Comment by realusername

Comment by realusername 3 hours ago

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> Take a look at France. They generally export quite large amounts of electricity. But whenever a cold spell hits that export flow is reversed to imports and they have to start up local fossil gas and coal based production.

That's the opposite, France is exporting in winter and imports in summer whenever the Germany overproduces solar and doesn't know what to do with it.

So for now it's France which helps to stabilize the grid of its neighbors.

There's even price caps against that because France would bleed other countries in winter otherwise.

> don't think you quite get how the grid works? BEVs are like the ultimate consumers for a renewable grid since they can utilize surpluses matching supply and demand.

No they can't, you have to understand how the EU consumption works, surplus are in summer and max demand is in winter. Nobody is going to store electricity in summer in their car to use it in winter, this is nonsense.

ViewTrick1002 2 hours ago

Here's a random selection when the French grid would collapse without 35 GW of their own and neighbors fossil based electricity:

https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...

https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...

https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...

https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...

https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...

You need to differentiate beteween exporting when the grid is strained and facing a grid collapse when a cold spell hits.

Click around the weeks and you will find enormous exports happening the week before. Those are the averages you mention. But as we can now both see the French nuclear grid is incredible inflexible when dealing with the demand curve.

> No they can't, you have to understand how the EU consumption works, surplus are in summer and max demand is in winter. Nobody is going to store electricity in summer in their car to use it in winter, this is nonsense.

Please, this is getting ridiculous. I presume you are smarter than thinking that when I put forth people with hourly contracts for their BEVs I am doing it suggesting seasonal storage.

Have you heard of this thing called wind power? Have you heard of the demand curve not being flat throughout the day?

You know, delay the full charge of the car by a day, two or five if you didn't need to go anywhere and simply worked at home this week.

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  • realusername 2 hours ago

    It seems you are pointing to the 2022 incident which is the only time it happened in 40 years (so clearly not random!). At the time the nuclear plants had unplanned maintenance, the wind power didn't produce much (bad luck) and the solar production wasn't producing (winter). The combination of all these factors made it an exceptional outlier.

    Any other time it's France which supported it's neighboring grids.

    > Have you heard of this thing called wind power? Have you heard of the demand curve not being flat throughout the day?

    Nobody cares about the daily demand curve, it's a solved problem, even my parents had a hourly contract since the 80s (!).

    The current problem in the EU is the winter load.

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    • ViewTrick1002 2 hours ago

      You should look closer rather than attempting a shallow dismissal. I specifically chose to not include dates in 2023 and 2024 due to the maintenance crisis. I also included 2021 numbers.

      Looking at the 2022 numbers nuclear power supplied almost 47-49 GW compared to hovering around 52-54 GW last winter.

      It does not change the outlook of France and its neighbors relying on 35 GW of fossil based power to manage nuclear inflexibility.

      > Nobody cares about the daily demand curve, it's a solved problem, even my parents had a hourly contract since the 80s (!).

      So now when you apparently couldn't backtrack more no one cares about meeting a varying demand?

      Please. Come with curiosity instead of digging the hole you are in ever deeper.

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      • realusername an hour ago

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France...

        This is the reality of the grid, France is a net exporter of electricity in the EU and has been for the longest time. The only outlier is 2022.

        You have to understand that the debate in France for a long time in the 2000s was that building capacity was not needed because there's already too much of it (!).

        The country also pushed to electric heating to use some of this extra capacity making France one of the highest electric heating share at around 40% (Germany has less than 5%).

        > So now when you apparently couldn't backtrack more no one cares about meeting a varying demand?

        The varying demand always meant the seasonal demand! You are in europe here and not a tropical country. The problem has always been meeting the winter load.

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