Articles

Germany's Industries Faces a Perfect Storm Because Wind & Solar Addiction

by Rudy P. SysAdmin at howtofindthemoney
The only things ‘inevitable’ about ‘transitioning’ to wind and solar are rocketing power prices, load shedding and mass blackouts. Ask a German or South Australian.

Renewable energy zealots keep telling us that wind and solar are free and getting cheaper all the time. Germany puts paid to that lie, as does Denmark and South Australia, which each jockey for line honours in the world’s highest power prices stakes.

No country has squandered more treasure on giant windmills and an endless sea of solar panels than Germany.

For all that wanton environmental destruction, Germans get a meagre 2.5% of their primary energy demand satisfied by wind and solar. And in the mother of all ironies, contrary to the stated aim of the ‘Energiewende’, carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise.



Its nuclear-powered, next-door neighbour, France wins the low CO2 power generation competition by a mile – and makes a killing selling electricity to power-starved Germans, whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in.

All in all, Germany’s (apparently) inevitable ‘transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future has been a total flop.

Adding insult to injury, German power prices have surged (again) and, in the midst of another bitter winter, Germans can expect more blackouts and load shedding as their grid groans under the burden of its suicidal attempt to run on chaotically intermittent wind and solar.

Here’s No Tricks Zone with an update on Germany’s power pricing and supply calamity.

Germany’s Energiewende (transition to green energies) is driving up prices

For a long time, electricity prices have known only one direction: upwards! Rising ever faster, ever more clearly. Now comes the shock for many families: The Federal Government has presented official figures in an answer to an inquiry from the FDP Free Democrats parliamentary group in the Bundestag and revealed the true extent of the electricity price increase.

320 euros extra annually per household

In the past ten years, the price of electricity for households and industry has risen by a third. According to the Augsburger Allgemeine, which quotes from the paper, the price of electricity rose by 35 percent between 2009 and 2019.

For a typical household with 4,000 kWh per year, this means 320 euros in additional costs for electricity alone. This is even more than the various comparison websites had previously calculated.

More 8% hike!

BILD expresses how drastic it is: “The electricity price wave is sweeping over Germany! Now the energy giants Innogy, RheinEnergy and Vattenfall are also raising prices by eight percent”. Millions of households are affected.

Germany has Europe’s highest price for electricity, if not the world’s highest price. One kilowatt hour of electricity now costs on average 30.03 euro cents. The experts at the Verivox comparison portal expect that prices will continue to rise this year, for a simple reason: Germany is paying for the transition to green energies.

With the so-called EEG feed-in levy, every electricity consumer pays for the feed-in of unreliable and extremely expensive “renewable energies” and thus also pays for the destruction of Germany’s once previously reliable and inexpensive power supply.

No way around subsidies

No sensible person would install wind turbines on a large scale in Germany. The yield of electricity is simply too low and too unreliable. If it was reliable, it would not have to be propped up by subsidies.

Money for nothing

According to the German government, wind turbine operators alone received a total of 635 million euros in compensation in 2018 because they were unable to feed their electricity into the grid during times it was not needed.

This “compensation” will be even more drastic in 2019, because in the first quarter alone there were strong winds; wind turbines were able to produce large volumes of electricity – but when there was no demand for it, so it could not be used, not even given away to neighboring countries.

“Anti-social”

FDP politician Sandra Weeser explained: “We have an extremely anti-social redistribution here. The weakest citizens would be burdened with the electricity price just as much as the strongest.”

Ms Weeser also sees the attractiveness of Germany as a business location at risk: “With our high wage cost level, we cannot keep increasing the production costs of electricity if we want to keep industry in the country.

“Gigantic redistribution machine”

The so-called EEG feed-in program continues to prove to be a gigantic redistribution machine. This is once again attracting the profiteers onto the scene – as can be seen from the results of the solar tender of the Federal Network Agency. Tendered were 500 MW of capacity for solar plants, bids were submitted for a total of 1,344 MW. That is 2.7 times more than was needed. In mid-January, the agency awarded the contract to “121 bids for a solar capacity of 501 MW to be erected”.

Unsteady supply means inefficient use of backup plants

This means even more photovoltaic systems for ridiculously low hours of output and even higher EEG fees. And even more CO2 emissions from those conventional power plants that have to supply electricity when the sun does not shine because Germans have no desire to live without electricity. The very frequent, inefficient start-up and shut-down processes of these large power plants on standby also cause additional CO2 emissions. This increases operating costs and raises retail power prices for consumers.


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About Rudy P. Magnate II   SysAdmin at howtofindthemoney

4,050 connections, 69 recommendations, 14,223 honor points.
Joined APSense since, April 9th, 2013, From Solo, Indonesia.

Created on Feb 2nd 2020 18:50. Viewed 490 times.

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