Reposted from the NoTricksZone
By P Gosselin on 23. June 2021
As wildly fluctuating, weather-dependent green energies come increasingly online, German grid operators and the German Federal Audit Office are warning the German government of power blackouts. But the government is ignoring the warnings and continues to insist everything is fine.
Grid operator 50Hertz, for example, warns of energy shortages as Germany continues to shut down its nuclear and coal power plants, which currently serve to provide crucial baseload power for the grid.
Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) refuses to heed the warnings and demands of the Federal Audit Office and the country’s grid operators, insisting: “All our studies show that, on the whole, we have sufficient power for Germany.”
“Momentous misjudgement”
But experts are calling BMWi’s stance “a technical and momentous misjudgement when it comes to power supply security, as will become apparent over the next few years,” reports the online Ruhrkultour here.
The President of the Austrian Society for Crisis Prevention, Herbert Saurugg, an expert for blackout and crisis prevention, says “the consequences of a blackout are being underestimated”.
“In Austria alone, this would mean damages of more than 1 billion euros in the first 24 hours. However, the danger of a sudden, supra-regional and prolonged power, infrastructure and supply failure affecting large parts of Europe is real. Help from outside is not to be expected.” reports the online Ruhrkultour here.
Power shortage warnings are mounting, “no Plan B”
The risk of blackouts are rising due to the unstable supply of growing wind and solar energy. The online Avantour reports:
Warnings of a massive power shortage are mounting. Three nuclear power plants are to be shut down at the end of the year, as are coal-fired power plants. Wind turbines and photovoltaic systems only supply electricity when the wind blows and the sun shines. There is no plan B to which energy policy can fall back.”
Germany will lose 50 GW of stable power
Experts have calculated that the phase-out of nuclear energy and coal-fired power generation means Germany will lose more than 50 gigawatts (GW) of stable power production capacity. Supply stability must be given higher priority, experts say.
Warnings of “considerable consequences”
Citing business daily Handelsblatt, “the energy industry warns of considerable consequences if the issue of secured capacity is not taken seriously.”
For power grid expert Herbert Saurugg, “the danger of a blackout is getting closer and closer if the government does not act,” reports Avantour .
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Neither clean nor green, Green renewable blackouts… one step forward, two steps backward.
maybe ‘two steps backward’ into the abyss…
Sounds like Uberdenialist Supreme Griff and Denialist Sub-Komander Loydo are writing the German Government Propaganda these days
I could almost swear that Loydo is actually Al Gore.
Has anyone ever seen the two of them in the same room at the same time?
At least we know Griff isn’t John Kerry posting under a pseudonym. Griff comes off as w-a-a-a-y more intelligent.
(Ok, OK… 😜)
I don’t know that I’d say griff comes off as more intelligent than Lurch, but he’s definitely more animated. Course that’s not saying much, a block of wood is more animated than Kerry.
What happens when the statists discover “oxygen pollution?”
That word is from the Greek oxy ,”cutting acid” and genos “creating.”
if the oxygen is in too pure a form, it causes myopia, detachment of the retina, even blindness, MOST especially in newborns.
We must ban this deadly threat at once!
Can be extremely dangerous when combined with hydrogen too!
It depends upon the ratio, but yeah…
Dihydrogen monoxide can be a potent greenhouse gas or deadly if ingested or inhaled in quantities above a certain level.
Somebody oughta doo sumpthin’!
Quit screwin’ around with CO2. We’re running a bit short of it right now and could use a little more.
When statists discover Oxygen Pollution their Moronics will Oxidize
Here’s a website devoted to the dangers of DHMO. It is claimed that a town council in California once discovered this website and tried to ban this dangerous substance.
Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide! (lockhaven.edu)
https://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/dhmo.htm
Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide!The Invisible Killer
Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.
Dihydrogen monoxide:
Contamination Is Reaching Epidemic Proportions!
Quantities of dihydrogen monoxide have been found in almost every stream, lake, and reservoir in America today. But the pollution is global, and the contaminant has even been found in Antarctic ice. DHMO has caused millions of dollars of property damage in the midwest, and recently California.
