It has started
-
@GOG said in It has started:
@Rhywden said in It has started:
We actually know about the problem since Arrhenius. That was more than a 100 years ago. He just erred on the timescale (he was a bit optimistic).
Yes, but how are you gonna keep the lights on and people from freezing is my question?
*shrug*
If energy is the problem (looks that way, doesn't it?), it seems like gas prices and availability would be affected too. If not ... I guess one can always buy a gasoline-based generator and use that to charge one's EV.
Filed under: Try doing that the other way around.
-
@cvi said in It has started:
If energy is the problem (looks that way, doesn't it?), it seems like gas prices and availability would be affected too. If not ... I guess one can always buy a gasoline-based generator and use that to charge one's EV.
I'd say that gas prices and availability (or rather - lack thereof) is why energy is a problem. One thing I noticed over the years is that people have a tendency to mentally substitute "electricity" when they say "energy", which obscures the fact of how much energy we consume right now that isn't electricity.
The big idea is to substitute electricity for other energy sources, but it's not like we have the generating capacity to do so - and that's even before we start shutting off power plants.
-
@GOG said in It has started:
I'd say that gas prices and availability (or rather - lack thereof) is why energy is a problem. One thing I noticed over the years is that people have a tendency to mentally substitute "electricity" when they say "energy", which obscures the fact of how much energy we consume right now that isn't electric
Yeah, I'd posted elsewhere some graphs that included total energy usage that included oil and it was a large percentage (easily 30-40%) of the total (granted, some of that will go to heating, etc, but the majority has to be vehicles). If electric cars actually catch on a lot of stuff is going to have to change.
-
@boomzilla said in It has started:
@GOG said in It has started:
I thought Applied-Mediocrity's post was mild enough by forum standards - it didn't even clock 0.5 on the Blakeyrant scale, and Blakey used to do that all the time, everywhere, about everything.
I don't get how it's political. The whole point of this thread is the energy crisis in Europe. Not having electricity to charge a car seems like a pretty obvious problem no matter how much denial one pours into European Energy Policy in the face of lack of capacity.
Has anybody been denying that there is a a lack of capacity? I don't think so. The point is, it's not from lack of nukes. If it was, France would be supplying electricity to Germany now and not the other way around.
Of course all of that is inherently political. You can still choose to either exchange arguments or say, in effect, "
haha u dumb, u suffer, sucker!".
-
@LaoC said in It has started:
@boomzilla said in It has started:
@GOG said in It has started:
I thought Applied-Mediocrity's post was mild enough by forum standards - it didn't even clock 0.5 on the Blakeyrant scale, and Blakey used to do that all the time, everywhere, about everything.
I don't get how it's political. The whole point of this thread is the energy crisis in Europe. Not having electricity to charge a car seems like a pretty obvious problem no matter how much denial one pours into European Energy Policy in the face of lack of capacity.
Has anybody been denying that there is a a lack of capacity?
Not exactly, but kind of, when people were saying that there was plenty for charging electric cars.
I don't think so. The point is, it's not from lack of nukes. If it was, France would be supplying electricity to Germany now and not the other way around.
The point was that Germany got rid of theirs. France's have other obvious problems mentioned. The decommissioning of nukes in Germany is certainly one of the causes of the current lack of energy there (which ripples out to other countries).
Of course all of that is inherently political. You can still choose to either exchange arguments or say, in effect, "
haha u dumb, u suffer, sucker!".I just don't see how you can look at a country shutting down lots of generating capacity and say that it has nothing to do with their current inability to generate enough electricity. We can look at other factors, too, but why deny the obvious?
-
@Rhywden said in It has started:
@HardwareGeek The Finns have some ideas about homelessness.
Ideas? Yes. Good ideas? Not so much.
It was recently calculated that the state pays approx. 30% of all rents. This has had a horrible effect on rents in general. No matter how small a closet is put up for rent, the minimum amount accepted is the maximum of the "rent-aid" for the region.
I agree that homelessness is a symptom. But please don't attempt to use Finland as an example of how to handle it. The whole nation is collapsing under the weight of our social security system.
-
@GOG said in It has started:
@Rhywden said in It has started:
We actually know about the problem since Arrhenius. That was more than a 100 years ago. He just erred on the timescale (he was a bit optimistic).
Yes, but how are you gonna keep the lights on and people from freezing is my question?
Going just by economics, some houses can't afford heating. So people move together, several families into an apartment. And then they can afford to heat the one apartment. And since consumption falls below production again, the prices will stabilize, and perhaps some gas is left over for factory use. And thus the gears of economy keep grinding.
But you can bet on politicians throwing a spanner. We're starting to see all kinds of plans about pouring money to the poorest citizens. Which completely ignores the problem of not having enough fuels to go around, and just erodes the economy further. Inflation skyrockets until fuel consumption matches availability.
-
@acrow Just how big are apartments in your neck of the woods? Because "several families to an apartment" gives me Second World flashbacks that may result in unforeseen and terrible consequences.
-
@GOG said in It has started:
@acrow Just how big are apartments in your neck of the woods? Because "several families to an apartment" gives me Second World flashbacks that may result in unforeseen and terrible consequences.
