{"id":16,"date":"2012-09-23T13:16:14","date_gmt":"2012-09-23T17:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/example.org\/germanys-wind-power-chaos-should-be-a-warning-to-everyone"},"modified":"2012-09-23T13:16:14","modified_gmt":"2012-09-23T17:16:14","slug":"germanys-wind-power-chaos-should-be-a-warning-to-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/makingripples.com\/?p=16","title":{"rendered":"Germany’s Wind Power Chaos Should Be A Warning To Everyone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Germany has gone further down the "renewables" path than any other country and now it's paying the price. Back-up fossil-fuel plants must run constantly and inefficiently to pick up the slightest slack in wind power.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Christopher Booker<\/a>, The Telegraph<\/a>
\n |<\/p>\n

Sep. 23, 2012, 6:19 AM<\/p>\n

|<\/p>\n

6,319<\/p>\n

|<\/p>\n

37<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\"wind<\/em><\/div>\n

WAstateDNR – Department of Natural Resources via flickr<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/div>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

On Friday, September 14, just before 10am, Britain\u2019s 3,500 wind
\nturbines broke all records by briefly supplying just over four gigawatts
\n (GW) of electricity to the national grid. Three hours later, in
\nGermany, that country\u2019s 23,000 wind turbines and millions of solar
\npanels similarly achieved an unprecedented output of 31GW. But the
\nresponses to these events in the two countries could not have been in
\nstarker contrast.<\/p>\n

In Britain, the wind industry proclaimed a triumph. Maria McCaffery,
\nthe CEO of RenewableUK, crowed that \u201cthis record high shows that wind
\nenergy is providing a reliable, secure supply of electricity to an
\never-growing number of British homes and businesses\u201d and that \u201cthis
\nbountiful free resource will help drive down energy bills\u201d. But in
\nGermany, the news was greeted with dismay, for reasons which merit
\nserious attention here in Britain.<\/p>\n

Germany is way ahead of us on the very path our politicians want us
\nto follow \u2013 and the problems it has encountered as a result are big news
\n there. In fact, Germany is being horribly caught out by precisely the
\nsame delusion about renewable energy that our own politicians have
\nfallen for. Like all enthusiasts for \u201cfree, clean, renewable
\nelectricity\u201d, they overlook the fatal implications of the fact that wind
\n speeds and sunlight constantly vary. They are taken in by the wind
\nindustry\u2019s trick of vastly exaggerating the usefulness of wind farms by
\ntalking in terms of their \u201ccapacity\u201d, hiding the fact that their actual
\noutput will waver between 100 per cent of capacity and zero. In Britain
\nit averages around 25 per cent; in Germany it is lower, just 17 per
\ncent.<\/p>\n

The more a country depends on such sources of energy, the more there
\nwill arise \u2013 as Germany is discovering \u2013 two massive technical problems.
\n One is that it becomes incredibly difficult to maintain a consistent
\nsupply of power to the grid, when that wildly fluctuating renewable
\noutput has to be balanced by input from conventional power stations. The
\n other is that, to keep that back-up constantly available can require
\nfossil-fuel power plants to run much of the time very inefficiently and
\nexpensively (incidentally chucking out so much more \u201ccarbon\u201d than normal
\n that it negates any supposed CO2 savings from the wind).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Both these problems have come home to roost in Germany in a big way,
\nbecause it has gone more aggressively down the renewables route than any
\n other country in the world. Having poured hundreds of billions of euros
\n in subsidies into wind and solar power, making its electricity bills
\nalmost the highest in Europe, the picture that Germany presents is, on
\npaper, almost everything the most rabid greenie could want. Last year,
\nits wind turbines already had 29GW of capacity, equivalent to a quarter
\nof Germany\u2019s average electricity demand. But because these turbines are
\neven less efficient than our own, their actual output averaged only 5GW,
\n and most of the rest had to come from grown-up power stations, ready to
\n supply up to 29GW at any time and then switch off as the wind picked up
\n again.<\/p>\n

Now the problem for the German grid has become even worse. Thanks to a
\n flood of subsidies unleashed by Angela Merkel\u2019s government, renewable
\ncapacity has risen still further (solar, for instance, by 43 per cent).
\nThis makes it so difficult to keep the grid balanced that it is
\npermanently at risk of power failures. (When the power to one Hamburg
\naluminium factory failed recently, for only a fraction of a second, it
\nshut down the plant, causing serious damage.) Energy-intensive
\nindustries are having to install their own generators, or are looking to
\n leave Germany altogether.<\/p>\n

In fact, a mighty battle is now developing in Germany between green
\nfantasists and practical realists. Because renewable energy must by law
\nhave priority in supplying the grid, the owners of conventional power
\nstations, finding they have to run plants unprofitably, are so angry
\nthat they are threatening to close many of them down. The government
\nresponse, astonishingly, has been to propose a new law forcing them to
\ncontinue running their plants at a loss.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, firms such as RWE and E.on are going flat out to build 16
\nnew coal-fired and 15 new gas-fired power stations by 2020, with a
\ncombined output equivalent to some 38 per cent of Germany\u2019s electricity
\nneeds. None of these will be required to have \u201ccarbon capture and
\nstorage\u201d (CCS), which is just an empty pipedream. This makes nonsense of
\n any pretence that Germany will meet its EU target for reducing CO2
\nemissions (and Mrs Merkel\u2019s equally fanciful goal of producing 35 per
\ncent of electricity from renewables).<\/p>\n

