I would also add, that much more demand response (load that can be shed during cruch times, and control systems to actuate it) is also in order. Getting a grid with a high degree of variable sources is going to require efforts on many fronts, DR is one of these fronts.

When we talk about intermittent renewable energy sources, we have to include the topic of energy storage. Pumped hydro storage is the cheapest but it takes massive capital and land area, not to mention having the correct potential energy conditions.

Like fracked NG, we just don't know what the cost of fully realized renewable energy systems will we be. Matured renewable energy systems, as well as matured fracked NG operations, are most likely to be far more expensive in EROEI terms than the beautiful, plentiful and inexpensive black gold that was used to build our wonderful and energy intensive global economy.

The newer sources of energy sure do exist but what human population levels will they support and what standard of living will they provide is a whole different topic of discussion.

It seems reasonable to expect Earth's human population to be less than 1 billion people after the 150 year depletion of fossil fuels and that, depending on the structure of the resulting communities (King/Serf, Equal Resource Distribution, Minimum Levels - Feudal, Caste or whatever models future generations come up with), the standard of living for different communities will be vastly different, from very comfortable to extreme suffering for the enslaved.

Due to the need for deep supply chains to support complex technologies, we can expect many of the luxuries we take for granted today to become part of our history, much like how concrete and the building of advanced roads were lost for great periods of time after the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Technology may be the answer... Too bad that technology requires so many resources.

Seems to me that an over-abundance of energy, even a somewhat erratic one, is a better problem to have than the alternative. Gives me hope for renewables. It's great to see a large country leading the way on this front.

As for DR, perhaps looking at energy intensive operations and placing a number of these on standby for surge events?

Pumped storage is an excellent way to smooth out the highs and lows of renewables.

Another way to store excess energy is to use electric vehicles. The Nissan Leaf parked in my drive way has a 24kwh Lithium battery pack. I always charge at night when there is extra grid capacity.

Now think about if there were 1 million electric vehicles in Germany. They could lower their import cost for oil and make the electrical grid more efficient all at the same time. All you would have to do is make the price of electricity reflect the availability of renewable power and problem solved.

BMW already has a big R&D program for EV's. This program could be expanded rapidly and it would be a jobs program for the german people as well.

If my reading is correct, the bottleneck is largely the grid itself. Enough storage and generating facilities maybe available here and there, but simply there is not enough interconnecting capacity to bring the power from the places it is available to where is needed. It seems to me that the whole structure is on the edge right now, as a failure of one component can easily lead to cascading failures of other components.

Hi Alan,

Switzerland currently has about 4GW of pumped storage, and AFAIK "only" another 4 GW planned, 2.5GW of which are being built right now.
Switzerland has an average electricity consumption of ~7-8GW, so obviously, 8 GW of pumped storage is mainly for export/profit-making. Actually, there is quite some debate here in Switzerland about this - it will force us to build new transmission lines, which probably will be payed by taxpayers and consumers, while the profits for selling the power at peak times go to the corporations. Also, I hear that the whole business model is a bit endangered, because German PV is driving peak prices down, and the pumped storage is thriving on high peak prices.

The Germans have nearly 7GW pumped storage themselves, so more than Switzerland at the moment.

Personally, I think investing in more energy efficiency would be the way to go, rather than producing more and more electricity, upgrading grids - and all just so people can continue wasting electric energy...

cheers
Martin

Pump water up with cheap French nukes & German wind at 3 AM. Let water down early in the morning, when solar PV production is still low, pump up again at noon using cheap german solar (oh, it is not so cheap ?) and down again for evening peak.

Oh, it's cheaper then the cheapest of night...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/28/1078562/-solar-cuts-electricity...

Sounds to me to be the ideal situation for small distributed thermal power, preferably but by no means necessarily fired by biomass or solid waste.

I do hope Germany and Japan keep up their trajectory toward sustainable energy, something I have seen the USA drop so badly.

Also, Japan seems to be leading the way toward population reduction, another absolute imperative. I presume they retain their zero immigration policy?

Vanadium batteries are not going to happen. Vanadium is at >25$/kg and Vanadium batteries can only store max 20Wh/kg. The price is thus at least 1.25 $ / Wh which is three times more than the current Li-Ion batteries cost.

Ravenscroft,

Here is some information:

1) The power in the wind is proportional to the cube of the wind speed
i.e. double the wind speed and the power will increase by a factor of eight (2 x 2 x 2).

