Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Krishna Gans – According to the German climate website Kalte Sonne, the renewables obsessed German and city of Hamburg governments intend to shut down local coal and nuclear power plants, but have no serious plan to make up the resulting energy shortfall.
Hamburg’s large power plant Moorburg is shut down – after 5 years of operation
from cold sun
The decision announced by the Federal Network Agency, according to which the coal-fired power station Moorburg will cease power production after 5 years of operation by the operator Vattenfall, will make the power supply in northern Germany a lot less secure. Because on December 31st In 2021, the Brokdorf nuclear power plant will also be shut down due to the Nuclear Energy Phase- Out Act .
After that there are no more large power plants in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein that could compensate for the strong fluctuations in wind and solar energy. That was the main reason of the construction of the 1600 MW large power plant Moorburg how’s then First Mayor Olaf Scholz in the remarkable inauguration speech stated :
“The prosperity of an industrial society depends to a large extent on whether it succeeds in generating or procuring the required energy and keeping it available. In such a way that it is firstly available to companies and consumers with a secure supply, secondly: economically, thirdly: sustainably and environmentally friendly … Hamburg also and above all has many electricity-intensive large consumers and the city is proud to have them at the location. She cannot and does not want to do without them. Whether steel, copper and aluminum, but also aircraft construction or scientific companies such as the German electron synchrotron, DESY, they would all have a difficult time in Hamburg without a reliable and inexpensive power supply …reliably and with a high degree of utilization of what we can extract from the earth. “
From the end of 2021, the fate of Hamburg’s electricity supply will depend on five high-voltage lines in the west, east and south of Germany. Hamburg’s industry alone consumes an unbelievably large amount of 11 million megawatt hours of electricity every year. The jug goes to water until it breaks.
…
Read more (German): https://kaltesonne.de/claudia-kemferts-rechenschwaeche/ (Translated)
I feel sorry for the workers in Hamburg, and all the heavy industry entrepreneurs in Hamburg who over the years have given everything to provide jobs and opportunities to Hamburg’s people, with a misplaced confidence that German authorities would take care of them.
Trust building is a slow process. Once lost, trust is not easily restored.
There are a lot of lampposts in Hamburg. In the absende of electricity they could be used for other purposes.
Gas lights, perhaps? No, that would use fossil fuels. It will have to be candles.
Candles made from what ???
most candles are made from petro-chemical wax.
Beeswax … not enough bees,
Animal fats … not enough animals,
Whale blubber … not enough whales,
All 4 above result in chronic lung disease … not enough hospitals !
Er, the Nazis found another source for animal fat. Ban burials and go into recycling to keep the street lights lit. Who would be against recycling and repurposing their relatives and friends?
Indeed.
And to gt those friends and relative, we’re back to the handy lampposts that Ed mentioned above; the rope can be used again and again.
Re-use, as Greta goes on about.
Auto
I see what you did there……..
NorwegianSceptic, are you guessing that some rope will be utilized with the lampposts?
As long as it is organic hemp.
The CCP has the largest hemp processing plants in the world BTW.
To hang RE lovers?
German willful ignorance?… or Dominion voting machine installed progressive politicians in action? The server was located in Germany after all…
Sure. They can’t give light, but they can recharge the EVs. 🙂
No energy plan to replace shuttered nuclear and FF plants?
Great! Some intense sessions of “Freeze in the dark” therapy will prove highly edifying to Germans who vote for Green energy and as an object lesson for the rest of the world. I’m all in favor of massive dislocation and discomfort if it becomes the “teaching moment” of last resort.
Cherry pickers replaced ladder leaning posts. Nowhere to tie your noose. Still, I think a previous generation of Germans developed other solutions. And besides, the companies will not lose because the state/government is buying back the plants. So you can have your cake and eat providing you don’t make another cake. https://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-germany-coal-power-20190126-story.html#:~:text=The%20decision%20to%20quit%20coal%20follows%20an%20earlier,2022%20in%20the%20wake%20of%20Japan%E2%80%99s%20Fukushima%20
Boy, I would so like to be a German taxpayer watching all this pixie dust being generated.
