited. More local,
| small scale, and distributed generation and storage are where
| we need to head, IMO
| matsemann wrote:
| Norway is at 98% renewable, at least.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| In the last 30 years there has never been a time where there
| wasn't wind or sun somewhere in Europe.
|
| So in theory it's possible to hit 100% even without storage.
| But obviously not in practice since it might mean you need
| enough generation and distribution to supply the entire
| continent from a tiny corner of it. (And the next night it
| might be a different corner).
|
| Once you add storage 100% becomes more practical, but
| "practical" is more a question of "how much are you willing to
| spend". Using the existing hydro much more heavily for storage
| means that 100% is practical IMO.
| sofixa wrote:
| There have been long periods of time with low winds /
| overcast weather though, severely limiting the effectiveness
| of solar and wind power generation over weeks.
|
| https://theconversation.com/what-europes-exceptionally-
| low-w...
| locallost wrote:
| There is research done on this, example [1]. My feeling from
| listening what is said in the industry is that 80-90% will be
| not that hard, and that 100% will be.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/ChristianOnRE/status/1705676813366612109
| Smaug123 wrote:
| Well, in principle one could store solar energy in the form of
| a flammable fuel which can be used to rapidly spin up a
| turbine, by constructing ethanol/methane from carbon dioxide
| and water. We can't do it at scale yet, but this is the realm
| of e.g. Prometheus Fuels.
| belorn wrote:
| Renewable electricity _production_ can be anything. Just
| because you produce something does not mean the same country
| has to consume it, nor that it is connected to the general
| grid. Renewable production can be 100% if that is what a given
| country is set to produce and sell on the international market.
|
| Renewable electricity _consumption_ is a bit more tricky.
| People generally consume energy independently from when energy
| is optimally produced, so intermittent nature of renewable is a
| problem. There are countries which are very close to 100%
| renewable production but which import more than 50% of the
| energy that they actually consume, while at the same time being
| energy export positive because of massive exports during
| periods of optimal weather conditions.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Batteries exist (and are getting better). Most of the
| intermittent nature of renewables is just solving for the
| timing issue (e.g. evening when demand is high and the sun goes
| down), so short term storage is what's most in demand.
|
| Longer term storage is harder (e.g. it's cloudy for days on
| end), but even then there are renewable storage options like
| pumped hydro and generation of natural gas from electricity.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| It is true the amount of storage needed goes up the higher the
| percentage of intermittent generation on the grid. There are
| various models that say it can be done but it requires
| overbuilding generation and substantial investment in
| transmission in addition to storage.
|
| It's for sure a hard problem.
| dahart wrote:
| Hydro never stops. Wind and solar are cyclical, but even aside
| from electrical batteries, there are multiple companies
| designing energy storage systems (cf EnergyVault which has been
| making rounds in the news https://www.energyvault.com/).
| worik wrote:
| > Hydro never stops
|
| It does. In droughts
| jackjeff wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| I wonder what happens in summer in case of drought.
|
| This links partially answers my question.
|
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT
|
| Apparently 33% was pumped storage (wow). And it's a
| windless night so no other renewables. 17% gas that
| produces the CO2.
|
| That is quite impressive. Won't compete with the crazy
| hydro of Norway/Sweden or the nuclear of France. But it's
| quite a decent chunk of carbon free power.
| generic92034 wrote:
| If you are willing to build a whole lot of infrastructure for
| storage and accept the efficiency loss due to the conversion
| then you can probably get pretty close to 100%. See also:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas
| wott wrote:
| ...and gets more and more dependant on neighbouring countries to
| produce the electricity Portugal consumes each time the
| intermittent renewable are down.
|
| ...and presents a carbon intensity over 4 time higher than
| France, despite the latter having a share of renewable 3 times
| lower.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| "renewable energy sources accounting for 54% of its energy
| consumption in 2019. This is higher than the EU average of 18%"
|
| "higher": quite an understatement.
|
| Go, Portugal!
| meiraleal wrote:
| Ironically, still very far from Brazil's 84%. Meanwhile the UE
| thinks it can lecture South America countries about how to
| preserve nature.
