Reposted from The No Tricks Zone
By P Gosselin on 16. September 2020
You would think that with all the added wind and solar energy in Germany, along with all the conventional power plants on standby, all totaling up to huge unneeded capacity, there would be no need to import any power at all. Well, think again.
The German epochtimes.de here reports that German imports of electricity in fact: “rose by 43.3 percent to 25.7 billion kilowatt hours in the first half of 2020 compared with the first half of 2019.”
The epochtimes.de explains further:
One reason for this was the declining share of domestic feed-in from base-load-capable, mostly conventionally operated power plants, which mainly use coal, nuclear energy and natural gas. As a result, electricity was imported to cover the demand for electricity, especially when there was no wind or darkness. The main import country for electricity was France with 8.7 billion kilowatt hours.
Overall, however, more electricity was still exported from Germany.”
What the article does not mention, however, is the reason for the rise in export from Germany. On windy and sunshine-plenty days, Germany produces more electricity than needed, and so is forced to dump the excess power into neighboring foreign markets – often at negative prices. The negative prices, in combination with the mandatory feed-in tariffs and excess production capacity, all means higher costs for consumers.
Little wonder that at close to 35 US cents per kwh, Germany’s electricity prices are among the highest in the world.
No doubt griff will be along shortly to tell us how Germany’s paying other countries to take their electricity is good for consumers. Well, it’s certainly good for those on the receiving end, anyway.
Not so much if it destroys the economics of the local grid. Then they all end up short of capacity and in a bidding war when renewables aren’t working to avoid blackouts. Power rationing by price.
“It doesn’t add up… September 17, 2020 at 3:23 pm
Power rationing by price.”
BINGO!
Meanwhile in the UK
OT but of interest to smart meters users
quote: Smart meters could allow energy networks to switch off central heating systems under proposals being considered by the watchdog.
The plans, tabled by Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN), would allow distributors to contact consumers directly to ask for permission to temporarily turn off appliances with high usage, including heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers.
There are fears that mass uptake of these green technologies will put pressure on the energy network./end quote
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/17/smart-meters-could-used-turn-heating-vehicle-chargers-plans/
Today voluntary, tomorrow compulsory.
I could see this coming a mile off and have always refused to allow them to fit one in my house.
It isn’t very good for EDF when gas power plant are forced to do larger swings than they would be doing in normal times: they are designed to have their output adjusted all the time, and over a large range, true. But they would last longer and have fewer downtimes if they didn’t have to do as much!
I thought that there had been a kickback against the Germans for dumping their excess wind electricity onto their neighbours’ grids and causing them management problems. The likes of the Czech Republic didn’t see why they had to act as managers for the German grid.
Hence the payments to countries to take the sometimes excess German electricity.
This is unacceptable, an embarrassment to the Green New Deal. The German Government must change the narrative immediately to “electricity price increases are due to rising oil/gas/coal prices, nuclear concerns, and have nothing to do with wonderful clean renewable solar/wind/wood chips!
Well aren’t they practically free energy???
Their intermittent source of fuel doesn’t cost anything!!!
It is most likely the same for Denmark.
Last months average import was 1.2GW.
This is despite the nameplate wind capacity is 6.23GW or about 50% more than the average consumption. On top of that comes solar, thus renewable is about twice the max load.
I am told that both Germany and Denmark have difficulties getting the unicorns to work in harmony.
The Danish position is to some extent determined by Norway’s need to export to lower its reservoirs. They filled rapidly in the spring because of low demand while the snow melted. Norway cannot take in surplus from elsewhere having done too much of that earlier.
The “nameplate wind capacity” is not important. What is the expected capacity factor? eg. 30% of nameplate wind capacity. There are times when the generation can be close to the 30% and follow demand but more time is spent significantly more or less. When it comes to electricity grids with limited storage, averaging over the day/weeks/months doesn’t count. 1 cycle of 50Hz = 20 milliseconds.
A total power loss for >20ms will cause most desktop computers to lose unsaved work (ie. reset. Using a UPS or a notebook avoids that problem). While most devices are spec’d for +/-10%, going above 20% or below -20% can (eg. >30 seconds) cause damage to many devices while others may just have a shorter life. It varies greatly so every device may have a hard limit or a curve of voltage vs time (eg. higher over voltage, fails quicker).
Although the excess electricity from appears cheaper to another, other costs increase. Grids in other countries share the cost of larger interconnectors, inefficient use of existing scheduled generators, load management, AC-DC-AC conversion losses to cope with loosing frequency synchronisation between grids. And then you need greater emergency capacity to cope with moody neighbours when they don’t have enough. The generators have large fixed costs so a low price today just means a higher price another day. It’s price re-distribution but the more unstable the generation-to-demand comparison, the greater the cost.
1.2 gigawatts, where do they park that DeLorean
Agree, Denmark is “a small kingdom by the sea”, as Edgar Allan Poe once said.
However, scale doesn’t really change the issue at hand.
Carl,
You’re right! Unicorns are notoriously hard to train to harness!
Fortunately Germans and Danes appear to be much more biddable. They will gladly swallow almost any amount of BS and then shoulder their burdens with a smile and a prayer to Gaia; much like American libtards!
It must be very upsetting for them to see Calizuela burning and blacking out regularly. Tends to put a crimp in their nightmares of a Green Raw Deal! Why does it seem that the only real rebels are conservative or libertarian; didn’t classical Liberals used to claim the mantle? I suppose they were driven out of the party by the new intelligences; people like Ed Marley and Princess Sandy the Bartender!
“Overall, however, more electricity was still exported from Germany.”
That should mean no other European country should do solar or wind.
” Little wonder that at close to 35 US cents per kwh, Germany’s electricity prices are among the highest in the world.”
And other countries could lower energy costs.
And other countries could lower energy costs
It doesn’t really work that way. The energy providers aren’t getting the money, distributors are. Plant maintenance costs don’t decrease just because the coal plants are forced abruptly offline by a surge of renewables, they likely increase.
So conventional plant operators cash in when renewables fail to deliver. The normal mechanism to prevent this – people building new gas plants to increase supply – is broken. End users end up paying more.
