Greened Out German Power Grid Collapsing, Could Bring Down European System
July 3, 2109 (EIRNS)—Usually, news about the situation in Germany’s electrical power, which is becoming more and more incalculable under the regime of “renewables first,” are not made public in the mainstream media, which are accomplices to this idiocy. But now, as the Federal Grid Agency has issued a warning after a series of very grave threats of power outages during June, the media all of a sudden are alarmed. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that on three days in June, the supply of control energy for urgent intervention to keep the German power grid stable was not there, with repercussions for the entire European power grid that connects all member countries. The agency states that the “security of the system” was put at the risk of a total blackout. In other words, the German problem can bring down the entire European system.
Before the era of “renewables,” the base load was always guaranteed by the combination of nuclear, coal, and gas, vacillations being really very rare; now, with the emphasis put on unreliable and incalculable solar and wind, a stable base load often can only be secured with huge imports of power from Germany’s neighbors. This also happened during the three days in June. Even worse: Since German electricity prices are fixed at the power exchange in Leipzig, they are vulnerable to unregulated speculation, which at the peak of critical undersupply on June 29 reached a sky-rocketing €37,856/megawatt-hour, against €10 on June 22. On June 30, the price was still at €3,900, and on July 1, it had dropped to €400. Providers that supply industry, institutions, and private households with electricity will have to increase end-user prices in order to compensate for the insanity on June 29.
Experts still have the chutzpah to claim that inaccurate weather forecasts led traders to bring less power to the market than required; the fact is, that the market is not oriented toward securing the base load but is dominated by the greed for maximum profit. There are hints that, on top of the physical cuts in the base load, speculators arranged the critical shortage in order to make greater gains, resembling the days of Enron et al.
There were some 100 power outages in 2018, not as serious as in June 2019, but still forcing numerous large industrial facilities, such as aluminum and steel plants, to go off the grid for a certain time. Should what happened in June, take place again, it will be much worse—and it will happen again, unless Germany decides to return to nuclear and scrap the coal exit decrees. Hopefully, these recent incidents are a wake-up call to stop the march backward into the dark, cold era of “renewables.”