| letrowekwel wrote:
| Wow, I had zero idea Brazil is doing so good in that front. I
| agree with you completely. EU's biggest economy shuts down
| nuclear plants in favor of coal, I think that tells us all
| enough about how much those in charge really care about the
| environment. Votes from irrational, brainwashed German
| population seems to be more important.
| dieortin wrote:
| If that front is preserving nature, then they're not doing
| a very good job, no
| onethought wrote:
| I mean having great renewables while clearfelling the
| rainforest is probably still net negative.
| klysm wrote:
| Renewable energy generation and aggressive deforestation and
| ecological destruction are orthogonal
| ThomPete wrote:
| Most of that is Hydro which only is possible some places in
| the world and only delivers electricity which is only 20% of
| a countrys energy needs.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Brazil
| Symbiote wrote:
| The page you link shows 18% of Brazil's energy is from
| sugar cane (making ethanol, mixed with petrol in cars).
| This is very high comparex to most of the world.
| ThomPete wrote:
| Doesn't change the facts.
|
| Saying 54% of electricity is not written to inform but to
| misinform. Most people don't know it's only around 20% of
| most countries (and here we are talking modern countries)
| energy that comes from electricity.
|
| The rest is fossil fuel. Globally it's still 76% that
| comes from fossil fuel and there is no realistic
| substitute for fossil fuel when it comes to the 4
| elements of modern society.
|
| Steel Concrete Fertilizer Plastic
| skrause wrote:
| Renewable energy is super easy when you're a hot, sunny
| country with a lot of water. High energy demand for AC has a
| big overlap with the time of the day when the sun is shining.
|
| It's the opposite when you're at a high latitude. Now you
| need the most energy for heating when there is barely any
| sun. Add some geography where you can't use any hydro power
| and wind is all you have left. This is what a large chunk of
| Europe has to deal with.
| flamedoge wrote:
| There's always nuclear.
| Symbiote wrote:
| That is 54% of Portugal's _electricity_ and 18% of the EU 's
| _energy_ , from different years.
|
| 34% (PT) and 22% (EU) are the total renewable energy figures
| from 2021.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Important to note that Portugal's geography allows it to have a
| large fraction of base load met with an unvarying renewable -
| Hydro.
|
| Not all nations will be able to reach these numbers with
| traditionally intermitent renewables like Solar/Wind.
| onethought wrote:
| All countries individually - sure. But the Sun is not
| intermittent. The planet just spins. You put enough solar
| panels on enough geographical locations (and connect them
| together) you get permanent solar without storage.
| abraae wrote:
| Most locations can experience many hours or days of cloud
| cover, which can slash solar panel output by e.g 90%.
|
| That's what intermittent means in the context of solar.
| onethought wrote:
| No it doesn't. Just provision 10x more solar then.
| Intermittency solved.
|
| (And yes, it's still cheaper than say, nuclear even if you
| provision 10x)
| sofixa wrote:
| What about a multi-month event with overcast weather with
| low winds over a whole continent (it was the case across
| most of Europe in 2020)? Just over provision by 100x? Is
| it still cheaper if you include all the land used?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > Just provision 10x more solar then. Intermittency
| solved.
|
| For my country (France) IIRC it would require something
| like 30x more solar to cope with clouds + low light
| during winter. Take UK or northern Europe and you'd need
| 50x.
|
| > And yes, it's still cheaper than say, nuclear even if
| you provision 10x
|
| What are you smoking? Also it would generate about 100
| times more wastes (not talking about high activity waste
| of course, in which case it would be like a million time
| more waste)
| acover wrote:
| Transmission loss will kill you. It's like 1% per 100 miles
| depending on the voltage.
| dools wrote:
| That's for AC thought right? Ultra high voltage direct
| current is pretty efficient for transmission I thought
| zdragnar wrote:
| Per 1000km (670 miles) AC's efficiency tops out at 6.7%
| losses, and DC 3.5%.
|
| The earth's circumference is 40,000 km, or 24,000 miles.
| Even if hurricanes and monsoon seasons weren't a problem,
| you're still looking at obscene transmission losses to
| get energy to NYC in the middle of the night- say 55% or
| worse... and that's not even counting the fact that the
| lines can't hug the earth's surface, they need to run
| along the bottom of the ocean floors to avoid damage by
| storms, boats and currents.
| cycomanic wrote:
| HVDC transmission losses are 3.5% per 1000km compared to
| 6.7% per 1000km for HVAC [1 ] so you are order of magnitude
| off.