2) The power output of a wind turbine is proportional to the area swept by the rotor –
i.e. double the swept area and the power output is also doubled. (The forces on a wind turbine at higher wind speeds can get very high so its output will be limited at a rated power. Therefore, at a site with double the average mean wind.

Betz Limit; A theoretical maximum of
59.3% of the wind energy can be extracted

To estimate the air speed and output for the actual height of your tower you can use an empirical 1/7 power law.

If you know the air speed V1 at a certain height h1, then the air speed V2 at a different height h2 can be estimated as: V2=V1×(h2/h1)1/7.

...local geography (terrain, structures, tress, etc) has a lot to do with the exact answer here.

higher air densities should also help increase power output (greater lift over the airfoil, as wis the case with aircraft), but I ask for some smarter-then-me folks (most of you) to roll in and validate or refute that idea, and the other stuff I plucked off the Intertubes here.

http://www.weset.org/uploads/worksheets/CalculationOfWindPower.pdf

http://windpower.generatorguide.net/wind-speed-power.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power

If I think about weather, the sun generally shines in good weather when wind is often light. Conversely when weather is cloudy, the wind often is stronger.

Is that an accepted fact of Wind and PV?

Yes, it is more or less an accepted fact. Peak power from wind and PV tend to be anti-correlated more than correlated. On the other hand, it is certainly not the case that there will never be high sun and high wind simultaneously, or no sun and no wind. And grids need to account for such events according to the frequency with which they occur.

I think that depends upon the local climate. here near the bay area, my PV system maxes out on days like the last couple with low temps and high winds. So on days like this with little AC demand, both wind and sun are producing flat out. In places where wind and clouds usually go together the situation look better.

This is an essential comment.
In Germany it is necessary to consider two dimensions in evaluating a combination of wind power and PV: time of day and geography.
It is an advantage that the two sources have different peak hours and different geographical distributions.
However, it is a disadvantage that there is no PV generation during the evening peak load. It is also a disadvantage that the regulating work which must be made by controllable power sources grows considerably with the growth of wind power and PV.
The publication of time series for both wind power and PV has given a good opportunity for replacing guesswork by analyses.

Yes, PV and Wind complement each other well and practically everywhere in the world:
http://www.q-cells.com/uploads/tx_abdownloads/files/6CV.1.32_Gerlach2011...

Time resolved geospatial data of global horizontal irradiation and wind speeds are used to simulate the power feed-in of PV and wind power plants assumed to be installed on an equally rated power basis in every region of a 1°x1° mesh of latitude and longitude between 65°N and 65°S. An overlap of PV and wind power full load hours is defined as measure for the complementarity of both technologies and identified as ranging between 5% and 25% of total PV and wind power feed-in. Critical overlap full load hours are introduced as a measure for energy losses that would appear if the grid was dimensioned only for one power plant of PV or wind. In result, they do not exceed 9% of total feed-in but are mainly around 3% - 4%. Thus the two major renewable power technologies must be characterized by complementing each other.

Meanwhile there are also windturbines with capacity factors of over 40%:
http://www.gamesacorp.com/recursos/noticias/2012-marzo-g114-20-mw-data-s...
http://www.nordex-online.com/en/products-services/wind-turbines/n117-24-mw

"Wind power peaks seem not to be simultaneous with PV peaks. This means that PV does not add its full peak capacity to the grid problems during high wind periods."

Yes, the author appears to draw the wrong conclusion from this. The chart appears to indicate the peaks are complementary, which should help to reduce "the need for regulating capacity" (a concern raised by the author). During high wind periods, presumably grid operators would schedule less fossil fuels or less imports, or in a worst case scenario export some energy for a profit.

Germany has scaled back solar and wind incentives (meeting their previously established targets), and are prioritizing transmission additions (in light of concerns raised in these reports). I don't see where any of this is a surprise, and isn't being highlighted by current resource planning or funding priorities (although some obstacles still remain).

http://www.germanenergyblog.de/?p=8736

I'm not sure how you would classify this as a "nightmare scenario." For those who take their jobs seriously, it is more likely just another day at the office.

"If so then the "real" capacity of such systems is probably something like 1.5 times the capacity of PV or Wind individually. Adding the capacities together likely leads to a number that would be very rarely achieved."

