Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July 9

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madd0ct0r
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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Simon_Jester wrote: ____________________

P.S. The key point is that, so far as I know, none of the above is a matter of opinion except the last paragraph. These are the basic facts about how electricity is made and used, and we cannot escape or evade them. Any plan any nation makes for generating electricity has to accomodate these facts on some level.

I think you underestimate the extent to which demand patterns can be altered and 'base load' reduced in size, but yeah I would broadly agree. It's when you need to put numbers to it it gets difficult.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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salm wrote:
blowfish wrote:
salm wrote:So, blowfish, are you saying that you used the price of nuclear power as an argument for nuclear without actually knowing the price?
I'm saying that power companies' numbers aren't the only source you should use. There are, however, renewable projects and nuclear projects for which prices are known (and I'm assuming that Germany wouldn't fuck up building projects even more badly than Areva in Finland).
So could you tell us what a unit of nuclear energy costs (with all costs such as waste storage and insurance included) compared to a unit of renewables (with all costs such as grid upgrade and energy storage included)?
Finland has nuclear reactors (older) which are profit making at market price of energy being around 40-45€/MWh most of the time. 2012-2015 period has lowest spot price at 13,67 (Julyr 2012) and highest 52,81 (Feb 2012). For new plant it is claimed they would need price of approx 57€/MWh to cover costs of first reactor on pristine location with no infrastructure.

By comparison, wind power demands constant feedin tariffs which are at minimum around 80€/MWh, that is with ZERO responsibility to provide RELIABLE energy.

If windpower producers were required to achieve on annual level say 70% output compared to nameplate capacity... (quite generous, nukes work at up to 90% capacity) We would see price skyrocket. Annually their output is about 20-25% in Finland of nameplate capacity. How badly it would fail depends on how long period the storage must endure with low to no production and what conditions are required to top it up again.
We have to keep in mind when speaking of storage of unreliable production that we may run into issue where you slowly bleed your stores to empty with situation where they are not replenished before being forced to feed energy again.

It just does not work.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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Simon_Jester wrote:P.P.S. Solar power satellites are a favorite of mine for replacing fission power, but we are nowhere near making them cost-effective. They don't pay even at launch costs 10 to 100 times lower than they are today, you basically need a space elevator to make them work as far as I can tell.
This is only true as long as you're essentially building everything on the ground and rocketing it up to space. If you make a mostly-automated orbital foundry and move resource mining and manufacturing up the well, the costs drop dramatically over the long-term. This requires asteroid capture or lunar mining, most likely, but our future lies up the well sooner or later. Might as well get a head start.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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madd0ct0r wrote:
Simon_Jester wrote: ____________________

P.S. The key point is that, so far as I know, none of the above is a matter of opinion except the last paragraph. These are the basic facts about how electricity is made and used, and we cannot escape or evade them. Any plan any nation makes for generating electricity has to accomodate these facts on some level.

I think you underestimate the extent to which demand patterns can be altered and 'base load' reduced in size, but yeah I would broadly agree. It's when you need to put numbers to it it gets difficult.
I don't think he underestimates it. When you start to force large changes to demand patterns, you are going to run into huge amount of really, really upset people. Or alternatively, you have to shovel up cash to companies like there is no tomorrow if you want to pull the plug on their factories.

Because that is what demand pattern altering in large scale ultimately means, you have to tell someone they are not getting electricity.

On other matters... Electric cars are HORRIBLE idea. Batteries have so limited lifetime and charging them up is absurdly slow. If you can, go and sit at some busy gas station. Even with something like Tesla fast chargers, you lose insanely much time compared to simple fuel refill. That means loooong queues for topping up. Or you need to put lots of charge points to field, which in turn means you have to rebuild cabling to enable gas stations to guzzle many times as much electricity from the grid as they do now.

And solar satellites, I am bit iffy on those too. We are speaking of microwave transmitters (as it is right now most convenient method of transfer) with output that is at least tens of megawatts. Imagine "small" error in targeting for whatever reason.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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Tiwaz wrote:And solar satellites, I am bit iffy on those too. We are speaking of microwave transmitters (as it is right now most convenient method of transfer) with output that is at least tens of megawatts. Imagine "small" error in targeting for whatever reason.
Yeah, it's megawatts at the emitter end, but even at the center of the rectenna, the intensity on the ground is on the order of 10s of milliWatts per square centimeter. That's on the same order of magnitude as the current OSHA levels of safe workplace microwave exposure for extended or indefinite periods. Even if the satellite was misaimed, it's not a huge deal. This is over and above that the sanest way to use them would be to string rectennae out over what is already sparsely populated space like agricultural or ranching fields. I don't think the cows care.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

Post by Ziggy Stardust »

Tiwaz wrote: On other matters... Electric cars are HORRIBLE idea. Batteries have so limited lifetime and charging them up is absurdly slow.
The technology is still new. When gasoline-fueled cars first came around, people also called them impractical and inefficient. That isn't a reasonable excuse to dismiss them as a horrible idea, given all of the practical benefits they confer.

And the gap isn't as large as you think, anyway.