…a misplaced confidence that German authorities would take care of them.
I always though lemmings lived in the Arctic; the seem to have descended to Western Europe and California.
Let them shoot themselves in the foot, maybe they will learn a thing or two..
Antonym
Lousy politicians are a bit like lousy engineers. They never admit mistakes, they blame others, then pile on problematic patch after problematic patch instead of tearing things down to fix the underlying problem.
Of course there are very few lousy engineers.
Don’t blame the politicians. Blame the public who votes the pols into office. The Germans like most liberal cosmopolitans are quite thick and obstinate. They are impervious to Data and reason. Pain and bankruptcy will provide and excellent teaching moment for the public in Germany and the rest of the world.
I blame the politicians. THEY are the ones who go along like lemmings without regard for teh science which requires spinning reserves for reliable. They seem to think they are engineers and these issues will just ‘go away’ if the wish it so.
If I were an executive and was considering siting a production plant in Germany I would refuse to do it/. Reliable power is ESSENTIAL to efficient operation of a production facility. If I were to site it there I would be fired with NO stock options! It is the politicians who don ‘t have the sense to even think about this part of the problem.
Eric, you have shown another example of a modern, industrialized society undertaking their own destruction. And this includes the uncontrolled immigration that Angela Merkel allowed, even supported, the consequences of which it is now impossible to deal with.
Germany. for the third time in a century, tries to destroy Europe.
Always thought that Merkel and Soros apparent mentality to undermine Western cultures may have been from their indoctrination in communist East Germany. Merkel will have been ultimately responsible for the future Muslim takeover of Europe (with nukes) and Soros has been fairly effective at de-legitimizing police authority and imprisonment in the USA and other countries through promotion of liberal DA’s and other politicians. That indoctrination has now become effective in the US education system and we are fast approaching a Roman Rubicon era. Even though liberal ideas can only be instituted by election cheating and bullying, those are apparently working.
On election night, CCTV cameras caught election workers escorting poll watchers out of the room (telling them that business was done for the night) then returning to their desks, pulling suitcases full of ballots from under tables, and spending the next several hours processing these extra ballots unhindered by any supervision.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/brian-kemp-georgia-brad-raffensperger-signature-audit
If Biden wins and the Democrats take control of the Senate, it will be due to a stolen election.
I’ve actually seen people claiming that video was faked.
Another thing caught on the video was at least one worker running the same batch of ballots through the tabulator multiple times.
There are people who tell us not to believe our own eyes.
BFL (BigFrackingLegend?), your comments re George Soros are right on. This scoundrel has wrecked havoc on several countries while making his billions. His support money flows freely into Socialist/Marxist groups in the USA and produces riots, etc.
Can’t blame WWI on Germany, all the big players in Europe were eager for a chance to seize each other’s colonies.
Hamburg is always at the forefront of revolutionary politics in Germany.
Just after WW1 they had a communist revolution and a Bolshevik administration in Hamburg for a few months.
Have the citizens been told what the objective is? To control global temperature in 2100AD? But CO2 is going to go on climbing at about 2ppm per year whatever suffering is inflicted on the Hamburgienses. And the weather will stay the same. Getting chilly there.
oh no, it’s Hamburgers, not Hamburgienses 🙂
Operation Gomorrah II. This time the Germans decided to carpet bomb the city of Hamburg by themselfs…
How long will the citizens of Europe let their leaders piss on them?
Well we have been pissed on for some time now, I think some of my fellow Europeans are beginning to like it.
Looking at US states like CA and NY, many decades with no end in sight, apparently.
Indefinitely, as they have no second amendment. Same as will soon happen in the US.
I would suggest that it would be a good idea for Ukraine to build lots of reserve power plants, because in the coming decades wholesale spot prices are going to through the roof.
I remember when Germany was a great engineering nation. Wasn’t that long ago really.
Also with a history of bad political decisions.
Can the new lunacy be traced back to 1989? I think it could.
After few power cuts in the middle of the cold German winter, the authorities will learn a lesson.