|
| [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| voltage_direct_current
| littlestymaar wrote:
| 6.7% per 1000km is .65% per 100km which is almost exactly
| 1% per 100miles, as GP said.
|
| So it's just off by a factor two if you compare with DC.
| pdpi wrote:
| > You put enough solar panels on enough geographical
| locations (and connect them together) you get permanent solar
| without storage.
|
| In theory? Yes. In practice? You have one whole hemisphere
| powering the other hemisphere, which makes transmission a
| brutal challenge.
| prettyStandard wrote:
| High voltage intercontinental direct current could really
| make this possible.
| klysm wrote:
| Clouds though?
| pstrateman wrote:
| Night time.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > But the Sun is not intermittent. The planet just spins.
|
| FYI clouds exist as well.
|
| > You put enough solar panels on enough geographical
| locations (and connect them together)
|
| It would cost orders of magnitude more in infra for the
| connection part that the power generation would (well, except
| for the solar panels you'd need to put on the Pacific Ocean,
| which is almost an hemisphere in itself, of course)
| Gys wrote:
| The hydro comes from artificial lakes filled by rain and rivers
| coming from Spain. Rain is becoming less and less. Spain is
| keeping more and more of the river waters, despite some
| agreements on this.
| [deleted]
| troupo wrote:
| Right now it's a calm night, so ~25% comes from hydro storage[0],
| 22% from hydro, 18% imported from Spain [1], and 16% from gas.
|
| I find these "x % is now renewable" useless without looking at
| actual numbers, and how they work not just in the best of cases.
|
| [0] Didn't know Portugal had this much hydro storage
|
| [1] Spain right now is 37% gas, 23% nuclear, 17% solar, 12% wind
|
| Edit: data from https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
| Ekaros wrote:
| I doubt Spain is 17% solar... As they are essentially same sun
| availability.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Right now the latest data is from 20:00 and it says 3.3% so
| when the comment above was made, the sun was shining a bit
| more.
|
| (But I think the sun goes down a bit earlier, but there are
| also the canarian islands as part of spain, way further south
| and west of the mainland)
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Portugal is on the Atlantic coast so has more wind and rain.
| A lot of inland Spain is pretty arid, making it ideal for
| solar.
| capableweb wrote:
| You think it's too much or too little? Sun availability
| didn't matter much in Spain until recently, as the country
| finally got rid of the "sun tax" that limited the development
| of wide-spread solar panel usage. Essentially, even if you
| used solar panels, you'd be taxed on every kWh produced, even
| from your own solar panels. Luckily, they got rid of it, so
| probably the development will ramp up a bit from now on.
| wott wrote:
| > You think it's too much or too little?
|
| When it's night in Portugal, it's night in Spain :-)
| Kon5ole wrote:
| Spain has quite a few solar plants that generate power
| even at night.
| Ekaros wrote:
| It seems surprisingly high for night time production. As I
| think original comment was about momentary production.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Spain has some heat-the-molten-salt power plants which
| continue to produce electricity after sunset.
| troupo wrote:
| I was surprised, too. Data is from
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/map, so could be quite
| inaccurate
| Ekaros wrote:
| I somewhat suspect the data. Could be that there is some
| inaccuracies and it is also from earlier point of time
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Better data for Spain in 2022: Solar:
| 11.5% Wind: 22.7% Hydro: 6.6%
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-
| source?coun...
| polshaw wrote:
| The time of the data is written there (right under where
| it says Spain)
|
| As of this moment it says 19:00 and 3% of electricity,
| which was before sunset, it was probably an hour or more
| earlier, and sun has been especially strong today.
| allears wrote:
| Probably the difference in solar installations.
| [deleted]
| jeffbee wrote:
| Fission stans are just going to stand on the sidelines seething
| while solar, wind, and storage accelerate. The world is deploying
| an amount of PV every year equal to the total cumulative output
| of all the fission stations built in history.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Maybe in a year or two renewables will reach the deployment
| rate of fission 40 years ago. I'm glad the green energy
| transition has _finally_ lurched back into motion, but no, I do
| not think it was worth the 200 gigatons of CO2 we dumped into
| the atmosphere in the meantime. I 'm speaking of the US alone;
| multiply it up for a global perspective.