And while it does take longer to charge them up from empty than it does to fill an empty tank, this time loss is mediated by the fact that you can have recharge stations EVERYWHERE, not just at gas stations. Most apartment complexes and businesses in my area have at least two parking spots with electric car charging spots in them already, and this is without them being particularly widespread. So I don't think that argument holds water (and this isn't even bringing up the fact that quick-charging stations are being developed anyway).
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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Terralthra wrote:
Tiwaz wrote:And solar satellites, I am bit iffy on those too. We are speaking of microwave transmitters (as it is right now most convenient method of transfer) with output that is at least tens of megawatts. Imagine "small" error in targeting for whatever reason.
Yeah, it's megawatts at the emitter end, but even at the center of the rectenna, the intensity on the ground is on the order of 10s of milliWatts per square centimeter. That's on the same order of magnitude as the current OSHA levels of safe workplace microwave exposure for extended or indefinite periods. Even if the satellite was misaimed, it's not a huge deal. This is over and above that the sanest way to use them would be to string rectennae out over what is already sparsely populated space like agricultural or ranching fields. I don't think the cows care.
Which would make it very area consuming as you would still need to get megawatts out on the ground level for whole system to have any purpose. And land costs, as well as construction of huge rectenna, so it would make it that much harder to break even. Most likely setup would be much higher in output while keeping beam tighter.

Specially since huge parts of Earth do not have massive excess of free landmass. Like Europe.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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Ziggy Stardust wrote:
Tiwaz wrote: On other matters... Electric cars are HORRIBLE idea. Batteries have so limited lifetime and charging them up is absurdly slow.
The technology is still new. When gasoline-fueled cars first came around, people also called them impractical and inefficient. That isn't a reasonable excuse to dismiss them as a horrible idea, given all of the practical benefits they confer.
Name practical benefits they achieve compared to my preferred option, hydrogen using fuel-cell vehicle.
I live in Finland, here we have added strain of winter for electric cars. You need heating to make passengers comfortable (eats up battery) on top of it reducing range from simple cold. We are also sparsely populated country. When I take kids to meet granny, it means 300km ride in one direction. All my cars can do this trip both ways with one tank of fuel in the middle of winter when it is cold, -20C being perfectly normal. And then some, as we also drive around a bit at destination too.

If I start off the trip without having topped up my car, my stop is 3-4 minutes and then off again to ensure minimum time wasted (once the little monsters fall asleep, you want maximum amount of kilometers passed from moment of passing out to moment of waking up). Oh, and we might load up a big pile of stuff in the car too, so there must be lots of space for things at back.

Even with possibility of snail charging car at destination I would be downgrading a LOT if I went to electric car.
And the gap isn't as large as you think, anyway.
It is large still, considering that vehicles not relying on such decaying components do not see their range shrink.
And while it does take longer to charge them up from empty than it does to fill an empty tank, this time loss is mediated by the fact that you can have recharge stations EVERYWHERE, not just at gas stations. Most apartment complexes and businesses in my area have at least two parking spots with electric car charging spots in them already, and this is without them being particularly widespread. So I don't think that argument holds water (and this isn't even bringing up the fact that quick-charging stations are being developed anyway).
And their output is seriously limited, so charging takes bloody AGES. Quick-charge does not change fact that energy has to come from SOMEWHERE, or that in order to move more energy in same time you have to up voltage, amperage or both. Either you need huge capacitor or you need to have connection to grid with enough capacity to do the same. Capacitor means less strain on grid, but it has to be recharged before you can quick-load again. Grid-solution can charge cars fast without need for recharge, but needs sufficient capacity all the way to main lines to avoid overloading any part of the grid.

Electric cars are dead-end. Problems are just too much inherent to technology to have worthwhile solutions. You can want to have solution all you want, but sometimes wanting and wasting money does not work. And limits set by moving energy in electric form around are well known, if we would have come up with solution to solve them easily and cheaply it would have already been done.

We could want perpetual motion engine with all our hearts and pour all our resources to it, but it would still not work. Some things cannot be solved by wanting really much.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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I don't think anything you are saying is news to anyone in this thread, and yeah I'd agree that long distance trips in scandanvia are about the worst case for electric cars imaginable. Petrol will remain competitive in that niche for decades to come.

However, a lot of people who work in this field disagree with your wider (wilder) statements.
I found this one this morning: http://www.highways.gov.uk/knowledge/pr ... -vehicles/

Demand shifting is known to occur already. The challenge is the design of appliances to make it low friction, and integrating with the smart grid that is steadily being rolled out: One (old) example of the kind of reasearch being carried out: http://behaveconference.com/wp-content/ ... ersity.pdf

Of course, domestic electricity isn't the full slice of pie, but industry always gets less public discussion as it less directly going to affect the public. Happy to talk more if you are interested.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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Tiwaz wrote: Finland has nuclear reactors (older) which are profit making at market price of energy being around 40-45€/MWh most of the time. 2012-2015 period has lowest spot price at 13,67 (Julyr 2012) and highest 52,81 (Feb 2012). For new plant it is claimed they would need price of approx 57€/MWh to cover costs of first reactor on pristine location with no infrastructure.
How are these costs calculated and do they include all external costs such as dismantling and storing the dismantled plant, storing the waste and similar things?

Here is an article about a recent EU study which claims that 1MWh of nuclear power is at around 100€/MWh while on shore wind is at around 75€/MWh. The latter is going to get cheaper in the future.
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-1131_en.htm
By comparison, wind power demands constant feedin tariffs which are at minimum around 80€/MWh, that is with ZERO responsibility to provide RELIABLE energy.

If windpower producers were required to achieve on annual level say 70% output compared to nameplate capacity... (quite generous, nukes work at up to 90% capacity) We would see price skyrocket. Annually their output is about 20-25% in Finland of nameplate capacity. How badly it would fail depends on how long period the storage must endure with low to no production and what conditions are required to top it up again.
We have to keep in mind when speaking of storage of unreliable production that we may run into issue where you slowly bleed your stores to empty with situation where they are not replenished before being forced to feed energy again.

