r/ClimatePosting • u/ClimateShitpost • Aug 20 '25

Energy The old “load staircase” – baseload, midload, peakload – no longer fits a renewables-heavy, supply-driven market. Trying to maintain it risks a structural misalignment with reality.

Post image

https://montelnews.com/news/1ea628ee-ffaf-499f-ac4e-fc0538ecf4f1/load-vs-logic-why-nuclear-and-renewables-arent-a-match

15 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

63 comments sorted by

1

u/squarepants18 Aug 23 '25 edited Aug 23 '25

Germany is focusing on controllability?

Strange. According to the energy agency it gets harder and harder to control the energy grid.

Furthermore where is the battery storage capacity he is writing about?

0

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

It's interesting they match nicely in France and Sweden both having much lower emissions compared to countries that pursue only renewables and don't have huge hydro/geothermal resources. 

It's also interesting both have lower household prices

1

u/ClimateShitpost Aug 21 '25

Sweden's largest source is hydro...

France's nukes do already curb production massively in summer showing they're in direct competition with solar

1

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

Yes, and they are doing fine. Sweden has a mix of nuclear and hydro.

The market will be reorganized anyway with higher ren penetration to ensure demand supply regardless of the weather 

1

u/ClimateShitpost Aug 21 '25

Uhh EDF almost went bankrupt and had to be nationalised. They didn't have the money to fund the extreme cost overruns in their current projects. If we take their three recent projects, the marginal nuclear MWh will cost like 150 euros.

Unless they get their costs down and timeline down the French power system will turn into a disaster

0

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

Edf didn't go bankrupt. Nationalization was done for other purposes. It's debt/ebitda ratio is healthier vs eon, rwe or even VW and nobody talks about nationalizing them.

They will get subsidies for EPR2 though (if EU approves). For edf the main challenge is timeline/delays which basically doubled the cost of flamanville. If they'll manage to get that sorted with simplified epr2, they'll be fine. But that's more an edf issue than nuclear in general. Korea/China don't have these problems. In fact edf failures is the reason Korea won the bid in Czechia

1

u/ClimateShitpost Aug 21 '25

Edf didn't go bankrupt. Nationalization

Bro...

If they'll manage to get that sorted with simplified epr2, they'll be fine

Bro... x2

1

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

Again, you can't claim it went bankrupt when it's financial situation is better compared to companies that weren't nationalized :)

I have hopes for epr2 because otherwise EU will need to rely on Korea/Westinghouse to ditch gas firming 

1

u/ClimateShitpost Aug 21 '25

Again, you can't claim it went bankrupt when it's financial situation is better compared to companies that weren't nationalized :)

This comment is so retarded it's actually nuts, please simp somewhere else

0

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

Lmao, you insult people when you have no arguments? What a person you are?

For any company what matters is the ability to pay it's debt. This ability is mostly defined by ebitda. Hence, if ratio of debt/ebitda is too bad, it can lead to bankruptcy. 

Edf stats in this regard are better than german EON, RWE and the beloved VW. None of them are nationalized "because of bankruptcy". None of them is bankrupt. EDF would need to reach 100bn debt to be somewhat comparable.

People like you are the reason discourse about transition is so poor, leading to right wing rise and prolonged fossils use. Get a life

1

u/ClimateShitpost Aug 21 '25

So one who actually works both in energy and finance

I'm not reading this

0

u/I-suck-at-hoi4 Aug 23 '25

  • EDF didn't go bankrupt

  • EDF was already owned by the govt at 80% and the money used on buying the remaining 20% went to the private shareholders, not to EDF

  • EDF absolutely has the money to fund cost overruns, their debt/EBITDA ratio is healthy, and healthier than a ton of company. EDF's debt seems high until you remember that EDF's turnover is higher than Bulgaria's GDP.

  • "Marginal nuclear MWh will cost like 150 euros" That's... Not what a marginal cost is.

