Reposted from the NoTricksZone
By P Gosselin on 19. January 2021
Is the German model America’s future?
Putting matches in charge of fighting gasoline fires? Even more interference appears to be the German government’s approach to solving the power grid mess that its earlier meddling created in the first place.
Germany struggles to keep the lights on, looks for a law to prevent its power grid from crashing.
Before the days of climate alarmism and hysteria, the job of deciding how to best produce electricity was left to power generation engineers and experts – people who actually understood it. The result: Germany had one of the most stable and reliable power grids worldwide.
Green energies destabilized the German power grid
Then in the 1990s, environmental activists, politicians, climate alarmists and pseudo-experts decided they could do a better job at generating power in Germany and eventually passed the outlandish EEG green energy feed-in act and rules. They insisted that wildly fluctuating, intermittent power supplies could be managed easily, and done so at a low cost.
Blackouts threaten
Fast forward to today: The result of all the government meddling is becoming glaringly clear: the country now finds itself on the verge of blackouts due to grid instability, has the highest electricity prices in the world, relies more on imports and is not even close to meeting its emissions targets.
Germany’s rickety and moody power grid now threatens the entire European power grid stability, as we recently witnessed.
The need for “smoothing out” demand peaks
So what solution does Berlin propose today? You guessed it: more meddling and interference, more outlandish bureaucrat solutions. Included among them are shutting down the remaining baseload coal-fired and nuclear power plants, and relying even more on the power sources that got the country into its current mess in the first place.
And new are restrictions as to when power can be consumed by consumers and industry! Energy rationing and targeted blackouts.
Hat-tip. Tichys Einblick
Cutting off e-vehicle battery chargers and industry
To deal with the power grid problems, Germany’s Economics Minister Peter Altmaier presented a draft law that would allow electric utilities “to temporarily cut off charging power for e-cars when there is once again too little electricity available”, an idea known as “peak smoothing”.
“Shutdowns due to power shortages have been practiced for some time. Aluminum smelters, for example, have to put up with having their power cut off for limited periods of time,” reports Tichys Einblick. “These, like refrigerated storage facilities, consume great amounts. It’s a dangerous game because after three hours the molten metal has solidified and the factory is ruined.”
Situation now “too critical”
The situation in the German power grid has deteriorated so much that Tichys Einblick also comments: “The situation in the power grids has become too critical. The only thing that helps are abstruse ideas like: ‘You are not allowed to refuel your car from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day!’”
A law that would allow for “peak smoothing” has been demanded by power utilities for some time now as they struggle to keep the increasingly wind and solar powered grid from careening out of control and into blackness. In other words: targeted blackouts.
And as Tichy Einblick mentions, the increasing number of cars on the market will only serve to cause more extreme power demand peaks. Currently Germany is set to make a major push into electric mobility this year.
No electricity for up to 2 hours a day
In the proposed draft law, which has since been recalled because it was deemed so embarrassing, it was written that “controllable consumption facilities” would be able to receive no electricity for up to two hours per day if there was a threat of overloading the grid.
“This includes charging stations for e-cars as well as heat pumps, which can already be temporarily disconnected from the power supply,” reports Tichy.
More burden on power grid
Currently there are only 33,000 electric car charging points in Germany, a country with over 50 million cars, and the government plans a vast expansion in the future, yet isn’t sure what that infrastructure should look like. It’s a policy of going full speed in total blackness and hoping there won’t be a brick wall in the way.
Government admits it’s not going to function
Tichy comments further: “The German government has recognized that in the future electricity system, it will no longer be possible to satisfy every demand at all times. Therefore, the control of the consumer side should be put on legal feet.” […] “Controllable consumers such as heat pumps, electric heaters and wall-boxes, i.e. charging stations for e-mobiles, would then be switched off variably at times.”
This is the sorry state of Germany’s once highly regarded power grid.
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Covid did wonders for fuel prices.
Hopefully Australia will avoid any of the direct carbon tax nonsense – been there and it is not a political winner. The country already pays a sort of tax due to the high cost of integrating intermittent generators. But if you are part of the problem then you can avoid those costs by adding to the intermittency. At least to the point where the lunchtime voltage prevents production.
So we can only praise the German citizens prepared to give up their gasoline and diesel cars and take up walking or cycling instead. Those autobahns will be left to the few government employees and representatives provided with government cars. Fortunately Covid also provided a valuable lesson in the ability of modern communications to successfully eliminate the need to work in a remote office. Germans can stay at home; conduct their zoom meetings when the wind permits and life will be wonderful.
So, Germany doesn’t have the engineers to keep their grid up anymore! We may be rapidly approaching the time when the old joke comes true; the Germans are the lovers, the British are the cooks, the French are the engineers and the Italians are the politicians!