Around Helsinki, the average seems to be 63m2. The average number of persons living in an apartment is 2,01.
If that seems low, it's mostly due to a large number of apartments housing only one resident; a consequence of how the social security rent-aid is distributed.
-
@acrow Hmm... 63 m2 is roughly in the ballpark of the ol' Communist M4 (three rooms + kitchen, ostensibly for four people, hence the designation) - something I'm rather familiar with (though the place I live in now is smaller, by area).
You do realise that proposing to stuff several families onto such an area is sufficient cause and reason for armed and bloody revolution?
-
@Rhywden said in It has started:
We'll manage.
You can regulate the price to consumers, but that will cost a lot in terms of subsidies. And the cost to businesses will cause a massive inflationary spike and/or drive many to cease trading. And that will still hit consumers and tax income and cause a lot of trouble.
Or you can do like the UK and get all of that plus plentiful trade barriers.
-
@GOG said in It has started:
You do realise that proposing to stuff several families onto such an area is sufficient cause and reason for armed and bloody revolution?
It's the solution that will allow everybody to survive. And if it's reminiscent of the Second World... If the available energy for heating is on par with that, then the housing must follow suit.
As for the bloody revolution part. The Finnish public sector has been in need of some trimming for quite a while. Maybe it can finally be slashed some. </joke>
More seriously, the bloated bureaucracy is a serious hindrance for Europe rising up again. But if Finland is representative of Europe in general, the only way to remove bureaucrats is to completely nuke the government. Which is not fun for anyone. But it's what it looks like.
-
@dkf said in It has started:
@Rhywden said in It has started:
We'll manage.
You can regulate the price to consumers, but that will cost a lot in terms of subsidies. And the cost to businesses will cause a massive inflationary spike and/or drive many to cease trading. And that will still hit consumers and tax income and cause a lot of trouble.
It's also likely to result in shortages.
-
@acrow said in It has started:
It's the solution that will allow everybody to survive.
It's also a final solution - in that you only try it after you've exhausted all other alternatives, and I expect there are plenty of alternatives to be exhausted, which is my point.
-
@topspin said in It has started:
@GOG said in It has started:
@topspin This is your friendly periodic reminder that the Garage is not, in fact, a container for political opinions you don't like.
Really?
Because I've been told that it's not only a "container for political opinions you don't like", not even a "container for political opinions", but a "container for anything that somebody else could vaguely interpret as political even if that's not what you said".Sure.
But everyone is posting about politics and treating this entire thread as if it's in the Garage.
In that context, it doesn't make sense to single out a particular Garagey post but not any of the others.
-
@GOG said in It has started:
@acrow said in It has started:
It's the solution that will allow everybody to survive.
It's also a final solution - in that you only try it after you've exhausted all other alternatives, and I expect there are plenty of alternatives to be exhausted, which is my point.
Alternatives assume that there is enough energy available in suitable form to heat every apartment. In every country. I simply don't know if there is. And I'd very much like there to be some industry left in Europe after this winter, or the problem will repeat as well.
-
@boomzilla said in It has started:
@LaoC said in It has started:
@boomzilla said in It has started:
@GOG said in It has started:
I thought Applied-Mediocrity's post was mild enough by forum standards - it didn't even clock 0.5 on the Blakeyrant scale, and Blakey used to do that all the time, everywhere, about everything.
I don't get how it's political. The whole point of this thread is the energy crisis in Europe. Not having electricity to charge a car seems like a pretty obvious problem no matter how much denial one pours into European Energy Policy in the face of lack of capacity.
Has anybody been denying that there is a a lack of capacity?
Not exactly, but kind of, when people were saying that there was plenty for charging electric cars.
That's not the same thing. You have a capacity problem if at any point in time there is more demand than the installed plants can deliver. Neither the load curve nor the demand curve for BEV are flat, however, and vehicles tend to stand idle about 95% of the time. Particularly at times when there is (and despite the high average price there is at times) plenty of cheap solar.
I don't think so. The point is, it's not from lack of nukes. If it was, France would be supplying electricity to Germany now and not the other way around.
The point was that Germany got rid of theirs. France's have other obvious problems mentioned. The decommissioning of nukes in Germany is certainly one of the causes of the current lack of energy there (which ripples out to other countries).
There is no rippling out of any kind of lack from Germany when they are exporting to France.
You could hope and pray that German nukes would be in better condition than the French ones.Of course all of that is inherently political. You can still choose to either exchange arguments or say, in effect, "
haha u dumb, u suffer, sucker!".I just don't see how you can look at a country shutting down lots of generating capacity and say that it has nothing to do with their current inability to generate enough electricity. We can look at other factors, too, but why deny the obvious?
You can either make an argument or fuck off to the Garage. @Applied-Mediocrity's post contained no argument, hence he was politely asked to fuck off to the Garage, that was the point here. That should be uncontroversial whether or not you find something obvious.
-
@LaoC said in It has started:
You can still choose to either exchange arguments or say, in effect, "
haha u dumb, u suffer, sucker!".This is TDWTF. We're quite capable of doing both at the same time.