This is mostly anecdotal from watching www.transparency.eex.com quite a bit: There are currently ~30GW wind capacity installed and 27GW PV capacity installed. This has resulted in a maximum of ~25GW of wind production and 22GW of PV production. However, combined, the maximum I have so far seen has been only a little above 30GW of wind + PV.

So at least in Germany, wind and PV do appear to complement each other pretty well.

Hi: you can have a better view of the German system by looking at these web sites, where data are almost real-time:

1) PV production, SMA network:

http://www.sma.de/en/company/pv-electricity-produced-in-germany.html

2) PV production and forecast, Tennett network

http://www.tennettso.de/site/en/Transparency/publications/network-figure...

3) Wind production andforecast, on=and off-shore, Tennett network:

http://www.tennettso.de/site/en/Transparency/publications/network-figure...

4) Wind production and meteorological parameters of Alpha Ventus off-shore FINO station: (changing "week" to "day" gives zoom to daily parameters)

http://fino.dewi.ag/fino_1week.png

5) Related to German RES, Danish' Energinet production:

http://energinet.dk/Flash/Forside/index.html

6) European electricity exchanges (ENTSO-E): (need to register, it's free)

www.entsoe.net

Very instructive and enjoyable.

I live int he bay area of california. In the winter wind generation does look a lo tlike figure 2 in the article. However in the summer where every day is sunny its a very different picture. In the summer the area between interstate 5 and Highway 99 often sees temperatures of 90F. All that hot air raising causes cool ocean air to move inland. In the morning there is no brease and it is cool were I live and frequently we have low clouds until about 10. By noon it is clear and quit comfortable with a very light brease. by 3PM the wind is getting quite strong. When I get home from work the wind is quit strong and the temperatuer is dropping rapidly. One hour after sunset the wind has almost stopped.

In centeral california wind power is at its best and most predictable in the summer in good weather. Most wind turbins are located in the costal mountains to take advantage of this. In southern california they get the summer winds but they also get a lot of wind on cold clear winter days. There the cold air in the high deserts falls down hill and can move very fast to the low costal areas. The Santa Ana winds can hit 70 miles per hour in some places.

The infrequent winter storms don't amount to much in california.

The Germans can always buy in nuclear power from France,Sweden,Finland and the former USSR.
As long as the nukes aren't on German territory then they can still have that self righteous inner glow so necessary for keeping warm on the those windless,cold winter nights.

Europe is a relatively small place (compared to the US at least). High capacity lines between states (or groups of states) are much more economically feasible.

The US actually has three almost entirely independent power grids: the Eastern, Western, and Texas Interconnects. The Texas Interconnect is (despite what Texans like to think) relatively small -- the portion of the state covered by that grid is about the same size as France. The Western Interconnect is physically much larger overall, but the large majority of its population (hence electricity demand) is concentrated into six smaller areas. The Eastern is probably most similar structurally to the European grid, with a relatively large number of cities broadly distributed over the area. Two important points to consider:

• The Eastern represents an enormously larger problem than the other two interconnects. In 2010, the Eastern accounted for about 93% of all US nuclear generation, about 90% of all US coal generation, and about 86% of total US generation. When people talk about the failing US grid, and the massive amounts of US coal and nuclear power, they are generally talking about the Eastern Interconnect (whether they know they are or not).

• Of the three regions, the Western clearly has the largest and best quality renewable resources relative to its population (in 2010, almost 30% of Western generation was from renewable sources). There are a variety of quite detailed studies of the specifics for heavy use of wind and solar in the Western; the same level of detail has not been done (to my knowledge) for the Eastern simply because the problem is so much harder.

One thing to remember is that even those high quality wind resources translate into a capacity factor of only 35% to 40%. As a result, it's increasingly hard to run the power grid when the share of wind electricity increases. When the share rises to 40% or so, wind powers entire grid for extended lengths of time. From this time, it's impossible to increase the percentage without wasting more and more wind electricity, simply because there's no users for it. Solar has the same problem, just even more exacerbated, as its capacity factor is at most 20% which drops to abysmal 3-7% in winter. These are physical limits, which can't be solved without a magic want. So there's no bright future for renewables.

Norway already gets almost all of its electricity from hydro, and there is a lot of potential for storage as well. I think in the face of realities with increasing oil scarcity the world will have to look past aesthetic issues and the "not in my backyard" kind of thinking. But its important that we dont go completely bonkers and ruin the nature because we want to live in our McMansions like before and zip around in our new EVs like nothing has changed. A good policy with reduced energy use and increased effectiveness would be a better solution imo.