| troupo wrote:
| Until it's a calm night and your solar panels and wind turbines
| produce zero electricity.
| credit_guy wrote:
| I'm on of those. For those not familiar with this slang term,
| "stan" comes from a song of Eminem, an American rapper, and
| means fanatic.
|
| I'm not seething at all. I'm cheering. Solar and wind are on an
| exponential trajectory in the US too. I'm am really happy for
| that.
|
| It does not mean we should not pursue fission. But I'm a pro-
| technology guy. I can't easily understand how 80 years ago we
| got to the point of harnessing a source of energy ten million
| times more dense than fossil fuels, and then we collectively
| decide to just give it up. And I don't buy any of the arguments
| of the anti-technology crowd: it's too expensive, it's too
| dangerous, it's too easy to make bombs. Nuclear technology is
| indeed expensive, but all sorts of technologies can undergo a
| Moore's law period. Just look at the rocket technology in the
| era of Musk. Dangerous, yes, nuclear is not without dangers,
| but we've learned most of the problem cases and how to handle
| them. As for the danger of nuclear bombs, yes, that is there,
| but it's containable, and it has been contained for many
| decades.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| >It does not mean we should not pursue fission. But I'm a
| pro-technology guy. I can't easily understand how 80 years
| ago we got to the point of harnessing a source of energy ten
| million times more dense than fossil fuels, and then we
| collectively decide to just give it up. And I don't buy any
| of the arguments of the anti-technology crowd: it's too
| expensive, it's too dangerous,
|
| I sympathise with your sentiment here, but consider this - we
| have invented technology that can create electricity when
| placed in sunlight. Once the device is created, the
| electricity is free.
|
| We can generate hydrogen from this free electricity to make
| the power predictable, and when consumed hydrogen releases
| not only energy but also clean water. The devices are already
| so cheap that people are putting them on their personal
| homes, to the tune of several TWh of additional yearly
| capacity. More than several nuclear reactors annually in
| fact.
|
| Is it really likely that anything can happen to Nuclear that
| makes it able to compete with that?
|
| Also, consider that the main risk comes from humans, who are
| immune to the Moores Law period in any case.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "but we've learned most of the problem cases and how to
| handle them."
|
| We also learned time and time again how corrupted human
| society and individuals can be. So while in theory we could
| do nuclear safe, we often don't. Neither mining, nor
| maintaining, nor disposing of the waste. We got lucky quite a
| few times, but having more of it, will likely just result in
| more incidents.
|
| So while I agree that we should not give it up, I also think
| we should just harness more of suns fusion power of which we
| got plenty and invest more in storage technology (you can
| make batteries out of iron and saltwater for example, no rare
| elements needed for grid storage). Then there is also the
| huge energy source beneath our feet, which is fueled by
| fission btw. if you are more into that. Lots of opportunities
| ..
| burkaman wrote:
| Pulling my comment out of a thread because I think it's
| important: nearly all of this article is plagiarized from years-
| old sources. Search any sentence with a number in it and you'll
| find it somewhere else. A few examples:
|
| > At the end of 2021, Portugal became coal-free after shutting
| down its 628MW Pego coal-fired power plant...
|
| https://www.energymonitor.ai/power/what-europe-can-learn-fro...,
| March 2022
|
| > In January 2022, 4,085 GWh of electricity were generated in
| mainland Portugal...
|
| https://www.unav.edu/web/global-affairs/portugal-a-strong-be...,
| February 2022
|
| > In the same year, Electricity was the 7th most imported product
| in Portugal.
|
| https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/electricity/r...
|
| > On February 4th, 2022, China Three Gorges (Europe), S.A.
| notified EDP that...
|
| https://www.edp.com/sites/default/files/2022-02/20220204_CTG...,
| February 2022
|
| > Unfortunately, Portugal has some of the highest prices for
| electricity in Europe thanks to taxes...
|
| Not sure the original source, but I found this quote verbatim in
| several other older articles.
|
| Is this a real newspaper? The author of this article is
| apparently the publisher:
| https://www.theportugalnews.com/contacts. Is this is a real
| person, or is this like an auto-generated ad vehicle? Why is it
| all in English?
