A damaged power cable led to a power outage at the German Parliament earlier today, interrupting government activities, parliamentary sessions and shutting down several government offices in the area, according to the Financial Times Deutschland.
Hat-tip: DirkH
The schadenfreude here can hardly be contained, I have to admit. In Great Britain citizens are being told not to expect a steady supply of power in the future. Now German leaders, also insisting we make due with less, have gotten a taste of it. Elevators, toilets, etc. ceased to function.
So what is the reaction from Green Parliamentarains over this unscheduled bout of climate protection and energy use reduction?
Climate-sceptic persecutor Hermann Ott twittered:
You mean we don’t have any back-up generator??”
Eco-radical and Green Party Faction leader Jürgen Trittin, who, according to DIE WELT, was outraged:
It is impossible that when Vattenfall screws up once again, the German Pariliament has no emergency back up supply of electricity.”
Vattenfall is the Sweden-based power company that operates some of Germany’s power plants, and probably has nothing to do with the outage that Trittin and Ott find so damn inconvenient.
I say leave the power off and let them use candles and portable toilets.
You can use a wad of grass when you’re “done”. (Just be sure to take it with you and dispose of it properly).
Also read here:
We already have seen similar reactions during the New Mexico power black outs.
One big frost, food shortage and power outages and the entire Green Movement will disappear.
On a political level matters look a whole lot different.
When the Greens are faced with reality and their home is without power, their fridge is thawing and their swimming pool is not heated anymore and their car can’t be driven because of a lack of fuel, the scare is over.
From that moment on ‘Drill Baby Drill” will have a lot more supporters.
And why not.
We are drowning in oil and gas.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/the_only_way_out_for_the_ameri.html
Better get used to outside latrines…….horse and cart, hand reaping and life expectancy of 35+/- again.
Oh joy!
Mediaeval? NO! the dark ages.
Basically the German Greens use a kind of Saul Alinsky tactic: Push through regulations that make power supply instable (by forcing grid operators to give intermittent power sources like wind and solar priority, and forcing them to take all of their output), later misleading the public about the reason for grid outages and instability, telling them that it’s the fault of the incompetent grid operators. Likewise, price hikes caused by an increase in the renewable subsidy total, are blamed by the Greens on profit greedy operators of nuclear power plants.
I don’t know if they can mislead many people – they got their share of true believers who will believe anything from them – but i hope it ruins their credibility for good. They deserve it; they lie every day.
Let’s see more power outages in the future, until they run out of scapegoats to blame.
Similar/same principle that the (communist) mayor of London applied to “justify” the congestion charge for the city.
First: create the problem. In London, this required assigning more traffic lanes to bus-only, change directions of roads, narrow streets with traffic obstacles and phasing traffic lights to make sure that everybody spent twice as long on the streets. When I was last in London (1999), it was difficult to stay below the speed limit in the area that was to be “congestion charged” a few years later.
Second: provide a “solution”. Which never involves removing the factors that create the “problem”.
Third: collect your rewards/awards/profits/pension/gold watch.
“In Great Britain citizens are being told not to expect a steady supply of power in the future.”
Funny you should say that – The UEA’s near(ish) neighbours, City College Norwich, were without power yesterday and their supplier said:
“We always encourage businesses which rely on electricity, to have back-up supplies for occasional interruptions such as this.”
http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/city_college_norwich_open_again_after_electricity_problems_1_821467
“It is thought that the cut was caused by engineers working on an underground cable to try to restore power.”
That explanation makes no sense. Was there an outage elsewhere too?
The Evening News / Eastern Daily Press reporters aren’t the brightest lamps in the box, but the previous paragraph suggests that an initial failure affected a much wider area, including some of the city centre. It looks as if they may have had to disconnect the college and immediate area to make repairs?
Quite what the principal thinks cane be done to prevent a repeat I would love to know. There will always be faults occurring, and no amount of alternative mains routing will guarantee them a continuous service. He will either have to get used to outages (whether accidental, or intentional), or get a genset like the rest of us will end up doing!
Here in Germany, we sometimes have small co-generation plants for larger housing blocks, when connection to a city-wide co-generation heating system is not possible. So you have a kind of central heating in the basement of such a block which just happens to produce electricity as well; like a mini power plant, usually gas-powered. Getting one or several of those would help them.
Installation of these devices is often encouraged by local government, or even required, especially for hospitals.
There’s also the lichtblick project (Lichtblick – lit.: ray of hope)
that plans to install durable VW motors as central heatings that also work as electricity generators. The customer gets the heat for free and lichtblick siphons off the electricity and sells it. Kind of like a distributed power plant – interesting due to low natgas prizes; the motors are made to run on natgas AFAIK.
http://www.lichtblick.de/h/aktuell_361.php?id_rec=192
And in summer, when no heat is required … there’s no electricity?
I can’t imagine how those systems can get near the efficiency of a larger, conventional electricity generation facility. It’s only the utilisation of “waste” heat that makes it worthwhile; and if the waste heat isn’t wanted by the people in the building, then it has to be dispersed into the environment, should electricity (co-)generation still be required.
And that would make for very expensive electricity.
I have my doubts as well, especially with the business model of Lichtblick. But the technology is IMHO interesting – using efficient long life motors as generators and heaters. It becomes interesting when there will be disruptions to the grid due to too much renewable power.
Someone from PIK should work out how much CO2 they saved because of the outage, then issue a press release applauding the Parliament for saving so much CO2.
I know, I’m rubbing it in. We here in Oz are very cross with our own Parliament right now, so I’m taking my annoyance out on your Parliament too.
You’re welcome. 😉
At last something to (temporarily) stem the effluent from the Bundestag. 🙂