In brief, Germany\u2019s renewables drive is turning out to be a disaster.
\n This should particularly concern us because our Government, with its
\nplan to build 30,000 turbines, to meet our EU target of sourcing 32 per
\ncent of our electricity from renewables by 2020, is hell-bent on the
\nsame path. But our own \u201cbig six\u201d electricity companies, including RWE
\nand E.on, are told that they cannot build any replacements for our
\ncoal-fired stations (many soon to be closed under EU rules) which last
\nweek were supplying more than 40 per cent of our power \u2013 unless they are
\n fitted with that make-believe CCS. A similar threat hangs over plans to
\n build new gas-fired plants of the type that will be essential to
\nprovide up to 100 per cent back-up for those useless windmills.<\/p>\n

Everything about the battle now raging in Germany applies equally to
\nus here in Britain \u2013 except that we have only fantasists such as Ed
\nDavey in charge of our energy policy. Unless the realists stage a
\ncounter-coup very fast, we are in deep trouble.<\/p>\n

Only warmists could pass this A-level<\/em><\/p>\n

While Michael Gove tries valiantly to remedy our dysfunctional exam
\nsystem he might take a look at some recent papers, such as that set last
\n June for A-level General Studies students by our leading exam body,
\nAQA. Candidates were asked to discuss 11 pages of \u201csource material\u201d on
\nthe subject of climate change. Sources ranged from a report of the UN\u2019s
\nIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to The Guardian, all
\nshamelessly promoting global warming alarmism. One document from the Met
\n Office solemnly predicted that \u201ceven if global temperatures only rise
\nby 2 degrees C, 30-40 per cent of species could face extinction\u201d. A
\ngraph from the US Environmental Protection Agency showed temperatures
\nhaving soared in the past 100 years by 1.4 degrees \u2013 exactly twice the
\ngenerally accepted figure.<\/p>\n

The only hint that anyone might question such beliefs was an article
\nby Louise Gray from The Daily Telegraph, which quoted that tireless
\ncampaigner for the warmist cause, Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute,
\ndismissing all sceptics as \u201ca remnant group of dinosaurs\u201d who
\n\u201cmisunderstood the point of science\u201d.<\/p>\n

If it were still a purpose of education to teach people to examine
\nevidence and think rationally, any bright A-level candidate might have
\nhad a field day, showing how all this \u201csource material\u201d was no more than
\n vacuous, one-sided propaganda. But today one fears they would have been
\n marked down so severely for not coming up with the desired answers that
\n they would have been among the tiny handful of candidates given an
\nunequivocal \u201cfail\u201d.<\/p>\n

ww.businessinsider.com\/germanys-wind-power-chaos-2012-9#ixzz27JQoDXNa<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\n
\n

Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Germany has gone further down the "renewables" path than any other country and now it's paying the price. Back-up fossil-fuel plants must run constantly and inefficiently to pick up the slightest slack in wind power.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Christopher Booker<\/a>, The Telegraph<\/a>
\n |<\/p>\n

Sep. 23, 2012, 6:19 AM<\/p>\n

|<\/p>\n

6,319<\/p>\n

|<\/p>\n

37<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\"wind<\/em><\/div>\n

WAstateDNR – Department of Natural Resources via flickr<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/div>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

On Friday, September 14, just before 10am, Britain\u2019s 3,500 wind
\nturbines broke all records by briefly supplying just over four gigawatts
\n (GW) of electricity to the national grid. Three hours later, in
\nGermany, that country\u2019s 23,000 wind turbines and millions of solar
\npanels similarly achieved an unprecedented output of 31GW. But the
\nresponses to these events in the two countries could not have been in
\nstarker contrast.<\/p>\n

In Britain, the wind industry proclaimed a triumph. Maria McCaffery,
\nthe CEO of RenewableUK, crowed that \u201cthis record high shows that wind
\nenergy is providing a reliable, secure supply of electricity to an
\never-growing number of British homes and businesses\u201d and that \u201cthis
\nbountiful free resource will help drive down energy bills\u201d. But in
\nGermany, the news was greeted with dismay, for reasons which merit
\nserious attention here in Britain.<\/p>\n

Germany is way ahead of us on the very path our politicians want us
\nto follow \u2013 and the problems it has encountered as a result are big news
\n there. In fact, Germany is being horribly caught out by precisely the
\nsame delusion about renewable energy that our own politicians have
\nfallen for. Like all enthusiasts for \u201cfree, clean, renewable
\nelectricity\u201d, they overlook the fatal implications of the fact that wind
\n speeds and sunlight constantly vary. They are taken in by the wind
\nindustry\u2019s trick of vastly exaggerating the usefulness of wind farms by
\ntalking in terms of their \u201ccapacity\u201d, hiding the fact that their actual
\noutput will waver between 100 per cent of capacity and zero. In Britain
\nit averages around 25 per cent; in Germany it is lower, just 17 per
\ncent.<\/p>\n

The more a country depends on such sources of energy, the more there
\nwill arise \u2013 as Germany is discovering \u2013 two massive technical problems.
\n One is that it becomes incredibly difficult to maintain a consistent
\nsupply of power to the grid, when that wildly fluctuating renewable
\noutput has to be balanced by input from conventional power stations. The
\n other is that, to keep that back-up constantly available can require
\nfossil-fuel power plants to run much of the time very inefficiently and
\nexpensively (incidentally chucking out so much more \u201ccarbon\u201d than normal
\n that it negates any supposed CO2 savings from the wind).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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