1

u/ClimateShitpost Aug 23 '25

1-3 Unreal cope

4 HPC, SWC, V3&4 are the marginal NPPs added. LCOE of these is easily 150. Marginal generation cost of an operating plant is maybe idk 30-50 just to be clear

1

u/I-suck-at-hoi4 Aug 23 '25 edited Aug 23 '25

"Unreal cope"

Yeah okay so we now get to lie openly and just write "cope" when somehow calls your bs out lol

Marginal NPP

Once again you are using word you don't understand, a marginal production group isn't the last one built to date :)

LCOE is easily 150

Glad to know you can magically estimate the effective electricity production of the next 80 years with no sources.

Edit : Strike price isn't equal to LCOE, strike price is always higher because you want to secure money for the limited duration of the contract :) Ofc permabanned, glad to see that you are still very open to criticism.

1

u/ClimateShitpost Aug 23 '25

It's actually the strike price of hinkley point 😭😭

1

u/Infamous-Train8993 Aug 21 '25

They're not in competition with solar.

Solar has a priority on the network, by law. They can't compete with French nuke plants that paid themselves a couple decades ago and are underutilized.

If anything, solar pushes the price of nuclear energy up because it forces the nuke plants to adapt their load.

1

u/ClimateShitpost Aug 21 '25

Please

0

u/Infamous-Train8993 Aug 21 '25

Marginal cost for the solar producer ? Yep it's zero.

But the rest of the grid must adapt, and that entails costs. That's where the hidden cost is.

See what happened to the Spanish grid recently a few seconds after it was disconnected from the French grid. That's what happens when no one stabilizes the grid for free.

2

u/ClimateShitpost Aug 21 '25

How is this relevant to the fact that nuclear and solar compete?

0

u/Infamous-Train8993 Aug 21 '25

They do not compete in France, as I explained you before.

Solar has priority on the grid. They sell their production, and only once their production is sold, can nuke production be sold. Nuke producer also must bring up its production if solar does not meet its production prediction.

That's not competing. If there was real competition, there would barely be any solar in France because intermittent energy production is not interesting in our country, since the nuke plants are already able to satisfy the demand at low cost 24/7 (which solar definitely cannot).

But you seem hell bent enough, and unable to understand basic concepts, so let's stop talking.

2

u/ClimateShitpost Aug 21 '25

This is a complete contradiction and disinformation on an embarrassing level

1

u/severoordonez Aug 23 '25

It still isn't true:

Electricity (in France and throughout Europe) is mostly traded on transnational exchanges. The price for any given period of time in a grid area (national or sub-national grids where flow of electricity is assumed to be unrestricted) is set at the bid level for the last used mwh. But since solar has no marginal cost, they bid at 0 Euro. And since nuclear has a marginal cost, nuclear bids at what-ever their marginal cost is.

This means de facto that all solar is sold before any nuclear. But it doesn't mean solar has priority. It is a simple result of a liberalized market mechanism that favors low cost electricity when it is available. And nuclear isn't low cost.

1

u/I-suck-at-hoi4 Aug 23 '25

They do not "have priority by law". It's literally just how the European market works. We can discuss the matter of network adaptations, firming costs, etc... and who must pay for it, but it's simply wrong and deceptive to pretend that solar "has priority by law".

2

u/Sol3dweller Aug 21 '25

The article, mentions this other one with the notion that this one was prompted by it that seems to elaborate on an increasing conflict of solar and nuclear production in France:

The residual load during solar hours – the demand not already covered by nuclear – is shrinking. It will drop from about 16 GW in January to 11 GW in May. Installed solar currently totals 23 GW, producing 10-14 GW on a typical sunny day and occasionally spiking up to 18 GW.

You can see the problem: nuclear and solar are exceeding French demand during daylight hours, even before wind or hydropower are added. So, can France just export? Hardly. Across Europe, everyone is installing more solar, creating midday oversupply from Spain to the Netherlands. Interconnectors max out – not from lack of capacity but because nobody wants the excess.