If we put our back into it we could be generating wind and solar power on a much larger scale on each house or local community and use a couple of EV batteries as excess storage which could be used back into the houses when necessary. There is a huge potential here, the question is if there is enough oil around to build this new infrastructure and if we will be able to sustain or service this as the oil supplies are dwindling. I guess part of the oil needed for certain essential production could come from biofuels, but it would absolutely necessary that most of the world was running on electricity including most of transportation. Again, "peak everything" could be a more serious issue than we think as well and it doesnt matter how much hydro you "could generate" if you cant find the raw materials to make the generator. :)

I agree. Germany's problems are good problems to have.

Went and had a look at the comments. Something interesting is happening. There is a heated debate going on that reveals something that may have escaped notice. The fact that deniers are engaging proponents of renewables lets us know that, deniers are being repeatedly exposed to opposing view points.

As time goes on, one or the other sides of this debate will be silenced as events unfold to support one side or the other. I know which side of the debate I am on and really hope that I don't end up with egg on my face.

Alan from the islands

Wind and solar have killed people in Germany? Did someone fall off a roof while installing or something?

The Germans haven't really abandoned nuclear power . . . they still get a lot of it from France.

I think you are quite over-pessimistic on Germany's ability to make it work. The ability of Germany to engineer solutions is world-reknown. Between their very large installation of renewables and their dropping of nuclear power, they have certainly given themselves a challenge. I look forward to seeing how they solve these problems so that we can all learn from their experiences.

My state of California has a reasonably aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standard so we will eventually have the same issues.

Dark Ages?

Germany can turn on lights, toasters and battery chargers if the wind blows OR if the sun shines. Japan's reactor fleet is now in the 'Dark Ages' again, it would seem.

..and is there something wrong with more local food?

I just spent several days with my cousins in Iowa, one of the topsoil capitals of the country, and didn't have a fresh leaf of Lettuce until last night.

Solar and Wind work alright, but there will be some adjustments necessary.. I'll have mine with a big side of salad, please.

The cherry on the cake is that very high electricity rates make it very difficult for German car makers to introduce electric cars as the economics do not make sense.

Hmmm. I've had the same thought . . . but, it really depends on how their subsidy and tariff systems works. At the current low price for PV systems, the PV generated electricity for an EV is cheap compared to $8/gallon gasoline. So if you install your own system and have net metering, it is pretty good. But paying over 30 cents/KWH is pretty darn high.

I think part of Germany's difficulty is that they are saddled with paying for all those PV systems installed years ago when the prices were more than double what they are today.

I guess your post explains why a little German company formerly called DBM Energy does not exist and why, this company that does not exist did not develop something they call a Kolibri battery, which they did not install in a small Audi. Said non existent company did not take said non existent car with non existent battery and did not set a record for the longest distance covered by an EV on a single charge, on public roads.

In addition, I wonder if this Bloomberg story, linked to in Fridays DB, is off the mark.

The European Union’s failure to decide whether to curb supplies of emission permits is sending prices for electricity in Germany, Europe’s largest market, toward their biggest losing streak since at least 2006.

Power for 2013 delivery has fallen as much as 8.8 percent this year to a record low today, according to broker data compiled by Bloomberg. It may decline a further 7.1 percent by November, according to UBS AG. Adapto Advisors AB, a hedge-fund manager, forecasts an additional 5 percent slide this year.

Could the fact that Solar PV is Reducing Price of Electricity in Germany have anything to do with the decrease in the forward prices for electricity rather than "The European Union’s failure to decide whether to curb supplies of emission permits". See the graphs at the top of this article.

As far as

So their policy to date has achieved high costs to the consumer, uncompetitive prices for industry

goes, the same cleantechnica.com article linked to above, presents an analysis that directly contradicts that.

Alan from the islands

"What Germany is actually doing about it is building 19 new coal fired power stations."

These will replace older and less efficient plants. By this strategy, they hope to gain a 14% reduction in overall carbon emissions.

http://www.businessweek.com/print/globalbiz/content/mar2007/gb20070321_9...

You're not doing away with coal in Germany. It's politically untenable and would break the back of effective voting blocks and change the shape of industrial policy in Germany.