[BIG SNIP]
Here are three more web pages detailing the dangers of DHMO:
https://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
https://www.dhmo.org/truth/Dihydrogen-Monoxide.html
http://bandhmo.org/
AND (historical background):
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/501907/14-year-old-who-convinced-people-ban-dihydrogen-monoxide
In the spring of 1997, a 14-year-old’s school science fair project made a convincing argument to ban a dangerous chemical compound: dihydrogen monoxide, known as DHMO. Nathan Zohner, a junior high school student in Idaho, gave 50 of his fellow students a report called “Dihydrogen Monoxide: The Unrecognized Killer,” which accurately laid out the dangers of DHMO, convincing the majority [86%] of students to call for its ban. The experiment caused enough of a splash that it was picked up by The Washington Post.
SNIP
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1997/10/21/dihydrogen-monoxide-unrecognized-killer/ee85631a-c426-42c4-bda7-ed63db993106/
SNIP
Last spring, Nathan Zohner, an enterprising 14-year-old student at Eagle Rock Junior High School in Idaho Falls, Idaho, conducted his science fair project on just this theme. Nathan distributed a tongue-in-cheek report that had been kicking around the Internet, “Dihydrogen Monoxide: The Unrecognized Killer” (from which the quotes above are drawn), to 50 of his classmates.
These are smart kids who had studied chemistry; many of them, like Nathan, have parents who work at the nearby Idaho Nuclear Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. Nathan simply asked them to read the report (which is completely factual) and decide what, if anything to do about the chemical. They could even ask the teacher what DHMO was, but none did.
In the end, 43 students, or 86 percent of the sample, “voted to ban dihydrogen monoxide because it has caused too many deaths,” wrote Nathan in the conclusion to his project, adding that he “was appalled that my peers were so easily misled. . . .
SNIP
Says David Murray, research director of the non-profit Statistical Assessment Service in Washington, “The likelihood is high that I could replicate these results with a survey of members of Congress.”
Yes, and all that ground level ozone pollution would not form without oxygen.
In fact, without oxygen, there would be far fewer dangers.There would be no fires, so we municipalities could save money by shutting down fire stations, and firefighters would not have to risk their lives in this dangerous line of work. We would no longer have to worry about wildfires too.
I understand that John McAfee gave up oxygen. RIP Mr. McAfee.
Rust would also be nonexistent
I should have thought of that. No rust. No rust belt.
Its a slow acting poison that will kill us all but it usually takes 80 – 100 years to get you. Then the anoxic bacteria get the remains
Don’t forget dihydrogen oxide. It is a universal acid and dissolves most solids. Physical immersion for just a short length of time can lead to asphyxia or death. When solid it can make driving hazardous destructive of building roofs and in it’s vapor to liquid changeover can cause destructive winds and destroy private homes.
Call your senator now to have this dangerous chemical removed from availability.
And so it begins.
The greatest civilization yet, ending not with a bang, as predicted, but with a sad series of blackouts….
I don’t know were in the world you aree my friend, start preparing.
Well, where I am right now, electricity and phones are literally 100s of miles apart, with zero travelling possible in the wet season, so people are pretty self-reliant.
I used to wonder how Rome collapsed and we entered into a dark age. Now I know.
Just did a little research. The NE US PJM grid has an official dispatchable reserve capacity margin of 16.1%. Germany has no dispatchable reserve standard at all. That is long term fatal to grid reliability. And Germany is interconnected to Austria, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, and Belgium. They will take down most of Northern Europe.
Griff’s socialist utopia in the making
I think you forgot the connection to France
Yup
France will be busy supplying the UK or not as the case may be.
UK gets an average 7.5% of it’s annual electricity from Europe.
They used to be our best friends, but we don’t like them any more & left their club, so in a cold winter, who do you think they will they supply first, Germany or UK ???
Money talks. It will go to the highest bidder.
The EU is not the French power companies that sell nuclear power.
