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points by fpoling 3 days ago | 0 comments

Keeping coal plants around is cheap to cover that. Longer term things like producing ammonia during summer and converting it to electricity in fuel cells will allow to remove needs for fossil fuels completely.

[–] adrianN 3 days ago

I’d keep gas plants around, but anyway, you need to cover that case and can’t just handwave it away.

[–] fpoling 3 days ago

The main advantage of gas plants is that they support variability. In a world with enough battery storage to last for days that would be irrelevant. And as an insurance against rare events it is better to keep coal plants as transportation and storage of coal is vastly more resilient to interruptions.

[–] adrianN 3 days ago

Gas turbines can also run on synthetic methane or hydrogen, which is nice.

[–] leonidasrup 2 days ago

Building new gas power plants for backup is currently the plan the Germany is implementing for it's future renewables powered electric grid.

https://biz.liga.net/en/energy/news/germany-to-build-11-gw-i...

In mean time, it looks like coal in Germany will used for longer.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-regulator-says-n...

[–] fpoling 2 days ago

Germany has not learned anything from the war in Ukraine and still think that dependence on gas imports from other countries is fine even for backup.