I disagree, on technical grounds, with much of his analysis.

It is FAR more scalable than he believes.

The USA is a society that routinely practices mountain top removal mining for a one time energy return. TBM drives keep getting cheaper (inflation adjusted -3%/year). Combine the two and a lot of pumped storage can be built here.

Alan

Last year around 3% of the renwable enregy was lost due to tranmission/production peak problems.

Ideally, DG relieves the grid. This assumes DG goes where the load is. The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference, and in practice, there is.

In my experience in California, most renewables applications by capacity occur in areas which are already generation dominated and thus transmission constrained. I have many distribution and subtransmission circuits where additional generation is a problem, not a relief. This is not theoretical. This is not a conspiracy by grid analysts to pretend a problem exists.

I support efforts to steer DG (thru incentive structure, etc), to locations where it will relieve the grid rather than burden it. I support efforts to build additional grid infrastructure to support additional renewables.

Ignoring this issue is not an option if we wish to continue increasing renewables penetration.

The quality of this article is not good:

Many of the peak production problems can be solved with small electric storage facilities (batteries + loading manager in combination with a PV inverter)in households. First products are available and I really hope that companies like SMA can mass produce the stuff. No need for MANY new HV transmission lines.

More serious was the limited capacity of pipelines for natural gas, the storage facilities are in norther Germany, the result was that power plants in southern Germany could not work in winter, when Russian NG supply was reduced due to high domestic demand in Russia.

The pump storage capacity in Germany's neighbour countries is too small and will not solve the problem.

Can the reluctance to connect Germany with Norway be problem of the utilities? Electricity from Norway would kill some of their cash cows.

The problems we faced last winter/spring were often NOT caused by wind but showed basic flaws of the transmission system, however, in some newspapers they were attributed to the renewable energies, i.e. used for pure propaganda.

The grid and the power system control have been designed for controllable power sources. A successful transition into less controllable power sources will require a redesigned infrastructure, which is often referred to as a Smart Grid.
The grid problems in Germany indicate a temporary imbalance between production system and infrastructure. Therefore it is interesting to observe the grid performance in Germany.
It is my experience that analyzing and understanding grid problems and blackouts is the most direct way to better system performance.
Both Southern Germany and Souther California depend on remote power sources. We are still waiting for the results of the investigation of the San Diego blackout in September 2011.
The lobby for wind power and PV should be the most eager supporters of a balanced integration process. To deny the existence of any operational problems caused by wind or PV is a typical reaction. However, it is not a constructive approach.

Hey anyone, you have been in my thoughts a lot recently, ever since I posted a news story from my neck of the woods. I got to thinking about the situation in Germany and how they managed to get the existing players to go along with the plan. I discovered the work of Hermann Scheer and think I have a much better grip on the situation.

In response to a recent "Peak Oil" story on Sunday in the same newspaper, I was able to point fellow readers to the ideas of Hermann Scheer and hopefully over the next few weeks I will be able to raise the level of awareness of how renewables can be encouraged on my island. In my DB post, I linked to a section of a video interview with Herr Scheer where he makes the salient point in relation to encouragement of renewables.

In watching the interview with Herr Scheer I have formed the impression that, renewables are disruptive technology that threaten to wrest control from and compromise the viability of, the large corporate fossil fuel extraction and electricity generation entities. It is understandable that a considerable amount of FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) will be spawned by the threatened parties and find it's way into analyses, even on fine sites like TOD. Trust me, I am typing this using Firefox, on Linux, on a netbook connected to the Internet via wi-fi so, I know the powerful and deceptive FUD campaigns can be.

edit: Funny how a slight misdirection of the finger and the dropping of an "n" turn Hermann into German. :^/

Alan from the islands

Do you have any ideas how to solve the problem of PV having only 3% capacity factor in German winter? That is, their entire 22GW PV fleet produces less than 0.7GW on average for months.

This is unfortunately one of worst articles posted in TOD so far

I agree. Another anti-renewables "drive by shooting" and diatribe posted by Euan. If The Oil Drum wants to marginalize itself, I can see no better way than posting one sided articles that minimize emerging trends and markets (and only serve to show how out of touch and immersed in conventional thinking many analysts can be).