|
| Edit: It does seem to be real:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20100601000000*/theportugalnews....,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Portugal_News (those references
| are real books). Just kind of a bizarre publication.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| Even without he plagiarism, the whole thing read like an LLM or
| offsite content farm (the 2 are becoming indistinguishable)
| baq wrote:
| Maybe it's a search-enabled LLM with a 'use exact quotes'
| prompt?
| polshaw wrote:
| >Why is it all in English?
|
| I can't speak to the plagiarism aspect but this part is
| trivially answered; because it's a site made by an English
| speaker targeted at English speakers. Of which there are large
| numbers in Portugal, especially in the Algarve where he is
| from.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes that makes sense, when I wrote that I was just looking at
| all the "related stories" under this one that have nothing to
| do with Portugal and wondering if this is some spam operation
| that had just picked the best the___news.com URL it could
| get. But no it is real, and looking at the print edition it
| does focus on Portugal, it just surrounds the news with 80%
| ads.
| jsf01 wrote:
| How did you discover the plagiarism? Or if you searched
| sentences manually, what prompted you to check?
| burkaman wrote:
| Elsewhere in this thread somebody noted that the electricity
| price in the article didn't seem right, so I went to Eurostat
| to check myself. I couldn't figure out where they got that
| 0.2246 number from so I searched for it and found the first
| plagiarized source.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Anyone knows what's the cheapest energy storage technology?
| Basically, if a typical European country wants to add energy
| storage sufficient to supply the country for 4 hours, what's the
| cheapest technology?
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Pumped storage by a country mile - if your countries geography
| supports it.
| biggc wrote:
| Pumped storage is definitely the most _efficient_ method of
| energy storage, but is it the _cheapest_ when taking
| infrastructure costs and land use into account?
|
| I remember reading about plans to use renewables to pump
| Colorado River water back up into Lake Mead to increase the
| amount of power the dam can generate during low generation
| periods for solar and wind.
|
| That seems like an efficient approach, because the dam and
| reservoir are already there.
| benj111 wrote:
| >Whichever way you look at it, renewables are saving our planet,
| not our pockets.
|
| In the UK, last year renewables were actually lowering the bills.
|
| Further the article blames the expense on taxes
|
| So this isn't backed by facts or the article itself.
|
| Also the 18% European average sounds low, is that total energy,
| rather than total electricity?
|
| As for the UK, it's looking like renewables could outproduce
| fossil fuels for electricity this year.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| That's impressive !
|
| Does anybody can point me toward good sources about costs of
| maintaining those solar / wind / hydro installations ? I'm
| thinking about the solar panels, which I always thought have a
| limited lifetime (apparently it's getting much better). Is this
| viable in the long term ?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Solar has a limited economic lifetime but it is in terms of
| centuries, not years. Panels just don't degrade that quickly in
| practice, and even when they do degrade at higher rates than
| expected, it's irrelevant to the economics of the projects.
| You'll be hard-pressed to find a large-scale solar power
| station that has been retired, even among the oldest of them.
| rsynnott wrote:
| For solar panels in particular, the answer is more or less
| _shrug_ ; for current common types estimates range from 25 to
| 50 years before efficiency drops off significantly, but
| obviously the technology was rather different 25 years ago so
| there's no example of a modern-type solar panel that has worked
| for 25 years. Domestic panels often have a 25 year warranty.
|
| Of course, _useful_ lifetime may be a different thing. If you
| have limited space for panels, and in ten years efficiencies
| have doubled (current panels that you can actually buy are in
| the 20% range; current lab record is 47% for exotic types, so
| this at least seems _plausible_), then it may be more
| economical to just replace them early.
| Gys wrote:
| The renewable energy in Portugal is not generated by private
| owners. Solar panels are not very common on residential
| buildings.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Who mentioned residential panels?
| Gys wrote:
| > I'm thinking about the solar panels
|
| Does not sound as industrial scale
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Lazard's regular comparison of levelized costs of electric
| generation technologies breaks down capital, operating, fuel,
| etc costs.
|
| In their latest PDF it's pages 12 and 13
|
| https://www.lazard.com/media/nltb551p/lazards-lcoeplus-april...
|
| Also most solar pv manufacturers warrant their panels at 90%
| for 25 years. I don't know if you consider that limited but to
| me that sounds pretty good.
