Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Electrical Story

There's a great piece over at N-TV (commercial news) today in Germany....talking about wind-energy and it's latest ills.  I highly recommend reading the article.

For those who didn't know....there is a national goal of having around two-thirds of the German grid capability being renewable by the end of 2030.  Currently?  They sit at 44-percent.  The odds of meeting the 2030 goal?  Pretty much zero at this point, and it's getting worse.  I wouldn't even give you a 50-percent chance by 2035 of reaching the 65-percent level.

What N-TV points out is that the building of wind-generators has slumped big-time in 2019.  Between the building permits and court battles, it's getting to a point where it's impossible to find proper acreage, and get the permission of the local authorities to build.

A new German regulation came up recently over selection sites....you have to be a minimum of 1,000 meters from any residential building.  If you go and view the distance, it's roughly two-thirds of a mile, which is a pretty good distance.  So you'd have to look for fairly remote and rural surroundings to get permission.

Why any of this matters?  Well, there's a shutdown schedule for nuke power in Germany....2022.  And 16 years later, the coal plants would start their shutdown process.

In terms of a failed strategy?  We aren't there yet, but with the negative numbers in 2019 for wind-generators....there's probably going to be some emergency meeting in 2022 as the lasts nuke plant shuts down, and politicians admit that they are now worried over the future.

The back-up plan?  None.  But I would imagine that both the French and Poles are working on building up more capability....to supply Germany plenty of electrical power, at hefty rates when the time comes.  The Germans already pay the highest rates in Europe, and it's likely to escalate over the next decade.

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