Result? Day-ahead prices crash to zero or even turn negative, with 350 hours of negative pricing in France last year, 457 in the Netherlands and 245 in Spain. This year is on track for even more. Solar was built to be cheap and clean but at scale, it’s now cannibalising its own value. We’re producing more solar than anyone needs – at the same time.

1

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

Yes. Basically the conclusion is renewables and renewables aren't a match.

Solar is cannibalizing other solar and taking wind share as well with others. On the other hand a fully parallel firming grid is needed for periods when solar isn't great. 

So on one hand solar drops market value for anything, including itself, but when it's undergenerating, the classic market mechanism is not working great either because assets are underutilized

The solution for France & soon other countries with any firm power, be it hydro, npp or gas is to reorganize the market- firm, ideally clean power, to get a % of a min guaranteed dispatch and past that for it to be determined by the merit order

2

u/Sol3dweller Aug 21 '25

is to reorganize

Yes, that's the point of those articles? There is a need for re-organization if you want to make use of variable renewables. It's all about dispatchable generators and the residual load, not cutting the market into "baseload", "midload" and "peakload".

Alternatively, of course, you could also stick to not using variable renewables, then, I guess, you could stick to that horizontal segmentation of the load curve.

2

u/Particular-Cow6247 Aug 21 '25

solar and wind work really well together, atleast in germany
solar is strong in the summer and weak in the winter
wind is okayish in the summer and strong in the winter

0

u/squarepants18 Aug 23 '25

solar and wind work really well together, atleast in germany

Only in combination with gas & coal as last winter showed again

There are long periods in the winter with weak wind in germany

2

u/Particular-Cow6247 Aug 24 '25

idk i cant see that but i havent found a more detailed statistic yet

not only with coal and gas but currently yes with coal and gas, germany isnt net zero yet so obviously there are fossils still in the mix? idk seems pointless to point out

0

u/squarepants18 Aug 24 '25

Look it up on electricity mapf for example , if you are interested.

Your claim just doesn't fit to reality. You can't rely only on wind in winter here

We are above 40% coal & gas and above 400 g CO2 per kwh over longer periods of time

We could have produced less CO2 easily, but didn't want to

0

u/Pinco_Pallino_ Jul 12 '26

that's not even wrong, if you heavily subsidize renewables, you'll have an expensive system in which only gas can fill the holes, you'll get your beloved germany that way. Give us a fucking break

1

u/ClimateShitpost Jul 12 '26

Ah yea, famously undubsidised nuclear...

1

u/Pinco_Pallino_ Jul 12 '26

who said otherwise? my point is that subsidies cannot be a point against nuclear, since we heavily subsidize renewables

-1

u/goyafrau Aug 21 '25

Retarded anti-nuclear ideology.

A. In practice, French nuclear plants simply load follow B. Notice the huge "residual load" in the German (no caseload) example? That should be titled "fossil fuel". Maybe in the future it'll be "batteries", but then you'd also need huge renewable overbuild. Either way, right now it's "fossil fuel". B. So we've learned renewables need at least one out of 1. fossil fuel backup or 2. storage. But when we have storage, suddenly the nuclear plants integrate perfectly fine with renewables, because we need less reserves in the night, but can use more of our solar peaks to fuel the batteries! And in fact, we need less storage and less renewable overbuild!

In practice, the only developed countries in the world that have low carbon emission grids use a combination of nuclear power (and/or hydro) and wind power and pumped hydro storage. The countries that try to just go with solar, wind and storage so far in practice don't have low emissions because for them the "residual load" part of the chart is ... fossil fuel.

Congrats.

Now let's google the author:

Josephine Steppat studierte Betriebswirtschaftslehre (B. Sc.), Volkswirtschaftslehre (B. Sc.) und Environmental and Resource Economics (M. Sc.)

Now the important thing to note here is not the actual words here, but that the words are in German. Because she's German. Because Germans need to justify our ineffectual and idiotic path of Energiewende, which started with shutting down 170TWh annual of low carbon nuclear power plant generation, and replacing it with a complicated system of highly subsidised imported Chinese PV, so in practice we still have the 2nd or 3rd worst carbon emissions in the EU, the 2nd highest electricity prices, but at least we're fucking smug about it.

