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Consumers In Germany Were Paid To Use Electricity This Holiday Season (inhabitat.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inhabitat: The cost of electricity in Germany has decreased so dramatically in the past few days that major consumers have actually been paid to use power from the grid. While "negative pricing" is not an everyday occurrence in the country, it does occur from time to time, as it did this holiday weekend. This gift to energy consumers is the result of hundreds of billions of dollars invested in renewable energy over the past two decades. This most recent period of negative pricing was a result from warm weather, strong breezes, and the low demand typical of people gathering together to celebrate. Germany's temporary energy surpluses are a result of both low demand and variably high supply. Wind power typically makes up 12 percent of Germany's power consumption on a daily basis. However, on windy days, that percentage can easily multiply several times the average. The older segment of Germany's energy portfolio, such as coal plants, are not able to lower output quickly enough. Thus, there is a glut of electricity. On Sunday, Christmas Eve, major energy consumers, such as factory owners, were being paid more than 50 euros (~$60) per megawatt-hour consumed. Further reading: The New York Times
Germans pay more for power than almost every other Western country. That fact was conveniently left out of the push piece in the submitted story.
Actually the conditions for coal cannot be repeated naturally. Coal formed before microbes evolved the ability to break down the hard cellulose of trees. This is long before terminates as well, which broke down trees in forests. Theoretically some coal can still form in the existing peat bogs, but new peat bogs cannot be formed either.
The grid most certainly is interconnected as Germany usually gets a substantial amount of electricity from the French. But France was probably also consuming little electricity on Christmas Eve. And the grid can only transfer so much electricity anyway.
Pumped hydro installations. They "buy" excess energy and then sell back into the grid when prices are high.
Which is where Tesla's coming in with their massive battery installations.
Batteries are very expensive for grid storage. A better option is to widen the grid, so a peak in one area can fill in a trough in other areas.
You're right that they share power loads, you're wrong to say they could efficiently buy/sell on a short-term with other countries without some mechanism to do that. It doesn't exist now, the ability to transmit the power exists, the lines exist that's true.
Three is nowhere you can go in the Ortenau or Schwarzwald-Bar counties where you can enjoy a view without a windmill. They place them atop the hills almost everywhere. A few years ago it wasn't a problem, annoying like TV/microwave masts, but limited in scope and not overly obtrusive. Now they are everywhere. Hearing "whoosh-whoosh" for over a kilometer in every direction is a nuisance. They aren't as bad as an autobahn or major road, but they do ruin what little feel of nature the region had left. My wife grew up here and really misses the forest feel that is constantly under attack. Farmers, wine growers, autobahns, ski lifts, now windmills.
Each windmill has a huge concrete block (600 tonnes). A street must be constructed to reach it, heavy enough for construction equipment, flat bed trucks with over sized windmill parts, etc. It isn't temporary as they must be serviced and inspected, so the network of roads stays. Then there is the power distribution infrastructure.
Most of the forests here are already managed, so you can't classify them as nature. There is now a kind of national park in the area to stop development. Guess what, wind mills get an exemption as the state and county want as many as possible.
It literally makes me and my wife cry. If we fuck off to California, the region will have two less champions and custodians. You city dwellers and your left wing BS politics care not for nature and known nothing of what you speak. The BS in California makes me cry too.
Put windmills out at sea or in industrial areas. Not in the middle of what little nature Germany has left.