Germany's green tech forces 400x increase in power rates

The analogy between the ‘power grid’ and other situations where discrete quantities interact with each other is obvious to me as a physical chemist.
I recently watched a program on “optimization of the airline boarding process” in which they compared a fully micromanaged process in which passengers were pre-segregated into 16 groups (based on their assigned seating) and boarded under strict protocols with a process based on open seating and passengers boarding ad libidum – “like ants” was the description used in the program.
The UNcontrolled boarding process, relying on individuals making personal decisions in the interest of their own convenience, was neary 25% FASTER than the micromanaged process. There is a MUCH broader lesson for would-be micromanagers of any process applying to a statistically significant number of similar ‘entities’ – a priori controls typically degrade system performance in comparison to a system allowed to regulated itself internally using local conditions and options.
One of the grestest scientific breakthroughs of chemistry in the 19th century was the development of “statistical mechanics” – a branch of physics that treated fluids as large ensembles of independent entities (molecules) rather than as a single, manageable object (a bulk of fluid).
In the words of Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut, “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.”

Good for green, growing plants though … more CO2 fertilizer …

My dad always said the Germans were the smartest. Global warming is pseudoscience. Maybe they are running out of beer and started taking stupid pills.

Rud, thats sensible economic operation. Here a lignite plant is run at near 100% but only producing heat. When power is required its just literally switched to electric mode and money rolls in. Four hours a day of paying generation will more than cover 24 hours fuel burn.

I believe 400x is not the top. As more and more alternative power sources come on line prices will continue to rise for the consumer.
Power bills for consumers in the CONUS are getting close to a surging point is my feeling. As more alternatives come on line electric prices will continue to rise and rise and rise for those with no solar or alternative power source on their home/business. One would think otherwise but the power companies that manage the grids( very expensive to maintain aging grids) are going to have to start really jacking up rates if they want to stay in business in time.
I will make a prediction now, within about 10 tp 20 years you are going to see most large electric companies going bankrupt.

Meanwhile in England we have just demolished the cooling towers of Didcot coal-fired power station as it is sacrificed to appease the great green goddess. To make up the expected shortfall in power entrepreneurs from around the globe are flocking here to buy up English fields and fill them with hundreds of diesel generators which the government gives subsidies for, plus a very decent unit rate when they are are called on as back up because the white elephants, sorry I mean windmills aren’t turning.
You couldn’t make it up. No, people would think you were mad if you proposed such a crazed scenario. Or they might think you a witless/crooked/incompetent politician.

Oops, Did not know they have already started charging a monthly Grid Access Fee, December 2013 Bloomberg article.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-24/utilities-mimic-cable-with-monthly-fee-to-preserve-grid.html

The price of a stabilized green power grid is very steep, one could say it is like a “hockey stick”. – I like your kind of humour! 😀

And what has happened to co2 emissions in Germany since going strongly green? That’s right, they are still increasing. What a bloody joke.

Responding To Climate Change – 12 March 2014
Germany’s carbon targets in doubt as emissions rise in 2013
New lignite-fired power stations prompt rise in Germany’s CO2 emissions, tarnishing the country’s green revolution
………Last year Germany emitted 951 million tonnes of greenhouse gases, up 1.2% than 2012, while CO2 from energy rose 1.5% according to German government calculations obtained by news agency Deutsche Presse Agentur………
http://www.rtcc.org/2014/03/10/germanys-carbon-targets-in-doubt-as-emissions-rise-in-2013/
=====================
Daily Caller – 9 April 2014
CO2 emissions have increased since 2011 despite Germany’s $140 billion green energy plan
Carbon dioxide levels in Germany have been increasing in the last three years despite the government spending nearly $140 billion (100 billion euros) on a green energy since 2005.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/04/09/germanys-140-billion-green-energy-plan-increased-co2-emissions/