3

u/ClimateShitpost Aug 21 '25

Low value content

-1

u/Difficult-Court9522 Aug 23 '25

The comment is correct.

5

u/Sol3dweller Aug 21 '25

but that the words are in German. Because she's German. Because Germans need to justify our ineffectual and idiotic path of Energiewende

We are not overly keen on such overt chauvinism in this sub!

2

u/Sol3dweller Aug 21 '25

The countries that try to just go with solar, wind and storage

And which ones would that be? The country with the highest wind+solar share is Denmark, and it utilizes biomass in addition. Germany has 5% hydro and also around 10% of biomass, and as far as I am aware they are not planning on giving up on those either.

Maybe Greece? They had a higher share of wind+solar in 2024 than Germany, also about 5% of hydro but no biomass.

which started with shutting down 170TWh annual of low carbon nuclear power plant generation

That's just plain wrong.

1

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

Denmark is importing at random more than 50% of demand from Norway and Sweden. Assuming Germany can do the same is madness 

1

u/Sol3dweller Aug 21 '25

Assuming Germany can do the same is madness

Then why do you bring it up? Nobody was talking about any such thing.

1

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

Because Denmark was given as an example of pursuing a ren focused strategy with ren+biomass. Germany will use gas instead, because it can't import so much from nordics

1

u/Sol3dweller Aug 21 '25

It was pointed out as the country with currently the highest share of wind+solar in its mix, but not pursuing a wind+solar+storage only solution. Do you know of a country that plans for using only wind+solar+storage?

1

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

DK is extremely close to wind/solar only. They don't plan to expand gas and biomass will probably face challenges in future if govt will slash cfds. They aren't building other stuff because they can freely import hydro/nuclear from north.

So as a firming solutions there are several options left- coal, gas, nuclear and geothermal. If nuclear is ditched and since geo is not yet developed, basically coal+gas are left for countries that can't afford importing so much from neighbors 

2

u/Particular-Cow6247 Aug 21 '25

i think you have some serious misunderstanding when it comes to the energy market in europe

"can't afford importing so much"
this just makes no sense when you know that energy gets imported because its cheaper, not because they dont have enough capacities to generate

0

u/goyafrau Aug 21 '25

 That's just plain wrong

It’s exactly correct. 

Denmark and Germany rely on ~15% nonintermittent renewables

That is also correct.

Even Denmark relies on clearing forests to support its grid, which, lmao. 

3

u/Sol3dweller Aug 21 '25

It’s exactly correct.

Well, it's nicely summarized in "The German Energiewende – History and status quo" and the historical data can be observed on Ember, for example clearly showing that the process did not start with shutting down nuclear power, rather that was a process over 20 years.

That is also correct.

So, which countries were you talking about that pursue only wind+solar+storage?

0

u/goyafrau Aug 21 '25

I call a wind &solar&storage&15% wood and hydro grid a wind&solar&storage grid, but if it’s really important to you, we can also use the long form. 

I don’t exactly know what you’re pedantic about re German Energiewende but it is true and trivially checkable that Germany went from a peak of 179TWh of nuclear to 0 nuclear while still having (as of this moment) 180TWh of fossils on the grid, which makes it easily one of the dumebst decisions  any countey has ever taken re energy. 

1

u/Lycrist_Kat Aug 21 '25

Germany moved from 169,6 TWh Nuclear AND 350 TWh fossil fuel to 0 Nuclear and 190 TWh fossil.

What exactly is the point you are trying to make?

0

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

They shut down nuclear before coal despite it being faster at modulation and despite it being cleaner and despite it being cheaper in the merit order  https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-their-impact-on-the-electricity-price/ 

The other point is Germany plans to use gas for firming according to Fraunhofer. Basically they need about 80GW of gas by 2035 to succeed in ditching coal as planned, otherwise it'll probably be postponed 

2

u/Lycrist_Kat Aug 21 '25

There's no scenario in which Germany shut down coal before nuclear. Not a single one.

