Green Energy Having Desired Effect In Germany

from WUWT, Germany Weighs Electricity Rationing Scheme To Stabilize Its Now Shaky Green Power Grid

Germany struggles to keep the lights on, looks for a law to prevent its power grid from crashing.

Before the days of climate alarmism and hysteria, the job of deciding how to best produce electricity was left to power generation engineers and experts – people who actually understood it. The result: Germany had one of the most stable and reliable power grids worldwide.

Green energies destabilized the German power grid

Then in the 1990s, environmental activists, politicians, climate alarmists and pseudo-experts decided they could do a better job at generating power in Germany and eventually passed the outlandish EEG green energy feed-in act and rules. They insisted that wildly fluctuating, intermittent power supplies could be managed easily, and done so at a low cost.

Blackouts threaten

Fast forward to today: The result of all the government meddling is becoming glaringly clear: the country now finds itself on the verge of blackouts due to grid instability, has the highest electricity prices in the world, relies more on imports and is not even close to meeting its emissions targets.

Germany’s rickety and moody power grid now threatens the entire European power grid stability, as we recently witnessed.

The need for “smoothing out” demand peaks

So what solution does Berlin propose today? You guessed it: more meddling and interference, more outlandish bureaucrat solutions. Included among them are shutting down the remaining baseload coal-fired and nuclear power plants, and relying even more on the power sources that got the country into its current mess in the first place.

And new are restrictions as to when power can be consumed by consumers and industry! Energy rationing and targeted blackouts.

Cutting off e-vehicle battery chargers and industry

To deal with the power grid problems, Germany’s Economics Minister Peter Altmaier presented a draft law that would allow electric utilities “to temporarily cut off charging power for e-cars when there is once again too little electricity available”, an idea known as “peak smoothing”.

“Shutdowns due to power shortages have been practiced for some time. Aluminum smelters, for example, have to put up with having their power cut off for limited periods of time,” reports Tichys Einblick. “These, like refrigerated storage facilities, consume great amounts. It’s a dangerous game because after three hours the molten metal has solidified and the factory is ruined.”

Bacon's Rebellion,  What Happens When You Turn Over Your Electric Grid to Environmentalists and Bureaucrats

Once upon a time, Germany had one of the most stable and reliable electric grids in the world. Then the Germans committed themselves to green energy from variable energy sources, wind and solar. The result? From an article on the NoTricksZone blog (which draws upon reporting from Tichys Einblick):

The country now finds itself on the verge of blackouts due to grid instability, has the highest electricity prices in the world, relies more on imports and is not even close to meeting its emissions targets. Germany’s rickety and moody power grid now threatens the entire European power grid stability.

A failure on all fronts. How’s this for irony: To deal with power shortages, the German economics minister has presented a draft law to temporarily cut off charging power to e-cars! Increasingly, the Germans are exploring strategies for “peak smoothing,” which is another way of saying “targeted blackouts.” Heat pumps, electric heaters and wall-boxes, i.e. charging stations for e-mobiles, could be shut off when needed to stabilize the grid.

Rationing isn't a bug, it's a feature for people who want to control you.