It just does not work.
Offshore wind is quite reliable. Offshore wind can be produced on around 340 days per year easing the challenge of storage and pushing the time when we actually need storage even further into the future.
The following PDF from the Fraunhofer Institut discribes how offshore wind energy will reduce the cost of renewables in the future and shows how an energy mix with a large percentage of off shore wind farms significanly reduces the need for backup and storage requirements.
Link
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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salm wrote:
Tiwaz wrote: Finland has nuclear reactors (older) which are profit making at market price of energy being around 40-45€/MWh most of the time. 2012-2015 period has lowest spot price at 13,67 (Julyr 2012) and highest 52,81 (Feb 2012). For new plant it is claimed they would need price of approx 57€/MWh to cover costs of first reactor on pristine location with no infrastructure.
How are these costs calculated and do they include all external costs such as dismantling and storing the dismantled plant, storing the waste and similar things?
Costs are calculated based on budgets of recent nuclear power plant projects. And yes, they contain mentioned costs as it is mandatory by law for nuclear power plant operator to take care of it and they have to put some of their income into fund which makes sure there are funds to take care of it even if operators do not.
Here is an article about a recent EU study which claims that 1MWh of nuclear power is at around 100€/MWh while on shore wind is at around 75€/MWh. The latter is going to get cheaper in the future.
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-1131_en.htm
Do you have information what they base this upon? Also notice, that this 75€/MWh is WITHOUT GUARANTEE OF PRODUCTION. It is random energy, you get it or you do not. Someone, somewhere has to build reliable production method that picks up the huge amount of slack created by random production.
By comparison, wind power demands constant feedin tariffs which are at minimum around 80€/MWh, that is with ZERO responsibility to provide RELIABLE energy.

If windpower producers were required to achieve on annual level say 70% output compared to nameplate capacity... (quite generous, nukes work at up to 90% capacity) We would see price skyrocket. Annually their output is about 20-25% in Finland of nameplate capacity. How badly it would fail depends on how long period the storage must endure with low to no production and what conditions are required to top it up again.
We have to keep in mind when speaking of storage of unreliable production that we may run into issue where you slowly bleed your stores to empty with situation where they are not replenished before being forced to feed energy again.

It just does not work.
Offshore wind is quite reliable. Offshore wind can be produced on around 340 days per year easing the challenge of storage and pushing the time when we actually need storage even further into the future.
The following PDF from the Fraunhofer Institut discribes how offshore wind energy will reduce the cost of renewables in the future and shows how an energy mix with a large percentage of off shore wind farms significanly reduces the need for backup and storage requirements.
Link
Is it produced 340 days of year at nameplate ratio or is actual production far lower? My recollection on this matter is that annual production of offshore is only maybe 20%-30% higher than inland windmills. Huge increase, but considering horrible production rates of inland windmills it is still bad. Looks like your PDF agrees, as it gives offshore 4800 hours of nameplate production on annual level. It is not enough that some energy is produced, as there has to always be enough energy produced somehow to meet the demand. So, there is still remaining rest of annual 8760 hours that have to be met in some other way. Which in turn costs money.

That research also failed to give us some kind of comparison point. Their version costs minimum of 63 billion euros.
Why they did not present alternative where there would be bulk energy from nuclear power? My guess... It would have thrown a wrench down at heir fine plan.

I also wonder where is their tariff going to be. Because wind power industry itself in here has made it clear they are not going to operate unless given free access to taxpayer money. In essence, they cannot operate in free markets and still be profitable. That really is all we need to know about wind power in my opinion. If electricity price has to double to make it viable (without them having any duty to provide reliable output for that price) it is not worth it. Time for better ideas.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

Post by madd0ct0r »

It's almost like the previous 6 pages, and the previous 12 threads never happened.

Jesus Christ. Tiwaz, put some numbers to your claims and put some sources to your numbers.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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Tiwaz wrote:
Terralthra wrote:
Tiwaz wrote:And solar satellites, I am bit iffy on those too. We are speaking of microwave transmitters (as it is right now most convenient method of transfer) with output that is at least tens of megawatts. Imagine "small" error in targeting for whatever reason.
Yeah, it's megawatts at the emitter end, but even at the center of the rectenna, the intensity on the ground is on the order of 10s of milliWatts per square centimeter. That's on the same order of magnitude as the current OSHA levels of safe workplace microwave exposure for extended or indefinite periods. Even if the satellite was misaimed, it's not a huge deal. This is over and above that the sanest way to use them would be to string rectennae out over what is already sparsely populated space like agricultural or ranching fields. I don't think the cows care.
Which would make it very area consuming as you would still need to get megawatts out on the ground level for whole system to have any purpose. And land costs, as well as construction of huge rectenna, so it would make it that much harder to break even. Most likely setup would be much higher in output while keeping beam tighter.