Britain has enough margin to supply itself. It even exports to France in winter.
Germany only has so much cross border interconnects. In extremis Germany would shut down with those links disconnected.
The ENTSO-E map is helpful.
https://www.entsoe.eu/data/map/
Germany also has connections with Poland, Czechia, Sweden and Switzerland. Of course, the European grid stretches all the way from Turkey to Portugal, but excludes the Nordpool countries and the Baltic states They nearly had a major blackout on January 8th, caused by loss of transmission capacity in Croatia, when tripped several other lines from Romania and Hungary, leading to a 6GW shortfall in Northern Europe and corresponding surplus in Southern Europe, which split into islanded grids. The over-frequency in the South tripped some blackouts, as well as knocking off power stations as far away as Turkey. The under-frequency in the North led to extensive contracted load shedding and some involuntary blackout until reserve generation could be brought online. It took some time to re-synchronise the grids once the faults had been cleared. More detail on that available from here:
https://www.entsoe.eu/news/2021/02/26/system-separation-in-the-continental-europe-synchronous-area-on-8-january-2021-interim-report/
The real problem is with planned closures, which may get accelerated by market conditions: coal plant is struggling to survive in the face of surging carbon prices, never mind Green pressure for closure. Timera explained the problems here:
https://timera-energy.com/carbon-closures-capacity-crunch-in-germany/
That’s up to 37GW of closures out of just under 60GW of dispatchable capacity remaining at the moment, with only 2.4 GW of new gas generation being built or planned. Some of that new generation is peaker OCGT plant, limited to only 1,500 hours a year of operation. That is going to bite hard. A look at German generation at the time of that near blackout shows up to 58 GW being met by dispatchable power at peak times
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2021&legendItems=11111111111111110&week=01
The cross border flows detailed in the next chart did add up to net exports, but the buffer represented by that would soon erode – the neighbours also need power, else there would be no exports
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2021&legendItems=111111111111&week=01&source=cbpf_saldo&stacking=stacked_absolute
Prices are going to soar when there’s a period of Dunkelflaute – little wind or sun in very cold weather. As Timera put it:
Small correction on German capacity: it will fall below 60GW of dispatchable by 2023 after the closure of nuclear and announced closures of lignite and coal.
The current picture is in this chart from Bundesnetzagentur
For those with no German: Kernenergie – nuclear; Braunkohle – lignite; Steinkohle – steam coal; Erdgas – Natural Gas; Mineralölprodukte – Diesel; Pumpspeicher – pumped storage; Sonstige – others; Laufwasser – run of river hydro; Speicherwasser – Hydro dam (no pumping)
If the worst happens one of these days, how long will it take them to get back up? For most people in industrial societies, electricity is just as necessary for survival as food, water, and air. 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food–3 months without power??? Or is that too optimistic?
Too optimistic IMO. Societal breakdown will occur long before 3 months. Look at the history of long-term outages over the past couple decades.
Coming soon to a grid near you. And maybe a good thing, frequent blackouts are the only way to educate the public so this insanity ends.
Unfortunately so. One of the many failures of our educational systems is not teaching people about the infrastructure that makes our historically easy lives possible. Too many will just consider this rhetoric until the lights go out and they won’t be able to tweet in complaint.
Now Now, haven’t you heard Xo Bai-Den’s words on Infrastructure? Power supplies and the wires that deliver them aren’t Infrastructure…
Infrastructure is People, people who enter the country illegally so they can vote Democrat
…and daycare and paid leave and giant decorative squids…
“Build Back Better”?
As James Burke reminded us in Connections 30+ years ago!
Don’t worry, they’ll blame it on fossil fuels somehow.
Like they did in Texas
I wish I had your faith.
California policy maker have learned nothing from the last two summers.
There was that (for now) cancellation of shutting down several gas fired plants in CA.
You can tell a kid time and time again not to play with fire, he never listens. But, give him 5 minutes of field experience and he learns it. In other words, the BMWi won’t learn until they suffer one or more Texas style grid outages. Then they will listen.
