Cost Comparisons for Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary (Energy Brainpool)
We linked to this "report" in a previous post, but it's worth breaking out. Greenpeace says that Central Europe can decarbonize its electricity system using wind & solar generation, with electrolysis & hydrogen-burning gas turbines for storage, at "low cost" & with "low environmental impact".
Why would they publish such obvious falsehoods? The rationale is right up front : it's a propaganda blast against the Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, & Polish nuclear power projects.
For those new to the game, why do we call it an obvious falsehood? Below a certain wind speed, wind machines generate nothing, & there are periods when large areas of Europe are becalmed. (Solar we can neglect entirely.) So the first part of this plan involves building enough gas plants to carry the whole electrical system load. That's not free! Then you have to build the electrolyzers & the hydrogen storage tanks, which also aren't free. THEN you have to build ― how much wind?
Be generous and assume that, on average, only 50% of the power has to be supplied from the gas plants. Also assume that, because of frequent starting & stopping, they don't achieve the 60% thermal efficiency of the most modern combined-cycle turbine plant running under full load, but more like 30%. And suppose the electrolysis plant is 80% efficient.
So, build enough wind to supply 50% of the total load, PLUS 50% ÷ (0.3 × 0.8) ― that adds up to 2.5 times the average load. Allow the wind machines to generate, on average, 25% of their nameplate capacity. For every megawatt of demand, in other words, you need 1 MW of gas turbine capacity, plus no less than 10 MW of wind machines.
Cheap, sure.