| jonatron wrote:
| > _Unfortunately, Portugal has some of the highest prices for
| electricity in Europe thanks to taxes. According to Eurostat, we
| pay EUR0.2246 per kWh here which is 22% higher than in the UK._
|
| It's more like PS0.30=EUR0.35, which is going down to
| PS0.27=EUR0.31, which is a lot higher than EUR0.22. Probably
| using data from before Feb 2022.
| burkaman wrote:
| That sentence appears to be copied from this 2019 article:
| https://www.portugalhomes.com/news/article/172/what-taxes-
| co....
|
| Eurostat's latest data, for second half of 2022, actually says
| EUR0.46 for household consumers, and taxes are only about 20%
| of that.
|
| Edit: Significant portions of this article are plagiarized. I
| picked another random sentence, "Portugal became coal-free
| after shutting down its 628MW Pego coal-fired power plant", and
| it's stolen from here: https://www.energymonitor.ai/power/what-
| europe-can-learn-fro.... This is literally the first one I
| tried.
| oliverpk wrote:
| A monumental achievement, especially when the EU average is only
| 18%.
| seydor wrote:
| Actually, portugal is doing very well, but it ~35% of total
| energy consumption
|
| https://www.eea.europa.eu/ims/share-of-energy-consumption-fr...
| foota wrote:
| I think they're both true, not all energy is electricity (e.g.,
| cars, industrial processes, heating, etc.,)
| tpmx wrote:
| Fossil-free is a more relevant metric in general. Since Portugal
| doesn't have any active commercial nuclear power the two metrics
| would show the same.
|
| Congrats on the improvements!
| Krasnol wrote:
| Congrats on bringing in nuclear in this topic even though it's
| not relevant at all. A discussion about renewable energy
| wouldn't be the same without it!
| pydry wrote:
| It is striking to see real life examples of countries
| achieving high rates of renewable energy production with
| large amounts of pumped storage and without nuclear power.
| troupo wrote:
| Right now, when it's a calm night, Portugal imports 18% of
| electricity from Spain which at this moment produces most
| energy from oil and nuclear.
|
| You cannot have a proper good faith discussion about
| renewables without nuclear and fossil fuels.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Sure you can. Personally, I view the fossil fuel plants
| differently than nuclear, I would much prefer that the
| majority of steady state power generation was nuclear,
| but that does present quite a target and threat to the
| rest of the world during a time of war. I don't have all
| the answers here, just wanted to start with my thinking.
|
| Getting away from fossil fuels is not a pie in the sky
| proposal these days. You could look at the success of the
| lithium storage battery in Australia, previously serviced
| by fossil fuel peaker plants. There is pumped hydro, and
| all manner of other non-chemical storage that is
| possible.
|
| There are certainly a range of options that are 100%
| renewable with storage, but at this moment don't compete
| on price with natural gas or even coal if you only factor
| the cost of the input to the system. Can we agree on
| that?
|
| I would say the inexpensive nature of fossil fuels
| ignores the total cost of the fuel. We're basically
| setting up future generations for a complicated
| terraforming process to recover the atmosphere to
| something that supports our farming needs and temperature
| needs to support life, not just our own but the natural
| world we rely on.
|
| This cost might not factor in to the per/MW cost of coal
| or NG, but it should. This is factored into nuclear
| (waste storage) so to ignore its cost for fossil fuels is
| disingenuous.
| onethought wrote:
| Yes you can. The good faith question to ask is: is the
| cost of nuclear higher than renewable +storage?
|
| I don't know the answer, but renewable +storage is
| trending down. Nuclear is up. So at some point (which may
| have already happened) nuclear is just going to be a bad
| faith argument.
| epistasis wrote:
| My hope is that some day that the passion for the political
| side of nuclear translates into passion for the logistical
| and project management challenges of nuclear. There's this
| false belief that if people just wanted nuclear, politically,
| it would be built in large amounts.
|
| In reality, in advanced economies with high labor costs,
| nuclear is nearly impossible to build. This is true even in
| countries like France, that complete large construction
| projects like public transit and trains without cost disease.
|
| In the US, we are beset with an additional challenge beyond
| the inherent high costs of high-labor demands for precision
| construction; we also have difficulty with any sort of
| project management of large construction projects.