But Germany hasn’t had any power cuts in decades of transition to renewables (now at 50% of annual demand).
watts readers have been prophesying this for over a decade now -still it doesn’t happen.
I think you’re right, Griff, that readers here are too quick to predict a sudden event, tied to a failure of renewables, that causes widespread electricity outages and leaves people shivering in the dark. Perhaps we secretly hope for that to happen because it would graphically illustrate the steady decline in reliable electric supply that is slowly occurring as Europe gives up on nuclear and fossil fuels.
But will you agree that moving to increased reliance on intermittent renewables has caused, and will cause, much higher electricity prices? The cost of buying power when renewables flag, and paying someone to take power when it has a surplus, has certainly cost Germany. Wouldn’t a fair appraisal of renewables require some analysis of the additional costs they impose, that a coal or nuclear plant does not?
Even if you can somehow get him to admit there are massive extra costs, the answer of that it’s needed to save the planet, or some such idiocy
Only because of interconnectors Griff
Once all the countries have gone this route there is no backup and then the day comes
It is inevitable, it is physics
And 50% is a joke, as always
Griff knows full well that Germany has (so far) avoided power cuts by expanding lignite (dirty coal) burning. He knows that in some months, typically in the winter when solar doesn’t work in Germany’s latitude and climate, that Germany gets more power from lignite burning than from solar and wind combined. He knows that when Germany relies on lignite burning, when they can’t get enough nuclear power from neighboring France, when solar fails every winter and the wind is calm, that Germany is among the most polluting countries per capita on Earth. He knows that Germans pay up to 3 times more for electricity than most other countries. He knows that Germany’s “renewable” approach has been a total failure but he still dishonestly (and fecklessly) tries to promote it.
Actually it has been happening. It hasn’t been happening in Germany because of the huge connections Germany has with the rest of the European power grid.
This has been explained to little griff many times, but like his belief that polar bears are on the brink of extinction, he doesn’t let anything as trivial as mere facts get in the way of a good rant.
I work for a power company that is — like all the others — wrecking its coal plants and simultaneously hyping electric vehicles. Indulge me a little back-of-envelope figuring, will you? Telsa’s new and improved battery holds 82 KWH. And likewise, we’re all told that we want to juice these things in a 10-minute stopover at the non-existent charging station. That would be pouring in 82 KWH in 10 minutes, for a power level of 492 KW.
If you’re like most people, you speak horsepower for cars, not KW. One horsepower is 746 watts, which means your little Tesla is going to be sucking electrons at a power level of 659.5 horsepower. Now, that’s a lot of power, can we agree? You need special equipment for that — big wires, breakers, and transformers.
Suppose you loaded a semi with 8 of these batteries and wanted to juice it up in half an hour. Your big rig is going to be drawing power at a rate of 1,758.7 horsepower.
Now imagine that giant truck stop in Iowa where, on any given evening, several hundred trucks pull in to park for the night ( https://iowa80truckstop.com/ ). In our utopian future, these will all be charging up, not fueling up, right? Iowa 80 advertises 900 parking places. But let’s imagine that only 100 of the trucks would be charging at any one time. The resulting power draw would be 175,871 horsepower, or 131 MW for you electrical guys. That’s the equivalent of one small power plant just to service this one truck stop, and that’s if only one in nine of the parking places is a charging spot.
Has anybody thought this through other than the skeptics? The politicized movement of demolishing old reliable power plants while pushing EVs is going to choke on its own stupid, probably pretty early in the game.
Bro,
I love your calculations and will use them in my articles.
Would those be Wilem’s posts?
Back in the 90s there was a string of embarrassing public IT failures. The major cause of these failures was the capacity planners had all made a fundamental error – they based their hardware requirement estimates on average capacity, not peak capacity.
How could a group of people make such a stupid mistake, all at the same time? The answer is groupthink – they all had the same teachers, those teachers taught them how to calculate hardware capacity requirements, they never paused to question what they were being taught.
I can see it now. Red-hot charging cables.
A year or so ago I calculated the diameter that connection made of copper would have to be in order to handle that kind of current. The result was a bar just under half an inch in diameter.