“It doesn’t really work that way.”
Well, yeah. Price depends competition {and consumer’s sense of value}.
So Germany {in EU} having higher prices, probably allows higher prices {within EU]
then one have otherwise. So, other countries power companies {will pocket the money- and spend it office furnishing, etc, etc, piss away whatever seems nice}
Germany is effectively using the rest of Europe as its “buffer” – the ickky stuff will hit the fan when everyone needs to borrow from everyone else.
Which is where this farrago must ultimately go.
“Germany is effectively using the rest of Europe as its “buffer””
Yes, Germany would be sunk if they couldn’t import electricity from other nations. They should just be glad that all their neighbors haven’t limited themselves to wind and solar for their electricity production. In that case, all of them would be out of luck periodically.
The Green Insane Deal. Idiocracy in action.
Breakingviews – Green bonds could slide into irrelevance
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2682BD?__twitter_impression=true
However, even the darkest green bonds only serve a narrow purpose: They tell investors a lot about the projects they fund, but not much about the company that issues them. An issuer can allocate funds for renewable projects, but that doesn’t make its overall business any greener. A recent Bank for International Settlements report showed that green bonds issuance does not lead to falling or even comparatively lower carbon emissions by the firms selling them.
Green bonds could become more useful if they stimulated new green investment by giving companies a new, cheaper source of funding. Yet that is unlikely, because the credit risk of green bonds is exactly the same as an issuer’s other bonds. If yields on green bonds fall too much out of whack with similar dirty bonds, investors will arbitrage the difference. While there is sometimes a green premium, or “greenium”, it is usually tiny.
A baseload plant cannot be considered standby unless there is an extended drought of renewable power. Baseload plants, especially coal and (conventional) nuclear take time to ramp up and produce power.
Germany is paying for its ignorance. If they had half a brain, they would simply wait for the near commercialization of molten salt small modular nuclear reactors, which can produce power (leelized) at 4 cent per kWhr and also load follow, eliminating need for peak power plants. But NOOOOOO….. , Germans are dumbkoffs – a nation of Sergeant Schultzes. “I know NOTHING!!!!.”
“Germany is paying for its ignorance. ”
It’s not ignorance, it’s stupidity. The Germans know better, they just refuse to acknowledge the facts.
It was Dr. Hermann Scheer, “a German politician and renewable energy evangelist” according to this article- https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2011/11/09/planting_the_seeds_of_green_energy.html
-who influenced the Dalton McGuinty government in Ontario, back in 2011 to invest in industrial scale wind turbines in rural communities. This is how our Great Lakes shoreline communities were sacrificed to the wind industry.
No, Sommer, that’s not the case. The die was cast in 2008 with the preparation and passage of the Green Energy Act by the Ontario Legislature under McGuinty’s Liberals. The Act was put together by Gerald Butts and Katie Telford, the very same people now doing much of the policy direction stuff by Canada’s current narcissist in chief Justin Trudeau.
They haven’t even managed to build one of these yet. They are still researching how to do so. Yet you know how much it will cost to run?
ColMosby: I appreciate your incessant optimism. But until there is a molten salt reactor up, running and supplying power to a grid somewhere, Just one, I’ll have to consider it to be like fusion, 20 years in the future.
Deutsche sind Dummköpfe. Fixed that for you ;-).
It’s only to pay attention, they bevome not dangerous “Dummköpfe” as in the past…
ColMosby,
Here is the rule:
Get 10 of your salty “unicorns” of grid scale up and running.
Get 100 more under construction.
Get 1,000 more permitted and financed.
Until then, I intend, every now and then, to relax and have a glass of German wine – – while waiting for your next plug the unicorn essay.
John F Hultquist, the issue here is capital cost.
Nuclear power station are very difficult in terms of permits, capital needed and time to build them.
Therefore you cannot do like the Wright brothers (followed by Ellehammer in Europe) and put a few sicks, nuts and bolts together in you backyard, in order to display you have a working solution.
The concept is clear, but some critical maturation is needed for durability, but again, without government financial help, it is difficult to get alpha projects up and running.
ColMosby, I agree that Germany should “wait for the commercialization of molten salt modular….” if for no other reason than like California, Germany already has more “renewable” (unreliable) than it can use. 2040 will be a good time to begin phasing in “molten salt”. Don’t agree with my timeline? Let’s see yours :”near commercialization” can mean anything to anyone.
copy
6 June 2018
Corrosion of Structural Alloys in High-Temperature Molten Fluoride Salts for Applications in Molten Salt Reactors
• Guiqiu Zheng & Kumar Sridharan
The corrosion of structural alloys in molten fluoride salts is recognized as an important consideration in the successful fruition of MSRs
1. The protective surface oxide layer that is relied upon for corrosion protection in most high-temperature environments is generally unstable in molten fluoride salts.
2. Alloying elements promoting the formation of protective oxide layers such as Cr, Al, and Si are prone to dissolution in molten fluoride salts.
3. The corrosion products can plate-out on the relatively cooler sections of the reactor system due to the strong dependence of solubility on temperature.
4. The corrosion can be driven by impurities in the salt and thermal gradients in the reactor system, as well as the presence of dissimilar materials in the molten salt.
5. In the reactor environment, the strong radiation fields can exacerbate alloy corrosion in molten salt, but the mechanisms are not conclusively understood.
Note 1 : Item five (5) isn’t going to be resolved anytime soon. It’ll be a few years (5?)before the testing even starts. Ten (10?) years to prove safety and reliability, then (5?) years for regulatory approval = 2040 to begin manufacture (I’m an optimist).
Note 2 : An up and running “molten salt” reactor before 2035? Maybe a commercial facility in rural China in 10 years? You do know that Gates backed out on doing his Terra dream nuke in China? Trump and Gates agree it needs to be done in the USA. What do you think Nancy and Chuckie think about a new nuke here at home? Regulatory timetable under a Democrat administration anyone?