You sure about that? Doesn’t seem like anyone really learned from Texas.
One time can be “explained away” as an aberration, a rare event that won’t happen again; but it’s much more difficult to sell that story on the second or third occurrence. Some children just require more correction to learn than others.
I was just reading an article that described the new “crisis” facing the environment.
Unsurprisingly, it was about the “tsunami” of obsolete / redundant domestic solar panels that have bugger-all financially viable recyclable materials, and will be appearing globally in the next 2 decades.
Landfills will be at a premium.
Mostly filled with exploded greenie heads.
Link please?
This is what I call the “green” virus … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpVAHZCNTa8&t
Another excellent video, John!
Hopefully, some day soon, children all over the country will see them and leave the panic and fear mongering behind!
Thanks for the like Mr. Abolition. It’s tough getting videos out there for the “walking woke” crowd, so I try to keep them short. But after listening to AOC, hopefully they take note before 2031 … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9OeWswZGaQ&t
That there is excellent material, Mr. Shewchuck. You’ve got a talent for the presentation of complex materials.
People are of the opinion that these countries must learn the hard way. power outages and grid failure is what it takes to wake people up and fix things.
I do not think so.
Even a catastrophic grid collapse will teach them nothing. Even such a huge failure as a grid collapse will be blamed on….
wait for it……
will be blamed on …. Global Warming!!!!!
Rud Istvan notes that one grid in the US has a 16% reserve capacity. The engineers deem this prudent, and have forever. Yet everywhere we look, “renewables” do not really provide new power insofar as they simply chew into reserve capacity. Eventually, reserve capacity goes to 0%. It is impossible for grid operators not to know what happens next. Yet the “renewables” beat goes on.
I repeat the wise words from TonyL,
“Yet everywhere we look, “renewables” do not really provide new power insofar as they simply chew into reserve capacity. Eventually, reserve capacity goes to 0%.”
They might learn something. But it will be blamed on CC. No fault of our own. But will it take out all of the EU grid. Or will the grid protect itself by isolating Germany. The pipeline will help but not if they shut off the nuclear and coal, gas power stations. Given that this will happen again during this Grand Solar Minimum. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/07/winter-storm-threatens-germanys-powerfreezing-hell-threatens-if-already-rickety-grid-collapses/ . Maybe more than once. Since the EU haven’t had a real spring. Summer?. Look out for winter! 21-22.
The only reason I voted for Brexit was to get the UK out of the impending Euro-Energy doom that anyone with any sense could see. Now the buffoonish Johnson turns out to be a fully paid up XR loon along with his family and cronies, and is leading us over the precipice even faster. I weep for western civilization
Exactly my position too.
There is a second German grid problem to report, uncovered while researching the above comment. Much of the German wind power is in central and northern Germany. A lot of the coal, CCGT, and nuclear is in the south and east. For NIMBY reasons, the grid has been unable to add sufficient north/south transmission. So it is places like Schwaben (Mercedes) and Bavaria (BMW) that will be hit hardest as conventional generation is retired per Energiewende. The fairly new massive CCGT at Irsching in Bavaria was forced to close less than half thru its design life because it wasn’t economic when just run intermittently, and the German government refused to pay Irsching a fair price for just standing by as dispatchable reserve about 40% of the time.
Add in further lunacies. It is now policy that at least 15% of wind should be built in the South (precisely because of the lack of grid capacity you allude to). But it’s not exactly a windswept area, as you can verify here
https://globalwindatlas.info/
so capacity factors will be low and much less economic.
Also remember that neighbouring countries have installed phase shift transformers on the borders to block German use of their grids for transmitting power from North to South.
And of course, Germany are far from the only ones pursuing insanity. Although France has now deferred a lot of its previously planned nuclear closures, Belgium seems set on going ahead. It’s far from clear that their plans are workable:
https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/167347/belgium-council-of-ministers-approves-auction-of-two-to-three-gas-fired-power-plants-tinne-van-der-straeten-crm-bill-nuclear-phaseout/
already there are times when the NEMO link to the UK is used for imports of power to Belgium, relying on exports from France to supply it. And of course the UK is also a big poster boy, albeit its nuclear closures are being forced by maintenance issues at old plants. But the coal that just kept the lights on over last winter will be gone.