If it’s a cable, it would have to be even bigger.
How many soccer moms are going to have the strength to wrestle that thing in order to connect your car to the charger?
Telephone company traffic engineers learned this on the first day of the job. Electrical engineers working with motors learned this on the first day of the job. IT engineers? Not so much.
Just a small point, but a lot of those parking spaces are for cars filled with people wanting a little food, a walk around, or just to hit the restroom. Of course, that’s in this world.
Now do a typical suburban neighborhood with 200 houses and two EV’s in every garage….or a typical apartment complex garage with 100’s of parking spaces in it. Repeat for a medium sized city (~300,000 residents).
Math is hard for all those EV fanboys/girls, evidently.
Electricity is magic.
Bro. Steve: Yup, I’ve done similar calculations and the very idea of such quick charging is a fantasy. In your example, 492 KW would mean an electrical system charging at 700 amps and 700 Volts (or 492 amps at 1000V, or 1000 A at 492 V, etc.) These are utility or industrial scale levels. In the real world only trained professionals following detailed safety protocols are allowed to touch equipment at these levels. But we’re going to let consumers hook up the family car to a power source capable of vaporizing a set of ordinary jumper cables? What happens when someone tries to drive off without unhooking?
Here’s a chart showing wire gauge and current capacity.
0000 gauge wire, which is about 0.46 inches in diameter is rated for 380amps.
https://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm
O.46 inch plus insulation?
0.46 is just the diameter of the conductor. Insulation is extra. (And probably pretty thick if the voltage is 700 volts.)
Another point is that the limiting factor in how much current a given conductor can carry is that conductor’s ability to dump the heat that is created by the resistance of the metal to current flow.
As a result, the limiting factor is not the cross sectional area of the wire, but rather the surface area of the wire.
One would think that if you doubled the current, you would need to double the cross sectional area at the same time. If you do that, the temperature of the wire would increase as the surface area increased by less than the cross sectional area did.
To keep the wire from heating up, if you want to double the current, you need to double the surface area.
“Bro. Steve December 4, 2020 at 4:53 am
You need special equipment for that — big wires, breakers, and transformers.”
Many who are avid supporters of EV’s have no idea what is needed to provide wide-scale EV charging capability.
Thousands of ‘Darwin Awards’ coming up ?
Don’t worry Germany, your industries can move to China.
The siemens Berlin motor plant will be gone one of these days
Been there for over 100 years
Just one example
Most of German car making is not done in Germany.
Maybe to open things out a bit and to cut a story – are they trying to railroad Hamburg into using the wind energy coming off the North Sea/
I understood that they planted a shipload of turbines out in the water, making a shedload of elecktrickery BUT, the transmission capacity (those power-lines mentioned above) wasn’t up to moving the power to where *most* Germans live & work. i.e. the South
*Then* nobody wanted new power lines cutting up *their* patch of turf so they were ‘in a jam’
But Hamburg, being in the North, is ideally placed to use the bounteous North Sea electerikterty and without the expense and hassle of new power-lines going South.
Makes Perfect Sense :-/
The south however has an enormous amount of solar power.
And yes, they have eventually started on the North/south power lines… though still nimby-ing away, they’ll get there
Yes all that solar…….51.08GW!! wow…
Quick look to see what it’s producing today @14h.45………. 3.1GW……….. oh……oh dear.
Around 17h this will dwindle to zero, just as early evening consumption starts to rise, and stay at zero for the next 16 hours……
….yes, enormous amounts of solar.
Still, not to bad, that’s a weekly average solar production in the UK…….in June.
They have an enormous amount of installed power. Getting actual electricity from them during the winter is another issue.
LIAR, there is no solar power for well over half the day.
Stuck on stupid!
The Germans have plenty of surplus electricity – just look at how much they export. and the German grid amongst the world’s most reliable.
And pay to export it
Don’t forget the important part Griff
Same as Ontario here in canada, contributing to Billions that Ontario consumers have overpaid and will continue to overpay.
Parker Gallant exposed all this in a series of articles in the Financial Post
Once again, griff finds the 5 minutes during the year that shows what it wants to see, then declares that this 5 minutes represents the entire year.
