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In the same thread, there is France with a price of 645€. I don't understand why a country loaded with nuclear reaction can beat Germany in price. Or maybe does

In the same thread, there is France with a price of 645€. I don't understand why a country loaded with nuclear reaction can beat Germany in price. Or maybe does it mean that the neighboring country are willing to pay France this much because they are desperate, but in this case why not buy the electricity from Germany at 432€ ?.

stdbrouw 5y ago
A number of reactors in France are down at the moment: https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/edf-extend-civaux-nuclear-outage-shut-down-reactors-chooz-safety-measures-2021-12-15/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/edf-extend-civaux-nuc...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Arnt 5y ago
I think the answer you may be looking for is: Nuclear reactors are unreliable. Compare them to solar, which is very different. Solar produces power according to sunshine, with no moving parts, and if a panel breaks the rest of the panels go on working, so the failure is a small deterioration in power output. Nuclear plants are differently unreliable, because they have lots of moving parts and elaborate maintenance procedures, and during maintenance a plant produces 0% power instead of that small deterioration. The unreliability is on a different timescale, both better and worse than solar. France has lots of reactors, but they're not all up, and you can't expect all to be up, so sometimes they'll have this problem. IIRC they had something similar in 2016, which they were able to solve using imports.
- hulitu 5y ago
  > I think the answer you may be looking for is: Nuclear reactors are unreliable. Compare them to solar, which is very different. You should come in southern Germany to see how reliable is solar when half of the year there is foggy.
  - Arnt 5y ago
    Right. Solar depends on the weather and is unreliable in that respect, but reliable against mechanical problems. Nuclear is the opposite. More and less reliable.
  - pydry 5y ago
    In 2011 the nuclear industry promised rolling blackouts by now: https://theguardian.com/environment/2011/may/23/germany-nuclear-shutdown-winter-blackouts https://theguardian.com/environment/2011/may/23/germany-nucl... Pretty sure they didnt envision Germany having cheaper winter electricity than France. All I can find evidence for is a balloon that short circuited a substation, which is a blackout that is unlikely to have been prevented by a nuclear reactor.
    - moooo99 5y ago
      > Pretty sure they didnt envision Germany having cheaper winter electricity than France. Unfortunately that does not reflect at all in the consumer price. We have been taking top spots in the energy price rankings for years now and there is no real hope for improvements.
- liketochill 5y ago
  You clearly don’t work in solar. The panels move on trackers, the panels have to be cleaned of dust and snow, vegetation around the panels has to be cut, inverters fail, etc. there are many moving parts and maintenance required.
  - toper-centage 5y ago
    That sort of maintenance can easily be done without the need for specialised engineers. A gardener can mow the lawn, a janitor can clean the panels, and most solar plants are not on tracks but static.
    - Arnt 5y ago
      But that's not what I had in mind. When an inverter fails, it has to be replaced, and meanwhile a few panels don't produce power. A few, as opposed to all. You get many small failures that cause the plant to produce ninety-some per cent of its possible output instead of the nuclear kind, where the plant is down and produces zero energy, and can't be turned back on even with several days of advance warning.
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  Nuke is 'reliable' in a much more important way - the plant outages are scheduled and the generation is scheduled. You can (and do) bet the health of the grid on nuke having the output you plan when you plan for it to be there. This is referred to in generation industry jargon as 'dispatchable' power. This makes a modern zero-sum storageless grid work. Solar is non-dispatchable. You can estimate what power output will be available, you can over-provision generation and store it in expensive batteries, but you simply can not rely on it being there and expect the grid to stay online. It turns out that regular plant maintenance outages aren't particularly important compared to not being able to properly plan generation.
  - pydry 5y ago
    Nuclear plants are "dispatchable" in the same way wind farms are "dispatchable" - you can just not feed as much of the power you are creating into the grid. Gas and hydro are actually dispatchable. You can dial down the power you are using and actually use it later.
    - liketochill 5y ago
      False. You can’t make more power out of a wind farm than there is wind.
      - Arnt 5y ago
        Of course. But also not much less. If you have a 50-unit wind farm you'll have a lot of problems that reduce your output to 98% of what the wind allows until you can fix them. Not so many that reduce output to 0% of what the wind allows.
      - pydry 5y ago
        Did I say you could?
        liketochill 5y ago
        Dispatchable means you can turn it on and turn it up when you want to.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > Nuclear reactors are unreliable. Compare them to solar, which is very different. > Solar produces power according to sunshine So, according to weather. Which isn't exactly renowned for being reliable. This is about wind power, not solar, but another tweet I saw recently mentioned "Solar availability in mid-winter: 0 %" It's also in Swedish, but the picture speaks for itself. https://mobile.twitter.com/HenrikSundstrom/status/1472654421322571779 https://mobile.twitter.com/HenrikSundstrom/status/1472654421...
srg0 5y ago
According to electricityMap, France is importing 3.58GW from Germany right now. And from all other neighbors, except Great Britain. https://app.electricitymap.org/map https://app.electricitymap.org/map

stdbrouw 5y ago

A number of reactors in France are down at the moment: https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/edf-extend-civaux-nuclear-outage-shut-down-reactors-chooz-safety-measures-2021-12-15/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/edf-extend-civaux-nuc...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Arnt 5y ago