“…One interesting possibility is that the CO2 belching fossil fuel utility companies are spinning their generators up to full power, and are simply discarding vast amounts of excess energy, until solar or wind output drops – so they can be ready to dump extra capacity onto the grid at a moment’s notice….”
That is not possible. Generator cannot generate electricity and dump it on a “dump site”.
What is done is that there is a excess capacity in the grid running as “spinning reserve”.
The spinnig reserve condition requires that the entire power plant is running, boiler at full pressure, turbine at full speed synchronised but at zero power produced and exported to the grid. This stand by condition consumes about 20% of coal at full power.
Power plant can be loaded from spinning reserve to full load in the matter of minutes. Basically what is needed to increase of the coal flow.
(just an engineer’s take on it)

J. Swift says:
July 28, 2014 at 11:11 am
” Meanwhile in England we have just demolished the cooling towers of Didcot coal-fired power station as it is sacrificed to appease the great green goddess”.
————-
There is a greater irony in that story . The fields, hedgerows and footpaths around Didcot ( a misfit of a small industrial town in the largely rural Thames Valley thanks to Brunel’s choice of it as a railway centre) were once full of majestic elm trees – I remember them well . All gone now because of Dutch elm disease , a fungal disease vectored by beetles and introduced into England on imported American logs .
Didcot coal fired power station is being replaced as a power source by the use of wood fired power stations elsewhere in England – using wood imported from the USA.
There are other newly observed diseases affecting british trees : ash , oak and chestnut , attributed also to imports of diseased timber.
So we are going to rely for power on importing a huge tonnage of , probably uninspected, timber of dubious origin in order to satisfy the fantasies of the environmentalists who appear to have no interest in preserving our own natural habitat.
Meanwhile, I believe that the ships carrying this cargo to our shores will be passed mid Atlantic by similar ships taking Norwegian wood chips to Canadian biomass power stations.
“Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”

Fortunately the problem of unequal input from wind and solar that is causing current problems will be resolved naturally in a couple of months as the solar panels will in effect stop working as autumn approaches and light levels drop away sharply.
Tonyb

@David Larsen says: July 28, 2014 at 10:37 am
-100, those two world wars, I don’t associate with the smartest.

According to this story, the northeast U.S. is in for some tough times as politicians and activists have been attacking the generation of electricity:
http://spectator.org/articles/60007/get-ready-new-england-power-shortage

… So what is likely to happen? Another cold winter is certain to bring skyrocketing prices and possible brownouts. New Englanders already pay 45 percent higher electric bills than the rest of the country and that figure can only grow. The first region of the country to industrialize is about the drive away the last of its blue-collar workshops. …

According to William Tucker, It looks like this winter will be the one where we all see what green policies in the US have done.

The solution for the Germans is to simply run the base load plants all the time and supply 100% of the electricity to satisfy the market. Pay for any green electricity from wind turbines of photovoltaic sources and dump it. It will be cheaper in the long run considering power grid damage from fluctuations and economic loss from power outages.

“At the beginning, this market counted for only a small portion of our earnings …Today, we earn 10 percent of our plant profits in the balancing market” in Germany”
There is nothing new in the above statement.
The newest power stations are usually the most efficient on the system (setting aside the distortion of gov’t policy and subsidy for a moment).
The condition of the newest power stations means better technical performance on measures like maximum capacity, thermal efficiency, and operating reliability. Investors may delay design features for flexible operation, and there may be a smaller staff compliment. It should be no surprise that a young power station may not be particularly flexible, and earns little from flexible services.
As a power station ages, technical degradation reduces thermal efficiency, maximum capacity and reliability. Competitive advantage is steadily lost to the latest crop of younger, more efficient power stations.
Not all power stations can enjoy life in the base load segment of the market: demand fluctuates and somebody has to respond (or the system would collapse on over-frequency). Let’s say 50% of the power station have to respond.
The market can thrash-out who stays in the base load market using price differentials. High prices when demand is highest, and low prices in off-peak periods. For many generators, the low prices in the off-peak periods will be loss-making (otherwise the market would not give anybody the incentive to do respond – and the system would collapse). The least efficient power stations (highest cost per unit) are least able to suffer the off-peak losses.
There comes a stage in a power station’s life when it has enjoyed life in the base load market, but the losses in the off-peak are increasing and the operator faces a choice: either adapt to a flexible operating regime (avoid those losses), or close
Unless there are particular reasons to prevent flexible operation, will be able to increase profit through flexible operation. This will usually involve capital investments for flexibility (such addtional automation) and a period of training/learning as plant managers figure out how to deliver flexible services reliably.
To conclude – there is nothing new in power stations earning income from flexibility when previously they enjoyed base load operation. It is a natural progression in the station’s life and the market striving to minimise cost/maximise the utility of the assets.

