American view on German renewable energy transformation

[news]

I don't know the credentials/bias of the author but this is an interesting insight on what the Americans are being told about German renewable power, and how the technology might affect life closer to home.

There are a couple of throwaway lines such as

"perhaps with techniques like paying utilities extra to keep conventional power plants on standby for times when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. The German government has acknowledged the need for new rules, though it has yet to figure out what they should be"

[news]

Apologies I missed to OT - but I think the thread header is explicit enough

[Martin Brown]

It is a reasonably balanced discussion of the issues despite being American. They are having trouble in Hawaii too with peak solar PV saturating and in places overloading the grid at some times of day.

Germany has shot itself in the foot by taking its entire base load nuclear capacity offline for fear of a non-existent tsunami threat.

[news]

Thanks, Another interesting article - I think its a long time before the UK runs into those sort of problems.

[The Natural Philosopher]

It hasnt taken it all off yet.

[The Natural Philosopher]

about 2 months

[Ian Jackson]

I can't see there being too much wind power here either. Today, it's presently a massive 1.7%. OK, there are still lots of wind turbines that are going to be built in the future - but so far, what's the maximum that their contribution has reached?

>

[Martin Brown]

I stand corrected. I am sure you keep better track of these things...

And to replace their nuclear component they intend to burn vast quantities of the dirtiest brown lignite coal on the planet.

The very antithesis of "Green" energy.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think in the middle of a stormy night with low demand they touched 20%

Hang on, I can tell you exactly

mysql> select wind/demand as percent, wind, demand,timestamp from day order by percent desc limit 1;

+-------------------+------+--------+---------------------+ | percent | wind | demand | timestamp | +-------------------+------+--------+---------------------+ | 0.224235200635677 | 5644 | 25170 | 2013-11-03 03:20:08 | +-------------------+------+--------+---------------------+

There ya go. 3 of November last year a whacking 22% of a very slender demand was reached by not very much wind.

The greatest wind recorded was:

mysql> select wind, timestamp from day order by wind desc limit 1;

+------+---------------------+ | wind | timestamp | +------+---------------------+ | 6222 | 2014-01-31 14:25:01 | +------+---------------------+

31st of jan this year. 6.22GW of metered wind. Prolly another GW on top for the unmetered..

Good old gridwatch :-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

I recieved an email from a German engineer today - wanting me to do Gridwatch for germany

"I work with Siemens gas turbines and we are a bit frustrated about the current situation in Germany."

A bit frustrated???!!!

[Dave Liquorice]

Yeah and the damn greenies will jump on the 22% figure to show how much energy the windmills are producing.

They will quietly ignore the fact that 25 GW is a very low demand.

They will quietly ignore the fact that it was at 22% for a short period, not 24/7.