Nope, the new Europe definitely doesn’t sound like heaven to me, but the US with a new president that many consider illegitimate and intellectually challenged is no bed of roses either! Welcome to the Dark Ages 2.0; brought to you by the ChiComs and the global political/corporate elite! Be sure to get your Mandarin-as-a-second-language course before they sell out; translator, security guard and concubine may be the last vestiges of the middle class for most of the non-Chinese world!
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help” has been described decades ago as ” the nine most terrifying words in the English language.” Probably translated into German it will ring just as true today.
a complete nonsense article.
Germany hasn’t had any blackouts, despite the longing of some here for them… once again in 2020 it increased renewables and reduced fossil fuel power with no blackouts.
these are emergency, least probable case scenarios. All states have them.
There is an internationally accepted measure called System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) and is the average outage duration for each customer served. Germany’s is SAIDI is 12, i.e. there have been blackouts.
I will note that by that metric. Germany has the second best SAIDI in Europe far exceeding France’s 52. They have a way to go before but its going to hit like a brick when it does
Having lived in rural France I can vouch for the fact that power cuts are a feature of La France profonde but the cause is normally weather related. The usual triggers are thunderstorms causing momentary dropouts to breaks of a few hours. Strong winds with similar effects to lightening, then major storms and snowfalls causing outages which could last days in some cases.
When travelling in rural France it’s easy to see why these things happen and why traditional telecoms over copper are also not the most reliable in the world.
So while the nuclear power stations are keeping the lights on in the UK and Germany the French infrastructure is letting its own citizens down
Again self-titling your dumb comments, hey griff.
Obviously didn’t even bother reading the report.
Why are you SO DUMB !!
.
And cowardly worms like you will grovel and say “thank you”
Are you really willing to say to your government.. “please take away my right to electricity” !
“Germany hasn’t had any blackouts, despite the longing of some here for them…”
You just can’t keep making these accusations that people here are some kind of “fringe anti whatever mob”. The truth is is much more rational than that, and quite simply people have done the maths…… and it don’t add up.
Here from a Bloomberg article May 10th 2019:
Europe’s Biggest Economy Is Worrying About Blackouts
“I am really insecure on the security of supply,” Tobias Federico, managing director of consultant Energy Brainpool, which has advised the German government and RWE AG, said at a Montel conference in Dusseldorf. “Specially for 2022 it is an issue. I am concerned about the winter of that year. It takes five years to build a power plant and we don’t have that time anymore.”
While some of the capacity gap can be filled by new renewable energy and natural gas plants, it will leave Germany reliant on imports from neighbours. But some of these other markets are going through their own energy revolutions and are also cutting coal capacity. And Germany has not being able to attract investments for new gas-fired power plants because of the very low or even negative margins.
“There is no rational reason for a company to build a gas plant right now, because it won’t get returns,” said Federico.
Investments in clean energy in Germany dropped by 31% to $10.6 billion in 2018 from a year earlier, according to Bloomberg NEF.
“We see security of supply in 2023 endangered in Germany with the recommendations of coal commission,” said Konstantin Lenz, a business developer at Wattsight, a Norwegian energy consultant. “And politicians are not really aware of that challenge. There is no time to install batteries or new gas power plants.”
Germany’s Bundesnetzagentur, the grid regulator, and the Economy and Energy Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.
…….surprise, surprise.
Other articles: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/09/05/renewables-threaten-german-economy-energy-supply-mckinsey-warns-in-new-report/?sh=1cec3cac8e48
(needs translator) : https://www.mckinsey.de/branchen/chemie-energie-rohstoffe/energiewende-index#
How little clue someone can have ? 😀
Our grid is edge sewn, as we saw Jan. 8th:
Just missed the blackout
Notice how the troll tries to change the subject.
The article said nothing about black outs. It talked about actual actions, that actual employees of the German government are doing in order to prevent future blackouts from occurring.
Simples. You go out and buy yourself a diesel generator……….as most large businesses and hospitals on interruptible contracts have done in the UK
That will work until they are outlawed – as they or their fuel will be.
Diesel powered emergency generators will not be outlawed. Too much money is to be made in manufacturing and servicing them, and even in supplying the diesel for them as a priority fuel allocation for large businesses and hospitals when the supply of diesel fuel begins to tighten.
Diesel generator lobbyists will buy off the green politicians, big profits will be made on the sale and maintenance of these generators — and on the fuel which powers them — the green politicians will get their cut of the action, and everyone will be happy.
Even larger profits will be made on the carbon credits required by said diesel generators. It is the end user who will pay for the increased cost, not those who are brokering the deals and making money from the arbitrage.
Initially, most of the affected will be low income, but as their numbers and dissatisfaction with energy costs increase, then more income shifting (ie taxes) will have to occur. The lid must be be kept on the pot.
Inflation will be the double edge sword which does us all in.
Germany doesn’t need a new law. They need a new Chancellor who makes sensible decisions…
I suppose anything is better than having to admit you were wrong, and need to correct it by building more of those dreaded fossil-fuel-powered generating stations!
