In Germany, the renewable energy sources appear to send bad signals as pointed out by Holman in his article, and then what will be the solution for future energy demand?
11 November 2013, The Wall Street Journal Europe, By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr:
"Germany dished out subsidies to encourage homeowners and farmers to install solar panels and windmills and sell energy back to the power company at inflated prices. Success—Germany now gets 25% of its power from renewables—has turned out to be a disaster."
"As Germans rush to grab this easy money, carbon dioxide output has risen, not fallen, because money-strapped utilities have switched to burning cheap American coal to provide the necessary standby power when wind and sun fail."
“It’s fine being very, very green, but not if you’re interested in manufacturing,” complains a prominent CEO.
Leave the politicians and bankers do their job in trying influencing the lobbies.
Yes, Germany has to burn more hydrocarbons, because they stopped the nuclear plants, not because they build solar cells and windmills !!!
Yes, the load balancing is an issue. If the big operators would agree to some better interconnections (and invest faster in new ones, instead of complaining their business is getting ruined by free energy) and if internationally they would give each other a push, that would be no problem.
They are many different versions of the German Energy Revolution.. depending who has which interest, you can choose your figures and statistics..
I am proud of the German: they stopped this nuclear error of humanity.
The german consumer pays the price, the industries make the profits and complain.
I am waiting for the French Revolution 2. If Germany would only be a little more courageous against their big industry, this could go hand in hand and put Europe where it should be: a wise model for everybody. Well Japan may be its own candidate too, I hope the Abenomics will not destroy this island of quietness and security.
I do not know all the details of the current situation in Germany since I work in Ireland. Firstly, providing the power is the responsibility of the power grid operator(s) not the factories.
There is a new concept that is becoming more and more popular which is Microgrids, It is basically what has been describe in your quotes, small grids that provide their own power and are independent from the main power grid. Although microgrids have some advantages, but their main disadvantage is that they are not reliable, in particular when you have renewable sources. So, I think the main problem with the German case is investing too much on microgrids not the renewable sources themselves.
But in the larger scale, volatility of renewable sources is always an issue. The main source of renewable energy in Ireland is wind. What grid operator in Ireland does is that they companies providing wind forecasts for them and based on these forecasts, they decided which utilities should be operational the next day. If the wind forecats happens to be very different that the actual wind power, then they use ancillary services. Each power grid operator has a list of utilities that can increase their power output or start operating in a short time to prevent blackouts in case renewable sources cannot provide enough power.
So, in summary, renewable energy is the way forward, but that doesn't mean there is nothing wrong with policies applied to them.
Leave the politicians and bankers do their job in trying influencing the lobbies.
Yes, Germany has to burn more hydrocarbons, because they stopped the nuclear plants, not because they build solar cells and windmills !!!
Yes, the load balancing is an issue. If the big operators would agree to some better interconnections (and invest faster in new ones, instead of complaining their business is getting ruined by free energy) and if internationally they would give each other a push, that would be no problem.
They are many different versions of the German Energy Revolution.. depending who has which interest, you can choose your figures and statistics..
I am proud of the German: they stopped this nuclear error of humanity.
The german consumer pays the price, the industries make the profits and complain.
I am waiting for the French Revolution 2. If Germany would only be a little more courageous against their big industry, this could go hand in hand and put Europe where it should be: a wise model for everybody. Well Japan may be its own candidate too, I hope the Abenomics will not destroy this island of quietness and security.
I think that it's a shame that Germany has been so quick to ditch nuclear power, especially in the wake of Japan's nuclear accidents, where if we are honest the accident was the result of a catalog of old nuclear design and other errors which should be mitigated in today's nuclear designs. So the result is renewable micro generation as carbon reduction is sought, residential, commercial and industrial wind and PV installations continue to be installed without thought on whether the aging infrastructure is designed to even deal with the back flow of power through transformers. The result is a need for distribution transformer modification to even lower voltage distribution transformers to include smart AVC to monitor micro generation and help reduce tapchanger failure. Maintenance of hundreds of thousands of these new on load tapchangers will push distribution companies to their limits and push electricity prices higher.
this is the real disaster waiting to happen.
There will always be an old nuclear power plant somewhere.
And may be we should have Sellafields and La Hague as world-wide deposit places for nuclear waste. So that french and britains will always have stuff to make their atomic bomb. How much of this very old geopolitics is surviving in the decision making of our prime-minister? Do we really fear an Iranian atomic war?
Never change a running system.. tell mother earth what it means.
I am sorry for those un-scientific comments.
The industry should take care by themselves about the energy they consume. They do not pay taxes anymore, they will be able to manage their production on their own.
The grid needs more flexibility and storage, yes for sure.. and we can wait for the disaster, but politicals could also do something instead of believing to the old predikates of old business. We do not have to wait, just be activ. Buy batteries.
I think that the use of renewable energy sources for the generation of electricity will not replace the use of other energy sources for the same purpose during the coming decades. The reason is the following: It is obvious that with the current rate of increase in the participation of different renewable energy sources in the EU energy balance, it will very difficult to reach the objective that was set for the EU countries. Under the above-mentioned situation it is expected only to reach between 9% and 10% share of renewable resources in the European energy balance in 2010, this means 2%-3% lower that the target approved (12%). According to the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) report of 2005, “the following countries could meet the established target for 2010: Germany, Denmark, Finland, and Spain”. The top five countries in the overall renewables index, in order, are: China, USA, India, Germany and Italy.
The main reason for the failure to reach the agreed target for renewable energy - besides the higher costs of renewable energy sources today compared to conventional energy sources - is the lack of a coherent and effective policy framework throughout the EU and a stable long-term vision. As a result, only a limited number of Member States have made serious progress in this area and the critical mass has not been reached to shift niche renewable production into the mainstream:
The European Commission estimates that “additional investments of €10 to €15 billion are required to achieve the 12% target the EU has set itself.” The main factors that should be taken into account in order to achieve the target goals are the following:
a) Using renewable energy sources today for electricity generation is generally more expensive than using hydrocarbons but the gap is narrowing – particularly when the costs of climate change are factored in;
b) Economies of scale can reduce the costs in the use of renewable energy source but this needs major investment today;
c) The use of different renewable energy sources for electricity generation helps to improve the EU's security of energy supply by increasing the share of domestically produced energy, diversifying the fuel mix and the sources of energy imports and increasing the proportion of energy from politically stable regions as well as creating new jobs in Europe;
d) The use of renewable energy sources for electricity generation emit few or no greenhouse gases, and most of them bring significant air quality benefits.
The use of new renewable energy sources like solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, hydrogen, among others, is expected to suffers an increment of their use as primary sources of energy inside the world energy balance, as well as in Europe to an annually average rhythm of 3.3%. The wind energy will grow to a higher rhythm, especially in Europe and other countries of the OECD whose governments have adopted urgent measures to promote energy projects based on renewable energy sources. However, the scale use of some of these new renewable energy sources present important limitations related with their geographical location, the intensity of the solar radiation and the meteorological conditions, among others.
The closure of the nuclear power programs in some European countries in the coming years will force these countries to increase the use of other energy sources to satisfy the foreseeable demands and the different renewable energy sources now available will not be in a position to satisfy this demand.
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