I think the answer you may be looking for is: Nuclear reactors are unreliable. Compare them to solar, which is very different. Solar produces power according to sunshine, with no moving parts, and if a panel breaks the rest of the panels go on working, so the failure is a small deterioration in power output. Nuclear plants are differently unreliable, because they have lots of moving parts and elaborate maintenance procedures, and during maintenance a plant produces 0% power instead of that small deterioration. The unreliability is on a different timescale, both better and worse than solar. France has lots of reactors, but they're not all up, and you can't expect all to be up, so sometimes they'll have this problem. IIRC they had something similar in 2016, which they were able to solve using imports.

hulitu 5y ago
> I think the answer you may be looking for is: Nuclear reactors are unreliable. Compare them to solar, which is very different. You should come in southern Germany to see how reliable is solar when half of the year there is foggy.
- Arnt 5y ago
  Right. Solar depends on the weather and is unreliable in that respect, but reliable against mechanical problems. Nuclear is the opposite. More and less reliable.
- pydry 5y ago
  In 2011 the nuclear industry promised rolling blackouts by now: https://theguardian.com/environment/2011/may/23/germany-nuclear-shutdown-winter-blackouts https://theguardian.com/environment/2011/may/23/germany-nucl... Pretty sure they didnt envision Germany having cheaper winter electricity than France. All I can find evidence for is a balloon that short circuited a substation, which is a blackout that is unlikely to have been prevented by a nuclear reactor.
  - moooo99 5y ago
    > Pretty sure they didnt envision Germany having cheaper winter electricity than France. Unfortunately that does not reflect at all in the consumer price. We have been taking top spots in the energy price rankings for years now and there is no real hope for improvements.
liketochill 5y ago
You clearly don’t work in solar. The panels move on trackers, the panels have to be cleaned of dust and snow, vegetation around the panels has to be cut, inverters fail, etc. there are many moving parts and maintenance required.
- toper-centage 5y ago
  That sort of maintenance can easily be done without the need for specialised engineers. A gardener can mow the lawn, a janitor can clean the panels, and most solar plants are not on tracks but static.
  - Arnt 5y ago
    But that's not what I had in mind. When an inverter fails, it has to be replaced, and meanwhile a few panels don't produce power. A few, as opposed to all. You get many small failures that cause the plant to produce ninety-some per cent of its possible output instead of the nuclear kind, where the plant is down and produces zero energy, and can't be turned back on even with several days of advance warning.
idiotsecant 5y ago
Nuke is 'reliable' in a much more important way - the plant outages are scheduled and the generation is scheduled. You can (and do) bet the health of the grid on nuke having the output you plan when you plan for it to be there. This is referred to in generation industry jargon as 'dispatchable' power. This makes a modern zero-sum storageless grid work. Solar is non-dispatchable. You can estimate what power output will be available, you can over-provision generation and store it in expensive batteries, but you simply can not rely on it being there and expect the grid to stay online. It turns out that regular plant maintenance outages aren't particularly important compared to not being able to properly plan generation.
- pydry 5y ago
  Nuclear plants are "dispatchable" in the same way wind farms are "dispatchable" - you can just not feed as much of the power you are creating into the grid. Gas and hydro are actually dispatchable. You can dial down the power you are using and actually use it later.
  - liketochill 5y ago
    False. You can’t make more power out of a wind farm than there is wind.
    - Arnt 5y ago
      Of course. But also not much less. If you have a 50-unit wind farm you'll have a lot of problems that reduce your output to 98% of what the wind allows until you can fix them. Not so many that reduce output to 0% of what the wind allows.
    - pydry 5y ago
      Did I say you could?
      - liketochill 5y ago
        Dispatchable means you can turn it on and turn it up when you want to.
CRConrad 5y ago
> Nuclear reactors are unreliable. Compare them to solar, which is very different. > Solar produces power according to sunshine So, according to weather. Which isn't exactly renowned for being reliable. This is about wind power, not solar, but another tweet I saw recently mentioned "Solar availability in mid-winter: 0 %" It's also in Swedish, but the picture speaks for itself. https://mobile.twitter.com/HenrikSundstrom/status/1472654421322571779 https://mobile.twitter.com/HenrikSundstrom/status/1472654421...

srg0 5y ago

According to electricityMap, France is importing 3.58GW from Germany right now. And from all other neighbors, except Great Britain. https://app.electricitymap.org/map https://app.electricitymap.org/map