(Germany) Utilities Give Away Power as Sun Floods Grid

[phantom power]

Are big increases in both grid and price volatility good things? I don't think so, but this article seems to take that point of view.

One thing it does point to is a new grid niche: companies that store excess production for a fee and sell back. I'm very interested to see if such companies materialize, and what that ends up looking like.

The 15 mile-per-hour winds that buffeted northern Germany on July 24 caused the nation’s 21,600 windmills to generate so much power that utilities such as EON AG and RWE AG (RWE) had to pay consumers to take it off the grid.

Rather than an anomaly, the event marked the 31st hour this year when power companies lost money on their electricity in the intraday market because of a torrent of supply from wind and solar parks. The phenomenon was unheard of five years ago.

With Europe’s wind and solar farms set to triple by 2020, utilities investing in new coal and gas-fired power stations no longer face stable returns. As more renewables come on line, a gas plant owned by RWE or EON that may cost $1 billion to build will be stopped more often from running at full capacity. It may only pay for itself on days like Jan. 31, when clouds and still weather pushed an hour of power on the same-day market above 162 ($220) euros a megawatt-hour after dusk, in peak demand time.

“You’re looking at a future where on a sunny day in Germany, you’ll have negative prices,” Bloomberg New Energy Finance chief solar analyst Jenny Chase said about power rates in wholesale trading. “And a lot of the other markets are heading the same way.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-29/utilities-giving-away-power-as-wind-sun-flood-european-grid.html

[dkf]

1. So envious of Germany. Why can't we have that problem?

[gater]

2. Because the new national motto in US is "Anything For A Buck!"

[jwirr]

3. Don't many of our states put limits on how much power can be produced

through alternative sources?

[Hawkowl]

4. Because we are not a democracy

We are ruled by the oil companies and Wall Street. Obama is merely the mouthpiece.

[Yo_Mama]

5. You can if you want to pay very high electricity prices

It's up to you, but a lot of people can't afford it.

The net price of what is spent to keep the grid up and powered is what ends up determining utility rates. From that same article:

German wind power capacity peaked at close to 12,000 megawatts on July 24, according to Meteogroup data, the last day of negative prices. Four days later, the most that the country’s wind parks generated was 315 megawatts.

Both the sun and the wind are highly correlated sources, although at least they aren't correlated to each other. In some places at least they are negatively correlated, which is a help.

But you can't recover costs on new plants to cover gaps in grid voltage, so you end up having extreme costs in powering the grid at times when your input from renewables is very low. Plus, eventually you have to dump power from active-feed renewables if you build enough of those sources into the grid.

Scotland is already dumping power from wind at times.

Edit: The fight in Scotland is getting ridiculous:
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/editor-s-picks/cashback-as-storms-knock-wind-out-of-turbine-sails-1.1123616

Further edit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-13253876

My understanding is that they are going to beef up their grid so they can ship more power elsewhere when needed, but they'd better get cracking.

[kristopher]

6. Renewables have virtually no external costs

Fukushima cleanup could cost up to $250 billion
http://www.ordons.com/asia/far-east/26159-fukushima-cleanup-could-cost-up-to-250-billion.html


Government to store radioactive waste in Tokyo, seven prefectures
http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201109290264.html


Radiation decontamination, disposal work to cost over 1 trillion yen: ministry
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110930p2a00m0na010000c.html


Nuking our energy future
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x312357


Germany’s phaseout reveals the true costs of nuclear power
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x312356


Fukushima Surprise: Radioactive Rice “Far Exceeding” Safe Levels Found in Japan
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/09/25/328035/nuclear-surprise-radioactive-rice-far-exceeding-safe-levels-found-in-japan/

[kristopher]

7. This was addressed here

The actual issue associated with and solved by storage isn't as much the power not being there when the wind moves across multiple fields of wind farms, but rather how to maximize the production that occurs when it is in excess of demand....
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/kristopher/745

Actual performance of renewables on California grid




See also:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=310610&mesg_id=310664