… the dedication of the first commercial German wind farm in the North Sea on August 10 is set to be a low-key affair. Chancellor Angela Merkel cancelled her scheduled appearance. And Environment Minister Peter Altmaier and European Union Energy Commission Günther Oettinger, both members of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), have hesitated to accept the invitation from EWE, an energy company based in the northern German city of Oldenburg.
The reason is that Riffgat has a cosmetic defect: the wind farm is still missing part of its power line to the mainland. For the time being, instead of producing energy, Riffgat is actually consuming it. To prevent the rotors from corroding in the salty air, they have to be supplied with electricity produced with diesel generators.
[…]
The shift in the direction of political winds immediately affected the turbine builders. Several companies that were recruiting on a large scale only a few months ago are now laying people off. One company, Siag Nordseewerke, has filed for bankruptcy, and others could soon follow. The offshore boom has hardly begun, and yet it already seems to be over.
h/t Maz2
More GREEN money. Up in smoke!
Only a government of the greatest magnitude could build a power source that actually consumes power!
I visit Maui, Hawaii on a regular basis. The island has approximately 25 wind turbines up on a ridge which I have hiked many times. A very dry and desolate stretch of land and I am sure the tourist below see nothing wrong with this type of power generation.
Locals have mixed feelings but since they have doubled the number of turbines in the last 2 years there cannot be a ground swell against them. The alternative is burning bunker fuel. The hope is to become self sufficient. I quite ‘touchy feely’ and to an extent eco friendly.
The last time I asked (3 years ago) a local what their power rates were I was told $0.34 a KWH. Compared to BC where we pay $0.13 per KWH. I would be curious to know what the current rate is.
I love the smell of Schadenfreude in the morning.
It’s more like GREEN money, blown away!
Just got my BC Hydro bill this morning
My rate is .069 Kw/hr.
Ontario is the place to be, it’s the stinking giant fan capital of Canada and soon to be the world. Ontario is stunned and stuck on stupid, they’re in the spell, trapped in a vicious web of the Liberals and their props the NDP. It’s a lethal mix. Those who voted Liberal in the by-elections should all take a stroll through Detroit to get an idea of where towns and cities of Ontario are heading if the voters don’t get their heads out of their butts.
Ontario?
You mean the province that was the former economic powerhouse of Canada that has been driven into Have Not status?
Dulton’s Ontario.
Dulton’s legacy.
The votes come from large thickly populated cities. These morons have no idea what is ahead for them. Toss in the unions and this is what you get.
And it is stories like these that make it clear that politicians need to be far more accountable for what they do with taxpayer money.
Maybe Merkel figures the hot air comimng out of her yap won’t be enough to turn a turbine? And we still allow women to vote?
Take the worst possible alternative fuel option – wind power – then move it offshore where it becomes the worst possible alternative combined with the highest cost.
At least solar power has potential in the long term. Maybe the solution is to force politicians to put up some of their own money – as happens (supposedly except for the crony capitalists) in the private sector – before funding of these technocratic white elephants is allowed to proceed.
Instead they get filthy rich without using a cent of their own money while the taxpayer (aka the polluter) takes the risk and foots the bill for this and other useless energy technologies.
Potential energy output is not energy output and never will be in the case of these propeller bird killers
Any news if Poland and the Czech Rep. have carried through on their threat to close the tie lines between themselves and Germany. Germany’s renewable power is not properly backed up by conventional power (aka. reliable power) so the intermittent nature of wind destabilizes the grid for the entire region. I also read a while back that the German government was considering forbidding money losing gas generators from closing down.
Why are they losing money? 1) Well due to fracking bans their natgas prices are still very high 2) Carbon pricing penalties 3)The government subsidized renewable power program was so ‘successful’ that when the wind is blowing the glut of electricity drops prices so low that natgas cannot compete (but the overproduced green electricity must given away or others paid to take it). So every policy had backfired and/or had unexpected consequences (for pols anyway)
Only government could screw up this badly. The UK, Germany, Spain, Ontario etc. all have variations on the same tragic tale. Moral of the story: women? (rolls eyes). Nope. Energy systems are too important to be left in the hands of politicians and activists. They are not intellectually equipped to understand complex systems of any kind.
