Last week a couple of North Sea storms swept across Europe, which is typical for this time of the year. And with them came strong winds, which are now reported to have had a detrimental impact on Germany’s power grid.
Daniel Wetzel at German flagship daily Die Welt here reports that though storms “Iwan” and “Heini” brought “a record high wind power production” of 32.6 GW to Germany, it “overloaded the power grid” and necessitated the import of expensive fossil fuel power from Austria to balance the grid and prevent its collapse.
During the stormy weather all 25,000 wind turbines in Germany produced at full capacity which overburdened the grid. Die Welt writes that national transmission line operators are forced to fall back on so-called winter reserves, or power plants in southern Germany and Austria which “are rented exclusively for stabilizing the power grid“.
“That’s expensive,” Die Welt’s Wetzel writes.
Wetzel explains that the reserve capacity of 200 und 2200 megawatts from the south are needed in order to create a sort of “counter pressure” against the wind power coming in from the north and thus keep the grid “balanced and stable.” Die Welt explains that a part of the grid stabilization process involved shutting down huge wind parks, for example Brandenburg grid operator E.dis and Tennet had to shut down hundreds of megawatts of wind capacity. This is expensive because the unproduced power still has to be paid for. This is required by Germany’s quirky renewable energy feed-in act.
In total the emergency measures needed to stabilize the power grid by Tennet alone will cost consumers 500 million euros this year, Die Welt reports.
The emergency grid intervention measures show how precarious Germany’s power grid has become. Die Welt quotes Tennet management Chairman Urban Keussen:
Both the intervention in the conventional and the renewable energy supply are emergency measures. They are not suited for securing the power supply over the long run.”
That means the grid is already on the brink. Keuseen says that these interventions are costly and that the costs will be passed on to consumers. Just in Tennet’s area alone the interventions will cost Germans 500 million euros in 2015.
According to Die Welt, Keussen describes a high voltage transmission system that is “tense” and says that there will be “more costs and risks of supply uncertainties” should the grid fail to be upgraded soon.
What a mess. We have a policy-made disaster just waiting to happen.
Germans may want to consider buying portable generators this winter.
It may interest some what the area covered by Tennet is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TenneT
I am getting a little bit confused by the differing messages on this site. Just a few days ago, the problem with wind where a few days with little wind.
Our 40 GW of capacity only generating 5 GW of output was declared a total disaster.
https://notrickszone.com/2015/11/04/siesta-energy-germanys-40-gigawatts-of-installed-wind-capacity-habitually-fails-to-report-to-work/
Now those 40 GW put out 30 GW rather constantly over 10 days, and it is a disaster again.
http://www.agora-energiewende.de/de/themen/-agothem-/Produkt/produkt/76/Agorameter/
Suedlink is coming. Storage is coming.
http://www.agora-energiewende.de/fileadmin/Projekte/2015/PV-Speicher-Rollout/Agora_Speicherdurchbruch_2015-10-27.pdf
And we still could shut down some coal plants (which are currently kept running because that is so cheap).
Oh and good news, gas plant Irsching was activated (you folks were really worried about it never seeing use).
Oh and more good news, we had a new wind record at 32.6 GW is 10% above the old 29 GW from 2014. And wind power is above 10% (12-13%) for the first time this year (was 9.7% last year).
http://www.taz.de/!5254358/
Oh and more good news, if the guys running the grid name 500 million as a cost, safely divide by 10, they are greedy and never take responsibility for any problem caused by them sleeping over the trend.
You never learn will ya? The problem with wind power is that most of the time there’s NOTHING and then for a brief moment there’s MUCH too much.
If you actually KNEW anything about wind power you would know that turbine output rises with the THIRD POWER of windspeed, creating hyperboloid spikes (the rapid rise often followed immediately by a total cutoff as the wind speed exceeds the consturctional limit and the turbine goes into protection mode).
So – you don’t even KNOW what a wind turbine is. Yet you advertise the things.
The industry should really try to find better spokespersons. I would fire you if I were them.
Dirk, the British renewable industry has figured out what to do when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine
http://www.thegwpf.com/green-madness-renewable-energy-bosses-cash-in-on-diesel/
More on this
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/go-green-get-diesel/
The real problem with wind power though is not their unavoidably malevolent production profile but that the business model is based on state-enforced theft (the profit lies not in the produced electricity’s value but in the subsidies – the wind turbine is just a FETISH that the enforced warmunist religion requires so that the thied can get his billions.)
You say: “I am getting a little bit confused by the differing messages on this site. Just a few days ago, the problem with wind where a few days with little wind.”
Is it so difficult to understand that, as electricity cannot be stored, too great a production is as great a problem as too few?
“Is it so difficult to understand that, as electricity cannot be stored, too great a production is as great a problem as too few?”
In the long run, this peaks will bring in storage. Just wait and see.
A malinvestment forces another malinvestment. The renewables scoundrels hope to get ALL of the taxpayers money.
How about we just run them out of town. That’s cheaper and far more resource-efficient.