|
| If nuclear has a future in the US, we need to start
| construction on 100GW of reactors in the next few years to
| replace reactors at their end of life. But we only have a few
| tiny projects for SMRs, with designs that are barely
| complete, if at all.
|
| The US is going to lose most of its nuclear power before it
| will build it back, if it ever does build back more nuclear.
| This is a stark contrast to renewables and storage, which are
| mature technologies that are on the TW scale, a magnitude
| that the nuclear industry can only dream of.
| Krasnol wrote:
| I doubt this day will come.
|
| The technology has been replaced and energy generation on
| this planet has turned toward renewable energies.
|
| Time to move on and care about the radioactive remains of
| this technology from the past.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _technology has been replaced and energy generation on
| this planet has turned toward renewable energies_
|
| This is totally untrue. Presently, in advanced economies,
| it's cheaper to build solar and wind. If those economics
| change, what's deployed will as well. (Or a country risks
| fuckup a la Deutschland.)
| Krasnol wrote:
| "Totally untrue"?
|
| Just face the
| facts...https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-
| renewables-electr... it's over.
|
| > If those economics change
|
| How are those economics supposed to change? Prices for
| renewables keep on falling, while those for nuclear never
| stopped rising.
|
| You should come up with some sources for those claims far
| away from reality...
|
| And what "fuckup" is this supposed to be? Germany build
| 7.9 Megawatt only solar in 7 months this year, and it's
| just the beginning after 16 years of stagnation. Wake up.
|
| https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/technologie/strompro
| duk...
|
| https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-
| deutschland-ga...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How are those economics supposed to change?_
|
| With better technology. Again, we agree that right now we
| should be deploying solar and wind. But because it's
| cheapest. The anti-nukes didn't win, economics did.
| (Again, case in point Germany versus America.)
| bee_rider wrote:
| I really don't think there's much passion for nuclear power
| generally, I never see it discussed in any context other
| than as a contrast to renewables.
|
| I'll believe it has a future when I see people randomly
| bringing it up in oil price discussions or things like
| that.
| kmax12 wrote:
| If you're curious about this data for the United States, I built
| a site that lets you track renewable production, as well as many
| other interesting datasets about the US electrical grid.
|
| https://www.gridstatus.io/map
| syntaxing wrote:
| I'm surprised how much is nuclear in the states I have lived
| in. The fact that California is almost 50% solar is pretty
| crazy too.
| huytersd wrote:
| [flagged]
| MarkMarine wrote:
| This is not constructive for HN
| huytersd wrote:
| That debatable. I've seen plenty of constructive
| criticism of government policies on this site.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| If this was constructive criticism I wouldn't have said
| anything. Not that hard to clean it up, if you want to
| use an article about Portugal's renewable policy to make
| a point about homelessness in California, and the
| governance of it, then just make your point without
| demonizing people, give constructive criticism (i.e. this
| is bad because the outcomes for society are bad, as
| evidenced by [x] and [y] and I think California should be
| doing Z, which worked in Z country, here are the
| outcomes: [z_link]
| rthomas6 wrote:
| Wow, the Arizona area is disappointing to say the least. All
| that sun and almost no solar power.
| ThomPete wrote:
| Most of Arizona and any other states energy need is not
| electricity. Only around 20% of it is.
| huytersd wrote:
| All I see is a "Tap the Region" button and nothing else on the
| iPhone 13 Pro
| kmax12 wrote:
| hmm, ill have to look into that. in that case, check out this
| listing of all the areas we support:
| https://www.gridstatus.io/eia.
|
| also, if anyone else has this problem please comment / email
| me max@gridstatus.io
| jorge-d wrote:
| It's a nice looking map, I'm personally a big fan of
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/
|
| I'm sure you could use the same datapoint to cover more zones
| (cf their Github repo
| https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-
| contrib/b...)
| kmax12 wrote:
| I am too!
|
| We focus on the United States, so we can have the deepest
| coverage for each of the regions. In some cases that means
| were the same as Electricity Maps. In other case, you'll see
| our data is more real time without relying on estimations.
|
| We have a lot more than generation mix data. For the
| wholesale energy markets, we also have all the pricing
| data[1]!