Note 3 : One WUWT blogger reported a new technology where the uranium rods are contained in a “can”. The idea of replacing the corroded “can” every seven (7) years sounds great, much better than a 40 year life requirement for a conventional nuke. The economics of doing so seem sketchy. A high temperature salt water mixed with uranium will require a safety factor of 2, 4, more? To ensure the replaceable can will last 7 years will the regulators require an indicated 14-28 year life?
Combined cycle gas turbines now, NuScale modular reactor phase in beginning in 2030, all nuclear in 2120 or thereabouts.
ColMosby, I agree that Germany should “wait for the commercialization of molten salt modular….” if for no other reason than like California, Germany already has more “renewable” (unreliable) than it can use. 2040 will be a good time to begin phasing in “molten salt”. Don’t agree with my timeline? Let’s see yours :”near commercialization” can mean anything to anyone.
copy
6 June 2018
Corrosion of Structural Alloys in High-Temperature Molten Fluoride Salts for Applications in Molten Salt Reactors
• Guiqiu Zheng & Kumar Sridharan
The corrosion of structural alloys in molten fluoride salts is recognized as an important consideration in the successful fruition of MSRs
1. The protective surface oxide layer that is relied upon for corrosion protection in most high-temperature environments is generally unstable in molten fluoride salts.
2. Alloying elements promoting the formation of protective oxide layers such as Cr, Al, and Si are prone to dissolution in molten fluoride salts.
3. The corrosion products can plate-out on the relatively cooler sections of the reactor system due to the strong dependence of solubility on temperature.
4. The corrosion can be driven by impurities in the salt and thermal gradients in the reactor system, as well as the presence of dissimilar materials in the molten salt.
5. In the reactor environment, the strong radiation fields can exacerbate alloy corrosion in molten salt, but the mechanisms are not conclusively understood.
Note 1 : Item five (5) isn’t going to be resolved anytime soon. It’ll be a few years (5?)before the testing even starts. Ten (10?) years to prove safety and reliability, then (5?) years for regulatory approval = 2040 to begin manufacture (I’m an optimist).
Note 2 : An up and running “molten salt” reactor before 2035? Maybe a commercial facility in rural China in 10 years? You do know that Gates backed out on doing his Terra dream nuke in China? Trump and Gates agree it needs to be done in the USA. What do you think Nancy and Chuckie think about a new nuke here at home? Regulatory timetable under a Democrat administration anyone?
Note 3 : One WUWT blogger reported a new technology where the uranium rods are contained in a “can”. The idea of replacing the corroded “can” every seven (7) years sounds great, much better than a 40 year life requirement for a conventional nuke. The economics of doing so seem sketchy. A high temperature salt water mixed with uranium will require a safety factor of 2, 4, more? To ensure the replaceable can will last 7 years will the regulators require an indicated 14-28 year life?
Combined cycle gas turbines now, NuScale modular reactor phase in beginning in 2030, all nuclear in 2120 or thereabouts.
The Germans have
1. Two closely matched main political parties
2. A minority Green party
3. Proportional representation.
So the 5% of Germans who vote green are the tail that wags the energy dog, as anyone who wants to govern has to be in coalition with the Greens. Or that was the case when Merkel unilaterally and illegally shut down some and forced short life spans on the rest of Germany’s nuclear power stations.
For which the power companies sued, and I think won.
Germany has the highest emissions of any European country, per country, per capita and per MWh generated. Despite the highest amount of renewable energy.
Energiewende has been a total failure, but no one wants to talk about it. They just mutter about ‘not being able to afford such generous subsidies in future’
1. These times are over. Fortunately because of Corona, they lost voices as their view on the things are not well appreciated
2. These times are over too, because green thinking is represented disproportionately.
Say Leo, was it you I’m thinking of that engineered Marshall amplifiers during your working career?
I wonder how that affects their industry.
It doesn’t as their industry, especially car making, is done in other countries.
It is insulated from the higher costs, which are instead added on to consumer bills.
cB
My understanding is industry gets subsidized rates & retail consumers do not (or at least “not as much” subsidy)
Someone pay the subsidy. Guess who. One step forward, three steps back.
They pay less or what did you think ? 😀
I do know that in the past they charged large firms involved in the export market a lot less for energy than small firms or individuals.
If the solar panels aren’t producing enough power at night, the solution is obvious.
Build more solar panels. Can I get my grant now?
just hook up diesel generators like Spain did…and sell it at night
What was the country that hooked up flood lights so the panels worked at night?
Isn’t that a bit like plugging in a power strip to itself?
Anon skeptic,
At least a power strip plugged into itself does not experience a net loss!
I understand that Sandy the Bartender and Sen. Markey are trying to plug that hole in their GND language!
When politicians rather than engineers dictate the electricity grid, nothing good ever happens.
Energiewende was always unnecessary nonsense. But now the chickens have come home to roost.
Rud, most pollies and most of their advisors and most activists and most of my non-engineer friends and virtually all MSM, as far as I can tell, still do not understand the difference between energy and its time derivative, power. What chance have we got!?!
If the EU keeps adding wind and solar energy and reducing fossil fuel plants, and by all accounts they will, their energy map will be so convoluted they won’t know where their electricity is coming from and the chances for failure will multiply along with their costs. Energy transfers will cease being as simple as they would like us to believe and the interdependence between suppliers and users will become super political. Intentionally I’m sure.
The high cost of power in Germany is about to put the squeeze on them in combination with the Chinese becoming rivals for German exports rather than customers. See WSJ story on this turn of events from all the forced tech transfers and other trade manipulation games by China.
If you want access to our markets. If you want to shave pennies and dollars. If you want to share/shift responsibility… Rome has a distinctly Oriental flavor.
Quick question. I have friends who travel to the EU during the summer months and they say nobody has air conditioning due to costs.
1: What is the average EU monthly bill.
2. What are the other charges/ surcharges on the bill such as T&D, Taxes, and fees?
An approx is ok. I know it varies but if Biden gets in or too many D’s in congress we’ll be forced to deal with this and tolling blackouts.
Google may help
Google helps
A last one
1) This year, 95 – 110 Euros/month for electricity only (heating/water -> diesel), household of 3 persons, no air conditioning, no electric heating, just cooking, light, appliances.