Far from being just a critic, however, I would like to offer something constructive in return. Rather than post a skewed and one-sided picture (something that any entry level journalism student or peer reviewed scientific journal advises you NOT to do), why not provide some counterpoint (however minimal). You can do this in many ways: a dialogue among several writers (I would certainly enjoy reading this), a section on alternative approaches or perspectives (since all models have uncertainties), or perhaps just selecting papers from people with a broader view (who can offer alternatives, weighing of options, and are well versed in the scientific, engineering, or operational literature of their field).

How to spot an article driven by ideological concerns? It's quite simple. Everything in the world has trade-offs (there are no perfect solutions). Anybody who suggests otherwise, who reduces complex problems to a single solution, or who sees in contingent circumstances conspiratorial motives, is not very well versed in their respective fields. Arguing the pros and cons of a position, or situating an issue in the complexity of competing variables, should not be remedial math for publishable pieces on TOD.

But the worst article on TOD, that would have to be: "A Nation Sized Battery." Maybe it has something to do with how engineers think, having an outcome in mind, and then working backwards. Sometimes, the opposite approach makes all the difference: asking the right question (and re-evaluating fundamental assumptions).

Brilliant contribution!

All the engineering types here at TOD sometimes forget that human vices (gluttony, greed, envy, pride, etc.) are as important as purely technological factors in determining our energy infrastructure.

Jon

Wait, you mean the grid is stressed because of the 8GW of missing base-load generation he mentions in the first sentence?

Indeed. Germany has succeeded in building quite the renewable energy generation system. It got a bit out of control when they still had large subsidies available and the PV prices suddenly dropped like a rock. Now they've got a somewhat unstable grid. Let's see them solve the problem and show the rest of the world that it can be done. Here in California, we will certainly need to learn from what they come up with.

uggh... that's a terrible suggestion, IMHO.

First, that would be mandating roughly a doubling of the cost to the customer who decides to install solar, with no additional benefit to them. That alone would simply kill the solar market as it currently exists, in all countries.

Second, until solar reaches a certain level of penetration, that storage is simply not necessary to safeguard grid stability. In the German case, they are reaching a point where they have to start thinking about it, but that is after installing GW of PV with the help of subsidies. So it is really not helpful, if you want to encourage solar, to make this a requirement off the bat. And then, when the time comes that it starts to become relevant, and the requirement might begin to make sense, it is exceedingly unfair to require new installations to shoulder the new financial outlay, or to place new requirements on existing installations that were purchased according to certain investment parameters.

Third, storage onsite at every grid-tied installation isn't necessarily the cheapest or most energy efficient way to achieve the storage needed.

And finally, the amount of storage required won't be the same as that which "is sufficient to delivery the day-time energy throughout the time where the sun does not shine during a 24 hour period." IOW, even the goal of converting solar to 'baseload' isn't necessary, even if it were cheap and easy.

Yeah, I concur with jaggedben. That would kill the solar market. They should start by scaling back the incentives . . . which they have done. They need to work on finding complementary systems such as wind systems in certain locations, pumped hydro storage (which is much more cost-effective than small batteries for PV systems), natural gas peakers, etc.

An analog to PV charged home batteries is the subsidised installation of rainwater tanks to reduce the need for piped water. So far the cost sharing formula is tentative as in this example. With batteries it is not clear whether the optimum capacity per house is 10 kwh, 30 kwh or 100 kwh. Ideally a home should generate and store enough PV to cover a run of several overcast dark days in winter. Otherwise the centralised generators on the grid cannot be seriously downsized. On the other hand if there is more summer residential PV than needed that is a waste of capital. It would take a fairly smart grid to manage which is yet more cost. That's why I think we'll always need big dumb dinosaur power stations. So far all attempts to solve this problem like Desertec seem seriously flawed.

I bet Iceland's rivers don't shut down during winter. There is probably still decent hydro year round.Wisconsin had much much colder winter weather, but creeks and rivers didn't shut down.

I like your comparison! Non-renewables is the gathering, renewables is agriculture :)

Thank you very much for your post. I am involved in grid integration of renewables in California. We currently have large areas of the grid where interconnection of additional export generation is effectively precluded pending major transmission projects for stability reasons (thermal reasons are mostly being addressed by schemes to trip or curtail generation for grid contingencies). Unfortunately, such grid upgrades are very slow in coming, though not for lack of trying on the part of wires companies. One problem we face is that the interconnection of non-export self-generation projects (which is happening without transmission upgrades) will offset loads locally which are already offset regionally by existing export renewables, leading to a need to regularly curtail existing renewables pending transmission upgrades.