-
@LaoC said in It has started:
@boomzilla said in It has started:
@LaoC said in It has started:
@boomzilla said in It has started:
@GOG said in It has started:
I thought Applied-Mediocrity's post was mild enough by forum standards - it didn't even clock 0.5 on the Blakeyrant scale, and Blakey used to do that all the time, everywhere, about everything.
I don't get how it's political. The whole point of this thread is the energy crisis in Europe. Not having electricity to charge a car seems like a pretty obvious problem no matter how much denial one pours into European Energy Policy in the face of lack of capacity.
Has anybody been denying that there is a a lack of capacity?
Not exactly, but kind of, when people were saying that there was plenty for charging electric cars.
That's not the same thing. You have a capacity problem if at any point in time there is more demand than the installed plants can deliver. Neither the load curve nor the demand curve for BEV are flat, however, and vehicles tend to stand idle about 95% of the time. Particularly at times when there is (and despite the high average price there is at times) plenty of cheap solar.
It's not identical, as I said, but I'm curious where this "cheap solar" exists given that the places currently warning about charging cars is where solar could potentially work pretty well given the amount of sunlight are telling people not to charge while the sun is up and shining. That this is a regular ritual and not some weird confluence of events tells us that there really is a serious capacity problem.
And that's with only a tiny fraction of EVs vs oil powered vehicles!
I don't think so. The point is, it's not from lack of nukes. If it was, France would be supplying electricity to Germany now and not the other way around.
The point was that Germany got rid of theirs. France's have other obvious problems mentioned. The decommissioning of nukes in Germany is certainly one of the causes of the current lack of energy there (which ripples out to other countries).
There is no rippling out of any kind of lack from Germany when they are exporting to France.
You could hope and pray that German nukes would be in better condition than the French ones.I'm totally missing what you're saying here because it's not making any sense to me. If they buy electricity from each other (in whichever direction), you seem to be saying that supply and demand and prices are completely disconnected.
Of course all of that is inherently political. You can still choose to either exchange arguments or say, in effect, "
haha u dumb, u suffer, sucker!".I just don't see how you can look at a country shutting down lots of generating capacity and say that it has nothing to do with their current inability to generate enough electricity. We can look at other factors, too, but why deny the obvious?
You can either make an argument or fuck off to the Garage. @Applied-Mediocrity's post contained no argument, hence he was politely asked to fuck off to the Garage, that was the point here. That should be uncontroversial whether or not you find something obvious.
Oh, come on, you're saying we can't make jokes about people being stupid on this site?
-
@acrow said in It has started:
Alternatives assume that there is enough energy available in suitable form to heat every apartment. In every country. I simply don't know if there is. And I'd very much like there to be some industry left in Europe after this winter, or the problem will repeat as well.
Given that we've not had a population explosion over the last year, nor is Europe (meaning: the EU) the target of actual wartime activities, there is pretty much no excuse for there not to be enough energy - not without massive policy failure.
Granted, the massive policy failure in question has already happened. What that means, however, is that a rapid about face on said failed policy is required. Things are still probably gonna be pretty bad, but possibly not quite as bad as all that. In Poland, for example, this likely means a good deal more coal being burnt (and I expect the same to be true elsewhere, as well).
Needless to say, past the current crisis the priority should be to ensure it never happens again, which translates to roughly a policy that ensures energy is secure, plentiful, cheap - in that order - and everything else is a nice-to-have, at best.
-
@LaoC said in It has started:
You can either make an argument or fuck off to the Garage. @Applied-Mediocrity's post contained no argument, hence he was politely asked to fuck off to the Garage, that was the point here. That should be uncontroversial whether or not you find something obvious.
This is not even close to the difference between The Garage and Not The Garage.
-
@boomzilla said in It has started:
Oh, come on, you're saying we can't make jokes about people being stupid on this site?
Occasionally, the jokes are even funny.
-
@LaoC said in It has started:
There is no rippling out of any kind of lack from Germany when they are exporting to France.
You could hope and pray that German nukes would be in better condition than the French ones.We have a gas problem. Not an electricity problem. Those three plants are providing about 1% of the needed electrical energy and their effect on the price of electrical energy is even below that, roughly at 0.3%.
The problem is that we have stupid morons who call themselves "conservatives" who did everything in their power to make us dependant on Russia (though the SPD certainly did their part as well) and enacted even more stupid rules about where to put wind mills.
The stupidest one of those was a rule by one state that there had to be no settlements around a windmill based on ten times its height. So if the height was 150 meters it was only allowed if there was nothing around it for 1.5 km.
It became even more absurd when you compared it to other distancing rules: Chemical industry? 500 meters. Nuclear power plants? 1 km. Landfills? 800 meters.Of course they also did everything in their power to ensure that a homegrown solar industry was strangled at birth. And they ensured that our homegrown wind mill industry also will not succeed.
That's what 16 years of conservative rule brought us. And the current morons who are part of the government (looking at you, Christian "Why don't they simply drive Porsche?" Linder from the FDP) are also doing their best to prevent fixing this mess because it upsets their sponsors. Whaffling on about "freedom" while actually it's only pure egotism. I wish this asshole would fuck off already.
Rant over.
-
@Rhywden said in It has started:
@LaoC said in It has started:
There is no rippling out of any kind of lack from Germany when they are exporting to France.