|
| In case you're curious we also have an open source library:
| https://github.com/kmax12/gridstatus
|
| We'd love to expand, but every new region is hard to support
| in the same depth as what we currently have in the US
|
| [1] https://www.gridstatus.io/datasets?filter=lmp
| meristohm wrote:
| That's awesome! Why is the PNW power-source display an x-y plot
| and the Midwest and Texas and New England (the others I looked
| at) are pies? I see in the PNW plot there's a ~constant output
| from nuclear and the other sources are more variable (x-t plot
| makes it easier to see this) but nuclear is a source of energy
| in the other locations with pie charts, as well.
| kmax12 wrote:
| It depends on the source of the data. For the regions with
| the pie charts, those are Independent System Operators (ISOs)
| or Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs). They publish
| much more data and is more real time than the other regions,
| so we have different pages to display them.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Nuclear is strictly a base load power source. It takes on the
| scale of "many hours" to days to change generation level at a
| nuke, and there's intense economic pressure to operate them
| at full capacity as much as possible because its opex is
| largely fixed and enormous (as is the capex from
| construction.)
|
| This is why all the people shrieking about how evil the
| public was/is for 'irrationally' hating nuclear and how we
| need more nuclear (here, on twitter, and reddit) are idiots,
| especially when they talk about it providing "grid stability"
| because of those naughty, highly variable renewables.
|
| Grid stability comes from fast-reacting power sources like
| natural gas, hydro, and energy storage systems like pumped
| hydro and batteries. The most famous example of this is in
| the UK, where pumped hydro is fast enough to react to "The
| Great British Kettle Surge" aka TV pickup:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
|
| Video covering Electric Mountain (9GWHr capacity) by Tom
| Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jx_bJgIFhI
|
| Any time someone opens their mouth and says nuclear is the
| solution to "days with no sun or wind", you can immediately
| discount everything else that comes out of their mouth as
| being from a person who doesn't understand the first thing
| about electrical grids/generation.
|
| Even if it were feasible to change power levels fast enough
| to react to wind and solar generation changing from a physics
| standpoint, no power authority in the world would keep
| nuclear generation (the most expensive form of power
| generation already) capacity in reserve for a cloudy day.
|
| What we need are more renewable sources, more energy storage,
| and a wide-scale HVDC distribution network to be able to
| cost-effectively move power from areas where there is strong
| generation by renewables to areas that need it, or at least
| into storage.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Much respect for the amount of ETL you must have written to
| accomplish this. I have a local dashboard that duplicates some,
| not all, of your features for CAISO only and that was more than
| enough work.
|
| ETA: Can I ask why you don't have records for CAISO storage
| charge level?
| imperfect_light wrote:
| The variation in price is crazy, $80/MWH for Atlantic vs.
| $20-$30 for many other regions?
| kmax12 wrote:
| Indeed! One of the reason I made this site is to make it
| easier to track all the prices in one spot
| chandlerswift wrote:
| This is really neat! Thanks for sharing.
|
| I notice that the map uses OpenStreetMap (via Mapbox, it looks
| like) for its base data, but doesn't display the required
| attribution[0]. For fixing this, their Attribution
| Guidelines[1] are pretty informative. Mapbox also has some
| helpful docs[2], and may have some additional requirements.
| Thanks!
|
| Edit: After a bit of digging, I'm a bit unimpressed: it looks
| like the OSM and Mapbox attributions are deliberately hidden?
| From your compiled index.css: .mapboxgl-ctrl-
| logo, .mapboxgl-ctrl-attrib-inner { display:
| none !important; }
|
| [0]: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
|
| [1]:
| https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Attribution_Guideline...
|
| [2]: https://docs.mapbox.com/help/getting-started/attribution/
| kmax12 wrote:
| fixed!
| chandlerswift wrote:
| Looks great! Thanks for doing that so quickly :)
| tomohawk wrote:
| Average, overall, and other measures are unimportant when talking
| about electrical power. You need to look at worst case scenarios
| to understand how much capacity is actually required. So, over
| the course of a year, on what day did renewables supply the least
| amount? That would provide an initial indication, but would
| hardly suffice for long term planning.
|
| For example, if utility A supplies only 20% of required power
| from renewable sources on a given day over the last year, you can
| really only say renewables can be expected to supply 20% on any
| given day. But you'd need to do modelling or track over a larger
| number of years to get to the (likely lower) actual number.
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