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

[Anti Federalist]

Already here in CA, but look for more of this, soon.


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

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/01/...en-power-grid/

By P Gosselin on 19. January 2021

Is the German model America’s future?

Putting matches in charge of fighting gasoline fires? Even more interference appears to be the German government’s approach to solving the power grid mess that its earlier meddling created in the first place.

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.”

Situation now “too critical”

The situation in the German power grid has deteriorated so much that Tichys Einblick also comments: “The situation in the power grids has become too critical. The only thing that helps are abstruse ideas like: ‘You are not allowed to refuel your car from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day!’”

A law that would allow for “peak smoothing” has been demanded by power utilities for some time now as they struggle to keep the increasingly wind and solar powered grid from careening out of control and into blackness. In other words: targeted blackouts.

And as Tichy Einblick mentions, the increasing number of cars on the market will only serve to cause more extreme power demand peaks. Currently Germany is set to make a major push into electric mobility this year.

No electricity for up to 2 hours a day

In the proposed draft law, which has since been recalled because it was deemed so embarrassing, it was written that “controllable consumption facilities” would be able to receive no electricity for up to two hours per day if there was a threat of overloading the grid.

“This includes charging stations for e-cars as well as heat pumps, which can already be temporarily disconnected from the power supply,” reports Tichy.

More burden on power grid

Currently there are only 33,000 electric car charging points in Germany, a country with over 50 million cars, and the government plans a vast expansion in the future, yet isn’t sure what that infrastructure should look like. It’s a policy of going full speed in total blackness and hoping there won’t be a brick wall in the way.

Government admits it’s not going to function

Tichy comments further: “The German government has recognized that in the future electricity system, it will no longer be possible to satisfy every demand at all times. Therefore, the control of the consumer side should be put on legal feet.” […] “Controllable consumers such as heat pumps, electric heaters and wall-boxes, i.e. charging stations for e-mobiles, would then be switched off variably at times.”

This is the sorry state of Germany’s once highly regarded power grid.

[Occam's Banana]

From another thread: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...al-quot-moment

You will also be required to allow us to decide how much electricity you will be permitted to use - and when you will be permitted to use it.

But do not fear, comrade! We will limit ourselves to just making you "eat a cold dinner here and there."

We promise ...

To Save the Climate, Give Up the Demand for Constant Electricity
https://bostonreview.net/science-nat...nt-electricity
David McDermott Hughes (05 October 2020)

Waiting to ensure uninterrupted power for everyone as we transition away from fossil fuels will cost too much time - and too many lives.

Many decades ago electricity became the new oxygen, and the vast majority of Americans today believe they need it every moment of every waking or sleeping hour. The United States has built a vast infrastructure for generating, transmitting, and consuming it - all almost entirely based on planet-destroying fossil fuels and nuclear power.

[...]

What applies in the pandemic also applies - and also with desperate urgency - in the climate crisis. We can live with some intermittency and rationing - at least until batteries and other forms of energy storage are up and running everywhere. Hospitals certainly need 100 percent reliable equipment - perhaps some “continuous” businesses and cell towers too. And, in cities, elevators, streetlights, and subways must run reliably. One could imagine battery-assisted, semi-smart micro-grids connecting such infrastructure as well as home medical devices. But we don’t need the entire residential third of U.S. electricity consumption to run off lithium or to operate seamlessly. We don’t need Nest or permanent telecommuting. For a while, let’s eat a cold dinner here and there. Continuity costs too much. Climate change kills, and it kills vulnerable people first. Intermittency saves lives, and it saves vulnerable people first. Let the pause take its place in continuous climate activism.

[bold emphasis added - OB]

[oyarde]

lol , people are so retarded it is actually going to catch up to them.

[acptulsa]

Germans have frozen in winter due to coal rationing before. The last time the culprit was a former wallpaper hanger named Adolph.

[AngryCanadian]

Germans have frozen in winter due to coal rationing before. The last time the culprit was a former wallpaper hanger named Adolph.

Germans were more worried on Climate then actual issues.

[Occam's Banana]

"Now, global energy shortages are forcing the poor to choose between food & electricity."

https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/...96614992257033