You could hope and pray that German nukes would be in better condition than the French ones.We have a gas problem. Not an electricity problem. Those three plants are providing about 1% of the needed electrical energy and their effect on the price of electrical energy is even below that, roughly at 0.3%.
The problem is that we have stupid morons who call themselves "conservatives" who did everything in their power to make us dependant on Russia (though the SPD certainly did their part as well) and enacted even more stupid rules about where to put wind mills.
The stupidest one of those was a rule by one state that there had to be no settlements around a windmill based on ten times its height. So if the height was 150 meters it was only allowed if there was nothing around it for 1.5 km.
It became even more absurd when you compared it to other distancing rules: Chemical industry? 500 meters. Nuclear power plants? 1 km. Landfills? 800 meters.Of course they also did everything in their power to ensure that a homegrown solar industry was strangled at birth. And they ensured that our homegrown wind mill industry also will not succeed.
That's what 16 years of conservative rule brought us. And the current morons who are part of the government (looking at you, Christian "Why don't they simply drive Porsche?" Linder from the FDP) are also doing their best to prevent fixing this mess because it upsets their sponsors. Whaffling on about "freedom" while actually it's only pure egotism. I wish this asshole would fuck off already.
Rant over.
For what it's worth, you keep calling me out as if I have a problem with your posts in this topic.
I don't.
At this point, this is a Garage topic. Post whatever you want, even stuff like this, in here.
-
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in It has started:
This topic should have been made in the Garage in the first place.
It's already been forked there once, https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/28589/it-has-been-jump-started-in-the-garage, but it didn't seem to have been enough to contain the leak.
-
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in It has started:
At this point, this is a Garage topic. Post whatever you want, even stuff like this, in there.
Conveniently there's already a topic that can be used.
-
Even though threads are free?
-
@Bulb said in It has started:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in It has started:
This topic should have been made in the Garage in the first place.
It's already been forked there once, https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/28589/it-has-been-jump-started-in-the-garage, but it didn't seem to have been enough to contain the leak.
@loopback0 said in It has started:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in It has started:
At this point, this is a Garage topic. Post whatever you want, even stuff like this, in there.
Conveniently there's already a topic that can be used.
Absolutely not. You're both wrong.
Go read the first post in this topic. It 100% belongs in the Garage.
So do 90% of the posts that follow. (The other 10% are the posts that argue about the rules of what belongs in the Garage.)
The "Garage Version" of this topic wasn't Jeffed there to contain a leak, @boomzilla made a parallel topic deliberately, for whatever reason. Nothing was Jeffed from here into there. If we wanted to contain the leak, this entire topic would have been Jeffed to the Garage when people started complaining about it, which was almost immediately.
Since the topic wasn't Jeffed when we had the chance, the only conclusion to draw is that people don't mind this particular leak. And if nobody minds the leak, there's nothing wrong with @Rhywden or @Applied-Mediocrity or whoever else splashing around at each other.
The Garage isn't about politeness and it isn't about style. There's no way we're going to be able to keep doofy cheap shots, which are the real problem, out of non-Garage political topics unless we enforce the rule that all politics needs to go in the Garage.
To pick a random example, this topic in particular is filled with doofy cheap shots from both sides and has been from the very first post. It's not even an example of the right politeness or style or whatever for Not The Garage. It's the kind of thing that would really bother me if I didn't realize that both sides are treating this topic as if it's in the Garage.
Anyone singling out one particular post while ignoring all the others on the other side is being a real asshole.
-
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in It has started:
The "Garage Version" of this topic wasn't Jeffed there to contain a leak, @boomzilla made a parallel topic deliberately, for whatever reason. Nothing was Jeffed from here into there.
OK fair point.
If we wanted to contain the leak, this entire topic would have been Jeffed to the Garage when people started complaining about it
It should have been.
Since the topic wasn't Jeffed when we had the chance, the only conclusion to draw is that people don't mind this particular leak. And if nobody minds the leak, there's nothing wrong with @Rhywden or @Applied-Mediocrity or whoever else splashing around at each other.
The only conclusion is that people don't mind the leak people complained about?
The Garage isn't about politeness and it isn't about style.
I'm familiar.
There's no way we're going to be able to keep doofy cheap shots, which are the real problem, out of non-Garage political topics unless we enforce the rule that all politics needs to go in the Garage.
We should enforce that rule. Or rather the two people who have the ability in General should. If this started in the Sidebar it'd be there already.
-
I actually don't believe the very first post was political. It was an expression of frustration over a power outage - and with a recognition that this is going to be more common, without commenting on the reasons or the rationales.
I give you that the second post onward is when it started. And that is absolutely pushing for a fight.
I think that's one of the problems that different groups have is that for some people, everything is political, and for others, very much less is political - and we can't agree where that line is.
-
@loopback0 said in It has started:
If we wanted to contain the leak, this entire topic would have been Jeffed to the Garage when people started complaining about it
It should have been.
I agree completely.
-
@Arantor said in It has started:
I actually don't believe the very first post was political. It was an expression of frustration over a power outage - and with a recognition that this is going to be more common, without commenting on the reasons or the rationales.
I give you that the second post onward is when it started. And that is absolutely pushing for a fight.