Neither the problems of balancing the grid, nor the costs of doing so are ever properly addressed by Politicians, and the public is on the dark on these issues.
Sometime ago, Christopher Booker wrote a number of articles on STOR (a scheme of diesel generators used for backup/grid balancing), See, for example, http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/stor-scandal-the-establishment-conspiracy-to-fleece-energy-customers-by-design/
he notes that the current wholesal market rate for coventionally generated electricty in the UK is £50 per Mega Watt hour, Onshore wind is £100, and off-shore wind is £150.
However, energy provided under the emergency diesel generating scheme require for balancing the grid due to the unreliable and variable nature of wind (and solar) is on average some £225 per Mega Watt hour, and in some cases up to £400 per Mega Watt hour. But the cost is even worse than that since we pay the owners of the generator £22,000 per Mega Watt hour of capacity. So say the owners of the generators build a 100 Mega Watt hour generator pack, they get a one off payment of £2.2 million, and then they get the feed in tarrif which on average is £225 per Mega Watt hour. We have already paid the owners of these generators £75 million to cover their investment costs, and now we are paying them a further £25 per Mega Watt hour of emergency power provided to the grid when the grid calls for rebalancing!
Of course, the irony is that diesel from small generators produces more CO2 then either gas or coal so this does nothing to reduce CO2 emissions.
When assessing the emissions form windfarms, one should take account of the CO2 produced by conventionally powered backup generation (which is required on average 755 of the time and because of the ramp up/shut down mode of operation, it runs less efficiently than would be the case if it was used to produce 100% base load) PLUS the CO2 from the diesel generators used for grid balancing. When proper account is taken, there is no CO2 reduction at all!

richardscourtney says: “Having failed to side-track this thread with irrelevance in your post at July 28, 2014 at 2:05 pm, you attempt to side-track the thread with another irrelevance in your post at July 28, 2014 at 2:28 pm.
Technically, Single In-feed Loss applies not only to possible outage of a power station but also to possible loss of grid connection to the power station.”
Cough, splutter! Richard, why so angry? Why so intolerant?
The point you raise is moot: a 1300MW power station could be lost because of the shutdown of the power station or its grid connection. They both have the same effect, and they both result from the fact that there is 1300MW single point of failure.
I only want to help people understand that these are complex issues and some of them are subtle. If people go all guns blazing into the attack on an issue, the subtleties might come back to bite their backsides.
Forewarned is….

Richard
With regard to the quality of the discussion, it is not helped by angry Richard lashing out at people.
So just try to calm yourself down and you might find yourself engaging in reasoned dialogue with people who’d like to help increase the sum total of knowledge.

RichardSCourtney I think you got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I dont think Janus or anyone else in this thread is suggesting that intermittent renewables such as windpower reduce CO2 emissions by any significant factor. What Janus was pointing out is that unpredictable system imbalances caused by intermittent operation of renewables require the provision of unloaded or partially loaded operating reserves. Reserve generators do not consume fuel at the same level as a fully loaded plant ( the 20% versus 100%). He is not claiming that the renewable resource has “saved” 80% at all. Policy makers who insist that renewables can replace fossil fuels (and nuclear) clearly do not understand how an electric system actually works – such as the requirement for reserves to cover contingencies, and the “ramping” that must balance changes in variable load and output. The net effect is that renewables can displace some fossil fueled generation in the dispatch of the entire system BUT also rely on system reserves to continually back them up (likely 30% capacity factor for wind and 15% for solar). As partially loaded plants have a much lower efficiency ( higher “heat rate” in industry terms) and burn more fuel per MWh when paretially loaded the net effect is that intermittent renewables have little effect on overall CO2 emissions and may even increase them under some circumstances. (Think town mileage vs highway mileage for a car). In other words the claimed CO2 reductions of renewables are illusory – or at least highly exaggerated. If the politicians are as daft as the current crop of German ones and try to replace base-load nuclear with renewables, then the only possible outcome is an increase in CO2 emissions.
The placis Richard ( ex-CEGB)

