By P Gosselin
More is not always better, as the expansion of renewable energies proves
By Klimanachricten
Wind turbines are blighting Germany’s landscape and delivering very little.
Daniel Wetzel in Die Welt (paid article) on a phenomenon: more and more plants are being put into operation, but the yield does not increase to the same extent.
The core of the report:
- The installed wind power capacity in Germany rose significantly between 2020 and 2025 (by around 14 gigawatts).
- However, the actual amount of wind electricity generated over the same period barely increased and remains at around 106 terawatt-hours per year.
- Several years with weak wind conditions,
- More frequent curtailments of wind turbines due to grid bottlenecks,
- The expansion of wind farms at weaker inland locations,
- So-called shading or ‘wind theft’ effects between wind turbines.
- The article argues that doubling the installed capacity does not automatically lead to a doubling of the electricity yield, and questions whether further expansion is running into physical and systemic limits.
However, the article also demonstrates very well that the thesis that wind and solar complement each other perfectly is flawed. The sunny holiday weekends in the spring of 2026 clearly showed that wind power has to be curtailed because millions of solar systems are pushing their electricity into the grid unregulated. Wetzel calls it cannibalization. This will not be solved with more power lines either—too much is too much.
I would feel happier if someone had taken the trouble to spell-check “cannibalise”…
Neil,
it depends on which English dictionary you use, Z commonly replaces S in some versions.
It doesn’t look right to me though.
The 5th letter should be “i”.
It’s part of the division by common language: USA ize, UK ise. Unfortunately therefore ize isn’t a spelling mistake. One way of telling if AI wrote something is:- no spelling mistakes. That is, until AI learns to make spelling mistakes to hide the origin. We live in a compliccated world.
Look at your title
Cannabalizing
^
What is with the a 🙂
I before E except after C, then use A. LOL
I before E, except after C or when sounding like A as in neigbor or weigh.
Stupid rule. There are too many exceptions
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/words-containing-ei#w8
English, like most languages, was essentially written by committee.
Just like climate religion. The committee being the IPCC.
So far the grammar errors are usually enough to give them away.
Though they are getting better at that too.
What blows me away is the near real time spoken language interpretation.
(A translator deals with written material, interpreters deal with the spoken word. Or so my wife, who does both, tells me.)
Actually it’s a time division. -ize was standard English (Shakespeare used it) until mid-19th Century when -ise became popular due to French influence – verbs evolving from French, – iser endings. It was the same French influence which caused a shift from color to colour… French couleur. Similarly the shift away from honor, flavor.
But Oxford English Dictionary still prefers -ize.
Either -ise or-ize is correct in British English and both forms do appear, and some words must take -ize, eg capsize, seize, prize, size.
I typed: cannibalise and the MS 11 spell checker put a wavy red underscore under it. I then typed: cannibalize, and there was no red wavy underscore. MS 11 has large built-in dictionary. By double tapping the touch pad of my laptop, a box with correct spelling appears. Clicking on the correct spelling, the spell checker replaces the misspelled word with the correct word. You can add new words to the dictionary.
I also have a Franklin Spelling Ace with Thesaurus. You enter the word via the keypad which then appears in the display. You the press: Enter If the word is incorrect, the correct spelling is then displayed. The Spell checker will also list synonyms and antonyms.
Cool Grandpa,
What’s this social media thing the kids keep talking about?
Unfortunately most new PCs and Pads contain Spellchecker with Autocorrect/Autoreplace and, sometimes what you type gets replaced with something fairly ridiculous … especially if your misspelling is from transposing letters or “Fat Fingers” hitting a D instead of an F.
… and sometimes autocorrect works, and your brain ‘learns’ to spell incorrectly
In MN they says Lear not learn. They even have centers for Learing
I always turn autocorrect off, it’s wrong to often.
Worse is when it tries to guess the word you are typing before you have finished it.
On my cell phone when it “corrects” something incorrectly, I refer to it as [explicative] autouncorrect.”