I think that's one of the problems that different groups have is that for some people, everything is political, and for others, very much less is political - and we can't agree where that line is.
I'm not ever going to be able to read "Our bright new future has begun!" at news of a power outage in Europe and pretend I don't notice that the guy is telling me his preferred environmental policy.
That said, can you phrase in your own words what you think this topic is supposed to be about?
Because as far as I can tell, @BernieTheBernie made the topic because he thinks that his country should use a different mix of fossil fuels, nuclear power, and wind/solar power than they currently use because he feels the current mix is responsible for electricity shortages that manifest themselves as blackouts.
Any possible mix you pick, including the current one and Bernie's preferred one, will have been picked for a political reason. I don't understand how you can discuss the topic while leaving politics aside. As evidenced by this topic.
-
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in It has started:
That said, can you phrase in your own words what you think this topic is supposed to be about?
I actually did, but I'll do so with more words to make it clearer.
I understood the OP of this topic to be a summary of 'oh, things have gone off, it's all of them, there is a power cut and we're going to have more of them in the future.'
The 'bright new future' to me was a sarcastic thought on how bright the future isn't because there's insufficient power.
Here's the thing, to me this isn't political commentary. I see why you think it is. To me, this is a statement of snark and frustration at what is going to happen.
If it got into the why this was so, fair play, that would be political. You're assuming that it's political based on what you know of the poster and the meaning you think it had.
Me, on the other hand, I don't remember where most people are from unless it's been said a whole bunch of times. The OP is one of the people that I don't remember, so I don't make any assumptions about politics because... I don't remember their politics. I get to treat it neutrally.
I get that you think otherwise. And that's fine, we can agree to disagree on whether the first post was political. But this same bias is what I have a problem with - you assume damn near everything is political. Even when it isn't. Even when it is explicitly stated as not, you just decide it is anyway.
And that's not even necessarily, or even always, wrong, it's just hella annoying. Because genuinely some people don't put more thought into their posting than 'huh, there you go'.
-
@Arantor said in It has started:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in It has started:
That said, can you phrase in your own words what you think this topic is supposed to be about?
I actually did, but I'll do so with more words to make it clearer.
I understood the OP of this topic to be a summary of 'oh, things have gone off, it's all of them, there is a power cut and we're going to have more of them in the future.'
...
If it got into the why this was so, fair play, that would be political.How does he know there's going to be more power outages?
He doesn't. Not everyone thinks there will be. Green-aligned politicians are telling him that switching to their preferred energy mix won't cause shortages.
He's predicting that those Green politicians are wrong.
By the way, I don't see any daylight between his prediction that there will be more blackouts if his country keeps following Green energy policy and @Gern_Blaanston's prediction in the second post that there will be more blackouts if his country keeps following Green environmental policies by having a bunch of people buy electric cars.
You criticized Gern's post, and I don't blame you. I just don't see the difference between Gern's post and Bernie's. If you ignore context and the fact that both posts are obviously sarcastic, neither of them have any actual overtly political words in the actual text the poster typed.
So what's wrong with Gern's post that's not wrong with Bernie's?
You're assuming that it's political based on what you know of the poster and the meaning you think it had.
Boy, you sure do like putting words in my mouth.
Coming into the topic, here's what I knew about @BernieTheBernie.
- Not a Garage regular.
- He yelled at me one time for yelling at you.
- Has the same name as Bernie Sanders, the most prominent Socialist politician in America.
Based on that information, if you held a gun to my head, my guess would have been that he's a left-wing guy.
Also, I'm not assuming the post was political at this point. Bernie has a bunch of posts in this topic that are over the line. You can tell that the first post was political because of his subsequent posts that were also political.
And that's not even necessarily, or even always, wrong, it's just hella annoying.
I'm sure my behavior hella annoyed you, given that I didn't say anything about it.
Because genuinely some people don't put more thought into their posting than 'huh, there you go'.
Do you think we should just get rid of the Garage and just let people shitpost about politics anywhere? Because if not, I have no idea what you think the standard should be for "This belongs in the Garage."
Yes, I expect people put enough thought into their non-Garage posts that they check that the post is appropriate for General before they hit the submit button.
Do you think I'm wrong to expect that?
-
@boomzilla said in It has started:
@LaoC said in It has started:
@boomzilla said in It has started:
@LaoC said in It has started:
@boomzilla said in It has started:
@GOG said in It has started:
I thought Applied-Mediocrity's post was mild enough by forum standards - it didn't even clock 0.5 on the Blakeyrant scale, and Blakey used to do that all the time, everywhere, about everything.
I don't get how it's political. The whole point of this thread is the energy crisis in Europe. Not having electricity to charge a car seems like a pretty obvious problem no matter how much denial one pours into European Energy Policy in the face of lack of capacity.
Has anybody been denying that there is a a lack of capacity?
Not exactly, but kind of, when people were saying that there was plenty for charging electric cars.
That's not the same thing. You have a capacity problem if at any point in time there is more demand than the installed plants can deliver. Neither the load curve nor the demand curve for BEV are flat, however, and vehicles tend to stand idle about 95% of the time. Particularly at times when there is (and despite the high average price there is at times) plenty of cheap solar.