28 July: JournalReview: AP: Not in my backyard: US sending dirty coal abroad
By 2020, coal will no longer be burned at the 38-year-old power plant (Boardman Coal Plant, Oregon), replaced by cleaner-burning natural gas…
But 12 miles north, a port on the Columbia River could represent the region’s coal future.
If all goes according to plan for global energy conglomerate Ambre Energy Ltd., coal mined from the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming will still arrive in Boardman by train car. But instead of feeding the coal plant, it would be shipped to Asia, where an energy-hungry populace is reliant on coal as a cheap power source…
This town in the Columbia Gorge is a real-life example of the gulf between Obama’s grand strategy to reduce coal emissions and the reality behind that policy: As the U.S. reduces its own carbon pollution, it is exporting more of it abroad.
Built in 1976, the Boardman Coal Plant burns about 3 million tons of coal each year. The Port of Morrow terminal would ship three times more — nearly 9 million tons — out of the country.
Those extra 6 million tons of thermal coal will generate energy somewhere, its carbon emissions joining the same atmosphere…
Over the last five years, as the U.S. has cut coal consumption by 195 million tons, about 20 percent of that coal has been shipped overseas, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of Energy Department data. That proportion is expected to get larger as the U.S. continues to clean up its power plants, boost energy efficiency and move to more pollution-free sources of energy such as wind and solar.
For the Northwest, proposed coal terminals would export more than 100 million tons of coal to Asia per year, far exceeding the total consumption for all plants that feed coal-fired power to the region, including Oregon, and doubling U.S. exports.
“If we’re trying to address carbon and we’re creating a whole new export industry, I think that is problematic,” said Citizens Utility Board of Oregon executive director Bob Jenks. “There’s a fundamental disconnect between trying to reduce carbon emissions and creating new industries around coal.”…
Despite requests from Oregon’s Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber to evaluate the full environmental consequences of the export terminal proposed here, including the emissions released in Asia from U.S. coal, the Obama administration has decided to analyze only the carbon released in the U.S…
Meanwhile, the coal exported will result in nearly 51 million tons of emissions…
http://www.journalreview.com/news/article_13a40e40-c2e1-5a8f-896d-6c5035f347a0.html

Sam Hall offered the interesting suggestion that nukes could be used for load balancing if the excess power was used to run a desalination plant in the off peak.
That works, but the economics are interesting. Desalination is inherently a very energy intensive process. Thus, large scale fresh water production by desalination will NEVER be practical unless a very cheap source of energy is introduced. Nuclear might be it, if we could restrain the silliness of the enviros, but what are the odds of that happening.
One can illustrate the fundamentally energy intensive nature of desalination by noting that the osmotic difference between salt and freshwater can be run the other direction to PRODUCE electricity. The gadget is an osmotic engine and it operates by the same thermodynamic logic as heat engines. I know because I’ve built one! In theory, one could supply all the electricity needs of the U.S. by redirecting the major rivers through osmotic engine plants where they meet the oceans. The technical challenges are huge, but theoretically it is simple.

Sigh, its nothing to do with efficiency or base load design. They have realised that the market is rigged and open to exploitation. For the cost of a small modification, they run their base load plant at full power but generate/supply no electricity to the grid. The cost of this is U.S.D. 40 per MWHr.
Now they have all the market data, weather data etc and know when the demand ramps up, as well as knowing when the wind and solar ramps down. Using this simple good management and simple maths, they kick in supplies when the price is right. at usd 400 per mwHr, they soon make a profit for the day.
End result, no fuel saved, no co2 emissions saved but the plant owner makes a profit.
How they do it? Does it matter

Sounds like Germany has figured out a way to print euros with their lignite.

I don’t see anything in this article or the linked articles that supports “400x increase in power rates.” I see a graph up there that looks like a 10x increase in rates. Is “400x” a typo of “400%” (4x)?

market forces are wonderful things. The simplest and cheapest and quickest way to send the EPA packing is to do what they want. No lengthy expensive legal battles. No giving them free publicity. Just give them what they want, starting in DC, close the nearest coal fired power station, for maintenance, then the next nearest and so on, till they are gone. Then turn the lights back on again.
Same is happening in Germany. So much free energy but no reduction in coal use????????????????? Same result, slightly different way of doing it.

