Germany’s Gas Reserves “Emptying At Record Speed” As Country Struggles To Keep Warm, Lights On

Germany’s gas reserves are emptying at record speed: 1% per day as the current wind/solar energy lull means more gas gets burned for electricity, heating. 

Image: cropped here.

Pleiteticker.de here reports how Germany’s natural gas reserves “are emptying at record speed” because wind and solar power have been on the scarce side over the past few weeks. This means gas turbines have had to jump in to pick up the slack in electricity production – not one the German government had hoped as it wrestles with the heightening energy crisis.

“Germany is converting gas into electricity in record quantities,” pleiteticker.de reports. “Thanks to high pressure system ‘Erika’, the current December is colder than it has been for years. […] In recent days, gas storage facilities have therefore been emptying much faster than before. From December 12 onwards, more than one percent was withdrawn from gas storage facilities in Germany every day.”

“Last week, almost one third of all electricity was generated from natural gas. These are record figures,” writes pleiteticker.de.

If the cold persists through the winter, gas reserves threaten to become extremely tight before spring arrives.

But instead of blaming the energy woes on failed government policies, federal network agency head Klaus Müller criticizes the situation on the consumers, and worries “the gas storage may not last the whole winter.”

“A national gas shortage in winter can be avoided if, firstly, the savings target of at least 20 percent continues to be achieved,” the Federal Network Agency says. Here the government’s solution clearly is that citizens should accept freezing even more when it’s bitterly cold out.

Over 800 million euros paid for unproduced energy in 2021

The problem with wind power is that either too much or too little is produced, due to the weather. As mentioned above. the past weeks have seen little wind power being produced, and so gas turbines had to be fired up to keep the grid supplied.

But when it’s too windy, something needs to be done to keep the grid from being overloaded: wind turbines have to be shut down. That’s costing Germans 807 million euros this year because the excess electricity that could have been fed into the grid by the wind parks legally has to be compensated.

Pleiteticker here writes: “For the amount of electricity that the operators could have fed into the grid, they still receive compensation from the grid operators according to the statutory tariffs. And this sum is higher than ever this year: 807 million euros. Record value. For electricity that never existed.”

And the problem is getting bigger, according to the Federal Ministry of Economics.

“At the time of the worst energy crisis Germany has seen in a long time, when companies and consumers are hammered by energy prices like rarely before, Germany is paying money for energy that also doesn’t get produced,” comments pleiteticker.de.

So far Germany’s response to the energy crisis is plans to build many more turbines, with talks of even tripling its current installed  capacity, which of course would only triple  grid volatility, thus making it far more unstable than it already is and so create an even much bigger mess.




13 responses to “Germany’s Gas Reserves “Emptying At Record Speed” As Country Struggles To Keep Warm, Lights On”

  1. voza0db

    Don’t worry that Freedom Gas from your Friends the USofT is on its way… at a very cheap price…

    So low so low price, that you’ll be able to burn GAS 24/7 just for FUN!

  2. Germany’s Gas Reserves ‘Emptying At Record Speed’ As Green Energy Fails – altnews.org

    […] Read more at No Tricks Zone […]

  3. Tom Anderson

    “A national gas shortage in winter can be avoided if, firstly, the savings target of at least 20 percent continues to be achieved,” the Federal Network Agency says. Here the government’s solution clearly is that citizens should accept freezing even more when it’s bitterly cold out.

    A political characteristic I noticed shortly after quitting the American Democratic Party is that leftist parties seem to have an inveterate, almost involuntary, penchant for casting blame elsewhere – ideally on an old rival – whenever its policies fail. It takes the heat off. You might call it the “blame and shame game.” It involves identifying the handiest imaginary culprit for any problem it has caused. It is a cheap way to shirk or ignore the responsibilities of governing while maintaining the appearance of probity and competence. Best of all it seems to satisfy the party faithful;. It also shows up in accusing its opponents of contemplating or doing exactly the illegal, unsavory or stupid acts it plans to do itself. This mannerism is usually the best guide to the real party platform.

    1. Michael Peinsipp

      1 Congrats on leaving the Dems (I left 38 yrs ago).
      2 That ‘red pill’ is you looking at all facts.
      3 AND We MAGA are NOT the terrorists they claim we are…
      4 The Democrats in my rural KY county are more Conservative than Coastal Republicans.
      5 If the Republicans do not stop the Democrats/Biden in destroying America…than by 2024 America may not be a Republic anymore.
      6 If you live in a big city…MOVE now.
      7 Hope you are safe and warm so See Ya!

  4. toorightmate

    There is no greenhouse effect.
    The CO2 hoax has to be stopped.

    1. Michael Peinsipp

      Ask these Global Warming ‘people’ two questions…
      1 Why is Greenland called GREENLAND?!?
      2 What controls the Earth’s temperature???
      Now when they look at you like you are an idjit…be polite and say ‘I would really like to know’.
      You will get gobbledygook OR they will think and say…’Uh I don’t know’…HAHAHAHA just kidding!
      They’ll call you a DENIER and walk away.

  5. John Hultquist

    build many more turbines, with talks of even tripling its current installed capacity,

    If one assumes all of those had been brought on-line as of 6 weeks ago, how much better off would Germans be this week?

    Asking for a friend.

    1. Graeme No.3

      More turbines means more times when they are paid to shut off. If they can, occasionally, produce 90% of demand, then 3 times the payout for not working, so German owners of wind turbines would be better off. The rest of the population worse off, as usual.

      And if the standard bureaucratic response to failure i.e. make the failure even bigger then the extra capacity from all those new turbines would result in more problems = more payouts.

  6. Indur Goklany

    Why should one pay for any product if it is overproduced and there is no demand for the overproduced product, like when wind power is overproduced but you don’t want it and want to keep it of the grid?

  7. Petit_Barde

    Greens would do better to practice the wind’s dance with singing incantations to god Aeolus to blows again (it would be Net-0 compliant and surely more efficient than building new wind turbines).

    Paraphrasing the ant in Jean de La Fontaine’s fable “The cicada and the ant”:

    – you kept singing all the summer, well, dance now!

    Hope this help.

  8. Adam Gallon

    How dare people wish to warm their homes & offices & eat hot food!

  9. pochas94

    I hear the Germans just got a new LNG terminal.

  10. soundos

    Very nice post and helpful information

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