We will have bidding wars for avoiding blackouts. At say €4-6,000/MWh, it may not necessarily be best to win the bids. Importing at 10GW would generate a bill of over €1bn a day.
Good, and the sooner the better.
As they used to say when I was a kid: Let the bastards freeze in the dark.
demos-cracy die in darkness h/t WaPo
Deb
Time to fire up the rocket stove!
It’s becoming clear that the people in charge are aware of the outcomes but wish to proceed regardless. Perhaps this has always been their plan ?. If your end goal is to reset the system then creating anarchy in the streets by cutting the power is a good way to create mass civil unrest and after you have killed the liberal democracy then you can use the power grid as a means to control people. This might sound crazy, but so does removing the nuclear power, which is by far the best source of emissions free energy by a long way.
When the lights go out they can blame it on anything they want but people who have been accustomed to reliable energy their whole life know how it is achieved, how it was lost, and word smithing won’t convince them otherwise. It will be political suicide, and none too soon.
Sadly if the electorate where that knowledgeable, they wouldn’t have voted in the bums who are pushing this nonsense in the first place. In other words don’t be to sure that enough of them can connect the dots as to why they’re sitting, freezing in the dark.
One side effect of the fossil fuel alarmists succeeding with their doom and gloom is Oz seems to be warming to the nuclear power option-
‘Incredible growth’ in the number of Australians ‘supporting the use of nuclear power’ (msn.com)
I’ve certainly noticed the heat’s gone out of opposition to nukes and the alarmists have succeeded most in convincing the young that it’s time has come. Perhaps they’ve woken up it would be nigh on impossible to fill our garages with Teslas without it as the demise of coal power means no off peak at night to refuel. Quite the contrary in fact as that becomes peak power cost time as they’re being constantly reminded with crashing solar FIT rates and the push for TOU power metering. That’s where the average punter knows something’s not right with the unreliables.
yes. The nuclear industry is running a slow but steady drip feed of ‘nuclear is Green’ into the narrative.
With people like Gates and Bezos pouring money in, it should help.
Russia nor China need to hack or sabotage the western world’s power grids we are doing it ourself.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/with-its-power-grid-under-pressure-california-asks-residents-to-avoid-charging-electric-vehicles_3870841.html/?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily
“By incentivizing, primarily through rates, charging behaviors that capitalize on when renewable energy is being generated—we basically have a win for the grid, and we have a win for the drivers in terms of reduced rates. Rates are a climate strategy, and California plans on using rates to help drive the charging behaviors”
Reads: We’re gunna slug you heaps to charge your EV at home at night whereas when you’re parked up for work during the day with no charger it will be dirt cheap.
Cost benefit! What in Gaia’s name is that?
Benefits of $1.3b Vic solar scheme unknown (msn.com)
Not just blackouts but shutting down the modern world to save it. Will it be worth it, no.
Big fan of the crash test dummy engineering test system. One learns a lot. California, Hawaii, UK, and Germany have knowingly volunteered for same. Texas arguably did not, knowingly, but almost became one anyway in Feb 21. Let the renewable blackout grid crashes begin. Sooner is better than later.
No less a scientist than Albert Einstein mused that human stupidity might well be infinite! It’s too bad that GangGreen seems so intent on proving him correct!
The suicide death cult of Climastrology was never about saving the planet; it has always been about gaining power and control over Western economies! It’s too bad that the Marxists in charge of the cult never read or understood the fairy tale of the goose laying golden eggs! Most young children used to be able to tell how this would turn out; now most committed alarmists won’t see the problems until they get smacked in the head with them!
What could go wrong when the American president wants his country to go green and pump less oil at home and rather import oil from Russia?
These are people that either can’t do arithmetic or are owned by the Chinese.