I don’t mind autosuggest, it saves time when entering words with apostrophes. I type the word without the apostrophe and then select the correct autosuggest.
Saves having to switch to the symbols screen for the apostrophe and then back again to continue.
I have a Websters big red book of words.
Yes, I am a cantankerous curmudgeon, so let’s just move on.
Try switching out the American English dictionary for a British one and see what you get.
Typos R US.
One must learn to read through bad spelling.
Stay away from media reports, especially social media, if this phenomenon cause you mental health issues.
I would feel happier if self-important people wouldn’t bold every comment they make.
Yes, spacing of wind turbines is crucial. Here is a link to a review of energy policies that includes a photo of shaddowing [or wake effects] of wind turbines. It also discusses how the turbines affect temperature & humidity locally.
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/18/4839 [2020]
As a teenager, I have done a number of stupid things – one of which was “drafting” behind 18-wheel trucks on the highway [at about 70mph]. The effect is real; it saved gas, but really pissed-off the truck drivers. Sorry! Lol
I used to drive a truck and pissed off is right, not because of the idiot slamming into you, but screwing up an entire day’s working schedule.
Time is money. You arrive late with your load the client is pissed.
If too much wind on a sunny day all hell breaks loose during midday hours, unless both are curtailed.
The owners still get paid for what they COULD have produced. How about that for insider politics?
Willpost, I, perhaps like you, do not own a windmill or solar panel so I do not generate any electricity. Why is it that I do not get paid for not generating electricity like the wind/solar operators do? I could stick a few children’s plastic windmills in my lawn if that would help.
I don’t move much so I don’t generate AC or DC but since I’m Static it can be shocking.
Recently, ISO-NE stated flexible CCGTs are needed to stabilize the grid. It means CCGTs can easily be ramped up and down as needed, 24/7/365.
Where was ISO-NE 25 years ago. Sticking its nose up dark places to curry favor?
It must have known, a new gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to bring plentiful, domestic, clean, low-cost natural gas to New England would be required to maintain grid sanity.
But now the pipe is 25 years overdue, due to woke, liberal arts major enviros clutching their pearls about protecting the highly subsidized, awful spread of wind and solar all over New England. That is turning Maine into an energy colony to be exploited by the lucrative, no-risk tax shelters of the out-of-state/foreign elites.
That is the reason flexible CCGT plants are needed to counteract the ups and downs of wind and solar, especially during no wind no solar conditions, called DUNKELFLAUTE In Germany, which has the highest household rates in Europe.
CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas that has a negligible impact on temperatures
CO2 is a highly necessary gas to make green leaves on plants.
Reducing CO2 ppm is a death sentence for plants. We need more CO2 ppm to make things grow during our short growing season.
Here is Clausen talking:
According to John Clauser, 2022 Nobel Physics Price recipient,
“Atmospheric CO2 and methane have negligible effect on the climate. The policies government have been implementing are totally unnecessary and should be eliminated. The dominant process is “the cloud-sunlight-reflexivity thermostat” mechanism. Clouds are bright white, reflect 90% of the sunlight back into space, are the most crucial aspect of the climate system. Oceans are 70% of the Earth surface. The Pacific Ocean alone is 50%. The average cloud cover for the Earth is 67%; about 50% over land and 75% over oceans.”
Mandate and subsidy farms all of them.
Without idiots in government putting the government’s Godzilla-sized foot on the scale, not one would ever have been built.
No utility in its right mind would ever have contracted to take the unpredictable, unreliable, erratic, inconsistent (and therefore, worse-than-useless) power they occasionally generate if not for stupid policies forcing them to.
Nothing new under the sun, one of the first “windfarms” a few clicks from where I lived in Germany ended up with a court order that the last windmill installed (by a competitor of course) had to be turned off if the wind blew from a certain direction. “Winddiebstahl” windtheft haha, that was 20 years ago.
Neil, spelling errors may be occur 😉
The current surge in wind activity in Germany—and likely in the United States—is best understood as a pipeline-clearing phase ahead of policy deadlines, rather than evidence of improving underlying project economics.
