Graeme of Malvern
Quote
"Well how do you account for 28.9% of wind power stopping in a 5 minute period in SA! NEM data 2014."

That's an interesting claim but can you substantiate it. It is possible that some other power source undercut the wind price, but it seems highly improbable that all the wind farms suddenly stopped at the same time. There are some 16 wind farms in South Australia which are reasonable well separated by distance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_South_Australia

Graeme of Malvern, can't you even finish reading a sentence before replying?

Warmair didn't claim wind never suddenly stops; merely that it doesn't do so without warning.

You do need some backup, but baseload generators are pretty crap at that. And load following (and more importantly, peak load) generators usually use gas in Australia.

Obama says, 70% renewable energy is required globally to avoid CAGW.

How and by when? Putting affordability aside, as good Greens do with everything they like, the time-scale available to achieve the target is as absurd as the target itself.

Burning gas to meet the 30% remainder would bring some CO2 abatement compared with coal, but two degrees is already built-in and guaranteed. We're choosing a gradual path to some compromise, when we can't be sure the degree of CAGW is linear with CO2 level. On that, something interesting:

http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/89722/1/cesifo_wp4573.pdf

World committment to affordable nuclear energy is needed to hammer GW as quickly as possible, to head us towards zero emissions. Renewables will have the role of effectively extending the grid, not a central one. All else is gambling that we've got the measure of CAGW.

Suggest to Obama he have the impact of ocean algae plant matter included in AGW science or modelling or whatever they call their non-sense to sell batteries and windmills.

For Gods sake, wake up.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/algae-accelerate-arctic-warming-18929
And
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/19/5921

Warmair,

Firstly I never said that Germany had an unstable network. After spending Euro bns the German network is probably the most secure in the world. What I did say is that it is suffering a significant increase in outages and that increased wind and solar would lead to increasing instability.

Secondly while I will admit that Germany generates more power than I expected, looking at the information on the website more closely there are certain trends that would give engineers sleepless nights.

My cursory analysis gives me:

The generation by renewables varies considerably i.e. sometimes by as much as half of total generation in a matter of hours. This is compensated by getting the conventional generators to rapidly increase and decrease generation and the export and import of vast quantities of power to other countries to balance supply and demand. That the flexibility of the generators to adjust load is reaching limits is the occasions when the spot price of power drops steeply negative (i.e. Germany is paying other countries to take power as its large generators cannot be stopped.

Considering that power exported correlates very closely with the solar and generation which is paid for by consumers at about 125 Euro /MWhr and exported at roughly 25 Euro/MShr whereas power is imported at peak times at between 50 and 100 Euro/MWhr. All in all making the French a tidy profit, and displacing energy generated by nuclear power, thus saving far less CO2 emmissions.