2) About half the bill face value. Those are dubbed “renewable incentives”, “grid charges”, “future provisions”, “peak hour penalties” and even recently, “water processing”, whatever that is in relation to electricity.
FL said: “This year, 95 – 110 Euros/month for electricity only (heating/water -> diesel), household of 3 persons, no air conditioning, no electric heating, just cooking, light, appliances.” Only two people here (California) but the same electric appliances and we average 48 euros a month and are considered at the low end of users (10kWh/mo.). And our electricity costs are among the highest in the US (by state). Everything is relative.
Oops….that should be 10kWh/day, 300kWh/mo, but I’m sure you figured out the mistake.
Here in Hamburg a. 65 sq meter apartment electric monthly costs Euro 275. plus minus
Is that a recently concluded contract with electric home or water heating ?
The only answer now is to install much larger batteries and bill the customers.
Quick question. I have friends who travel to the EU during the summer months and they say nobody has air conditioning due to costs.
1: What is the average EU monthly bill?
2. What are the other charges/ surcharges on the bill such as T&D, Taxes, and fees?
An approx is ok. I know it varies but if Biden gets in or too many D’s in congress we’ll be forced to deal with this and rolling blackouts.
john
It’s amazing how many people think of questions, including writing them down in understandable terms, but are too lazy to enter the questions into a Google (Duck Duck Go, whatever) search box.
Assuming Germany, Denmark and Sweden have same price policy.
In Sweden you just about double the price of the net cost.
The doubling comes from VAT, Green tax, CO2 fees and fixed costs for main fuse size.
My own bill is between $120 and $260 per month. I am a low consumer considering I am living in a large villa (small horse farm), using my own forest for heating in winter and electric heating and air conditioning in the summer.
Average retail cost in Nebraska is ten cents a kWh. My house consumes about 300 kWh per month in the last 12 months. About one dollar per day. The monthly service charge is about 25 dollars per month. Heating and cooking are NG. Window AC operates most of the summer.
There was a proposed and planned coal powered base station a few years ago near here.
Needed to replace an old plant that was approaching its end of life.
I recall the engineering life span as 40 years, with total capital and operating costs, including decommissioning costs included for a final cost of 3.7 cents per kWh.
As bwegher describes for Nebraska, the funny (tragic) thing is, that northern Sweden is way cheaper than southern Sweden. The reason is claimed to be, that northwest European prices must be harmonized by decree from the Green EU Politburo.
There still aren’t enough wind turbines in Sweden to make the price as high enough to satisfy the Greens. So for the sake of trading electricity on the same low-pan level, the prices are artificially increased in areas where the production cost is too low.
Years ago this was called monopoly – a game I was fighting with my brothers over as a teen. Today it is equality.
John, I lived in Munich for almost six years. My daughter was borne there.
The reason Europe (and our condo) doesn’t generally have summer AC is it is seldom needed, unlike much of the US. More northern, moderated in winter by the Gulf Stream.
I did go back to Munich on business a few years ago during a true heat wave. Our solution: open the third floor office windows a bit to catch the breeze. Amazing: we all survived.
The solution is for people to kneel before Environmentalism, and change their lives to sustain a consensus with Green solutions. I think there was a Star Trek, Outer Limits, or perhaps Twilight Fringe… Zone episode that investigated this theme.
Energiewende is a fairy tail or more accurately a lie.
Germany is at crazy green scam step 1. Germany has hit there are no magic batteries to store electricity for months problems. And the energy savings calculations do not include the energy to construct the green stuff, new power lines, the loss in grid efficiency, and so on.
And the German electrical grid would need to be expanded roughly by a factor of three if all heat and transportation were powered from the electric grid.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/21/germanys-green-transition-has-hit-a-brick-wall/
Attached below is a high level analysis of the impossible to solve technical problems to reach absolute zero for the UK.
http://www.ukfires.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Absolute-Zero-online.pdf
The UK electrical grid power supply output would be required to INCREASE by a factor of THREE (with zero emissions) as all heating, manufacturing, and transportation, is going to be powered from electricity.
Cement cannot be made and there is no solution.
There is no solution to how to power ships or airplanes.
There is no solution as to how to construct buildings or what is going to replace plastics.
As the CO2 tax increases, the high energy materials/products/chemicals start to be manufactured in countries that do not care about CO2 emissions.
So, the carbon tax does not reduce CO2 emissions, it reduces manufacturing jobs, in the location where the tax is applied.
Mining is dead. No alternative to cement. Construction is not possible. No alternative to plastic.
“There is no solution to how to power ships or airplanes.”
Agree with airplanes.
Wooden ships have been sailing for millenniums using red cotton sails.
I love sailing with sails – in my spare time!
Until you hit the doldrums. 🙂
I think it would be very difficult to find people to man clipper ships from the ‘woke’ generation!
Steve Richards, it would be even more difficult to find captains for the woke Green seamen.
The woke will tell you what to do, they will not be told what to do. – In particular not if the captain knows hows how to navigate and read the weather forecast. – Thinking of the Ship Of Fools in the Antarctic. The Captain asked the fools to come back onboard, but they didn’t want to be told by a skeptic fact fixated captain. So we all know what that ended with.
“William Astley September 17, 2020 at 3:17 pm
As the CO2 tax increases, the high energy materials/products/chemicals start to be manufactured in countries that do not care about CO2 emissions.”
That’s already happening and has been for quite some time.
There has been a lot of work developing ammonia as fuel for oceangoing ships.
Recently we are seeing a lot of interest in ammonia as jet fuel. link
The joy of ammonia is that existing engines can be used with minimal modification.
As long as you don’t care when you get electricity, wind power has a good EROEI. That means it could be viable to electrolyze water to get hydrogen to make ammonia. The production would be hard to predict but at least ammonia is relatively cheap to store. Of course, if they built such a facility near me I would move.
Ammonia don’t let it leak, it spreads all over and will kill in very short order.
and where does the ammonia come from? Fossil fuel, mostly natural gas. and it is hazardous. and it damages the engines.