The German energiewende transition to wind dream has turned into a nightmare of diminishing returns, just As Lion Hirth, German physicist, in 2013 told them would happen.
Both Germany and the U.S. are on a path to end the wind plague, but the momentum may carry over into 2028, but not 2029.
Oh, gee. I wrote articles in 2000 predicting a cost wall at about 30% annual wind/solar on the grid
That seems about right. Both El Hierro and King Island have wind/solar/storage systems installed which by design are supposed to supply all of their electricity but neither can get more than about 1/2 from them. The balance is largely diesel. And the cost is very very high.
I was late to the game, but I’ve been reading you for the past 15 years, including your battery costing reports that I frequently quote. Excellent.
Thank you. At least it was not in vain.
The Law of Diminishing Returns. Like three phases instead of more – at some point the gains are not worth the effort.
Like pissing upwind?
Or tugging on Superman’s cape? 🙂
Or pulling the mask of that old Lone Ranger.
Jim Croce, one of the best.
Yeah. Some of the good ones are gone. Jim Croce, John Prine, Townes Van Zandt. Croce’s “Operator” struck a cord with me as I was supervising a bunch of manual switchboards and mechanized operator stations at Southwestern Bell at the time.
That’s why you invest in the grid and batteries. It’s not rocket science.
More in-depth analysis of the article:
https://scilogs-spektrum-de.translate.goog/relativ-einfach/das-windenergieraetsel-der-welt/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
In the USA in 2023, wind and solar power development practically stopped and a number of large completed projects were standing idle because they cannot connect to the grid.
Unsurprisingly this problem has arisen because no one wants to spend vast amounts of money on distribution lines which are expensive and lightly loaded – most of the time.
The wind and solar investors (in the idle plants) are crying huge crocodile tears – however if it was mandated that they should have provided their own interconnection to the grid, it is unlikely they would have gone for the investment in the first place. They of course want the government to step in and to coerce the utilities (by legislation or subsidy / tax credits) which cost will of course be borne by Joe Citizen. The same problem is arising – some wind farm investors have been told they can only get connected in 2036 – Wahh Boo Hoo!
I have seen this presented by the alarmists thus :- “all that free power is tied up for the outrageous reason that they are waiting for permits to connect to the grid”
Notice the economy of truth once again – trying to make it sound like a beuraucratic problem. Imagine your neighbour buys a new electric car but has neither driveway, charging nor garaging facilities and demands that you share yours with him ? Also you must allow him to plug in his charger which will overload your system but he thinks you should pay for “your” upgrade. Then when you turn him down flat he tries to get legislation enacted to force you to do so – this is the reality of the problem facing wind and solar developers – they do not wish to have to pay for the necessary support infrastructure. While all the time lying that they are “cheaper” – it’s remarkable how truly expensive this free energy has become.
If they would have to pay for grid work their spreadsheets, that show them making a profit, would not work.
They have been so spoiled in the past, it is life thieves having dug their way to the vault and don’t want the vault moved.
I believe any expenses charged against utilities are ultimately paid by Rate Payers. JQP customer at large.
Batteries cannot economically protect the grid for long. Then you still have all the same problems but you haven’t got quite as much money as you had before. The obvious solution is coal hydro and nuclear for baseload, gas for fast reaction, minimal wind and solar on the grid with most of it used off-grid (pumping water uphill, charging EVs and batteries, and uses that can work with variable supply). Cheap, effective. It’s not rocket science.
In dysfunctional California the woke enviros with liberal arts degrees, such as Newscum, BELIEVED batteries were the answer to solar duck curves. A few $400 million projects caught fire.
California has near the highest electric rates in the US and industry and tax paying people are leaving in droves, while the millions of illegal tax money sucking folks are coddled.
If the money was printed and spend on sufficient battery capacity, there would be no land left for the hoouses.
Nor money to BUILD the houses. Or the replacements for all those batteries.
