Netherlands' renewables drive putting pressure on its power grid

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn40y9yxkgvo

by clarionbell • 9 months ago

7 4 9 months ago

goku12• 9 months ago

I seriously dislike articles like these. Not because they're wrong, but because of how they frame it. It's due to the issues they choose to focus on. Yes, it's true that the electric grids around the world are straining due to the generation of wind and solar power. It isn't just Netherlands. I read the exact same news here in India (technical alone, not the opinion like in this article).

We're all well aware of why we're ditching gas and coal in favor of wind and solar. The truth is that this can't happen soon enough. Climate change is progressing more rapidly than predicted, because the scientists were blamed for causing panic. I don't know what sort of catastrophe awaits. Perhaps it won't be a Hollywood style apocalypse. But one thing is certain. The new norm won't support the current 8 billion strong population. Yet, this is the only sentence in the article that mentions the environment:

This is all good in environmental terms, but it's putting the Dutch national electricity grid under enormous stress, and in recent years there have been a number of power cuts.

And then you have statements like this:

Grid congestion is putting the future of the Dutch chemical industry at risk… while in other countries it will be easier to invest

All the while, not giving nearly enough attention to the fact that it's the lack of foresight in upgrading the grid that led to this crisis, though they mention it in passing here and there. Remember that solar and wind are not taking away the power or making anyone consume more. They're actually adding a lot of clean power into the economy. It's the grid that's ruining the situation. The article does mention that the grid was designed to distribute power from massive power plants. The issue is that the grid that was designed and fine tuned to deliver huge quantities of power from some massive rich corporations to smaller customers is woefully incapable of handling millions of smaller unreliable power sources connected everywhere on it. That's like a province where all the development was focused on one city, but the villages and towns nearby suddenly found some precious ore. Of course the roads are going to be congested and gridlocked - they weren't designed for that. You can't blame the miners for that. Blame the planners who neglected those roads, the towns and the villages. But here is the kicker:

He adds that following the 2015 Paris Agreement on trying to tackle climate change, "we were very much focusing on increasing the renewable power generation side. But we kind of underestimated the impact it would have on the power grid."

I find this ridiculous because solar and wind were around for a long time. Sure, their volume and efficiency are significantly higher today. But that wasn't a quantum leap - it happened gradually over decades. The production capacity was added over decades. High efficiency PVs were in use in space decades before we got them down here. They're saying that in all that time, they didn't consider the effects of connecting those to the grid. It says how serious they were about the climate crisis mitigation.

But if you read the article carefully, you'll realize that their thinking hasn't changed much. They're saying that the grid capacity will have to be increased two, three or even up to ten fold. Why? Are the consumers consuming two, three or ten fold the amount of power? How are you going to utilize all that extra capacity? The problem is that the grid is still being treated as a transport network for rich corporations to sell power to the smaller consumers. The post-petro power economy will be a decentralized one, rather than a centralized one with massive logistical and distribution networks. The grid must reflect that reality. It should be treated as a big network of smaller subgrids where the power producers and consumers are as close as possible. Think of it like a mesh network rather than a telephone network. The subgrids must strive to be self-sufficient and depend on other subgrids only to overcome minor imbalances. That will reduce the large cross-country loads on the weaker distribution networks that has become the main issue here. It will require overcoming unaddressed problems like the unreliability of the power source. You may need mass energy storage solutions like sodium ion battery farms, pumped hydro, molten salt energy storage, etc.

While the article doesn't say it explicitly, their sentiment about the transition to renewables is overwhelmingly negative. In fact, it's this implicit negativity hidden behind unclear intentions that's dangerous. Any normal person reading it will reach the conclusion that it's the inconsiderate switch to renewables that caused the crisis, instead of the fact that nobody dealing with the grid took it seriously enough. That's like complaining about the weight of a bear spray while going on camping. I'm sure that the bear that's following you will be very thankful to the people who made it that heavy.

I don't want to judge the planners, designers and the policy makers too harshly here. You can't catch all mistakes beforehand, after all. But who does this article benefit anyway? It doesn't take too much to realize that the economic benefits of slowing down the growth of renewables are solely for the petro and power companies that want to protect their traditional sources of revenue, or at least stretch it as far as possible. That's why headlines like:

Netherlands' renewables drive putting pressure on its power grid

don't sound as appropriate or innocent as something like:

Netherlands' power grid is struggling to keep pace with their renewables drive

rstuart4133• 9 months ago

The reality is closer to: "Netherlands' power grid is struggling to manage the transition away from Russian gas". My daughter lives there. The sudden switch cause a lot of hand wringing at the time. It didn't matter how they managed it, that transition was always going to strain the grid in new ways.

As to why they were using Russian gas: they did use domestic gas as the article says. They stopped that when it became apparent it caused earthquakes, which are a significant problem when a good chunk of your country is below sea level. Odd they neglected to mention that in the article.

We've had the same should be bullshit thrown around in Australia politics. The claim: "South Australia change to renewables caused state wide blackouts". The reality: "Storm blows down transmission power line pylons, at the same time as the backup line was down for maintenance. Then the privately owned standby gas companies made things worse by refusing to power up until the price rose to astronomical levels."

The fluctuations caused by the high voltage lines hitting the ground did cause some wind turbines to trip out prematurely, and they got hit over the knuckles for setting the trip out voltage too conservatively. But those fines weren't close to what the gas generators received for their behaviour.

Meanwhile, the biggest regular disturbances to the grid are still caused by the coal fired generator turbines tripping out. I have no idea why it happens as regularly as it does, especially in the summer months. I presume the wind turbines also trip out on occasion, but as they are smaller they don't cause 1 gigawatt of generation to disappear in an instant. Until batteries arrived on the scene that gigawatt disappearing caused blackouts for a few minutes while the gas turbines fired up.

Now no one notices. The article doesn't mention that of course, because batteries are part of the new wave of generation they are campaigning against.

ZeroGravitas• 9 months ago

The power cuts the article heavily suggests are to do with renewables are listed as people digging into cables by accident or things being disconnected while upgrade work is done. And still resulting in a 99.9% reliability.

It then shifts to curtailment presumably implying just the "too much" renewables is the cause.

more_corn• 9 months ago

Renewables without batteries is going to cause problems.

Decentralized solar plus battery DECREASES strain on the grid.

Netherlands' renewables drive putting pressure on its power grid

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