At 5 p.m. last Wednesday, Germany’s 1602 offshore wind turbines in the North and Baltic Seas stood still…solar output was also near zero. Germany had to scramble to keep supply going.
The enemy of green energy: the high pressure system
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In the words of Professor Claudia Kemfert: It is a myth to believe that solar and wind do not provide enough electricity. The myth that there will be enough wind and sunshine somewhere in Europe was shattered at the beginning of November 2024. Daniel Wetzel describes the situation in the online Die Welt (pay article)
At 5 p.m. on Wednesday, solar power was only supplying a single megawatt hour. The 1602 offshore wind turbines in the North and Baltic Seas – each one the size of the Eiffel Tower – were at a complete standstill. Zero electricity production.
The onshore wind turbines produced only 114 megawatt hours at that hour, with German electricity consumption at 63,000 megawatt hours. Transmission system operator Amprion described the situation on the LinkedIn web portal on Thursday: ‘The minimum feed-in from wind and PV was just around 100 megawatts in total (in the period from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.).’
This means that the 87,000 megawatts of photovoltaic capacity and around 72,000 megawatts of wind power installed in Germany with triple-digit billion-euro subsidies were virtually unused for hours on end. There was no danger to the power supply, it was said. ‘No sun, no wind – yesterday and today there was a dark doldrums in Germany,’ explained Amprion on Thursday: ‘But our system management had everything under control.'”
Without the fossil power producers and foreign countries, things would have looked bad. A situation that was to be expected – but was consistently smiled away. Instead, graphics of the annual cycle were waved around to show that sun and wind would complement each other perfectly.
The fatal thing about the situation is the prices. Fossil power generation has been made politically more expensive and in times of shortage, prices really go through the roof. Die Welt added:
The peak prices of the past week are possibly just a harbinger of what is to be expected in the coming winter. The expert agency “Montel” quotes energy market experts who expect price peaks of 1000 euros per megawatt hour in the event of further wind lulls. This is because in times of low wind power production, increasingly expensive gas-fired power plants have to step in, which then define the market price level.
Traders interviewed by “Montel” also referred to the German nuclear and coal phase-out, which has reduced the base load-capable power plant capacity that can produce regardless of the weather. The imminent onset of the autumn and winter cold in Europe is also likely to drive up prices. This is because France in particular will then see a sharp increase in its own consumption, as many heating systems in the country are powered by electricity. The surge in demand for electricity in France is likely to further increase the relative shortage on the European Power Exchange and thus drive up prices.”
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They don’t understand units, do they?
I often see the ignorati using MW for total energy stored in a battery where the unit should be MW-hours.; now we see the reverse – using MW-hours for power, where they mean MW.
We’re doomed!
It is almost heart breaking to see, just how many “experts” have no idea what they are talking about. Take the article by Mr. Daniel Wetzel, who informed us, that “solar power was only supplying a single megawatt hour.” or “wind turbines produced only 114 megawatt hours at that hour”. This is, of course, patently wrong. The solar panels did not supply single megawatt hour! They were supplying a megawatt of power, and if that power was used for one hour, than one megawatt hour of energy was used. That goes for all the other incorrect statements in his article. And while I am totally on the side of those who fight this climate change con, I think it would help to maintain the credibility of the authors.
114 MWh for that hour means that the average power output was 114 MW for that hour, which could also mean that the first 10 minutes the output was 684 MW and the next 50 minutes it was 0.
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Toman comment: “It is almost heart breaking to see, just how many “experts” have no idea what they are talking about.”
I would prefer the word “mind blowing”…….
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/now-germany-has-green-electricity-outage-huge-consequences
[…] Green Blues…As Fog Persists For Days In Germany, Green Energy Output Falls To Near Zero!No Tricks ZonePierre Gosselin10 November 2024 […]
WHY DID DUNKELFLAUTES COME AS A SURPRISE LATELY WHEN SAILORS AND MILLERS MUST HAVE KNOWN ABOUT THEM FOR CENTURIES?
https://www.flickerpower.com/images/The_endless_wind_drought_crippling_renewables___The_Spectator_Australia.pdf
IS THIS THE SMOKING GUN IN THE CLIMATE AND ENERGY FRAUD CASE?
The term “smoking gun” is a reference to an object or fact that serves as almost conclusive evidence of a crime or similar act, just short of being caught in flagrante delicto. “Smoking gun” refers to the strongest kind of circumstantial evidence, as opposed to direct evidence.
My colleague John Maclean discovered that the first assessment report of the IPCC in 1990 recommended a survey of the wind resources of the world in case they might be harnessed to generate power on a large-scale.
The meteorologists, who were involved with the IPCC, must have discovered wind droughts and realised that they would wreck attempts to power the grid by wind.
So not a word was said about wind droughts while the Western nations wrote suicide notes committing themselves to net zero based on intermittent energy.
We have been sleepwalking into a wind drought trap when subsidised and mandated intermittent energy drives out conventional power to reach the tipping point and we enter the red zone where every windless night is a mortal threat to the power supply.
https://newcatallaxy.blog/2023/07/11/approaching-the-tipping-point/
Hence the working title of my next book “How wind droughts almost destroyed Western civilisation as we know it.”
The smoking gun in this case is the discovery of wind droughts by the people in the heart of evil empire who were driving the global warming fraud. That in turn drove the net zero ponzi scheme which threatens to destroy the basis of our energy system by making it vulnerable to wind droughts. That will crash the western economies as you can see in Britain, Germany and South Australia.