Melissa Eddy, writing in the New York Times on Christmas Eve 2014, fails to explain why "Germans Balk at Plan for Wind Power Lines" to bring wind power from the North to the power-hungry South:
The
North-to-South transmission lines are not needed; they are a waste of
money, designed to increase the cost of the Energiewende and thus do
discredit it, and to split the environmental community in various ways.
Here is why:
The
promoters of these North-to-South "Electricity Autobahns" have you
believe that Germany has good wind only offshore in the North, and faces
the risk of black-out in the South, when the last nuclear power plants
go cold at the end of 2022. (If they go cold; these folks also float
the idea of "extending the running time of nuclear power plants beyond
2022" whenever they have a chance.) Their map shows Germany as an
island. Look at a map of the European power grid and you understand what
nonsense has been planted in the general public‘s and many a
politician‘s mind. (On the side: One of the proposed transmission lines
was designed to bring lignite power from the East into the South. It
was sold as "necessary for the Energiewende" but was in fact the exact
opposite.)
The
capacity of the existing North-to-South transmission lines is fully
sufficient in the (daily) average. More demand management and storage
in the South would improve capacity utilisation. Many large industrial
power users have ways to become "swing consumers" and reduce their
demand when power prices are high. The innovative businesses in
Germany‘s South could benefit from even lower average power prices if
they put their mind to it. Increasingly inexpensive storage, built up
incrementally and flexibly in the South close to demand centers, is way
more economical than large-scale and indivisible, capital-intensive,
medium-term investment in high-voltage transmission lines, which create
strong economic and technical path-dependencies. The German auto
industry, which is strong in the South, could take a lead here.
There
is wind also in Germany‘s South. Instead of putting turbines into the
corrosive marine environment of the North and Baltic Seas, on muddy
ground in 40m of water‘s depth in large off-shore parks that need to be
connected to the grid in what are in effect vulnerable choke points,
the turbines could rise above the forest canopies on the high plains
and ridges of Southern Germany. The project sizes and risks, costs of
grid connection and system integration would be way lower than with
off-shore wind power.
Germany
still has a massive problem with atomic power from France, which all
too often clogs up the German grid in the West and South-West, including
the North-to-South lines, on its way to Switzerland and Italy. It
would be way quicker and cheaper to build an underwater cable from
Marseille to Rome than to expand grid capacity in Germany just so that
it can accommodate that atomic power.
The
solution is Tunur, a company that wants to bring 24h solar power from
Tunesia via an underwater cable to Italy (near Rome) and thus into the
integrated European power market. Tunur power could replace the power
currently imported into Italy from the North and reverse the flow
across the Alps. Tunur‘s power is already sold in the UK, so the
project is fully financed; it would not cost Germany a cent, just a
vote for accelerating this private project as part of the 315bn Euro
investment stimulus package.
Freeing
up the German grid would also help reduce stress with Eastern
neighbours Poland and the Czech Republic as "loop flows" would be
reduced. A direct transmission line from Germany to the UK, again as
part of the 315bn package, would facilitate regional grid integration
and reduce France‘s ability to way-lay Tunur‘s power on the way to its
customers. (Excuse me for the simplistic description of power flows
across Europe and the Mediterranean.)
As
a whole, the concept of building all these (8300km of) new power lines
in Germany is part of a framing of the Energiewende that focuses on
supply-sided expansion of large-scale and distant-from-demand renewable
energy, denigrates the potential of more distributed generation and
storage in a smart grid that would also enable demand flexibility to
help reduce total system cost. Tennet, the transmission grid operator
in question here, operates a regulated "cost-plus-margin" business and
has an interest in making expensive investments for a regulated rate of
return way higher than the current cost of capital.
Melissa
Eddy is normally relatively knowledgeable and scrupulous in her
reporting, but a number of blatant falsehoods give away some presumably
heavy-handed editorial guidance. Just to examples to prove this point:
1) The nuclear phase-out was agreed in 2000; it didn‘t need
Fukushima. 2) Germany has record low power prices for businesses, the
larger the user, the lower the price. No-one in German industry
worries about any "growing cost" of the Energiewende, because a) the
Energiewende costs only a little more than the business-as-usual
maintenance of the risky and dirty power supply system that is now
being replaced, and b) industry does not pay for the policy but gets
all the benefit (in the form of very cheap power in a very reliable
grid).
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Related post:
European Energy Policy after the Crimean Crisis: Focus on Flexibility