There are times when Germany is paying other countries to take their excess electricity, but there are also times when Germany has to buy power from other countries in order to make up the huge short falls. Like night when there is no wind blowing.
I really don’t care what Germany does or the UK or Oz, I just care what the US does because that is where I live.
About the only thing we have going for us here in the US is that although the Federal government can set certain policies, each State has its own authority and can wreak havoc in the courts for at least 4 years.
Additionally getting something through Congress will be tight as that even if the Democrats end up controlling the Senate, there will be enough Senators on that side that come from “Red Leaning States” to vote against over the top policies. It is going to be an interesting 4 years coming up here in the US.
rbabcock, I understand your frustration. However, the masters that the US is up against, are the same masters most of the western world is up against.
Why do you think coal fired plants are closed in most western countries?
Why is the plant food CO2 treated as poison in most western countries?
Why do you think nature savage and insanely resource demanding wind and solar is virtually (and for real) forced upon most western countries?
Why do you think freedom of expression is increasingly denied in most western countries?
This is about way more than just US, although US and Germany are the two significant players at the moment.
I suppose every European country is thinking they can always import power, at the same time.
Yup,
That is what they thought in California before the rolling blackouts.
But the RE idiots ruled the roost in CA, the SOCIALIST BANANA REPUBLIC of the US, that everyone tries to get out of.
The fight for freedom is rising sharply in Germany.
Not sure who will win the fight, but here are some of the day’s examples:
A large portion of Germans put a parallel between President Donald Trump’s fight for freedom with their own fight for freedom and call for example the Corona measures for “Corona Dictatorship”.
63,000 Germans have asked the major TV broadcaster WDR to host a debate over the Corona thing with experts invited. The answer from WDR Program Director Jörn Schönenborn: “There is only one legitimate opinion!” and refused to support such a debate.
Many Germans also find Eric Trump’s resent Twitter as clear evidence that much the same battle is fought in the US:
Eric Trump (@EricTrump) December 4, 2020 with the graph that clearly shows a spike during the “pause”.
The problem in most western countries, very soon possibly also to include the US, is that their politicians are precautionary, spineless and self destructing, hiding behind a deep state censored media. Not sure if Trump is and was the right politician, but he has spine, work for the people and confront us with political incorrect statements in the spirit of the common people.
The Energiewende, the climate idiocy and the Corona Dictatorship could easily be crushed if enough politicians would stand up for the people and show some mature character.
The Aurubis company in Hamburg is one of the largest employers in the city. The company produces over one million tonnes of copper cathodes annually, uses them to manufacture various copper products and employs about 6,500 people. They have a contract with the Moorburg power plant for electricity supplies of 1 TWh per year. It is not known from where they will get the electricity in the near future.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Aurubis moved the entire factory to Poland.
In 2019, the port of Hamburg had a shore power supply for ships.(This plant cost about 10 million Euro.) However, this was only used by a cruise ship which docks about 20 times a year for 10 to 14 hours. And this ship also switched over to its own diesel generators as soon as the price of electricity rose, which always happened during the day because the demand for electricity was highest there.
Imagine a perfect world then wake up.
Certainly not the brightest Germany has to offer.
The problem with the Moorburg power plant is that it was already uneconomical before it was commissioned. It was too oversized and has only been in the red since the beginning of its operating life because it was never properly utilized. But yes, the electricity has to come from somewhere now.
The problem is that it is currently more expensive to keep the power plant running than to look after new energy sources.
What about ensuring the the new power source first.
In the meantime some of the money subsidizing weather dependent plants could be given to the current coal power plant.
This is just as unplanned as the plans in California since 1998 when I worked there in between. California back then, as now, had no sensible planning for future adequate power within the state.
Another German example: The nuclear power plant Mülheim-Kärlich (abbreviation: KMK) on the left bank of the Rhine northwest of Koblenz was the only nuclear power plant in Rhineland-Palatinate. It started operation on 1 March 1986. Due to a faulty building permit procedure, it had to be taken off the grid again after only 30 months on September 9, 1988. Errors in the approval procedure: not errors in construction!
