{"id":4796,"date":"2013-07-21T13:28:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T17:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=4796"},"modified":"2013-07-21T13:49:06","modified_gmt":"2013-07-21T17:49:06","slug":"german-wind-overpowering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/german-wind-overpowering.html","title":{"rendered":"German wind overpowering?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nThe biggest wind problem in Germany is it produces too much<\/em> power?\r\nFortunately there are two well-known simple solutions to \r\nthis problem raised by GA Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols in\r\na comment yesterday.\r\nI do want to thank him for engaging in dialog with the public.\r\n

\r\nTim Echols\r\n\r\nwrote<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"eeX<\/a>\r\nWe need nuclear, coal and gas as our baseload power. Germany is\r\ndoing the opposite and they are in trouble. Their people pay triple\r\nwhat we pay for power, and when the wind is blowing at night or on\r\nthe weekend, the Germans have to pay Poland to take their excess\r\npower. All of that primarily because the German people hate nuclear\r\npower. In Georgia, we are leading the nation, and I am fine with\r\nthat. I just want to make sure our ratepayers are protected and not\r\npaying for the learning curve of new nuclear.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\nAs FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghof has been pointing out for years,\r\n\r\nbaseload is the problem<\/a>.\r\nThe baseload ideology stands in the way of\r\n\r\nthe distributed solar power the vast majority of the American people want<\/a>, and in the way of wind power.\r\n

\r\nRegarding German power costs to customers, Germany is far north of here,\r\nwith far less sun, and Germany has depended heavily on Feed-In Tariffs,\r\nwhich may or may not be what we need in Georgia.\r\nMeanwhile, what’s been hiking power rates in Georgia is not solar or wind\r\npower, it’s\r\n\r\nnuclear and natural gas<\/a>.\r\nAnd not for Feed-In Tariffs, either, which are only charged on actual\r\nenergy production.\r\nThe Georgia legislature approved\r\n\r\nConstruction Work in Progress (CWIP) for nuclear<\/a>,\r\nand GA PSC has raised rates to pay for natural\r\ngas plant construction, which amounts to the same thing.\r\nIf we want to save ratepayers money,\r\nwe should get on with solar and wind power.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nNow to the problem with two well-known solutions:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n…when the wind is blowing at night or on\r\nthe weekend, the Germans have to pay Poland to take their excess power.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\nHere’s an article about the Czechs considering installing phase-shifters\r\nto push German power on to Poland.\r\nJan Lopatka wrote for Reuters 17 April 2013,\r\n\r\nCzech grid acts to guard against German wind power surges<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\nHe\r\n[Chairman Tomas Huener of the Czech grid operator CEPS]\r\nsaid Germany could solve the problem by allowing its grid\r\noperators to turn off renewable sources at times of excess\r\nproduction, which is not currently possible under German law.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe German cabinet agreed a plan late last year which could also\r\nhelp, aiming to speed up the construction of 2,800 km of power lines\r\nto improve the grid between the northern coast, where many of the\r\nwind turbines are, and the country’s industrialised south. (Editing\r\nby Michael Kahn and Jason Neely)\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThere are the two well-known solutions:\r\n

    \r\n
  1. \r\nDon’t legally prohibit feathering windmills when they’re\r\nproducing more power than needed.\r\nGeorgia has a chance to learn from Germany’s experience.\r\nHowever, there is a problem with this solution.\r\nWho decides what’s more than needed?\r\nWould that be Georgia Power, and would “more than needed”\r\nmean “we might have to turn down some of our nuclear or natural gas\r\nor coal plants”?\r\nIf so, that’s a bad solution.\r\n

    \r\n

  2. \r\n\r\n\"Innovative<\/a>\r\nSo the second solution is preferable:\r\nget on with a smart grid.\r\n\r\nSouthern Company brags about having the biggest private R&D operation\r\nin the country.\r\nBy “brags” I mean not only has SO CEO Tom Fanning mentioned it repeatedly,\r\nand SO had a presentation about it at their Stockholder Meeting in May,\r\nbut they also wrote a book about it,\r\n\r\nInnovative Solutions: A History of R&D at Southern Company<\/a>, by Sam Heys,\r\n2013; the copy pictured on the right with my solar panels I got signed\r\nby the author at that meeting.\r\nAt that same meeting, Tom Fanning announced\r\n\r\na tiger team<\/a>\r\nwith\r\n
    \r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

    \r\n…a number of people working across the system — representation\r\non every system company — to develop a business model where\r\nSouthern Company can now promote, play offense, on distributed\r\ngeneration.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nTom Fanning promised a report from the tiger team “later this summer”.\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

    \r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIt was really refreshing to see SO working on distributed\r\ngeneration, since\r\n\r\nI’ve been calling for an energy reliability study for Georgia\r\nfor at least two years now<\/a>.\r\nI would bet SO will find that they don’t even have to build a lot\r\nof new power lines, since they already have most of those in place,\r\nfor example to distribute from Plant McIntosh near Savannah.\r\nEven if Georgia Power does have to build more lines,\r\nthat’s far cheaper than building a nuclear plant.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnd, unlike\r\n\r\nthat natural gas pipeline from Alabama to Florida<\/a>\r\nfor no benefit to Georgians that GA PSC has apparently permitted,\r\nI’d bet Georgia Power could use existing transmission line rights of way.\r\nLet’s see\r\n\r\na real renewable energy study for Georgia<\/a> so we can find out.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

    \r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnd such a study may well find what\r\n\r\nthe late John Blackburn already\r\ndiscovered for North Carolina<\/a>:\r\nwind and solar can power the whole state, with only much less\r\nnatural gas than now needed for backup, and no coal or nuclear at all.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

    \r\nContinuing to build more baseload power plants while shirking solar and wind generation\r\nis not leading Georgia into the future, it’s leading us into the past,\r\nlike\r\n\r\nbuilding a stand-alone copper telephone network in this age of the mobile wireless Internet<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

    \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nHow about instead of another rate hike for\r\n\r\nthose infrastructure investments Georgia Power says it needs<\/a>,\r\nGA PSC this time can say stop wasting more of our money on\r\n\r\nthat nuke boondoggle at Plant Vogtle<\/a>?\r\nThat’s what Ray Henry of AP said Tim Echols was suggesting Monday:\r\ncap Plant Vogtle cost overruns like the Mississippi PSC did with Kemper Coal<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

    \r\nAnd thanks once again to Tim Echols for engaging in dialog.\r\n

    \r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest wind problem in Germany is it produces too much power? Fortunately there are two well-known simple solutions to this problem raised by GA Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols in a comment yesterday. I do want to thank him for engaging in dialog with the public. Tim Echols wrote: We need nuclear, coal and […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[216,14,17,8,18,558,6124,104,23,24,36],"tags":[8753,6688,8704,8707,8701,8708,8781,8702,12,7,562,8737,6689,8713,8714,108,1088,6339,6,8716],"class_list":["post-4796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-economy","category-ga-psc","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-germany","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-wind","tag-coal","tag-czechia","tag-economy","tag-ga-psc","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-germany","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-poland","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-southern-company","tag-tim-echols","tag-tom-fanning","tag-valdosta","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1fm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4796"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4810,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796\/revisions\/4810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}