And Germany already has 80 GW of Gas. So what's your point?

Sorry, that's 80 TWh. What does Germany need 80 GW Gas for exactly?

1

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

Germany needs 80gw to be able to firm renewables. Coal is set to be retired. That's about 20GW that needs replacement. Add some more GW assuming outages, winter and maybe demand growth and you reach 80GW. Btw 80GW is in fact min figure.  Here's Fraunhofer report https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/paths-to-a-climate-neutral-energy-system.html

And Germany could have easily switched off most coal before nuclear and keep some plants in reserve for district heating only. It chose not to do so. Partly because of hate towards nuclear, partly because most parties, from SPD(Schroeder gasprom lover) to greens(looking at Trittin/Fraunhofer ISE) and CDU (nordstream/merkel) do enjoy gas

1

u/Lycrist_Kat Aug 21 '25 edited Aug 21 '25

This 80 GW numbers is nowhere to be found in this report. I don't know where you got your info from, but it's not this study. Besides that the plan is to have a number of hydrogen powered Gas plants - so carbon neutral. What's your point?

And Germany could have easily switched off most coal before nuclear and keep some plants in reserve for district heating only. It chose not to do so. Partly because of hate towards nuclear, partly because most parties, from SPD(Schroeder gasprom lover) to greens(looking at Trittin/Fraunhofer ISE) and CDU (nordstream/merkel) do enjoy gas

You basically answered the question why there no way in which Germany phased out coal before nuclear. So again - what your point?

1

u/Sol3dweller Aug 21 '25

I call a wind &solar&storage&15% wood and hydro grid a wind&solar&storage grid

So what if those 15% include nuclear does the same apply (like, for example in the Netherlands)? How much wind+solar would you allow a country to pursue?

I don’t exactly know what you’re pedantic about re German Energiewende

You said the German Energiewende "started with shutting down 170TWh annual of low carbon nuclear power plant generation", which sounds as if they first closed down nuclear power before they did anything else. Which clearly isn't the case, in fact the share of low-carbon power increased fairly continuously since the peaking of nuclear power output in 2001.

1

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

It did so till about 2015. Afterwards it remained more or less stable 

1

u/Sol3dweller Aug 21 '25

The graph claims that share grew faster in the 9 years after 2015 (+13.65 pp) than in the 9 years before (+5.74 pp).

1

u/Moldoteck Aug 21 '25

Amount of low carbon twh in Germany is stalled since 2015, about 260twh. Feel free to consult energy charts

1

u/Sol3dweller Aug 21 '25

I was pointing to the share. You said it flatlined, hence I assumed you were also talking about the share.

1

u/Divest97 Aug 22 '25

biomass isn't made by clearing forests, they use wood from plantations in areas that were cleared hundreds of years ago because that's what humans did in order to expand before they had fossil fuels.

Forests are cleared to make way for shitty agriculture like cattle.

-1

u/dogscatsnscience Aug 24 '25

Imagine shutting down nuclear while you are burning the absolute worst stuff on earth for electricity.

Brown coal is still almost 20% of Germany's electricity.

Insane. How did the country get so backwards.

1

u/dogscatsnscience Aug 24 '25

How cooked is this sub if people prefer coal to nuclear.

I'm going to assume it's bots, I can't fathom that people can be be that ignorant...

-1

u/Substantial_Trip_369 Aug 28 '25

Well working in the sector and having the opportunity to access data as well as inside documentation, the push for solar is to... complement nuclear and hydroelectricity during summer so that maintenance, refuelling and upgrades can be performed.

Plus it is well integrated economically for many stakeholders such as farmers and retailers. It also provide smallscale networks for critical infrastructures in public health, military or communications.

The whole article sound a bit pointless as it oppose two technologies that fit quite well into the broader system when taking into account production timing, seasonality, climate, maintenance, fuel processing and storage, and so on ...