Does the author know what the balance of payments is of this power transfer? Does German pay $$ for imported power and then sell it power for less because of oversupply from renewables?
It is a big Yes.
If there is a lot of wind and have excess production in the north west European marked, you may have to pay for the scrap electricity.
From everything I have read, Germany doesn’t sell it’s excess electricity. It has to pay others to take it.
What a stunning business model. No wonder Karl Marx was a German.
The problem with exporting excess unreliable electricity supply, is that it can disrupt the grid of the receiving company, thus requiring a lot of extra cost for stabilisation of frequency and phase.
Exactly as you said, as crazy as possible. If f.e Switzerland takes it, they store in their pump accumulators, and once we need it, they sell it back to Germany. No better way to make money.
IF Germany didn’t exist, you have to invent it to show the world, what crazyness is.
What California has to look forward to. WASS (we are so screwed)
35 US cents . . . Australia is not far behind. Our prime minister ScoMo listens to the snake from DOW Andrew Liveris who speaks with forked tongue. The ultimate play-both-sides-guy from politics listening to the ultimate play-both-sides-guy from business. Both sound good but we pay and increasingly will. Electricity prices will keep going up. Liveris is a globalist who loves Paris and carbon taxes. Liveris is guiding Australia’s energy policy and if he gets his full plan implemented you’ll see more Australian manufacturing off to China! Australia is run by globalists, not conservatives.
Australia gets far more sun than Germany:
https://globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=15.707663,48.515625,3
And don’t know difference in terms of wind.
But it doesn’t matter solar energy or wind don’t work anywhere on Earth surface.
Not at night it doesn’t.
You’re just nitpicking now.
It’s true. The Chinese need to start exporting lunar electricity panels.
Werewolves on treadmills. !
German prosperity is memories. Bracing for impact now is futile.
Those who can should seriously consider the aftermath.
Such a shame to purposely crash a perfectly serviceable economy with more than enough fuel reserves on board.
The Germans are offshoring much of their manufacturing and industry overseas such as to China, with their car factories for just one example. So effectively, they still generate much more CO2 but the emissions don’t accrue to them nationally, but to China for e.g. who also isn’t responsible for any rise in emissions under the Paris Agreement until 2030. At which time I don’t know if there is even any deal to have China deal with their emissions as that is still a whole 10 years away and the Paris Agreement is up in the air until after the USA election results on Jan 21st/21 when the USA is set to formally leave the Paris Agreement.
Not that the CO2 emissions matters…but the Germans sure are disingenuous and hypocritical in claiming their own national CO2 reduction while sticking it to their own consumers for insane electricity generation methods and prices, and their own national security in being reliant on others for their electricity or Russia for example, for their natural gas. It almost makes you think this could have only been planned decades ago by East German/Russian forces to cause Germany to fail so inefficiently at some point in the future.
Makes you wonder if Angela Merkel was having an affair with Vladimir Putin when he was KGB Chief for East Germany. She speaks fluent Russian and he speaks fluent German…almost the same age.. he is just a year and a half older or so. In fact his job description for the KGB posting was a German-Russian translator and she was winning awards in school for her proficiency in Russian. And she has an education in physics (from the former Karl Marx University in Leipzig,) and after that a doctorate in quantum chemistry from the Berlin Academy of Sciences, so she should definitely know better about everything from nuclear energy to excessive wind/solar penetration of their grid. Dr. Merkel has been Chancellor since 2005, one of the longest lasting elected leaders in the free world and probably the most powerful woman in the world being the de facto head of the EU. A lot of this happened on her watch over the last 15 years.
https://providencemag.com/2017/10/know-angela-merkel/
Wait! Angela Merkel went to Karl Marx University? Oh that is priceless. Now many things make sense….
One thing about Germany is its proportional representation system, I think the Greens get about 10% of the vote so they get allocated 10% of the seats in the German parliament, the Bundestag. This more or less gives them the balance of power, so the main parties have to listen to their silly demands when crafting and passing legislation.
Of course it suits Russia very well to have Germany spending money on useless windmills and renewables, instead of say, on panzer factories… And it means they need to import mucho Russian pipeline gas for real energy. The kind of energy needed to cook and heat with, and spin a turbine to make reliable electricity.
Got a couple of cousins in southern Germany, Black Forest area, so I hear a bit about what’s going on there. They believe the climate koolaid unfortunately.
Wait! Angela Merkel went to Karl Marx University? Oh that is priceless. Now many things make sense….
Not only that, she was leadinig member of the CP youth organisation in GDR, and suspected to be an IM of the Stasi, the East German “KGB”.
And we are on the way to aGDR 2.0
11 Sept: China Dialogue: What are the prospects of an EU–China climate deal?
Ahead of the EU–China leaders’ call on 14 September, the EU is looking to China for strong climate targets
by Byford Tsang, Jennifer Tollmann
Although trade will be the focus of the EU–China leaders’ call on 14 September, it would be a mistake to think climate is off the summit’s agenda or unimportant in the broader relationship…
***Unspoken, but not forgotten in the European debate is growing concern over China’s reawakening coal habit. If China completes all the coal power plants it is currently building and plans to build, the lifetime emissions from these projects would be equal to nearly seven times the EU’s annual emissions…
https://chinadialogue.net/en/climate/what-are-the-prospects-of-an-eu-china-climate-deal/
15 Sept: The Diplomat: China, EU Leaders Hold ‘Intense’ Virtual Meeting
by Shannon Tiezzi
On Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping held a virtual meeting with European Council President Charles Michel, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel…
According to Michel, the meeting addressed “four key topics”: climate change, economic and trade issues, “international affairs and human rights,” and “COVID-19 and economic recovery.”