I’d say wind and solar off-grid only. Nothing but parasites.
The more you “invest”, the more you invest (unwisely). The article is about the laws of diminishing returns from those investments, for those with enough brain cells to read and understand it.
You DO NOT NEED BATTERIES if you have reliable , dispatchable electricity supply.
In fact they are an extremely expensive option.
In the East Coast NEM in Australia, batteries set the maximum cost whenever they are called on as wind and solar FAIL to provide.
That is the last thing you want to do to make a bad situation worse worse.
The last thing you want to do is make a bad situation worse?
That is the plan!
Oh, no. They are not that smart.
They feel good acting in good faith, so they don’t need to know the facts, because then they would be confused.
Ignorance is Bliss
Who is the ‘you’ that will invest in grid and batteries?
Like most leftists, he’s planning on spending your money.
For your own good of course.
Much cheaper to run fossil fuel generators than build batteries … just saying 🙂
Especially since those batteries still won’t do the job (they provide minutes or hours when days or weeks are needed), and will probably need about three replacements + as many additional replacements due to fires while that one fossil fuel plant keeps on going.
People who say this have absolutely no comprehension of the sheer scales involved in storing enough energy to supply the grid for more than a second or two.
People who say this have absolutely no comprehension
of the sheer scales involved in storing enough energy to supply the grid for more than a second or two.Fixed it for you.
🤣😅😆😄
The further left politically or the more “climate policy enthusiastic” or the dumber (but then I repeat myself) one is, the greater the lack of comprehension of which you speak.
Batteries cannot store energy that is not generated.
Roundtrip, they loose about 20% of electricity fed to them, from high voltage line to high voltage line. That really sucks, but few talk about it
That sure makes the 60% lost as heat in diesel/electricity conversion look so much better – goofy smiley gif not attached.
Are you suggesting that an 80% (60%+20%) loss is preferable to a 60% loss?
PS – Quick honesty test for you, bob – how much non-hydro renewable energy would there be on the grid absent regulatory (political) mandates?
“Are you suggesting that an 80% (60%+20%) loss is preferable to a 60% loss?”
No. I’m assuming that you are isolating one component of renewable source conversion loss, without the cradle to grave assessment of power and costs required. After all, aren’t the (non nuc) choices between fossil fuels, all with great heat loss, and renewables, with some battery conversion loss? Yes, the proper comparison is the comprehensive, cradle to grave (asset retirement costs included) discounted LCOE comparison, resulting in an incremental ROR one way or the other. But even fencing out ACC costs, the WUWT crowd would rather not accept those.
The apparent “Heat Loss” is more than covered by the overall energy density and MW/MW space required plus lifespan and associated replacement costs.
You’ll never get 2,200MW per hour from Wind or Solar on 12 acres of land. (You won’t even get it on 100 acres of land.)
You’ll never get 24 hours of generation from Solar in a 24 hour period.
You’ll also never get 24/7/52 from any wind turbine regardless of (X)GW of capacity availability.
And you’ll never have Wind Turbines or Solar Panels that last 40-60-80 years without multiple replacements
Here is part of the problem. Renewables have a depreciation schedule of around 5 years. Coal and Gas deprecation schedule is around 50 years. With a 5 year depreciation schedule rates charged to users are higher and stay that way as new investment at the end of 5 years starts the clock ticking again. With a 50 year depreciation schedule consumer rates are smaller and remain that way for a long time.
This is only one of the reasons that renewables are increasing consumer rates every where. The system was designed for long term stability and minimal consumer rates. Bye, bye to that.
“After all, aren’t the (non nuc) choices between fossil fuels, all with great heat loss, and renewables, with some battery conversion loss?”
NO. Because “renewables” REQUIRE FOSSIL FUEL BACKUP. You can’t substitute worse-than-useless wind and solar for fossil fuels. Nor could the world afford (or find all the minerals to waste on) all the batteries you’d need to provide unreliable backup to unreliable generation for a minuscule period of time.