Interesting bit here http://bit.ly/1uD5Uc5 on how spinning reserve and other sources were used to cover the sudden loss of 1GW after storm breaks wires (overhead cables!):
Dungeness nuclear power station shuts down following hurricane-strength winds
The bulk is instantly (12 seconds spec) supplied by pumped storage. Even coal sees a quick ramp up and a few 10s MW from OCGT. But no power outage caused. It would be interesting to know what happened to the power being generated when the line went down – it’s not easy damping down a nuke (see Fukushima problems)

Janice Moore says:
July 28, 2014 at 5:37 pm
You have no idea how deeply ingrained & Mainstream the Green Mantras have become in Germany. As is usual with ideologies, these consist of unconnected bits and slogans: no inkling, e.g., that supposed benefits may incur costs (indeed, MUST), or any economic factors at all. The whole show runs on pure belief: if something is Deemed Good, according to the green dogma, it must, a priori, be good. If things turn out otherwise, it has not been implemented forcefully enough, or been sabotaged by Hidebound Reactionaries, or Vested Interests. For those who remember the mindset of the socialists, it`s déjá vu all over again.
Add to it a widespread ignorance in matters scientific or mathematical. By now, it is the rule even for a Professor at a University to be unable to add or subtract two 2-digit numbers without having to ask one of his (or hers) students where to find “this calculator thingie” on his computer.

Guys! I was arguing with this:
`…One interesting possibility is that the CO2 belching fossil fuel utility companies are spinning their generators up to full power, and are simply discarding vast amounts of excess energy, until solar or wind output drops – so they can be ready to dump extra capacity onto the grid at a moment’s notice….`
The spinning reserve is the way to keep the system stability, not be running the generators at full power (thermal power plant boiler at full steam output and dumping the steam through by-pass, or having a huge load bank at the generator terminals, or whatever discarding vast amount of excess energy“ actually means) Spinning reserve fuel consumption (in a simple scenario of having one plant on standby, synchronised but at no load) is about 20% of the full load consumption of the thermal coal based plant. If somebody has better figures please correct me, but it is not 100% that is certain.
Spinning reserve results in extra capital costs and operating costs (including extra fuel and extra CO2 emissions). Renewables require extra spinning reserve (over and beyond the regular requirements) in the system due to their inherent unreliability.
Richard, nice paper you referenced. However I did not find anything in there which would contradict my statement.
P.S.: I will not argue this point anymore. Have better things to do. Cheers.

Spinning reserve not relevant. they run the lignite plant at 100%. install a bleed line to condenser. this just takes excess steam , so that power is not generated. As power is required they close the bypass line. instant power on call. add in four small hydraulic coupled alternators and they can virtually ramp in any amount of power as required.

I think we can blame the deterioration of German intellect on 2 factors:
a) Chasing away the Askenazim.
b) 70 years of relentless propaganda by the Nazi broadcasting system which had been repurposed after WW 2 by SHAEF. And which today is still forcibly financed by a household fee collecting 8 bn EUR / year – think of the BCC, only much much worse.

David Larsen says:
July 28, 2014 at 10:37 am
Nah, the Germans have been that stupid all along. Their propensity to abstract thinking makes them vulnerable to all of the ideologies of whatever age one happens to be in. We had Kaiser Wilhelm and his batty foreign policy and aggressive expansion, based upon his quasi-social-Darwinism; we had Hitler and his scapegoating of Jews and his robbing Peter to pay Paul welfare state, designed to buy the support of the average German during the worst period of military and strategic decision-making. Now, the Germans have fallen lock-stock and barrel for the Greens’ view of the world (which in Germany, has its roots in the Nazi views on environment and nature). So this is nothing new – German stupidity has been both a blessing and a curse to the rest of the world.

This might also help to explain why German electricity is three times the price of American, they are paying for three system producers.

In the end it will be
“who runs barter town”
Fossil fuels.