Comment by input_sh
15 hours ago
I guess somewhat of a fun fact: Albania has rented(!) two floating(!) oil-powered power plants near the city of Vlöre that are there in case of emergency. The last time they were really needed was in 2022 (if I remember correctly), but these days they're not turned on any more than they need to be to make sure they're operating properly. That very expensive backup system is basically the only non-renewable source in the whole country, and most of the time it's just sitting there doing nothing.
Being powered almost entirely by hydro means that the system is highly susceptible to droughts, so then they either have to spin up those oil plants from time to time or import electricity from abroad. I think it's also worth pointing out that nothing really changed because of climate change, the decision to rely on hydro was made in the 90s. The country used to have its own oil power plant that it heavily relied on before that decision, which slowly produced less and less until it was shut down for good in 2007. Some images of it from 2019: https://www.oneman-onemap.com/en/2019/06/26/the-abandoned-po...
Sri Lanka used to rely on hydro, with oil as a backup, and has added a lot of coal.
I wonder how many other countries are increasing non-renewable output?
Sri Lanka has only one coal power plant (construction began 2006), and the later coal project was canceled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Sri_...
Not increasing but cancelling plans on phasing out. Here in The Netherlands, an absolutely minuscule country of ~18 million people, two coal plants will remain online that previously would've been phased out.
> I think it's also worth pointing out that nothing really changed because of climate change, the decision to rely on hydro was made in the 90s.
Why do you think it is worth pointing this out?
To assuage any implication that the conversion was based on that concern?
It's helpful to know that there are economics and environmental concerns outside of an existential threat, to galvanize a country's momentum.
Mostly because when the title says "seven countries now generate...", it sure makes it look like there was some sort of a recent development made in response to climate change, and not something that would've been the case regardless.
Correct for the others, but Ethiopia was only added to this list after GERD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Da...) came online, which is a fairly recent development.
And this is an expected problem with renewables that can be engineered around. It's unlikely the whole world has a drought at once during a calm night, so developing ways to transmit power long distances will be important.
Or just use nuclear as base load, and battery storage as much as you can.
The economics of new nuclear plants don't make sense. They take too long to build and cost too much. By the time a new plant is ready, alternate sources (likely solar + battery and long-distance HVDC) will have eaten its lunch.
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Or just gradually taper off fossil fuel use until storage and renewables carry everything.
Exactly what "storage" means there is the key, especially at high latitude. Do not assume just batteries.
Nuclear doesn't really solve this particular problem - solar is already cheaper than nuclear, so no one is going to replace their entire solar capacity with nuclear. And nuclear doesn't spin up/down rapidly like natural gas, so its a lousy solution for nighttime.
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You don't need battery storage if you've got hydro.
You need solar. Make hydro the backup, fill reservoirs as your reserve and sell extra energy when they're nearly full.
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Over-provisioning with renewables is cheaper
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Get a drought and you have to shut them down, ask France.
"Base load" is just some nonsense from nuclear fans to get the cost per GWh down.
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Nuclear seems to be the worst option:
You can't quickly change the amount of power it generates. Which is what you need if you want to use it together with dirt cheap solar.
It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years.
It's dangerous. For millenia. Vulnerable to terrorism. Enabler of nuclear weapons.
It takes a long time to build and bring online.
It doesn't scale down.
Finally, Kasachstan is the major producer of Uranium. Yay?
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Which absolutely should be done, but having energy sovereignty is never a bad thing.
Having a continent-wide draught (or cold winter or other weather effect) is rather common though. Just a few years back Europe had a massive issue where draught caused both drop of hydro production and cooling for French nukes, causing energy prices to spike.
No. Cooling french nukes was never a problem. In that period France was net exporting 14GW. Cooling in general isn't a problem - some modulation is done just to save fish.
Maybe you are confusing with 2022 when half of french fleet was shut down to check for potential pipe cracks/corrosion esp in one of their reactor designs due to poor geometry. But that's unrelated to droughts
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Cooling for French nuclear reactors, yes. More than once since 2020. But nukes?
Funny, TAP runs straight-thru Albania. They could just build a gas power station. Of course rented rigs line the pockets much better.
Why would they want to do that?
Building something is cheaper than renting it forever?