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You'd think that if this was an easily solvable problem, the great engineering nation of Germany would've solved it, instead of just firing up the coal plants.
by gridlockd 6y ago
You'd think that if this was an easily solvable problem, the great engineering nation of Germany would've solved it, instead of just firing up the coal plants.
To store just a fraction of the needed power would require millions of large expensive batteries, whereas pumped hydro storage requires geological features that are in limited supply.
Once you factor in all these costs, suddenly the "cheapest electricity in history" becomes really expensive.
- pfortuny 6y agoWell, the great engineering nation of Germany brought us the Dieselgate.
- cbmuser 6y agoThat’s not an argument. Germany’s industry doesn’t exclusively consist of Volkswagen. No country has solved large scale energy storage that would be needed for storing electric energy in the range of TWh. None.
- majewsky 6y agoBecause there is no incentive. The current political incentive in Germany is to keep the existing fossil fuel power plants running for as long as possible to avoid investments that could ruin the "Schwarze Null" (the government's "no new debt" policy).
- pjc50 6y agoPolitical issues: the coal lobby is strong in Germany despite its "green" image.