Specially since huge parts of Earth do not have massive excess of free landmass. Like Europe.
Um, can you do basic algebra? 20 mW/cm2 = 200MW per km2. And, as I just pointed out, you can string the rectenna over agricultural land with little to no effect on the crops or animals below. It's essentially chicken-wire, only with larger gaps and a bit more tautness. Or did you mean to say that Europe doesn't have farms? I doubt that quite a bit.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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Tiwaz wrote: Costs are calculated based on budgets of recent nuclear power plant projects. And yes, they contain mentioned costs as it is mandatory by law for nuclear power plant operator to take care of it and they have to put some of their income into fund which makes sure there are funds to take care of it even if operators do not.
Could you please show these numbers then? As I said before in this thread I find it very difficult or even impossible to find reliable numbers on the cost of nuclear energy because not even the people conducting these studies agree on what actually should be part of these costs.
Do you have information what they base this upon?
No, I don´t have that information. I actually WANT information like that.
There´s of course allways the glorious Hinkley Point C (about 125€/MWh, guaranteed and inflation adjusted every year by the British tax payer) but I hope that´s not representative.
Also notice, that this 75€/MWh is WITHOUT GUARANTEE OF PRODUCTION. It is random energy, you get it or you do not. Someone, somewhere has to build reliable production method that picks up the huge amount of slack created by random production.
No it isn´t random. There are fluctuations. This is the main point of the Fraunhofer study. It tries to save cost by implementing a lot of better predicable offshore energy. BTW, prediction methods will also get better in the future.
The study is concerned with making renewables as reliable as possible by adding back up and storage in an optimal way.
Is it produced 340 days of year at nameplate ratio or is actual production far lower? My recollection on this matter is that annual production of offshore is only maybe 20%-30% higher than inland windmills. Huge increase, but considering horrible production rates of inland windmills it is still bad. Looks like your PDF agrees, as it gives offshore 4800 hours of nameplate production on annual level. It is not enough that some energy is produced, as there has to always be enough energy produced somehow to meet the demand. So, there is still remaining rest of annual 8760 hours that have to be met in some other way. Which in turn costs money.
4800 hours is about 55% of the year.
Why is this so important to you? The study cleary speaks about redundancies and energy storage as a solution.
Maddoctor noted in the beginning of this thread that British coal plants run only at 60% of the time. This has never been a concern. So why is it a concern when it comes to renewables?
That research also failed to give us some kind of comparison point. Their version costs minimum of 63 billion euros.
Why they did not present alternative where there would be bulk energy from nuclear power? My guess... It would have thrown a wrench down at heir fine plan.
What do you mean "their fine plan"? This is not some agenda driven study to evaluate wind vs nuclear. The nuclear option isn´t an option at all. Nuclear is dead in Germany. This study is concerned with finding out the best way to implement renewables.
Note that these scenarios are for about 50% more power than is produced today, accounting for the fact that in the future more stuff will come from electricity than today (power-to-heat, power-to-gas, electromobility).
I also wonder where is their tariff going to be. Because wind power industry itself in here has made it clear they are not going to operate unless given free access to taxpayer money. In essence, they cannot operate in free markets and still be profitable. That really is all we need to know about wind power in my opinion. If electricity price has to double to make it viable (without them having any duty to provide reliable output for that price) it is not worth it. Time for better ideas.
What do you mean? All energy is operated with free tax payer money. At least renewables are given tax payer transparently while nuclear, coal, oil and the rest recieves billions in subsidies in completely muddled up instransparent ways. This has been one of the major points in the thread the whole time, for christs sake.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

Post by Darth Tanner »

Maddoctor noted in the beginning of this thread that British coal plants run only at 60% of the time. This has never been a concern. So why is it a concern when it comes to renewables?
Just to pick this point in isolation, the UK coal fleet is current picking the 60% of the time it runs so it only largely runs on the peaks and winter season with the more efficient plants running significantly more than 60%. You don't get to choose your 10%/55% for renewables, you get it when the sun peaks or the wind blows with no other option. Despatchable plant must make up for that.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

Post by madd0ct0r »

That is mostly true. Unscheduled maintenance is always possible after all :)

It's also worth trying to figure out what amount of the 65% of the year each turbine isn't running is also scheduled maintennce. (It also tends to be summer, since demand in uk is lower then and nobody likes being up those things when they are covered in ice)

Apples to apples is always difficult in this game. As an example there's a number of windturbines that were actually being classified as smaller wattage then they actually were, since only ones in that class were eligible for a particularly poorly designed local subsidy. http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Tur ... story.html
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

Post by Tiwaz »

salm wrote: Could you please show these numbers then? As I said before in this thread I find it very difficult or even impossible to find reliable numbers on the cost of nuclear energy because not even the people conducting these studies agree on what actually should be part of these costs.
https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/86304

Knock yourself out. maddoctor can have fun reading it too.

As said, law requires things from nuclear power plant operators and that they pay money to security fund.
No, I don´t have that information. I actually WANT information like that.
There´s of course allways the glorious Hinkley Point C (about 125€/MWh, guaranteed and inflation adjusted every year by the British tax payer) but I hope that´s not representative.
You also have market disruptors called feedin tariffs for windpower and such. Those are disrupting the markets causing situation where you have to pay more for reliable energy too. You need to pay for capacity which is there but might not be used or have to be used at loss due to market disruption caused by heavy subsidies of renewables.
No it isn´t random. There are fluctuations. This is the main point of the Fraunhofer study. It tries to save cost by implementing a lot of better predicable offshore energy. BTW, prediction methods will also get better in the future.
The study is concerned with making renewables as reliable as possible by adding back up and storage in an optimal way.
Not random? Then please, present to me clear and reliable prediction which tells with say 20% error speed of wind in any location for every hour of your choice for period of say one year. It is random. You can say it is most likely going to be something like X with small advance warning, but that's it.

And backup and storage are excess costs which we could do without. I want to see version where they do not put in storages and backups, instead choosing method which can be relied on. It would be cheaper at end really, as adding more parts to it to make up for unreliability of one production form is always at end more expensive.
4800 hours is about 55% of the year.
Why is this so important to you? The study cleary speaks about redundancies and energy storage as a solution.
Maddoctor noted in the beginning of this thread that British coal plants run only at 60% of the time. This has never been a concern. So why is it a concern when it comes to renewables?
Yes, what the fuck you do with 45% of the year? Coal plants and such are not run all the time because they do not need to run at all times. But when you MUST have them running, they WILL run. Bar some accident or malfunction.