Oh, but you don’t get it
60% efficient CCGTS PRODUCE ELECTRICITY, whereas the batteries produce NOTHING.
Yep, Batteries are nothing but a large heavy fuel tank.
Which, in the case of EVs … at 1/4 the vehicle weight, require 1/4 of the energy used devoted just to move that battery from place to place with the car.
Apples and oranges.
Apples and tennis balls, more like.
Apples and screw balls?
Change electricity to energy and you are spot on.
Mostly it is voltage loss.
A transformer will boost the voltage in exchange for diminished output current, of course, so you are not incorrect.
In addition, aside from transmission line losses, some of the energy used to charge and delivered during discharge is lost due to chemistry thermal effects.
Yes! A transformer is not a power generator. You cannot get something for nothing. You can exchange voltage for reduced current, or vice versa, more current for less voltage. You can’t get more of both t the same time. The other issue is the loss entailed by doing either.
Transformers merely convert one voltage to another, at a 1% loss.
They have zero relation to batteries.
That wasn’t the point. Losses in transmission lines are voltage decrease, not current.
You also have to include the self-discharge if you try to keep those batteries full all of the time.
One might call that “An Inconvenient Truth.”
No. That is why you invest in rotating generators that stabilize frequency and voltage. The “grid” by itself and batteries can do neither.
Wind and solar provide no synchronous inertia and no positive reactive power to the grid, whereas all standard power plants are required, by FERC, to provide positive reactive power to the grid to make the AC grid work.
Wind and solar are just free-loading, as Spain found out a few years ago, but the Socialist, Spain wackos were pretending all was OK.
Who is this “you” that throws good money after bad (aka invest in grid and batteries)?
Answer: Tax payers and consumers (rate payers).
You constantly complain about oligarchs and the elite rich capitalists ripping people off, then contradict your socialist position by wanting to give oligarchs and the elite rich capitalists more money.
Actually, it is akin to rocket science. I can attest given my profession.
You make it obvious that you do not have an electrical engineering degree. It IS rocket science. Both the electric grid and rockets are complicated systems with a multitude of interacting parts and systems.
Your blind assertions are less than intelligent, much less.
You must think there are people assigned to operate big knife switches at a moments notice to change connections between solar, wind, and battery supplies. Hate to tell you but the system is more complex than that.
I read the article you referenced. It did not address the simple fact that as capacity is added, the result is less than expected at the margin. You obviously have no experience in business. If I spend $1000 and get a return of $100, then spend another $1000 but only get $50 more in return, my marginal increase isn’t worth the money. Your article reference tries to dance around that issue and attempts to show otherwise. Simple fail all around.
It’s not any kind of science. It is obsession and delusion.
Recently the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) issued a report calling for the abandoning of LCOE and its replacement by the Full System Cost of Electricity (FSCOE)
“Traditional cost measures, such as LCOE, widely used around the world to assess investment opportunities in different energy options, provide a baseline for technology comparison but overlook critical system wide elements such as grid upgrade, balancing costs for renewables, flexibility needs, eg storage, demand response, essential reliability services ( reactive power, frequency response) back up capacity and externalities like unserved energy costs and environmental and climate impacts. This leads to suboptimal investments, increased planning risk and over reliance on intermittent sources without adequate firm capacity”
https://unece.org/climate-change/press/unece-and-partners-launch-initiative-develop-full-system-cost-approach-guide
Read it and learn
The FCOE, accounting for a to z costs during lifetime, has to be on a year by year basis for whatever years the system will last.
For each year you determine the net gain or loss.
Then you move all these values to the present at the rate the Owner needs to make money to get his money back.
Then you subtract that from the turnkey capital cost to obtain zero.
If investments are required during the life of the project, you need a separate spreadsheet for each investment
It is no different than amortizing a bank loan, except a lot more complex
Big spreadsheets, big fun!
LCOEs are pure, sophomoric BS.
No Owner would make investments based on LCOEs
“provide a baseline for technology comparison”
I seem to recall reading here that the creators of the “LCOE” metric said specifically that LCOE CANNOT be used to compare dispatchable sources and worse-than-useless intermittent sources.
