Saturday, August 01, 2015

A perfect storm for renewables

Economic and industrial powerhouse Germany just broke its own record for the amount of power generated by renewables. On July 25th 2015, it met 78% of its energy needs from renewable technologies, mainly wind and solar, with smaller contributions from biomass and hydro power. Its previous record, set last year, was 74%.
To achieve this, weather conditions were perfect, as a storm created high winds in the north of the country (where most of Germany's wind turbines are installed), while the south of the country (where most of its solar panels are located) experienced a nice sunny day. Wind and solar between them generated 40.65 GW, and a further 7.5 GW came from biomass and hydro facilities.
Some people claim that Germany's obsession with renewable energy is making their electricity unnecessarily expensive. But I still say that is pretty impressive, and puts most of the rest of the world (and particularly mealy-mouthed Canada) to shame.
Just a couple of weeks earlier, fellow renewables trailblazer Denmark had its own day in the sun when it generated fully 140% of its electricity demand from its extensive network of  wind turbines on July 9th. Apparently, the turbines were not even operating at full stretch. The surplus power was exported to Germany, Norway and Sweden, via interconnectors between the countries' grids, and so nothing was wasted.
I know these are just isolated and exceptional results (even Denmark "only" generates 39% of its power from renewables over the course of a year), but it does go to show what can be done by a determined and enlightened approach to clean power generation.

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