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Energy Fiasco in Germany Looming, Thanks to ’Alternative Energy’ Madness
29 November 2012
The bad news relating to the wicked decision of Merkel’s government for an "Energy Revolution" embracing solar and wind power, is mounting by the day. Not only will electricity prices rise because of increased "Eco-Quota" per kWh in 2013 to finance "alternative" energy producers. It turns out that, because wind energy parks created in the North Sea cannot be connected to the electricity grid, the energy companies will have to compensate for the losses by adding an additional charge to the electricity bills of consumers — households and small firms alike. German N-TV news reports that the German Electrical Network Agency (BNA) has been forced to cut supply lines from wind generation in general, in order to avoid over-stressing the domestic electricity grid. Although the argument is used in favor of wind energy to show how much is lost because of missing grid lines, the situation is far more serious for Germany’s energy security. "The German Energy Grid Is Threatened with Collapse" Spiegel Online writes, referring to a report that the BNA and German Antitrust agency will release today. The critical moments of possible voltage breakdown are increasing, says the report, precisely "because of the increasing percentage of wind and solar energy, whose performance varies strongly." Meanwhile, German electricity grid companies are bracing themselves for a hard winter to come, with purchase of reserve capacity from abroad. TransnetBW, which provides for the southeast, announced that it will buy from mid-sized German power plants and will consider importing more from Switzerland and Italy. Rainer Joswig, head of TransnetBW, says that the situation in southern Germany will only become more dire with the ongoing permanent shutdowns of power plants. Furthermore, the release admits that manual interventions into the stability of the grid are the order of the day (to maintain the electricity grid at constant tension). The cabinet has just enacted a law to reward industries with high energy consumption for turning off their electricity for an hour or so at peak times of general electricity usage. Spiegel Online explains that this is being done to avoid future bottlenecks in energy supply. But these shutdowns have to happen on immediate notice, because nobody can predict bottlenecks more than a little beforehand. If the companies agree to participate in the program, they will be rewarded with EU1,667 per switched off megawatt. This means they would have to, if signaled, switch off capacity worth 1500MW within seconds and another 1500MW within 15 minutes. If the industries do it on time, they will be rewarded with an extra EU100-EU500 per MWh. The money to compensate the industries will come from the other consumers, e.g., households, small firms, etc. All this is due to the slow construction of the necessary electricity grid for decentralized, low-density energy production such as wind, solar and shit power. |