It's not identical, as I said, but I'm curious where this "cheap solar" exists given that the places currently warning about charging cars is where solar could potentially work pretty well given the amount of sunlight are telling people not to charge while the sun is up and shining. That this is a regular ritual and not some weird confluence of events tells us that there really is a serious capacity problem.
Utilities announcing their price is fundamental to finding the price for electricity, so yes, those prices are public. There have been a few times last year where solar alone was powering 100% of the demand in Germany.
I can't really comment on why that may be different in other places. When those places warn people not to charge, do they give any reason? Because experience tells people being told not to do something they're entitled to for no reason at all tends to work at best for people who've spend too much of their life in the army.And that's with only a tiny fraction of EVs vs oil powered vehicles!
As the rest of the fleet is still to be replaced, it's about time for something like the USB plug mandate that fixed charging hell for phones: a standardized interface that allows BEVs to both receive price signals to charge when there is enough supply, and to supply electricity to the grid when the owner allows it.
I don't think so. The point is, it's not from lack of nukes. If it was, France would be supplying electricity to Germany now and not the other way around.
The point was that Germany got rid of theirs. France's have other obvious problems mentioned. The decommissioning of nukes in Germany is certainly one of the causes of the current lack of energy there (which ripples out to other countries).
There is no rippling out of any kind of lack from Germany when they are exporting to France.
You could hope and pray that German nukes would be in better condition than the French ones.I'm totally missing what you're saying here because it's not making any sense to me. If they buy electricity from each other (in whichever direction), you seem to be saying that supply and demand and prices are completely disconnected.
Why would a European market for electricity imply that supply and demand and prices are disconnected?
What I'm saying is that nukes are are having a very bad effect on France's grid right now and Germany is compensating for it. I guess that's undisputed?
Now if anyone is saying more nukes would have a positive effect on Germany's grid, they need to explain why they expect German nukes to behave differently from French nukes.Of course all of that is inherently political. You can still choose to either exchange arguments or say, in effect, "
haha u dumb, u suffer, sucker!".I just don't see how you can look at a country shutting down lots of generating capacity and say that it has nothing to do with their current inability to generate enough electricity. We can look at other factors, too, but why deny the obvious?
You can either make an argument or fuck off to the Garage. @Applied-Mediocrity's post contained no argument, hence he was politely asked to fuck off to the Garage, that was the point here. That should be uncontroversial whether or not you find something obvious.
Oh, come on, you're saying we can't make jokes about people being stupid on this site?
Of course we can joke about whatever we want, some of us may be asked to fuck off to the garage though. Which I understood to be a part of this site, but what do I know.
Edit: feel free to jeff this, I'm not coming over.
-
@GOG said in It has started:
Given that we've not had a population explosion over the last year, nor is Europe (meaning: the EU) the target of actual wartime activities, there is pretty much no excuse for there not to be enough energy - not without massive policy failure.
Depends on how you define "population explosion". The large-scale immigration of last few years before Corona caused a lot of new construction in Finland. Our social security system basically guaranteed every adult their own apartment.
And that's on top of the other massive failures in policy, yes.
-
@Rhywden said in It has started:
That's what 16 years of conservative rule brought us. And the current morons who are part of the government (looking at you, Christian "Why don't they simply drive Porsche?" Linder from the FDP) are also doing their best to prevent fixing this mess because it upsets their sponsors. Whaffling on about "freedom" while actually it's only pure egotism. I wish this asshole would fuck off already.
I'm wondering if, following the chain of money to the end, they have the same sponsors as the "conservatives". One editor of a gun magazine here in Finland wrote recently that our proposed legislation for peacetime training of the reserve using the military's weapons stock has parts that make absolutely no sense unless the text originates in kremlin (sic.).
Whatever our political leanings, we can probably agree that bureaucracies and positions of power attract bribes. And in preparation for the current war, all kinds of covert activity must have been even more intense than usual.
-
@LaoC said in It has started:
What I'm saying is that nukes are are having a very bad effect on France's grid right now and Germany is compensating for it. I guess that's undisputed?
But they are having bad effect because they are not operating, don't they? And they are not operating not because they are nuclear, but because they are either broken down or short of cooling water.
Now my understanding is that the reason they are broken down is that, given the recent political climate in which it was expected the EU will order them closed any day now, the operators had little incentive to invest in them.
And as for cooling water, it depends on how open or closed the cooling circuit is. But it is exceptional drought this year, and it is complicating things, because we have two problems at the same time.
Now if anyone is saying more nukes would have a positive effect on Germany's grid, they need to explain why they expect German nukes to behave differently from French nukes.
It depends on whether they'd work. Which is back to the strategic mistakes. Not this summer. In last ten or more years. This summer was too late to really fix anything. These things won't change in a year.
-
@acrow said in It has started:
Depends on how you define "population explosion". The large-scale immigration of last few years before Corona caused a lot of new construction in Finland. Our social security system basically guaranteed every adult their own apartment.
I totally get that. What I'm getting at, however, is that there haven't been game-changing developments on either the population or infrastructure front since last winter. Therefore: if there wasn't a need to stack multiple families last winter, there should not be this year either.
