If you measure useful energy as electricity output of a fossil fuel plant then yes. But in many cases the waste heat is used in other applications for example district heating or low grade industrial heat.
If you use fossil fuel to directly drive an industrial process, for example melting of ores/metals/glass then the efficiency is much higher.
Electricity can still be more efficient for many of these with heat pumps, like indoor heating and steam production. The gap is smaller then for working engines of cause.
It really depends on the size and placement of the oversupply, this could cause localized grid overloading.
"However, BDEW warned that around half of the new capacity came in the form of small-scale systems under 100 kilowatt each, which under current rules feed into the grid whatever they produce, without the option to curtail production when this is necessary to ensure grid stability."
Smart electric meters for individual PV producers that signal and account for negative prices would help. e.g. if your balcony solar power pushes electricity during oversupply you pay penalty.
Yeah. Going forward, I suspect the way to handle this will be requiring the small producers to join a "virtual power plant".
It'll result in a lot of misinformed shrieking from people, but probably the way forward is to remove the guaranteed price subsidy for individual household producers, and make it so thar they have to join a VPP if they want to sell to the grid.
But it takes a real energy supply crisis (and probably many resulting deaths) to overcome NIMBY and anti-nuclear sentiment. In the current situation: in the U.S. there is currently just minor price hike, in Asia there is potential for real crisis (in few months), in Africa it will be really bad (crop production failures - famine).
Maybe few manufacturers of specialized components colluded to not increase much production capacity, even with increased demand, so that prices don't collapse.
Its estimated that a PV panel is co2 neutral aver 2 years.
And the great thing is: this is only if the panel was produced with fossil fuels. So due to increase in green energy everywere, this number goes down too and a PV can easily be used for 15 years and after. After that it might just be more economicly to reinvest in a new set of PV panels while the old ones can be sold and used somewere else.
About 1/10 or so of the output of the panel, e.g. 1 barrel of input energy making and transporting panels saves 10 barrels in fossil fuel energy. That's a rough number assuming a particular mix of oil based energy and no energy cost to procuring the fossil fuels used in the comparison.
Long time ago when Siemens in Germany was still building nuclear power plants, I was working in the nuclear power plant engineering department. After the year 2022 when the Russia invaded Ukraine, the gas shortages and the following costs hikes renewed my interest energy sector. Why didn't German reverse it's anti-nuclear stance, even with war in Europe?
Was is the general lack of knowledge of physical, technological and economical aspects of energy, both in German population and decision makers?
The political aspect became clearer after reading "Akte Atomausstieg" by Daniel Gräber.
I think solar and wind are interesting technologies, (solar almost magical - turning photons of light inside thin layer of doped silicon into electrons) but by itself insufficient to power modern world. They are intermittent, weather dependent and low density. Yes the sun and wind come free from Sun, the machines that convert the energy, store it and distribute it are not. Minerals have to be mined, machines build, transported, installed and then disposed off.
Recommended reading:
"Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air" by Sir David John Cameron MacKay
There are still big hydrocarbon reserves, gas/oil for atleast 100 years, coal 200 years, at current consumption rates. I fear that, if we don't use the only carbon free high density energy source and cling our hopes to the mirage of renewables, we will transform our atmosphere to hell.
When even the oil and gas giants advertise for renewables, you know that renewables will never replace fossil fuels.
The real question is "why are nukemen so desperately against renewables (and therefore by default in favor of fossil fuels)?" The all-nuclear future had its moment in the sun in the 70s and has been comprehensively lapped. Only France came close.
> the machines that convert the energy, store it and distribute it are not. Minerals have to be mined, machines build, transported, installed and then disposed off
This is of course also a valid argument against nuclear power.
I dislike ‘energy religion’. Nuclear is necessary for Europe. We simply can’t heat our homes and power our industry with renewables in winter. At the same time wind and pv can be built up faster and is simply cheap. Hydro where topography and local bio conditions allow it. We need all those technologies, so we can move away from fossil (climate, resilience and depletion).
On your map, let's say the source is valid, UK has $0.4.
I'm from CZ, we have $0.35.
UK has more than double median salary, DOUBLE. Which means that in some cities it will be actually more like 2x or 3x smaller. But price of electricity is more or less same in the whole country here.
Don't tell me something about expensive electricity and saving money. Because on top of that, let's check affordable housing stats
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