Do you know when in Finland our electricity consumption is highest? During Jan/Feb months, at night with clear skies and low winds. It is bloody important that something as vital as electricity does not suddenly go out when outdoors is -20 or worse.
That research also failed to give us some kind of comparison point. Their version costs minimum of 63 billion euros.
Why they did not present alternative where there would be bulk energy from nuclear power? My guess... It would have thrown a wrench down at heir fine plan.
What do you mean "their fine plan"? This is not some agenda driven study to evaluate wind vs nuclear. The nuclear option isn´t an option at all. Nuclear is dead in Germany. This study is concerned with finding out the best way to implement renewables.
Note that these scenarios are for about 50% more power than is produced today, accounting for the fact that in the future more stuff will come from electricity than today (power-to-heat, power-to-gas, electromobility).[/quote]

Research tends to be political too. Studies which fit the current line get funding more easily. Nuclear is dead in Germany because HOW many studies Germany has published and made public where they give clear cost difference presenting how much more they pay for unreliable energy production compared to reliable one?

And nuclear power is not dead in Germany, Germany just exported the issue to it's neighbours buying their electricity. For example from Temelin in Czech, plant which should have been shut down ages ago for being bloody dangerous! But since Germany needs electricity and is happy to import when it's production fails, Czech company has no reason to get rid of goose laying golden eggs. Even if maintenance has been little this and that. And plants are old as hell.
What do you mean? All energy is operated with free tax payer money. At least renewables are given tax payer transparently while nuclear, coal, oil and the rest recieves billions in subsidies in completely muddled up instransparent ways. This has been one of the major points in the thread the whole time, for christs sake.
Actually no. When I pay electric company, I am consumer. When government hands out money I paid, I am taxpayer.
Finland does not pay subsidies for nuclear power (rather the opposite) nor other energy production forms. Only wind.

Commonly referred subsidies mentioned specially by renewable fans are often GLOBAL subsidies. So that they can conveniently avoid transparency to avoid telling that those are actually Iran and bunch of other nations using subsidies to lower cost of fuel for citizens to make them able to afford it.

Or in case of Finland, claiming that lower taxes on diesel fuel is "subsidy". Approximately 0% of our grid electricity is produced burning that diesel.

This blog has already said much there is to say about the reality of fossil subsidies:
http://euanmearns.com/the-appalling-tru ... subsidies/
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

Post by madd0ct0r »

Tiwaz wrote:
salm wrote: Could you please show these numbers then? As I said before in this thread I find it very difficult or even impossible to find reliable numbers on the cost of nuclear energy because not even the people conducting these studies agree on what actually should be part of these costs.
https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/86304

Knock yourself out. maddoctor can have fun reading it too.

As said, law requires things from nuclear power plant operators and that they pay money to security fund.

I'm at work now, so don't have time to thoroughly dissect it, but one thing immediately stands out: a 5% real interest rate was assumed. Finland's interest rate, in common with much of the west, has not gone near that in years. http://ycharts.com/indicators/finland_l ... rest_rates

The interest rate is used to calculate the comparative cost of future work compared to upfront cost. It can be thought of as the amount of money that would have to be put in the bank now to have grown into the final amount needed by that time. In the case of nuclear, a huge chunk of the plant's cost is set in the far future. A unrealistically high annual interest rate allows you to make that portion of the cost magically shrink, bringing the total 'cost' of the scheme down.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

Post by Tiwaz »

madd0ct0r wrote:
Tiwaz wrote:
salm wrote: Could you please show these numbers then? As I said before in this thread I find it very difficult or even impossible to find reliable numbers on the cost of nuclear energy because not even the people conducting these studies agree on what actually should be part of these costs.
https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/86304

Knock yourself out. maddoctor can have fun reading it too.

As said, law requires things from nuclear power plant operators and that they pay money to security fund.

I'm at work now, so don't have time to thoroughly dissect it, but one thing immediately stands out: a 5% real interest rate was assumed. Finland's interest rate, in common with much of the west, has not gone near that in years. http://ycharts.com/indicators/finland_l ... rest_rates

The interest rate is used to calculate the comparative cost of future work compared to upfront cost. It can be thought of as the amount of money that would have to be put in the bank now to have grown into the final amount needed by that time. In the case of nuclear, a huge chunk of the plant's cost is set in the far future. A unrealistically high annual interest rate allows you to make that portion of the cost magically shrink, bringing the total 'cost' of the scheme down.
Huge cost of nuclear plant is construction, costs from running are peanuts compared to that. That is money that has to be paid at start of construction and at end of construction. This is money that most parties funding the construction have to loan to pay. So it can actually work opposite to what you claim and exaggerate the cost of building nuclear plant. We should also take into account the possibility that Euro is coming to end of it's road. Graph in your link does not extend to days of FIM, which preceded Euro as currency. Back then interest rates were way higher, and would/will be post euro.

Even cost of final depository are small, approximately 0,17 cents/kWh (http://suomenkuvalehti.fi/jutut/kotimaa ... ma-haluaa/).

This, of course, comes with notable matter of Finland being located geologically extremely stable area with kilometers of solid granite under our feet, which makes simply digging deep hole working solution.

What definitely is not factored in in the costs is stability of grid for wind power, which when taken into account would radically increase wind power costs far higher than now as it would not be assumed that someone else somewhere would shoulder the burden of making sure grid does not suffer from surges and shortages.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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no. interest rate discounting can never exaggerate the cost of building anything in the present. Everything in the present costs the same no matter what interest rate is used.

What it can do is affect which of two options looks better in the long term. For example, for 2 options, one with high upfront cost but low maintenance and another with with lower upfront cost but higher maintenance, the interest rate prediction can strongly effect which one gets built. In the UK a goverment department issues long term rate predictions to be used in infrastructure to stop shenanigans happening at council level.


I'm not even going to touch your suggestion that finnish interest rates in the event the eurozone collapsed would look anything like they did a decade ago.


