Yeah historically that makes a lot of sense to me. Reactors going offline directly would usually be planned and thus not cause instability.
The 2006 one I had read about before. I love reading timelines of such disasters. Shows how hard this actually is and how much work it is to keep it all running.
Here's another one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003#Tim... And speaking of Canada and power lines (this time it does include transmission lines) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ic... While not so severe this is basically the kind of thing I was referring to us happening in "shoulder season". There's usually at least one ice storm or very wet snow event at the start and/or end of winter now and it's very likely that in our wooded area we get trees into power lines and boom the buckets go. When we're lucky it's localized and crews are available to come out and fix it in a few hours. If it's all over the place then it's gonna take a while and they'll have crews from other provinces and the US come in to help as well.
I'd be interested in your outlook on the future of the grid in Germany and Europe though. Of course when France takes a nuke offline, that's usually planned, even when done for a "river water temperature emergency" it's gonna take a while and you can bring that coal plant online like you mention. But doesn't Germany want to reach the climate goals it set itself? How does coal make sense there? And how is shutting down their own nukes a thing when it's OK to use French nuke power?
Or some natural gas, which is quicker. If you have the gas. Re: Russia.
In all of the European (NATO) countries together, is there enough generation capacity if you assume zero Russian inputs (save for say untraceable third party transit or resources) and half of France's nukes going offline? Especially when the sun doesn't shine because bad weather and thus the winds are so high that you have to shut down your wind turbines?
> There's usually at least one ice storm or very wet snow event at the start and/or end of winter now and it's very likely that in our wooded area we get trees into power lines and boom the buckets go
That's where a large, sparsely populated country is a real disadvantage. "Trees into powerlines" isn't really an event in Germany, since high voltage lines are 150 feet up in the air and kept clear of trees (they'll just cut a line though a forest for them). And everything smaller is generally buried. But that would be very hard to do in Canada. And of course we don't have to fight with ice on our transmission lines.
> How does coal make sense there?
Lobbying. And saving the jobs of hard-working coal miners is more romantic and appealing in election campaigns than saving the jobs of wind turbine manufacturers.
It used to make economic sense in the sense that coal plants were cheaper to run, but that has changed in recent years so what you see now is mostly inertia
> And how is shutting down their own nukes a thing when it's OK to use French nuke power?
Oh, there are lots of protests against French nuclear plants too, especially those in the border regions. We just can't do much about them. But the people who don't like nuclear plants aren't the ones running the energy markets.
On the future: Before 2022 the idea was to transition all coal capacity to gas. This was mostly happening on its own anyways due to gas outcompeting coal on price, and new pipelines like Nordstream were going to accelerate that economic pressure to transition. The Ukraine war was a big setback for that.
In the end I believe we are still moving to a future where a lot of power is coming from solar and offshore wind, with natural gas peaker plants to offset times without wind until grid-scale battery technology moves a bit along (molten salt, hot sand, pumped hydro in abandoned mines, etc). In addition to that obviously hydro and pumped hydro from the Scandinavian countries
We are far enough into economies of scale that the generation side is mostly going to sort itself out on economics alone. Solar is becoming dirt cheap, offshore wind is becoming profitable, natural gas is cleaner and cheaper than coal. The bigger issue are transmission lines. Building transmission lines takes decades because every NIMBY fights against them. But the existing transmission lines are built around a somewhat even spread of supply and demand, versus the new situation where we want offshore farms in the North Sea to be able to supply lots of electricity to the South when there's good wind, and the solar panels in the South to help power the North. And politicians from certain parties love to side with "their" NIMBYs for easy political points
The 2006 one I had read about before. I love reading timelines of such disasters. Shows how hard this actually is and how much work it is to keep it all running.
Here's another one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003#Tim... And speaking of Canada and power lines (this time it does include transmission lines) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ic... While not so severe this is basically the kind of thing I was referring to us happening in "shoulder season". There's usually at least one ice storm or very wet snow event at the start and/or end of winter now and it's very likely that in our wooded area we get trees into power lines and boom the buckets go. When we're lucky it's localized and crews are available to come out and fix it in a few hours. If it's all over the place then it's gonna take a while and they'll have crews from other provinces and the US come in to help as well.
I'd be interested in your outlook on the future of the grid in Germany and Europe though. Of course when France takes a nuke offline, that's usually planned, even when done for a "river water temperature emergency" it's gonna take a while and you can bring that coal plant online like you mention. But doesn't Germany want to reach the climate goals it set itself? How does coal make sense there? And how is shutting down their own nukes a thing when it's OK to use French nuke power?
Or some natural gas, which is quicker. If you have the gas. Re: Russia.
In all of the European (NATO) countries together, is there enough generation capacity if you assume zero Russian inputs (save for say untraceable third party transit or resources) and half of France's nukes going offline? Especially when the sun doesn't shine because bad weather and thus the winds are so high that you have to shut down your wind turbines?