The video call was a sharply downgraded version of what was once planned as a massive in-person summit to be held in Leipzig, Germany this September, bringing together Xi and the heads of state of all 27 EU member countries. The summit – and a long-dreamed-of bilateral investment treaty between China and the EU, known as the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) — was to be the crowning achievement of Germany’s rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. But the in-person summit was cancelled months ago, officially due to the coronavirus pandemic…
The two sides also agreed to set up “high level dialogues” on the environment and climate as well as digital issues. The environment is an issue of much friction between Europe and the United States, as the Trump administration has withdrawn the country from the Paris climate agreement and consistently downplays the threat of climate change. Thus seeking cooperation on climate action is one of Germany’s key priorities for relations with China, according to a top German diplomat for the Asia-Pacific…
In another topic Beijing would be keen to downplay, Michel and von der Leyen also stressed the need for China to provide full cooperation for an international investigation of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic – a sensitive topic for China, given the virus’ initial emergence in Wuhan…
https://thediplomat.com/2020/09/china-eu-leaders-hold-intense-virtual-meeting/
“Unspoken, but not forgotten in the European debate is growing concern over China’s reawakening coal habit. If China completes all the coal power plants it is currently building and plans to build, the lifetime emissions from these projects would be equal to nearly seven times the EU’s annual emissions”
LOL ! The EU bankrupts itself trying to produce all its electricity with windmills and solar and meanwhile China is negating all the EU’s efforts at reducing CO2.
There is a serious lack of leadership, and an overabundance of ignorance in the Western world. Trump seems to be the only one who has his head on straight. Maybe that will be enough.
1 Nov 2019: Time: China Is Bankrolling Green Energy Projects Around the World
By Charlie Campbell/Shanghai
Chinese export of renewable energy technology around the globe is set to boost Beijing’s clout as the influence of major oil exporters like Russia and Saudi Arabia wanes. China has by far the most renewable energy patents with the U.S., Japan and Europe lagging behind. “No country has put itself in a better position to become the world’s renewable energy superpower than China,” says a recent report by the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation, chaired by former Iceland President Olafur Grimsson…
The vast majority of the more than $244 billion that China has spent on energy projects worldwide since 2000 have been on fossil fuels, according to data from the Global Development Policy Center, a policy-oriented research body affiliated with Boston University. Despite Xi telling journalists at April’s second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing that he embraces “open, clean and green development,” China has financed more than 300 foreign coal plants from Egypt to the Philippines.
According to Nicholas, the analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, Beijing’s vociferous championing of renewables is “partly an attempt to position itself globally regarding climate issues, but also to distract from the fact that it’s also heavily pushing coal-fired technology to developing countries.” For as long as the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy relies on the prosperity of the Chinese people, green intentions will always be sacrificed on the altar of economic expediency, both at home and abroad.
https://time.com/5714267/china-green-energy/
We have installed a total of 69 GW of wind turbines in Germany. 1.470 turbines off-shore with 7.5 GW and 29.546 on-shore with 61.5 GW. The daily demand varies between 50 GW at midnight and 70 GW at lunchtime.
Now take a look at this graphic: (click on the blue window ‘the last 7 days’)
https://www.agora-energiewende.de/service/agorameter/chart/power_generation/11.09.2020/18.09.2020/
Sometimes you have to aim the cursor very precisely to find the production of the off-shore equipment (dark blue). Now the days are getting shorter, the sunshine hours less and the total imbecility of dreaming of 100% ‘renewable’ energy is revealed again.
I think German billionaire wind baron Aloys Wobben of Enercon is one of the main mixologists in the Bundesrepublik when it comes to blending the climate koolaid cocktail and persuading people to swallow it. Enercon is aptly named, because wind energy is a complete con. Herr Wobben, though, likes this kind of con. Forbes has him placed as worth $5 billion. That kind of moolah buys influence.
The Australian electricity market is more developed than in Europe. There is no priority scheduling of weather dependent generation (WDG). Rooftop solar gets priority simply because it cannot be controlled. It only reduces or cuts out when the system reaches 10% above the nominal 230V domestic supply voltage.
Coal generators nor bid in a block of energy near the floor price of minus $1000/MWh so they remain dispatched during negative price swings. Once the wholesale price falls below minus $40/MWh the grid scale WDGs curtail output because the subsidies are now at $40/MWh so they are losing money if the price goes below that.
On most days in spring, at least one of the Australian regions will have negative wholesale price during the middle of the day because rooftops are able to supply a substantial portion of the demand. Coal plants are riding through the negative price knowing they will recover losses during the evening peak. WDGs are curtailing output:
https://www.aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/data-nem/data-dashboard-nem#price-demand
There is so much rooftop solar in South Australia that grid stability is becoming a key issue. On Sunday 13th Sept, rooftops peaked at 939MW and the grid scale generators were at 330MW; ‘directed’ to stay on line for stability reasons. The cost of ‘directions’ to SA stable when the interconnector to Victoria was down for two weeks in February amounted to $400/MWh for the entire 2 weeks. The cost of directions are recovered outside the wholesale price being levied on generators causing the instability and the retailers. All the weather WDG just shut down for the period to avoid the high cost of directions.
This has given the grid operator a glimpse of the future and they have growing concerns. The one good factor is they now recognise that any modelling of WDGs needs to be time based rather than just relying on the capacity factors and the diversity fairy to determine sufficiency.
Hopefully, people in power will learn that you can not use “Averages” of the power generated, that is dividing the total power generated over a year by 365 to design a power grid. look at the daily, weekly, monthly and annual charts of power generated by Wind, Solar and Hydro. It soon becomes obvious that these sources of power will never “Average” out to a smooth line. I have seen charts of the generated power for nuclear power plants stay right on the “100%” line for hour after hour, day after day for over weeks at a time. You begin to think the chart recorder pen is stuck!
Eventually they might learn, realize that all of the additional equipment needed to make the power grid is not FREE and will add several times the imaginary savings they claim we are getting by using Free Solar and Free Wind as the source of power.
Usurbrain,
Nah, that would only work if most humans DID actually use their brains! Sadly, training in that skill has been deleted from modern education as those proficient in it tend to be obstreperous and rebellious!
These days most people seem to think of their brain as part of the structure for carrying their make up! If the brain shrivels from lack of use, they can keep their heads fully inflated with regular hot air injections!
Who needs critical thinking skills when you have critical race theory as your lodestar!