Which of course was ignored and the propaganda ensued telling all how “cheap” it is to use WHAT DOESN’T WORK.
And how many trillions of dollars do you invest in these mythical batteries?
That will self-destruct like a “Mission: Impossible” message and require replacements on VERY short time scales!
for some strange reason, the Met Bureaus of the World never bothered to issue wind drought warnings, and the enthusiasts who legislated and subsidized wind power never bothered to check the reliability of the supply it has taken them a long time to wake up that you don’t get any wind or solar power during nocturnal wind droughts.
https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/wind-and-solar-aint-capacity
Why did nobody take any notice of the Dunkelflautes observed for 60 years on the North Sea oil and gas rigs? Britain and Germany bet the farm on wind, especially offshore wind!
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/a-curious-tale-of-the-north-sea-winds/
For some strange reason?
We know the reason and “it is as clear as a button hook in the well water” (compliments of The Music Man).
It is not about science or engineering.
It is about transforming the world into a command economy and eliminating all liberties and freedoms of the population (except the oligarchs and rich elite capitalists).
Rich elite socialists.
Having money does not make one a capitalist.
I was commenting on his past used of rich elite capitalists. The people building these obscenities are not socialists per se, merely opportunist money grabbers.
An astute comment that we should embrace is found in the readers’ comments on the second link.
“Wind turbines do NOT produce any energy at all, FULL STOP.”
“Stand one in a giant hanger and see what happens, or doesn’t.”
“So called ‘renewables’ should more accurately be called energy collectors or converters. They collect energy that already exists, in the form of wind or sunlight, and convert what little there is into electricity.”
There can be a counterpoint that all electricity generators are the same. Some convert EM energy to electricity. Some convert kinetic energy to electricity. Some convert potential chemical energy to electricity.
None of them “produce” energy. By the way, electricity (I) is not energy (J = VxIxt).
Words matter.
Language precision is especially critical in science and engineering communications.
O look at the picture and wonder why anyone is so stupid to buy one of those houses.
A blade breaking off and hitting a house will do much greater damage than a tree limb.
Looks like an AI image. See the diamond in the lower right corner? Likely created by Gemini.
And pity the people who retire to a life in the countryside and wake up one morning to find they are surrounded by solar farms with little countryside left.
Diminishing returns on something that can only be theorized but will never be accomplished if you want 24X7X365 electricity.
Oh, I thought this was going to be about human organ harvesting in China from green energy equipment worker prisons.
A perfect illustration of how “wind farms” and “solar farms” are “rent-seeking equipment,” not useful generators of electricity. They are nothing but parasites on an electric grid.
Please do NOT call them farms.
The owners of wind and solar systems are parasites on our well being and the systems are parasites on the grid, which detracts from our well being.
Well, I did put that in quotes.
The free market process: supply/demand/price mechanism.
Price is key – it signals the state of the market so that resources can be best allocated. High price = supply shortage = produce more. Low price = oversupply = supply less. Price also rations demand, dampening it or encouraging it so demand and supply balance.
In a crowded, oversupplied market, price drops to the point where only the most efficient suppliers can make a profit. This means the least efficient will withdraw from the market, new entrants will be discouraged and not enter. This is market self-regulation by price to prevent misallocation of resources, and proper match between supply and demand.
Take away price mechanism – or in this case distort it by Government intervention – and that essential market regulator is gone, misallocation of resources is rife, the market will eventually collapse.
Command and control economics always fails; the political class never learns.
Very nice summation. Politicians rarely understand economics.
Ironically, those who understand it least seem to be those holding educational credentials in economics (cough AOC cough), which is a travesty caused by the declining quality of our “education” system.
And that system has also been knee-capped by stupid government interventions (lack of school choice, government support of teachers’ unions whose objectives are more about politics than education, government loans pushing up tuitions, DEI-related dumbing down of standards).
The more government tries to “fix” things, the worse things get.