Just how many times have I commented on this all across the net and media? Now perhaps they will believe me! Never was a phrophet without honour except in his own country (or the EU!)
If renewable energy sources, wind and solar, were seen only as a way of providing extra energy to the grid, perhaps this would be of some use. The government could subsidize this type of energy just enough to attract investment, not to make it the most profitable means of producing energy at the expense of taxes paid by the people. But it seems that this is a very complicated equation, which brings together technical, economic and socio-environmental variables. I don’t know if any country is capable of solving this equation today.
The electric car , government states buy electric cars better for envoirment, no fossil fuel to be used and yet the restrictive charging rules have put a dent in the now owners of said cars.So much for global warming preventive measure when people cannot charge their cars to go to work etc as for the home and business: for those that did not think it takes fossil fuel to make all things work including charging those electric cars.
Ah, but it’s the Energiewende….
Isn’t this the kind of insanity that ushered in our last great German leader in the 1930s?
Sadly, IMO, the only way this insanity ends is for a complete collapse of the grid that affects not only Germany, but the entire EU in such a way that it is undeniable what caused it. That is, the claims by the green mob that it is not due to unreliables, but due to the failure of fossil fuels (as some tried to do re: CA blackouts).
Stuck on stupid.
It’s alright – they’ve got rock-solid Putin fossil fuel contracts – this will all work out in the end
I guess they can’t use cheat software and deception on this one. They did it to themselves.
Germany didn’t just use high cost, early adopter solar panels, they used most of them in even higher cost rooftop applications. Such moves like that served to waste their wealth and other advantages from an earlier time before China moved to eclipse them.
Where I live in the US, a number of coal plants are being shut down as they reach the end of their useful lives with no realistic plan to replace the lost capacity.
So I’m expecting to see an increasing number of power interruptions beginning to occur in our area starting in about 2025 and then getting worse throughout the remainder of the decade.
I will be buying a 15,000 watt emergency generator for my house. So the question I’m now asking is whether it should be powered by diesel or by liquid propane.
I haven’t decided yet on whether it should be diesel or propane, but I do want to get one ordered and installed before the big rush for these generators begins.
Simple answer to your question: buy one of each, or alternatively a dual-fuel unit.
Thanks. Those are options I hadn’t thought of. The other question I’m thinking about is where near the house the generator should be sited since it must be protected from theft. Another question is whether 15,000 watts is enough given that I may have to be sheltering some of my neighbors for a time if I have power and they don’t.
Just a quick calculation. 15000w/120v = 125 amps. See those wires coming into your house, plan on something like those. Will that replace your regular feed? Probably not. No air, dryer, stove @ur momisugly 220v. Even if the gen is 220v, you still won’t much more capacity but you could run a 220v device one at a time.
220v @ur momisugly 25 amps = 5500 watts with 9500 watts left over for 120v, so 9500/120 = 80 amps.
Remember, that would be at full blast running. Probably not a good idea for long periods of time.
I took a look at Generac’s online size calculator this afternoon. I will need 22,000 watts if I want to stay warm in winter using my heat pump. Assuming a limited supply of propane is available, every watt we consume during an outage would have to be evaluated for its worth relative to the severity of the situation.
flip the breaker n the circuits you don’t need. Or don’t hook them up to the transfer switch at all.
The last multi-day winter outage we had we just ran the furnace. Used a white gas camping stove to cook on. Get up when it is daylight and go to bed when it is dark. Worked for us.
Of course no thought is given to doing something rational and sensible like more fossil fuel power plants.
Controllable customers, that is a new one. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around where the supplier meets the demand of the customer. Socialism.
I remember when I first read Atlas Shrugged, decades ago, I enjoyed the book very much but thought some of the storylines, such as the government’s involvement in the power grid, were a little too far-fetched to be plausible. Sadly, some of the storylines I thought were unrealistic have actually come to pass. Unfortunately, I don’t think we have a John Galt or even a Dagny Taggart.
Read “1984” and “Animal Farm” by Orwell and “Farenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury. Frightening what may happen to keep politicians and crony capitalists in power.
The “Titans of Industry” who were iconized by Galt, Taggart, and Rearden, don’t exist. Today’s “leaders” are all wrapped up in government graft.
Even some of the bills being put forward are strikingly similar in name and intent.
They can call it “The Fair Use of Electricity Act”.
Marxists are only happy when everybody but their elites are groveling at the same level.
This is the final solution. Force everyone into EV’s, then make electricity prices so high and scarce you can’t charge it. Then you are forced to move into a cramped apartment and take public transport. All part of the plan
You only have two choices:
1) Learn to live with blackouts by installing your own power generation or storage infrastructure.
2) Throw the government quacks out of office and re-establish sensible polices.
Pick one. The U.S. just chose option 1.