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February 14, 2020 at 12:04PM

Europe storm leads to negative electricity prices

By Die kalte Sonne
(Translated/edited by P. Gosselin)

It almost hurts a little that “specialist for renewable energies” (own claim on Twitter) Prof. Volker Quaschning gets mentioned here so often. This is simply due to the absurd tweets the man continuously puts out.

His latest prank has to do with the storm Sabine, which earlier this week swept across Germany. It supplied a lot of energy in the form of wind, which made the wind turbines rotate strongly.

Even in the otherwise regulated electricity market, the laws of the market cannot simply be levered out. Supply and demand determine the price. If supply is higher than demand, the price falls.

In the case of electricity, even money might be included with the product when this electricity is purchased, meaning negative prices. Electricity is an extremely perishable “commodity”, it must be consumed at the moment of production. However, the “expert” Quaschning does not blame this oversupply and the negative prices on the volatile wind power plants, but rather on nuclear power and coal. They deliver very reliably and not wildly fluctuating like wind power.

Prof. Volker Quaschning tweeted in response to the negative electricity prices from overproduction which Germany saw during the recent storm:

Sturm und viel Wind sorgen wieder für negative Börsenstrompreise. Ein klares Zeichen, dass Kohle- und Atomkraftwerke zu unflexibel sind und nicht als Backup für erneuerbare Energien taugen. Wir brauchen darum einen schnelleren #Kohleausstieg. #FridaysForFuture #Scientists4Future pic.twitter.com/w7CRrEruoq

— Volker Quaschning (@VQuaschning) February 10, 2020

In English: “Storm and lots of wind are again causing negative stock market electricity prices. This is a clear sign that coal-fired and nuclear power plants are too inflexible and are not suitable as back-up for renewable energies. We therefore need a faster #coal exit.
#FridaysForFuture #Scientists4Future.”

A logical train of thought actually would have been to realize that highly volatile power sources such as wind and the simultaneous provision of base load are difficult to reconcile. Unfortunately, the energy source gas is also being massively fought by people like Quaschning, although it is more flexible and at the same time more CO2-friendly. In any case, however, it is only a crutch that might have to supply a great deal of energy, namely when we have the well-known lulls in wind and sun.

Every wind turbine and every photovoltaic system needs a backup. And anyone who has ever wondered why the wind countries of Denmark and Germany have such high electricity prices knows the reason. We are paying for a double power infrastructure. The prices will not decrease with an increasing share of renewable energies, but rather will continue to rise.

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February 14, 2020 at 11:28AM

Ice recovery – It even exceeds the 2001-2010 average size.

12 Feb 2020 – The latest sea ice analysis shows that during this rather mild winter in the mid-latitudes, the trapping of the colder air in the polar circle was beneficial to the growth and recovery of the polar icecap.

Every winter the Arctic ocean freezes, reaching a maximum sea ice extent around March. The stronger than normal polar vortex has helped to keep more cold air in the polar regions, promoting ice growth.

*ICE recovery* Arctic sea ice reaches the largest early February ice area in the past 11 years! It even exceeds the 2001-2010 average size

Thanks to Victor for this link

The post Arctic sea ice reaches the largest early February area in past 11 years appeared first on Ice Age Now.

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February 14, 2020 at 10:50AM

Arctic sea ice at the middle of winter (January-March) is a measure of what’s to come because winter ice is the set-up for early spring, the time when polar bears do most of their feeding on young seals.

[Mid-winter photos of polar bears are hard to come by, partly because the Arctic is still dark for most hours of the day, it’s still bitterly cold, and scientists don’t venture out to do work on polar bears until the end of March at the earliest]

At 12 February this year, the ice was similar in overall extent to 2013 but higher than 2006.

Remember, as far as polar bears are concerned, we can discount what’s happening in the Sea of Okhotsk, the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of St. Lawrence because these are outside the bears’ range (12 Feb 2020 below).

So for ice extent relevant to polar bears, this year is very like 2009 (below, 12 Feb 2009 at 14.9 mkm2) – especially with respect to the Barents Sea.

This extent of ice around Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya (below) has been rare since the late 1990s. Ice is within swimming distance of Bear Island and if the island becomes surrounded, as happened in March 2019, visits by polar bears are a near-certainty. However, this pack-ice tends to advance and retract at the edges over the season, so it’s possible that Bear Island will not see the ice this year.

Polar bear researcher Andrew Derocher posted a map of the locations of his collared and ear-tagged bears last week (8 Feb 2020):

Ice thickness charts from the Canadian Ice Service for last week on Hudson Bay (week of Feb 10), below, shows a broad swath of medium first year ice (70-120 cm) across the centre and that will continue to thicken over the next few months:

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February 14, 2020 at 10:04AM