To clarify: this sort of intervention falls squarely under war-time economy, and by "war-time" I mean "our country has been invaded/is being bombed". The current situation in Ukraine should not trigger the need for such drastic interventions, because the West is only engaged economically.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that you should not base provision of economic necessities on unfriendly foreign powers. Indeed, the potential for economic coercion should be minimised at all levels and every opportunity, because it will be used against you.
-
@Bulb said in It has started:
nuclear
As I understand it, the problem with nuclear is that power output is more or less fixed and can't be adjusted to demand. So it's great to cover base load but you still need a lot of "fast" capacity to make up for daytime peaks. From what I've heard, gas is a good choice for filling up this gap.
I've heard (but didn't confirm myself) that during some periods, Switzerland regularly imported electricity from France during the night to fill up the pumped-storage reservoirs, then re-exported to France the energy produced with that during day time, getting paid in both directions, because France was desperate to get rid of the nightly excess capacity.
-
@GOG Or maybe don't base economic necessities abroad at all if you can help it. Nothing like limiting the fallout when someone's economy implodes.
But that'd be common sense. And common sense rule makes it harder to mooch off the government moneys. So we can't have that.
-
@acrow Amen.
-
@ixvedeusi said in It has started:
@Bulb said in It has started:
nuclear
As I understand it, the problem with nuclear is that power output is more or less fixed and can't be adjusted to demand. So it's great to cover base load but you still need a lot of "fast" capacity to make up for daytime peaks. From what I've heard, gas is a good choice for filling up this gap.
I've heard (but didn't confirm myself) that during some periods, Switzerland regularly imported electricity from France during the night to fill up the pumped-storage reservoirs, then re-exported to France the energy produced with that during day time, getting paid in both directions, because France was desperate to get rid of the nightly excess capacity.
It has been suggested that houses could be heated with "night electricity". By heating via a large heat-storing element, the heat would be slowly released during the day.
A good fireplace also does this; you heat it up once per day, and it releases heat for the next 24-36 hours. Now replace the fire with an electric heater, and you can take advantage of cheap electricity when there are no other loads.
It doesn't completely eliminate the need for gas or hydro-electric plants to even the peaks, but goes some way towards that.
-
@GuyWhoKilledBear I think you’re stretching, but now that I’ve checked a couple of things, let’s look at it again.
BernieTheBernie seems to be from Germany. Given the current situation, it is very clear that there are going to be energy shortages in Germany for the foreseeable future - this is not a surprise seeing how the energy supply for Germany is very heavily strained right now.
It is not a stretch to say that there are going to be power shortages, I think it has even been announced? (It’s certainly been suggested in the news that Britain is likely to have power shortages in January). Switching policy isn’t going to fix that in the short term because it’s not really a green energy problem. I certainly had no deeper analysis on that in mind, I suspect neither did the OP at the time, because we’re not all fixated on hoe things are political.
Here’s the thing for me: to me this was, as I said, a venting of frustration over something that has happened and is likely to keep happening. It did not offer commentary on root cause, or motive, or anything else, merely “this happened, and from everything I and a whole bunch of people in the region know, is going to keep on happening”. Though I’ll give you that the push for EVs across Europe is a factor, it’s certainly not the only factor in the big equation of “there is this much energy, demand is going up and up and up and up, and supply isn’t.”
To me that wasn’t political, just acknowledging “how things are”. But if you’re going to argue that anything which has a political root cause behind is it also political, then literally everything has politics behind it. Things can’t ever just be things in that world view, because there’s a political edge somewhere.
Hell, pi being 3.141 and some more digits seems like it’d be political in your world just because that one time one state tried to rule that it wasn’t. It’s not political for a thing to simply be a shallow take on “huh this is how it is now” because that’s not in itself where the problems start, the problems start when people get into the how, the why and the what should be done about it - them’s the politics. But there was none of that in the OP, just “here’s where we are and where we’re going”.
Here’s also one of the things that makes me genuinely baffled and part of the “holy shit how did you even”. So what if BernieTheBernie’s username features Bernie? I guess it never occurred to you that Bernard could actually be someone’s name without it being a fucking political reference. Especially in Germany where I gather it’s statistically something like 10x more common than it is in the US because it’s originally Germanic in origin I believe.
-
@ixvedeusi said in It has started:
@Bulb said in It has started:
nuclear
As I understand it, the problem with nuclear is that power output is more or less fixed and can't be adjusted to demand. So it's great to cover base load but you still need a lot of "fast" capacity to make up for daytime peaks. From what I've heard, gas is a good choice for filling up this gap.
I've heard (but didn't confirm myself) that during some periods, Switzerland regularly imported electricity from France during the night to fill up the pumped-storage reservoirs, then re-exported to France the energy produced with that during day time, getting paid in both directions, because France was desperate to get rid of the nightly excess capacity.
Well, yes. Nuclear powerplant can't run below something like 50%, and takes hours to go from that to full. And it is the reason the pumped-storage reservoirs exist. But the base load is quite big and the pumped storage was built, so decomissioning the nuclear powerplants wasn't good planning (green politicians don't plan well:
).And this is a huge benefit of the gas ones. A gas powerplant is just a bunch of turboshaft engines. After turning on they need to idle for maybe two minutes to get the oil heated to operating temperature and then the power can be changed across full range in around 10 seconds.