I'll keep plowing through that pdf you linked, although I'm working with google translate here. Is it a student paper by any chance?
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

Post by salm »

Tiwaz wrote: https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/86304

Knock yourself out. maddoctor can have fun reading it too.

As said, law requires things from nuclear power plant operators and that they pay money to security fund.
Is there an English version of the PDF somewhere? I don´t speak Finish.
You also have market disruptors called feedin tariffs for windpower and such. Those are disrupting the markets causing situation where you have to pay more for reliable energy too. You need to pay for capacity which is there but might not be used or have to be used at loss due to market disruption caused by heavy subsidies of renewables.
Or the feedin in tariffs for nuclear like in Hinkley Point C at 125€/MWh. Guaranteed for 35 years.
The feedin tariffs in Germany are a way to subsidize renewables. Installing renewables guarantees you a certain feedin price for X years. This price is gets lower and lower every year for newly built renewables, so that the price for renewables goes down. At the same time installing renewables is still interesting for investors because the technology gets better and more modern tech produces more power to sell.
This is a transparent system to subsidize power.

Not random? Then please, present to me clear and reliable prediction which tells with say 20% error speed of wind in any location for every hour of your choice for period of say one year. It is random. You can say it is most likely going to be something like X with small advance warning, but that's it.
The relieability of forecasts is pretty high and it is rapidly getting even better.
The current reliability for Germany within the next 24 - 48 hours has an error of about 5%.
Within the next 72 hours is around 10 percent.

Here´s a study on wind predicatability. On page 11 there is an example of typical forecast results. Note that this study is 5 years and uses even older data. Furthermore it´s an onshore wind farm. Offshore would be easier to forecast.
http://orbit.dtu.dk/fedora/objects/orbi ... 61/content

Some more information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_ ... ariability
And backup and storage are excess costs which we could do without. I want to see version where they do not put in storages and backups, instead choosing method which can be relied on. It would be cheaper at end really, as adding more parts to it to make up for unreliability of one production form is always at end more expensive.
Of course storage is an extra cost when using renewables and we can not do without. Who cares? For a nuclear power plant building thick walls is an extra cost which we can not do without when building nukes. It´s just one element of what is required for a specific type of energy which has to be taken into account when calculating cost but there is nothing special about storage and redundancies except that we can wait to implement storage until we´ve reached a renewable energy percentage of about 50 or so percent.

Yes, what the fuck you do with 45% of the year? Coal plants and such are not run all the time because they do not need to run at all times. But when you MUST have them running, they WILL run. Bar some accident or malfunction.

Do you know when in Finland our electricity consumption is highest? During Jan/Feb months, at night with clear skies and low winds. It is bloody important that something as vital as electricity does not suddenly go out when outdoors is -20 or worse.
Storage and distribution. Finnland is not an isolated place. If it´s storages run low there allways the possibility to import. Importing is nothing unusual and has been done for ages. Trading energy is not magically going to disappear just because a country is run on renewables. In fact, i´d assume that it´s going to get more important because diversifying locations is important for reliable renewables.
Research tends to be political too. Studies which fit the current line get funding more easily. Nuclear is dead in Germany because HOW many studies Germany has published and made public where they give clear cost difference presenting how much more they pay for unreliable energy production compared to reliable one?
That is not relevant to this study. Even if the Fraunhofer Institut was following an agenda (which I doubt) this study doesn´t concern itself with nuclear at all. It simply shows which way of implementing offshore energy would be the cheapest.
And nuclear power is not dead in Germany, Germany just exported the issue to it's neighbours buying their electricity. For example from Temelin in Czech, plant which should have been shut down ages ago for being bloody dangerous! But since Germany needs electricity and is happy to import when it's production fails, Czech company has no reason to get rid of goose laying golden eggs. Even if maintenance has been little this and that. And plants are old as hell.
Germany actually exported more energy than it imported. However, like mentioned before, trading energy is not going to stop just because of renewables.
Actually no. When I pay electric company, I am consumer. When government hands out money I paid, I am taxpayer.
Finland does not pay subsidies for nuclear power (rather the opposite) nor other energy production forms. Only wind.
That would be unusual. In a lot of countries nuclear plants (as well as coal and similar plants) are heavily subsidized. External costs (R&D, Waste, Dismantling) are ofte not or only partially payed by compainies themselves and financed by some sort of tax. This makes the subsidies so intransparent and it makes it difficult to find out the true cost of nuclear energy.
Commonly referred subsidies mentioned specially by renewable fans are often GLOBAL subsidies. So that they can conveniently avoid transparency to avoid telling that those are actually Iran and bunch of other nations using subsidies to lower cost of fuel for citizens to make them able to afford it.

Or in case of Finland, claiming that lower taxes on diesel fuel is "subsidy". Approximately 0% of our grid electricity is produced burning that diesel.

This blog has already said much there is to say about the reality of fossil subsidies:
http://euanmearns.com/the-appalling-tru ... subsidies/
I´m not talking about global subsidies.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

Post by Tiwaz »

madd0ct0r wrote:no. interest rate discounting can never exaggerate the cost of building anything in the present. Everything in the present costs the same no matter what interest rate is used.

What it can do is affect which of two options looks better in the long term. For example, for 2 options, one with high upfront cost but low maintenance and another with with lower upfront cost but higher maintenance, the interest rate prediction can strongly effect which one gets built. In the UK a goverment department issues long term rate predictions to be used in infrastructure to stop shenanigans happening at council level.


I'm not even going to touch your suggestion that finnish interest rates in the event the eurozone collapsed would look anything like they did a decade ago.


I'll keep plowing through that pdf you linked, although I'm working with google translate here. Is it a student paper by any chance?
salm, no version in foreign languages I know of.

