Clean Energy For 14 Years In Germany

Of course. But if you are discussing future storage today, you can only discuss the forseeable future (a few decades at most). In that period, wind will remain the dominant renewable and possibly increase its lead over solar, hydro and biomass further.

That means that storage will mainly be driven by the needs of wind. And since wind is less variable throughout the year than solar, Vensonata’s point about long term storage is less significant than it may seem: wind needs mainly short term storage, not the seasonal storage solar would need in a climate like Germany’s.

As for Germany being connected: yes, but many of its neighbors (the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland and most of all Denmark) have a similar renewable profile to Germany: lots of wind, some solar and biomass. Even France and Spain are betting mainly on wind for now. And the Benelux, Denmark and northern France all have a remarkably similar wind spatio-temporal wind distribution compared to the northern Germany.

Europe is a wet and windy continent. As such, solar will be a fairly minor player in the energy mix for the forseeable future and any storage planning must work from that.

Wind became affordable years ago and is still becoming cheaper – at pretty much the exact same rate models predicted. Solar will need years upon years before it comes close to wind according to most pricing models (at least in cloudy climates).

That is of course assuming that crystalline silicon (and CdTe/CIGS to a lesser extent) will continue their dominance. However, no other technique offers any prospect of swift commercialization, let alone mass production.

The Pacific intertie runs through a single, stable polity and doesn’t have to cross a single stretch of sea. Compare that to a hypothetical link to North Africa, which would several different countries with widely different legal frameworks (and constantly changing legislation), run under the Mediteranean Sea and over the Alps and would have to tie in with a North African electricity grid that is still in its infancy.

Oh, and do note that much of North Africa is actually fairly windy too. Countries like Morocco seem to be rather fond of wind as well – possibly because even in the Sahara wind achieves a higher capacity factor.

And those prices are significantly lower than those reached in Europe, for various reasons that don’t really matter here.

Laying subsea cables has been possible for over a century, that’s not the issue. Cost is the issue: subsea cable is significantly more expensive than terrestrial cabling and tunnel boring is more expensive still.

A connection from Algiers to Marseille has two drawbacks: it crosses the Med almost at its widest and it goes through the French grid. France is unwilling to allow large export currents through its own grid, a grid that was designed for a steady stream of nuclear power and can’t take much more without upgrades. Upgrades that would mainly benefit others but would have to paid for by France – something the country isn’t too keen on.

Also, Algeria isn’t exactly the most stable or safe country in the region. Realistically, only Morocco and Tunesia are stable enough for a long term, high risk project such as massive, export-oriented solar.

A cheaper option would be to install more solar in southern Italy and Sicily. The Italian grid is already well connected to the rest of Europe and solar resources are almost comparable to those found in North Africa.

As for your last point: I discuss the future based on today’s models. That’s how every company, university and government department I’ve come into contact with does long term planning.

You can’t make a long term plan that assumes that X will drop in price massively if Y or that Z might happen. You base yourself on known quantities and use an appropriate regression model to make assumptions about the future. And those models all indicate that wind will remain the dominant renewable across Europe and probably beyond.

But all that is academical. The only realistic option is gradual, local progress that doesn’t involve any pie-in-the-sky projects like North African solar or massive storage in Germany.

Let the market grow organically and choose its path; when storage becomes an issue, market forces will push it to the front – as seems to be happening in sparsely populated regions of countries like Australia already. When solar becomes more attractive than wind, investment will gravitate towards it.

If you read studies like Matthias Popss Dissertation (TU Braunschweig) on storage demand in Germany then you find that the demand is much higher in PV heavy scenarios.

The “optimal” RE mix for Germany looks like 50% on-shore wind, 30% offfshore wind, 20% PV.

The reason for this is that the demand peaks in winter, when PV does not deliver, and that the difference between daytime and nighttime demand is smaller in Germany than in the USA, here onshore wind shines.

I think Larmion’s assessment is correct.

Larmion, point of use solar provides electricity to consumers at a lower cost than wind power right now in Australia. And this is also the case in Europe.

Well, Larmion, around noon on weekends in South Australia over a third of total electricity consumption can come from rooftop solar. Since we also have wind power and currently an operating coal power station, their combination can result in negative electricity prices during the day. If we had a pumped storage reservoir, which we don’t, it would definitely take advantage of those negative electricity prices to charge itself so it could sell power in the evening. So if we did have utility scale storage, it would definitely make use of distributed grid tied solar when ever it charged itself during hours of daylight.