@acrow said in It has started:
It has been suggested that houses could be heated with "night electricity". By heating via a large heat-storing element, the heat would be slowly released during the day.
That used to be the standard 30 years ago!
Storage heaters, and separate off-peak tariff, used to be very common around here. And I think still is, though it fell out of favor to some extent.
-
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in It has started:
How does he know there's going to be more power outages?
While visiting a different country for a week or so, energy supply was the #1 item in the national news. Voluntary measures were discussed. Industry was called to identify critical infrastructure, to come up with plans to reduce energy consumption, and to come up with fallback plans in case of outages. People were asked to prep at home for rolling outages for a few hours as well (at least to some degree, e.g., have light; this is in a city, where there probably hasn't been a significant length outage for a while).
Not exactly a far fetched conclusion that there might be power outages in the near future.
-
@Bulb said in It has started:
That used to be the standard 30 years ago!
Storage heaters, and separate off-peak tariff, used to be very common around here.Also in West
. So not a thing of the former sovyet (why is that flag missing in our collection?) block only.In a previous appartment, I had electric floor heating. Also with different tariffs for night time vs. day time (and those tariffs were for the heating only, not for other things like washing machine, as some of my neighbors thought...)
-
Now, seriously... has anyone seen any numbers about the difference those 14 reactors would make? Obviously, there would be less gas burnt in the gas plants, so at the very least the prices would not be that high, but would it be enough difference to offset the current lack of gas from one particular source?
I seriously doubt it. Of course, paying 800% is better than paying 1100% more, but it still sucks.
-
@Bulb said in It has started:
That used to be the standard 30 years ago!
Storage heaters, and separate off-peak tariff, used to be very common around here. And I think still is, though it fell out of favor to some extent.
Because with non-subsidized market prices, it's bloody expensive. The off-peak tariff of course exists (without it, it's bloody eye-gougingly expensive and outright out not affordable by anyone below median income). And yes, it was like that already in 90s (it got progressively worse with increased international electricity trade, obviously).
-
@LaoC said in It has started:
@boomzilla said in It has started:
@LaoC said in It has started:
@boomzilla said in It has started:
@LaoC said in It has started:
@boomzilla said in It has started:
@GOG said in It has started:
I thought Applied-Mediocrity's post was mild enough by forum standards - it didn't even clock 0.5 on the Blakeyrant scale, and Blakey used to do that all the time, everywhere, about everything.
I don't get how it's political. The whole point of this thread is the energy crisis in Europe. Not having electricity to charge a car seems like a pretty obvious problem no matter how much denial one pours into European Energy Policy in the face of lack of capacity.
Has anybody been denying that there is a a lack of capacity?
Not exactly, but kind of, when people were saying that there was plenty for charging electric cars.
That's not the same thing. You have a capacity problem if at any point in time there is more demand than the installed plants can deliver. Neither the load curve nor the demand curve for BEV are flat, however, and vehicles tend to stand idle about 95% of the time. Particularly at times when there is (and despite the high average price there is at times) plenty of cheap solar.
It's not identical, as I said, but I'm curious where this "cheap solar" exists given that the places currently warning about charging cars is where solar could potentially work pretty well given the amount of sunlight are telling people not to charge while the sun is up and shining. That this is a regular ritual and not some weird confluence of events tells us that there really is a serious capacity problem.
Utilities announcing their price is fundamental to finding the price for electricity, so yes, those prices are public. There have been a few times last year where solar alone was powering 100% of the demand in Germany.
I can't really comment on why that may be different in other places. When those places warn people not to charge, do they give any reason? Because experience tells people being told not to do something they're entitled to for no reason at all tends to work at best for people who've spend too much of their life in the army.Your Gribnit impersonation is getting better.
And that's with only a tiny fraction of EVs vs oil powered vehicles!
As the rest of the fleet is still to be replaced, it's about time for something like the USB plug mandate that fixed charging hell for phones: a standardized interface that allows BEVs to both receive price signals to charge when there is enough supply, and to supply electricity to the grid when the owner allows it.
I don't think so. The point is, it's not from lack of nukes. If it was, France would be supplying electricity to Germany now and not the other way around.
The point was that Germany got rid of theirs. France's have other obvious problems mentioned. The decommissioning of nukes in Germany is certainly one of the causes of the current lack of energy there (which ripples out to other countries).
There is no rippling out of any kind of lack from Germany when they are exporting to France.
You could hope and pray that German nukes would be in better condition than the French ones.I'm totally missing what you're saying here because it's not making any sense to me. If they buy electricity from each other (in whichever direction), you seem to be saying that supply and demand and prices are completely disconnected.
Why would a European market for electricity imply that supply and demand and prices are disconnected?
Well, yes, that was my point. You seemed to be making some other kind of argument.
What I'm saying is that nukes are are having a very bad effect on France's grid right now and Germany is compensating for it. I guess that's undisputed?
Now if anyone is saying more nukes would have a positive effect on Germany's grid, they need to explain why they expect German nukes to behave differently from French nukes.
Such as that they currently are?