University study, research report. Vakkilainen is professor of energy technology, Kivistö teacher (Laboratory of Sustainable Energy Systems) and last one is not listed in their staff.

As for interest rates, if we left eurozone for whatever reason. I would be delighted if our interest rates remained somewhere near what they were decade ago.

In the paper they state that they are calculating the expenses of nuclear plant with assumption 1650MW plant, new location costing 8,56 billion, existing location 6,25 billion. Includes interests from construction time (6 years), finished and running plant with initial fuel inside. All waste expenses are included in cost. Nuclear plant gets 40 years of use during which it has to reach point where investment has paid back itself. Other plants have 25 year period without any large maintenance investments.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

Post by Tiwaz »

salm wrote: Or the feedin in tariffs for nuclear like in Hinkley Point C at 125€/MWh. Guaranteed for 35 years.
The feedin tariffs in Germany are a way to subsidize renewables. Installing renewables guarantees you a certain feedin price for X years. This price is gets lower and lower every year for newly built renewables, so that the price for renewables goes down. At the same time installing renewables is still interesting for investors because the technology gets better and more modern tech produces more power to sell.
This is a transparent system to subsidize power.
Blame renewable subsidies for Hinkley Point. What kind of moron would in society where you get guaranteed profit, directly from taxpayer pocket in exchange for nothing, build expensive powerplant which would be at the mercy of changing electricity prices?

That would be stupid. Better build windmill, not give a crap about stability of grid and let taxpayer bleed when they have to make up the difference between market price and guaranteed price. And should price climb up so that you no longer sap taxpayer, just consumer, you can build plants which have lower production costs and THEN make killer profit that way.

Renewable subsidies are messing up energy markets, it is going to hurt us bad in future.


The relieability of forecasts is pretty high and it is rapidly getting even better.
The current reliability for Germany within the next 24 - 48 hours has an error of about 5%.
Within the next 72 hours is around 10 percent.

Here´s a study on wind predicatability. On page 11 there is an example of typical forecast results. Note that this study is 5 years and uses even older data. Furthermore it´s an onshore wind farm. Offshore would be easier to forecast.
http://orbit.dtu.dk/fedora/objects/orbi ... 61/content

Some more information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_ ... ariability
So it is random without any rhythm or guaranteed pattern. Shame modern societies do not run on principle of people living at their offices waiting for wind to pick up so that computers get power so they can get their job done.
Of course storage is an extra cost when using renewables and we can not do without. Who cares? For a nuclear power plant building thick walls is an extra cost which we can not do without when building nukes. It´s just one element of what is required for a specific type of energy which has to be taken into account when calculating cost but there is nothing special about storage and redundancies except that we can wait to implement storage until we´ve reached a renewable energy percentage of about 50 or so percent.
Nuclear plants have those walls mentioned in their costs. Renewables to this date have basically never been reported with cost that includes guarantee for production. All renewable costs are presented without storage. By your analogy, renewable costs are same as telling price of nuclear power without taking account cost of those walls. Would make it a lot cheaper.

Storage and distribution. Finnland is not an isolated place. If it´s storages run low there allways the possibility to import. Importing is nothing unusual and has been done for ages. Trading energy is not magically going to disappear just because a country is run on renewables. In fact, i´d assume that it´s going to get more important because diversifying locations is important for reliable renewables.
Oh yes, imports. So delightful. We would then be 100% depending on our neighbours for something vital, trusting them to never take advantage of it. Works really well for countries who were made dependent on Russia supplying them with gas. Never has Russia tried to use it to push their own agenda. This also assumes there is someone with excess nearby, because long transfer distances hurt a lot. For Finland, options are basically Russia, Sweden and Norway. Russia we have dealt with, Norway and Sweden have two problems. If Finland were to commit German stupidity and try to live relying heavily on renewables, Sweden most likely would be there already. They are far ahead Finland in committing this folly.

So, what are the odds that when poor production hits Finland, that Norway and Sweden happen to have huge surplus for us to buy? And at what cost?

Importing also has one nasty thing... Supply and demand. Germany and Denmark sometimes have big excess of electricity, which is when they export it at any cost. Usually at loss. Norway for example eagerly buys Danish electricity and saves water behind dams. Then wind dies out, Denmark starts to feel bit dark. They import EXPENSIVE Norwegian electricity, taking double kick in their asses.
That is not relevant to this study. Even if the Fraunhofer Institut was following an agenda (which I doubt) this study doesn´t concern itself with nuclear at all. It simply shows which way of implementing offshore energy would be the cheapest.
Which makes research in itself rather worthless for this discussion in many ways, as it presents no comparison to which mirror their idea. They have already chosen poison you MUST use and now just want to tell you how it tastes little less bitter.
Which is agenda in itself. You do not present alternatives to poison, so reader has no method to say if taking that poison is sensible or not.
Germany actually exported more energy than it imported. However, like mentioned before, trading energy is not going to stop just because of renewables.
At loss. Which is result of absurd amounts of renewables for massive cost to average german. They pay one of the highest electricity prices in Europe when you factor in all costs.

And there was situation where neighbours were making threats to Germany that they will cut the transfer routes if Germany does not stop disrupting their grid with random excess.

http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/a ... ric-grids/
That would be unusual. In a lot of countries nuclear plants (as well as coal and similar plants) are heavily subsidized. External costs (R&D, Waste, Dismantling) are ofte not or only partially payed by compainies themselves and financed by some sort of tax. This makes the subsidies so intransparent and it makes it difficult to find out the true cost of nuclear energy.
I have already said. Finland makes a point that companies are responsible for waste management and life cycle. And to ensure it, they have to pay certain amount of income to fun which makes sure there is money to pay for it.
R&D in turn are not related to facilities, they produce energy. Others research. And while there are subsidies and grants to research, they are not earmarked. If your plan fills the requirements, you get grant. Which includes whole lot of companies making and researching windmills and their components. Should we add this to renewable subsidies too?