I apologize if any of my comments appeared to doubt your intentions.

It is FAR easier to claim a solution that to actually build it.

In Germany, I suspect that the major utilities are not very interested in the national goals - and suddenly scrapping paid for machinery that they expected to make decades more profits from was certainly not positive for them.

May I make a practical suggestion ?

Announce a program, using special meters, where any EV hooked up and recharged (on signal) with power that would otherwise go to waste, would get free electricity. the same meters could be used for demand management.

A way to promote EVs (say to the postal service) as well as private individuals.

Best Hopes,

Alan

Daniel Dobbeni's, President of ENTSO-E, Letter to Commissioner Oettinger dated April 17, 2012, (PDF warning) expresses the primary desire of ENTSO-E, a trade organization for European transmission system operators, that their industry must be deregulated. Absolutely not because it will only lead to the misbehavior of TSO's. As for his concern about, "... outdated connection conditions for distributed generation that are not being retrofitted anywhere fast enough," if there is a program and a need for retrofitting, then they need to complete the program. He is referring to Europe in general, not just Germany.

Report on Energy Supplies in Winter 2011/12: Executive Summary, Bundesnetzagentur, May 3, 2012 (PDF warning). This report does not blame renewable energy for the problems last winter. It blames:
2. "shortfall in gas supplies in February 2012"
3. "... in February 2012, exceptionally large deviations from the forecasts...." does not identify the deviations. It is too vague.
4. phase shifting is the TSO's standard method of adapting to variable supply
5. German and Austrian reserve generators were activated on more than one occasion, but there is no mention as to when or why.
6. a plea to not decommission any more existing fossil fuel or nuclear powered generators
7. Periods of large generation from renewable energy sources are driving down the price of electricity hurting the profit margins of the conventional boys. This is not the way we envisioned deregulation to a market system for selling electricity. Since we are stuck with expanding RES's, please let us manipulate the transmission system to increase our profits in the market system.
9. Only expanding the grid can relieve the problems.
10. Don't bother with the supply shortfall in natural gas because it is far more important to do our project to expand the grid.

Interconnected system operation conditions in Continental Central Europe
A briefing paper to the European Commission, ENTSO-E, March 13, 2012, (PDF warning).
This is a more detailed document asserting that ENTSO-E wants deregulation. They want to expand the techniques of selling excess power to neighboring countries who then resell is back to them. They also want to install more phase shifting transformers. They insist on keeping the market system alive and well in their industry.

ENTSO-E has a clear agenda: deregulate, add more transmission lines and add more phase shifting transformers (PSO). I do not understand how a PSO relieves high power events. If they are altering the phase of the AC power, then it should make motors run less efficiently and increase the cost to the consumer. Basically the TSO's would be dissipating the excess energy as heat in consumer equipment while making the customers pay for it. The other method of sending the excess power to another country using a HVDC line and then sending it back on another HVDC line sounds like a scam too. It seems to be dissipating the extra power as heat in the transmission system while making the other country pay for the extra electricity while the sender pays for the smaller amount that is returned allowing for some profit. Has ENRON been reborn in Europe?

ENTSO-E needs to stop with entrenched industry advocacy and genuinely get with the renewable energy program. They should advocate flywheels, more pumped hydro, improving efficiency, demand side management and making methane from the excess energy. Making methane from CO₂, water and RES electricity could mitigate both problems from last winter.

Since the article was written the four German transmission system operators have jointly published a ten years grid development plan.

The four 10 year grid enhancement plans by German transmission operators were in the works long before the June 03 draft filing deadline, and were emphasized by Angela Merkel (with a timeline for approval) back in late April of 2012.

http://www.germanenergyblog.de/?p=9162

Given that grid operators are taking seriously and responding to the reliability and congestion issues that you summarize so well from the reports above, I'm curious if you still view the Renewable energy picture, planned capacity additions, and nuclear shutdown in Germany (over the long run) as "a nightmare for system operators."

It would also be helpful to get any updates regarding pending investigations by Federal Network Agency into "alarm level yellow" condition for German power grids back in March, 2012. Other contributing causes were also highlighted in initial reports: scheduling conflicts, uncertain weather patterns, and failure of substation. Have they made a determination as to the final causes yet?