Australia has nothing on Canada. We have the most “woke” government in a history, headed by the man-child Justin Trudeau, under the sway of the “enlightened” Gerald Butts, a former head of the WWF. Despite the pandemic shuttering millions of jobs, he forged ahead with raising the Carbon Tax (called the Federal Fuel Tax on my natural gas bill) from CAD10.00 to CAD20.00 per ton of CO on April 1 of this year, and rising every year until its CAD50.00 per ton. For reference, I live in Alberta, where winters last 7 months of the year, and temps regularly drop to -27 degrees C. That’s right, the coldest country in the world, and they tax our heating fuel. Globalist puppets at the helm, and of course guided by their conscience and “superior” virtue. There will come a reckoning, and these misguided souls will need to repay their foolishness big time.
“temps regularly drop to -27 degrees C”
True statement, but -27 C is more like the average night time temperature from mid Dec to mid Feb when skies are clear, and colder further north in Fort Mac. More like -40 overnight regularly under a dome of high pressure (in Celsius or Fahrenheit) and usually every winter it hits -40 many successive nights and that is just normal. I had a propane truck back in the 90’s, and the propane totally froze up around -42 or so. Then the starter went after I switched back to gasoline, and was changing the starter under the truck when it officially hit -44 at the airport south of town. So cold, the copper battery wire to the starter snapped in half trying to hook it back up. With a wind, then it feels really, really cold and just minutes to live if not having been prepared. To charge a carbon tax for the necessity of keeping your family warm, and tell you to use less nat gas to stay warm is criminal. Did I ever tell you how much I dread winter?
That why I move to Arizona, Most of my life was spent in Northern Minnesota and North Dakota, I have lived through -50 F (-45 C) and 72 hours where is never got above -22 F (- 30 C0, nope I will take 116 F (46.6 C) over that any day of the week.
One should never be so flippantly dismissive of solar energy. I am lucky (or smart) enough to live in British Columbia, where we have abundant benefit from solar power. The sun evaporates the water, sets up weather patterns that moves it over to and drops it as rain and snow on high mountains. We built batteries (called ‘reservoirs’ here) to store the energy to be used when (and where, considering that the legislature uses quite a bit) the sun don’t shine or the rain don’t fall. All it requires is some gravel and limestone, no mining of rare earths by the little children in Congo.
As an added perk–our spillways don’t crumble when used!
BC has such magnificently elevated perched water that a turbine the size of a domestic washing machine will produce 100MW of electric power. Sadly not many places on earth can match that.
Certainly agreed–and I realize that tectonics plus Climate Change–the coming and going of the Pleistocene–made it that way.
That said, I think man’s future is in nuclear energy as the entire universe (as we presently understand it) consists of nothing but the stuff manifested in many forms. Just think, some 200 billion nuclear fusion/fission reactors make up the Milky Way, with one so close that you can hold your hand up and feel the heat from it–at 93 million miles away.
Every now and again my mind boggles at just how powerful that reactor is. And that is only a small star!
Yes that works well, trying to collect it with solar panel is a fools errand. I cannot make solar pay for me in Arizona, how it suppose to work anywhere else.
Please note that unless Germany stopped paying for their Green New Deal by taxation on some but not all consumers, what they are doing is 100%, cristal clear, plainly illegal. It’s the most blatant illegality there is!
In Europe, we have “free and fair trade” which means that you don’t get to pay your producers to lower their prices and take over foreign markets; you can’t (with exceptions) hide the giveaway with a tax that applies to just some corporations in a discretionary way, to help some friends. You can’t have small consumers that pay a full price, with taxes, and large consumers that pay a “market” “price”, with no taxes, when the taxes make up the difference between the “PRICE” and the producing COST.
Germany has been allowed to ignore the MOST FUNDAMENTAL EUROPEAN LAW since the beginning of their green thing. Nobody talks about it!
Car manufacturing in Europe is moving to places like Slovakia. Cheaper labour, land, electricity, etc.
Electricity in Slovakia: nuke 54%, thermal 20%, hydro 17%, biomass 6%, solar & wind 2%.
Slovakians ain’t dumb. They know what works…
[Jaguar Land Rover opened a €1.4 billion plant there in 2018]
I worked for Honda in Swindon in the UK in the mid-90’s and even then there was over-capacity in the industry EU-wide. Many makers, like Honda and Nissan, are only in the UK because of tax breaks.
And because UK was in the EU.
All those car makers will be moving into the EU due to additional customs checks, delays, paperwork and very likely tariffs.
Incidentally Honda had a large solar power array – I wonder what happens to it now they are closing the Swindon plant?
Landfill.
The Great Wall of the EU is longer and higher than the one in China. It was designed to keep out imports while continuing the NATO half effort for show.
And with the ending of EU Tariffs against Japan, Honda is saying sayonara.
I read that MAN is looking to move more production to Austria (Steyr) and wonder if Energiewende is perhaps a factor?
Is Austria less crazy than Germany?
Austria closed its last coal plant this year…
and 25 % of electricity in Austria is still produced with fossil fuels, namely gas.Austria has a share of 60.2 % of hydroelectric power, 1 % photovoltaics and the rest comes from wind turbines and biogas plants.
Where is griff?
Look down.
‘Overall, however, more electricity was still exported from Germany.’
That’s the point.
Germany intends that its wind and solar should be exported when it is high – and its neighbors expect that and plan to buy the electricity.
There is an European day ahead spot market based on this…
I’ll get back on the rise in imports later. I see a percentage quoted, but how much is that in real terms? Over what periods and from what source?
Generally in the last decade Germany has maintained a positive export balance and a positive balance with all countries except France.
(interlude for day’s first coffee)
The problem is, Germany’s neighbors aren’t buying the extra electricity. Germany is paying them to take it.