Apples to apples. Only subsidies for building and maintaining power production should be included.
I´m not talking about global subsidies.
Then say what subsidies you speak of. I speak of Finland, and we have no subsidies for anything but windpower.
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

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The main problem with space solar from off-world resources is the path dependency of a switch away from fossils fuels power on Earth. By the time you have the ability to put an automated refinery/factory in space around a captured asteroid to convert it into space solar panels (let's say 50-100 years from now), you'll already be well along your way of replacing the existing infrastructure with some type of renewable/efficiency mix here on Earth. The cost advantages of the space solar power would have to be extremely compelling under those circumstances (it's the same problem commercial power has, assuming it's even possible to do).
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Re: Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July

Post by salm »

Tiwaz wrote: Blame renewable subsidies for Hinkley Point. What kind of moron would in society where you get guaranteed profit, directly from taxpayer pocket in exchange for nothing, build expensive powerplant which would be at the mercy of changing electricity prices?

That would be stupid. Better build windmill, not give a crap about stability of grid and let taxpayer bleed when they have to make up the difference between market price and guaranteed price. And should price climb up so that you no longer sap taxpayer, just consumer, you can build plants which have lower production costs and THEN make killer profit that way.

Renewable subsidies are messing up energy markets, it is going to hurt us bad in future.
So nuclear energy isn´t flexible enough for the current system. Therefore it is silly to build it. At least in this case.
So it is random without any rhythm or guaranteed pattern. Shame modern societies do not run on principle of people living at their offices waiting for wind to pick up so that computers get power so they can get their job done.
You just have a strange definition of "random". Experts agree that wind forecasts are pretty good. Solar is even better.
Nuclear plants have those walls mentioned in their costs. Renewables to this date have basically never been reported with cost that includes guarantee for production. All renewable costs are presented without storage. By your analogy, renewable costs are same as telling price of nuclear power without taking account cost of those walls. Would make it a lot cheaper.
That is not true. The Fraunhofer study I posted is concerned with these costs. And up til now of course renewables are presented without the cost of storage in the sense that it doesn´t appear on the bill. We don´t have a significant amount of storage, so of course it is not important at the moment and won´t be important another two decades or so.
Studies concerning themselves with these topics on the other hand incorporate storage and backup. They also present other costs like the necessary improvement of the electrical grid.
Oh yes, imports. So delightful. We would then be 100% depending on our neighbours for something vital, trusting them to never take advantage of it. Works really well for countries who were made dependent on Russia supplying them with gas. Never has Russia tried to use it to push their own agenda. This also assumes there is someone with excess nearby, because long transfer distances hurt a lot. For Finland, options are basically Russia, Sweden and Norway. Russia we have dealt with, Norway and Sweden have two problems. If Finland were to commit German stupidity and try to live relying heavily on renewables, Sweden most likely would be there already. They are far ahead Finland in committing this folly.

So, what are the odds that when poor production hits Finland, that Norway and Sweden happen to have huge surplus for us to buy? And at what cost?

Importing also has one nasty thing... Supply and demand. Germany and Denmark sometimes have big excess of electricity, which is when they export it at any cost. Usually at loss. Norway for example eagerly buys Danish electricity and saves water behind dams. Then wind dies out, Denmark starts to feel bit dark. They import EXPENSIVE Norwegian electricity, taking double kick in their asses.
If you can build a good balanced system with enough storage and backup you won´t be dependent on imports. Also note that I never talked about Finish energy. In fact I don´t know anything about the Finish situation therefore it would be silly to conclude that renewables are a good solution for Finland. I´ve been talking about the German Energiewende all the time.

With nuclear energy Germany is 100% dependend. We don´t even know where that shit comes from. We buy some from France for example but since France doesn´t mine uranium themselves but buys it from places like Mali we probably feed our nukes with uranium from pretty questionable sources. But we don´t know because the German government thinks it´s important to keep it a secret.
At loss. Which is result of absurd amounts of renewables for massive cost to average german. They pay one of the highest electricity prices in Europe when you factor in all costs.

And there was situation where neighbours were making threats to Germany that they will cut the transfer routes if Germany does not stop disrupting their grid with random excess.

http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/a ... ric-grids/
Interestingly Germany is exporting more Power and for a higher price per unit than it is importing. Germany made about 2bn with excess energy exports in 2013.
Then say what subsidies you speak of. I speak of Finland, and we have no subsidies for anything but windpower.
I´ve said that a whole bunch of time in this thread now. Have you actually read it? Storage, dismanteling, R&D, Insurance for example. External costs which are often not included in the cost of nuclear energy or are so muddled up and intransparent that it is impossible to conclude how much nuclear energy is per unit.
Not to speak of what it would cost to turn public opinion from hating nuclear power into one supporting it. I´m not sure if that could be done at all within a relevant time frame.

And then there are benefits of rich countries going for renewables that are often ignored. Poor and developing countries often can´t aford nuclear power plants but want energy. Or they don´t have a grid that is necessary for centralized power generation. It is also not desirable that unstable areas build nuclear power plants. It would be rather worrying if Syria had a couple of nuklear plants that would be conquered by ISIS or similar scum.
Therefore it is more desirable that such countries use renewable energy. However, they don´t have the resources to research these technologies, nor the financial power to bring prices of manufacturing down. So they are dependent on rich countries to do so. Rich countries will only throw significant resources at research if they somehow profit from it. Therefore it is vital that at least a couple of rich countries invest in renewables.
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