Also Biblis Nuclear Power Plant in South Hessen (gross output of 2500 megawatts. Now shut down permanently for political reasons.) The Greens tried to increase the administrative costs in such a way that operation became uneconomical. The goal: no use of nuclear power. A purely populist way to gain votes by buying into the negative mood in the German population against nuclear power.
Was it oversized when it was planned or just oversized when it was commissioned?
How much did the mandate to give preference to so called “renewable” power factor in the plant being “oversized”?
Have you seen where Moorburg is? It is in a industrial area with hundreds of tanks, which I presume contain petroleum or petroleum products. They can stay, but the coal has to go!
The coal plant operators and employees got midnight knocks on their doors…..
They won’t need it if they adopt the Great Reset.
The Great Reset. The Great Leap. Planned Population not limited to Planned Parenthood and Planned Parent.
So Griff unreliables sometimes supply up to 50% of Germany’s electricity and some 5 million people in Germany regularly say they struggle to pay their bills and every year hundreds of thousands are cut off for not paying theirs.
Meanwhile in the UK a recent survey found 3 in 10 households (29%) were probably not in a position to be able to meet the cost of higher energy bills caused largely by the use of unreliables,
But this doesn’t bother you one bit.
It does not bother him because he is, so far, unaffected by these crazy energy policies. Only those who are making money out of it or are totally unaffected support this madness.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/first-phase-out-auction-german-hard-coal-deemed-success-modern-plants-go-offline
‘The first auction for the decommissioning of hard coal plants in Germany has been hailed as a success both by coal plant operators and climate activists, as it ensures that plants with a capacity of almost 5 gigawatts will be off the market by the end of the year as planned. The successful bid by operators of plants inaugurated as recently as 2015 is seen as confirmation of coal power’s increasingly difficult market situation. ‘
Once again, green politics triumphs over reality.
Trolls celebrate.
Perhaps with the Netherlands goes the right direction. Three Mile Island still haunts the U.S.A.
I can’t help but wonder how far this madness will go before people start to understand how crazy it is. How many brownouts and blackouts, how many grid failures, how much “rationing” before there is finally a connection between the policy and the result?
Given what I see across the “western” world in other areas of policy vs result, I’m not sure there IS a limit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NordLink
When I read things like this, part of me is scratching my head, and part of me is thinking, people are not crazy. So, I’m left wondering, where are the plans to show how this is going to actually work (there must be some). Long term can we build enough utility scale batteries to make wind and solar reliable? Are the constraints mainly economic or technical? Is there enough lithium in the world to do all this?
It isn’t just lithium, there are several other relatively rare elements you need for batteries. And no, there is not enough “known reserves” of these metals to build the car and storage batteries required to shut down using fossil fuels.
That is just one aspect of the problem…more threatening is where these elements come from. How do we secure adequate resources, what extent do we go to protect them from countries that have no qualms about taking them (i.e. China). Where do we build all of these intermittent power collectors and storage facilities? In YOUR backyard? On Federal lands that are currently protected? The land requirements are HUGE. Simply off the scale.
The entire idea that we can replace all of the world’s electrical power with intermittent sources and storage is insane – beyond just not practical. Can we get to the point of only electric cars? Sure, given a reasonable amount of time to change infrastructure (like another 40 to 50 years) and a few breakthroughs in technology, but the power needs to come from stable dependable sources.
The ONLY reasonable technology that comes after fossil fuels is nuclear power. It has a high power density, can operate very efficiently, and is the safest form of power (look the numbers up). We need to be building and testing Molten Salt Reactors because of their inherent safety and because they can burn most of the so-called nuclear wastes – therefore the problem of storing wastes is reduced by a factor of 20 or more.
I hear you RoT, but hasn’t anyone put a pencil to all of this and come up with the answer? I hope at his first presser, someone asks Biden where is plan is for curbing climate change. Saying you’re going to do something is not a plan.
But they just opened a new one..
https://www.power-technology.com/projects/datteln-4-coal-fired-power-plant/