“In the long run, this peaks will bring in storage. Just wait and see.”
Folks, this is the kind of approach to “technology development” that the scientifically and technically illiterate think that they can take.
Identify some goal as “desirable” – and then simply declare that it will just happen. Clap your hands and believe real hard, and hyperventilate about how wonderful it will all be when it happens. (If you have political power, simply mandate that it will happen – and by a certain date!) And that’s about it! No need to delve into messy details – those are irrelevant, and they’re the province of men lesser than the ignorant-but-self-anointed “visionaries.”
This “approach” explains pretty much every “initiative” involving “renewable” (sic) energy – be it the ridiculous EU “20-20-20” directive (that 20% of the cars on European roads will be electric by the year 2020 – hey, how’s THAT one working out?), or the latest gasbag’s (NY governor Andrew Cuomo) declaration that a certain percentage of the jurisdiction’s electricity (50%) will come from “renewable” (sic) sources (by 2030). There’s no need to explain how any of this will actually happen – it just will, because… because!
“Renewable” (sic) energy has only two constituencies – fantasists, and kleptocrats. That’s basically all that you need to know.
“the latest gasbag’s (NY governor Andrew Cuomo) declaration that a certain percentage of the jurisdiction’s electricity (50%) will come from “renewable” (sic) sources (by 2030).”
Basically most places on earth will have 50+% renewables in 2030. Do you really have doubts about that?
Germany was pretty close to that number for 10 days in november (09. till 20.)
http://www.agora-energiewende.de/de/themen/-agothem-/Produkt/produkt/76/Agorameter/
“Basically most places on earth will have 50+% renewables in 2030.”
And upon what do you base this unsupported assertion? That it’s a great fantasy and thus will magically come true? Or because the latest hack politician has said that it will happen? (And this one in particularly is royally scr**ing over the impoverished “southern tier” NY counties by banning fracking – where the remnant population that hasn’t been forced to leave looks enviously across the state line at Pennsylvania’s shale gas boom.)
A few days where everything lined up doesn’t cut it. An electric grid must be able to supply steady, stable electricity 24/7/365 – and do so at a commoditized cost. Period. No amount of technically-illiterate fantasizing can change that.
“In any technology, reality must take precedence over public relations – for nature cannot be fooled.” — Richard Feynman
Sod, sorry to add to your suffering but this is something you should read in order to understand what the rest of us know of the crony “green” energy:
http://www.thegwpf.com/green-madness-renewable-energy-bosses-cash-in-on-diesel/
Anything goes when you’re the state or connected to him – and can brainwash the next generation into obedient little Maoists praying to the wind turbines.
Ah! Diesel Farms! Great.
Mr. Gosselin,
Please aggregate your posts on Germany’s EnergyWendte strategy. You have compiled the best data on the pioneering effort made by Germany. Sadly, pioneers fail.
They were first and had no history to guide them. However, politicians will not redirect. There are options. A politician will never change. This class of people have zero humility. Thomas Edison said I discovered more than a thousand ways not to make an electric light bulb.
There are wonderful solutions like Capstone Turbines, Energy Focus,SaskPower, and Kinder Morgan that can reduce CO2 and reduce costs. However, the political leaders give them zero mind share. It is ironic that the Environmental
Protection Agency [EPA] is following Germany’s lead, the Department of Energy [DOE] is investing in private strategies, which reduce costs and create jobs.
However, we have zero political mind share.
Please aggregate your great posts!
Click on the category beneath the post: “Alternative Energy”. You get here:
https://notrickszone.com/category/alternative-energy/
Warmunist Swedish King wants to prohibit bathtubs because Global Warming.
http://www.focus.de/panorama/boulevard/leute-schwedens-koenig-moechte-badewannen-verbieten_id_5105048.html
As Sweden is still run by crazy persons, (the socialist-Green minority government) we can now expect them to eagerly lap the suggestion up.
Tough luck Swedes. Why do you vote for crazy persons.
Everything that you do is a sin against Gaia (driving, eating, heating, cooling, using a computer, reading (paper!)). We know that.
Now Greenpeace breaks new ground by slandering the Germans, claiming that Germans use their cloths as throw aways articles.
Yeah, wearing clothes was suspiciously missing from the list.
http://www.focus.de/regional/hamburg/bekleidung-greenpeace-umfrage-deutsche-sehen-kleidung-als-wegwerfware_id_5104527.html
Maoist culture revolution. Very old playbook.
Does “counter pressure” mean generating electricity 180 degrees out of phase, so that it cancels the excess?
Thank you for the link.
Regards,
70% of mongolian Nomads can afford solar power. But we can not.
http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/renewable-energy-ecology/70-of-mongolian-nomads-now-have-solar-power/
Solar is getting cheaper than coal in India. And this source (which is not anti-coal!) thinks that coal will the face the challenge of having to chase solar prices. Good luck!
http://qz.com/557291/solar-power-looks-to-be-cheaper-than-coal-in-india-by-2020/