LC, close but not quite. 1. Gas prices are high in Europe in large part because they are price takers from Uncle Vlad. And North Sea reserves are in severe decline. 2. Carbon pricing penalties are not very much given how low the price of carbon credits has dropped on the EU carbon exchange.
The real reason they are losing money is that, given the need to provide spinning reserve, they must keep the CTU on but not producing kWh except when the wind velocity drops. As a result of the grid switching, they’re not allowed to sell enough kWh to cover costs. The same sort of thing happened in the eastern US about 10 years ago. Gas-fired CTUs idle through much of the winter because the regulated price of electricity was below the purchase cost of the gas (then about $8/million BTUs). As a result, even though there was idle capacity, there were localized brownouts that winter.
Now the wind generators are doing fine; they get paid the FIT price for electricity regardless of when they produce it. It’s the grid companies that are absorbing the loss when it’s produced at times they can’t use it. But the manufacturers? They’re taking losses all over the place with threatened cutbacks in subsidies for installation of new machines.
The real problem with the renewables is that they are destroying any price signal for dispatch of generation onto the system.
Ok but if the EU opened up to fracking they could *potentially* drive uncle vlad out of business and replace North Sea reserves. I was also under the impression that heavy users of electricity were the main beneficiaries of carbon credits not electricity producers. The green fees and taxes in Germany have pushed up consumer rates quite high and I assumed those costs were passed on from producers. I think the penalties for fossil fuel electricity are more than just cap and trade. Is this incorrect?
Ah yes, spinning reserve. I forgot about that. It is also terrible from an operating perspective since gas turbines are least efficient when going up and down in load and it increases wear and tear.
“The real problem with the renewables is that they are destroying any price signal for dispatch of generation onto the system.” Yes, a complete mess. Of course, the new solution is to put a simple free market friendly carbon on top of the mess ’cause somehow that’ll magically fix all problems (CO2 and government meddling). Unless pro carbon tax advocates are deluded enough to think the rest of the green energy monster will be dismantled.
Speaking of backup up generation,cgh, have you seen this new atrocity? Pity the UK taxpayers and consumers. Crony capitalism? Incompetence? Or both?
http://www.thegwpf.org/diesel-generated-back-up-unreliable-wind-farms-cost-britons-billions/
“Richard North, on his EU Referendum blog, owners of diesel generators are being incentivised with offers of astronomic fees to make them available to the grid – subsidies equivalent to up to 12 times the going rate for conventional electricity, and even, on very rare occasions, up to £15,000 per megawatt hour (MWh), or 300 times the normal rate of £50 per MWh.”
The other day one of my kids was signing the song :
…There was an old lady who swallowed a cow.
I don’t know how she swallowed a cow!
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat…
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog…
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat…
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird …
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she’ll die.
There was an old lady who swallowed a horse –
She’s dead, of course.
Basically that’s our CAGW induced energy policy. One mistake compounded to absurdity.
LC, good points. One thing to remember about Uncle Vlad. He can kneecap the shale gas business if he wants to by undercutting the price. And make no mistake, he will if he thinks any such could be a threat to Russian price control.
Yes, the heavy industrial users of carbon fuels have benefited by being given carbon alotments which are larger than what they need. Fact is, any business of allocating carbon emissions is going to be a corrupt shambles, with some businesses benefiting because of what they were able to lobby for their particular situation. And you’re right, the penalties for electricity generation are far more than just cap and trade. The biggest one is grid access priority. By granting renewables first access, everyone else can be disrupted to some degree by having to back and fill. The same situation prevails in Ontario, with the business of nuclear reactor forced maneuvers, which I detailed a few months ago.
No, I hadn’t seen that diesel backup item. I’m not surprised, and it’s truly ironic. It’s another consequence of the first right of wind access to grid referred to above. Your child was right; modern electricity supply policy is a compounded insanity, with low cost sources displaced by high cost ones.
But,but,but.I thought that the Spanish mirrors could produce power at night! How could they have been so wrong?
I thought that the Spanish mirrors could produce power at night!
not surprising
Don’t believe everything you think