OK – so here are German electricity imports/exports 2019. You need to hover your cursor over each stream to get detailed figures (and the Swedish stream is mislabelled Twh)
Only with France does Germany have a net deficit -and Germany still exported far more than it imported.
https://www.energy-charts.de/exchange.htm
There isn’t enough information in that link to tell where the electricity came from – except France. Which is interesting…
You will note that with the virus French electricity demand fell and with a largely nuclear generation, the French had to dump that power somewhere… Germany imports nuclear power from France when the French need to dump excess nuclear generation at low prices
There was still a net export balance in favour of Germany:
‘Electricity imports increased by 43.3 percent to 25.7 billion kilowatt hours in the first half of 2020 compared to the first half of 2019… the amount of electricity exported fell by 11.6 percent to 33.6 billion kilowatt hours in the first half of 2020 compared to the first half of 2019.’
And I note:
‘In the first half of 2020, more than half of the electricity produced in Germany was from renewable energies. Exactly 128.4 billion kilowatt hours, or 51.8 percent
the amount of electricity fed in from conventional energy sources fell by 22.6 percent. At -37.8 percent, coal-fired power in particular was significantly lower than in the same period last year.’
The assertion it was for periods of cold and dark because there wasn’t baseload has no backing in facts provided. Since Germany imports power when it is cheap from adjoining countries, we can for example estimate if Germany had more wind, perhaps Denmark did too and exported it. Until the 2020 export figures appear from BDEW we can’t reliably say more. But it is likely Germany imports when power is cheap, not when there’s some supposed baseload shortfall.
I remind all German electricity bills are lower than US ones and that much of the cost is tax unrelated to renewables. And that the renewable component is due to historic subsidy, not current.
(I am still looking for more energy poverty data to compare Germany with USA)
“I remind all German electricity bills are lower than US ones and that much of the cost is tax unrelated to renewables.”
Really? I find that hard to believe. I”m paying about 11 cents per Kwh in West Virginia. Germans are paying less than that? Or do you mean that Germans use less electricity per month, though at a higher price?
In 2019, the monthly electricity bill for an average German household consisting of three people with a combined annual consumption of 3,500 kWh was 88.7 euros, the BDEW says.
sorry to say, but that is a stupid lie. I checked may bill from 2019 und it says:
1.543 kWh used, payed 636,00 Euros, REFUND 87,11. Net costs 548,89m Euros.
Since March 2020 I have to pay 47,00 Euros in advance per month and I’m a single houshold.
PV solar cannot power the grid.
Wind turbines cannot pride 50Hz energy.
Off course they can Brian.
The turbines are set up to take account of grid frequency (I summarise)
But they can only do that is there is sufficient dispatchable energy
Seems griff has figured out how to copy data…, but totally ignorant at understanding how electricity grids work.
Brian is totally correct, PV cannot power a grid, because there would be no grid for at least half the day
And wind energy DOES NOT provide 50Hz electricity, it relies totally on having a steady 50Hz grid system to synchronise to. Without that, wind would be totally useless as grid supply.
They need power from the grid to bring them to synchronised speed.
griff’s government handout says it can, therefore it does.
A quick check: in Germany the Greens hold 67 of the 709 seats in the Bundestag parliament, approx 9%. Merkel’s CDU only have 246 seats, nowhere near a majority, so they have to make nice nice with the Greens or someone else to get any legislation through the house. And get this, the Marxoid Left Party, originally from the old East Germany of Stasi fame, have 69 seats. Caught between the Marxists and the Greens, no wonder the place is going backwards.
today there is an article in the weekly magazine ‘SPIEGEL’ with the headline: “Germans pay almost the highest electricity prices worldwide”.
The average cost per kWh is USD 0.38. I live in the north of Germany and pay 0,41 USD per kWh and consume about 1550 kWh per year as a single household. I don’t have air conditioning but I really don’t need it. Heating is done with gas.
And the stupidest of all arguments is always gladly used like it griff straight does. Nobody in the world manufactures products or supplies services to the production costs and without including the due taxes and profit in the price.
By the way the paper/website from which this article comes has no credibility -it is an offshoot of the Falun gong organisation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times
Griff,
Do you get paid by the ChiComs for your propaganda work or are you doing it pro bono?
Considering the depth and quality, it has to be the latter! Right?
I’m just interested.
as to depth and quality, this whole article is based on a free news sheet from a dubious Chinese religious/political group, with no sources quoted and no basis for believing it is accurate.
do you think abusing me as some ‘communist’ contributes to debate on climate issues? to getting to the truth?
Griff,
Why do you continue to ignore the data and the facts on the ground? Germany’s push for expensive Unreliable wind and solar will destabilize the European grid and lead to numerous deaths from energy poverty when a serious cold spell hits this winter!
In the meantime they are clear cutting areas of forest to use for another one of their anti-environmental GangGreen hoaxes: the wood chip powered electric plant! You may believe that the harvesting and processing of trees for this latest scam produces no CO2, but I’m fairly confident most intelligent observers would disagree! It’d be far better to preserve those trees so the German people have something they can afford to heat their homes in winter; but you don’t seem to care about people, another sign of being a Communist!
The griff collective does not ignore facts, just any facts that don’t go along with what they are paid to promote.
I hope, you don’t believe to have a higher credibility with your comments and “insides” ?
😀
A detailed account of German electricity costs…
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-households-pay-power
Please note this up to date information: The average power price for households and small businesses in Germany stood at 30.43 cents per kilowatt hour (ct/kWh) in 2019
And: In 2019, the monthly electricity bill for an average German household consisting of three people with a combined annual consumption of 3,500 kWh was 88.7 euros, the BDEW says.
that should inform any discussion of costs…
German officials:
Ve vant your electricity. Ver ist your electricity? Schnellstens!
Now Germany is caving in under the Navalny fallout, offering (begging?) the US a LNG terminal and $1 billion to save NordSteam 4-times cheaper Russian LNG pipeline.
That will for sure be passed on to consumers.
I am sure the Greens will oppose that offering too.
NeoCons and Greens sure make strange bedfellows!
Meanwhile in the Arctic the French are investing in gas……
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-international-lenders-back-9-080925404.html
Gotta love communism! Lol. Germany never learned anything from the past two world wars they caused. So I say – leave them alone and let them implode by over-taxing their people. Eventually…they’ll get tired of no heat in winter or A/C in summer. Think they’d read the news about California power problems. They should shutter their existing back up plants, if they have faith in their own renewable power.