Baseload: overrated?

Talk renewables and the first doubt voiced is how do we address the intermittency issue? Inevitably one looks for baseload! Who better than Germany to ask! How did Germany switch over directly from nuclear to renewables without first relying on ramped-up coal use during the transition? As a new study shows, renewables completely ‘obliterate’ the need for baseload power. The study’s main question was: How will intermittent wind and solar power affect the grid? And how much electricity will need to be stored?

Dispatchable power generators will mainly have to be flexible, but this requirement can be met in all of the scenarios. And up to a 40% share of renewables, the cost of power storage (or otherwise lost excess power production) remains moderate, only raising the cost of power by 10% in the worst case, Renewables International says.

Renewables International had already found based on its calculations that Germany won’t need to make any real changes to its grid and won’t need very much power storage if it meets the targets that it currently has set for wind and solar. If the targets are met, Germany will get around 40% of its electricity from renewables. As a comparison, it got around 25% of their electricity from renewable sources during the first half of 2012. So far, the effect has mostly been to offset power from natural gas, but it’s been increasingly “cutting into the baseload.” Denmark, which is already sourcing over 40% of its power from renewable sources, hasn’t had to create any major power storage infrastructure so far.

To move beyond 40% to 80% renewable power (the target for around 2050), Germany could need as much as 14 GW of short-term and 18 GW of seasonal power storage to meet its peak power demand of around 80 GW in the moderate scenario. At that point, power prices would be roughly 10% greater than in 2011, but reaching 100% renewable power will be quite expensive indeed. The German engineers estimate that the final 20% will triple the need for power storage, raising prices once again by around 19%. Not only will nuclear disappear but coal power use will fall off, nearly disappearing by the time the country sources 80% of its electricity from renewable sources.

The country’s phaseout of coal power is based not on an official policy, but rather on a general understanding among experts in the power sector that the switch to renewables will gradually obliterate the need for baseload power, says the study. And if Germany can do it, any reason why others can’t?