so what?
Germany has installed solar and wind power to such an extent that it
should theoretically be able to satisfy the power requirement on any day
that provides sufficient sunshine and wind. However, since sun and wind
are often lacking – in Germany even more so than in other countries
like Italy or Greece – the country only manages to produce around 27% of
its annual electric power needs from these sources.
Doesn't matter if it was enough on this or that day, it cannot do it reliably. Some days way too little, some days way too much. Which costs.
Production is often too high to keep the network frequency stable
without disconnecting some solar and wind facilities. This leads to
major energy losses and forced power exports to neighboring countries
(“load shedding”) at negative electricity prices, below the cost of
generating the power.
In 2017 about half of Germany’s wind-based electricity production was
exported. Neighboring countries typically do not want this often
unexpected power, and the German power companies must therefore pay them to get rid of the excess. German customers have to pick up the bill.
And on. And on.
And let's not forget something that the 'green power' people generally do not want to talk about:
Perhaps more important, the amount of land, concrete, steel, copper,
rare earth metals, lithium, cadmium, hydrocarbon-based composites and
other raw materials required to do this is astronomical. None of those
materials is renewable, and none can be extracted, processed and
manufactured into wind, solar or fossil power plants without fossil
fuels. This is simply not sustainable or ecological.
Reading this reminded me to do some digging around on the size of the foundation needed for these things. There's not a set size, because the local ground and weather conditions greatly influence how they need to be made/how big, but you're talking about a LOT of concrete and rebar for each one. All of which needs to be made, and transported.
Throw in building a road- and it needs to be a good one- to each site so you can move in all the materials and parts, and the machinery needed to put them together...
1 comment:
We have some major wind farms down in south Texas going up as we speak. I think they are a boondoggle for the people that own the property, the owner getting paid thousands of dollars for allowing people to erect on their land.
Have energy prices gone down - hell no. The energy savings if any will be for the people who distribute it, not the end user. Where is that energy cell some years back that they were predicting would power each household, freeing us from public utilities ?
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