Germany to Expand Power Grid — Great for Renewables?

June 3rd, 2012 by Thomas Gerke

Last Thursday, the German federal grid regulatory agency — the Bundesnetzagentur — handed a draft for a plan to extend the German power grid to the federal goverment. The content of the plan was especially anticipated by the wind industry, which currently suffers the most from the insufficient power grid infrastructure. A frustrating bottleneck situation that already forces wind power producers in northern Germany to disconnect wind turbines from the grid on windy days in order to ensure grid stability.

The now presented draft of the so called “grid development plan” calls for the expansion of the power grid in order to allow an increasing amount of wind power from offshore and onshore wind to be fed into the grid and provide renewable electricity to industrial centers and households alike. One important part of the plan is the retrofitting of 4,400 km of the existing power lines by 2022. But at the core of the proposal lies the construction of four massive new direct current power lines stretching from northern Germany all the way down to the south with a total length of 3,800 km. This will be a investment will be in the tens of billions of euros over the next 10 years, which is an absolute necessity according to the government.

It should be noted that this plan was drafted in close cooperation with the 4 huge grid operators under the guiding principles of a scenario framework which was developed by the regulatory agency in 2011. The draft will now enter the political process for further discussion and possible changes.

An Important Step Forward or a Step in the Wrong Direction?

While it is obvious that the power grid has to be adapted and expanded for the radically changing patterns of power productions and consumption that Germany is heading for, this particular plan is highly controversial. Many renewable energy experts did already question the fundamental assumptions of the scenario framework that is the basis of this plan back in 2011. The criticsm back then was that the government does not take into account the true development of renewable energy sources and their decentralized application mainly by citizens and communities. And this is a development that has highly increasing momentum since all German states now have their own very ambitious goals for 2020-2030.

Some of the retrofitting and expansions definitely make sense, but the underlying mindset of the draft seems fundamentally flawed. It’s a clear sign of the current struggle between centralization and decentralization. Between the notion that the current fossil and nuclear power corporations are the natural suppliers of renewable energy on the one side, and the efficient use of local renewable energy resources by a huge number of small and medium power producers on the other.

Outdated Mindset = Bad Economics

It’s easy to show that this logic is fundamentally flawed, because it’s founded in the world view that wind power has to be produced in the north because coastal areas are windier. Why is that notion wrong when it sounds so true at first?

There is no doubt that renewable energy potentials are higher at some places and lower at others. But that doesn’t mean that the slightly lower potentials can’t and shouldn’t be exploited. Today, wind power can be produced profitably almost everywhere in Germany. That’s possible due to modern wind turbine designs optimized for low-wind conditions and the removal of arbitary restrictions by state governments.

Don’t get me wrong, wind power is more efficent in the north. There is no doubt that the very same wind turbine produces more electricity at the coast compared to the Bavarian forrests. The average hours of production at full capacity (the capacity factor) can actually be 30-50% higher at the coast. But the critical question is: Is the capacity factor all that important for a renewable energy system?

In the opinion of most renewable energy experts, the answer is no. Because, for local consumers and local independent utilites, it doesn’t matter that much if electricity produced from wind costs 30-50€ per MWh at the coast or 50-70€ per MWh in Bavaria. In both cases the electricity generated from wind is significantly cheaper than the cost of electricity from the power grid which stands at 110-140€ per MWh (before taxes & fees). And in the latter case, Bavaria benefits in other ways from producing its own electricity.

While I am happy for the necessary improvements for removing bottleneck situations in the power grid, I am bewildered by the level of ignorance on the side of the government coalition which doesn’t even talk about smart grids as it discusses changes to the power gird during the next decades. It also does not take into account that the situation in the states has changed dramatically and that the driving force of renewable energy is not centralized offshore wind, but decentralized investments by local individuals, businesses, and utilities.

In the words of a press release by Eurosolar, the European Association for Renewable Energy:
“Now it’s up to the states to demand the necessary changes.”

As I wrote this post: 17.8 GW of solar and 9.2 GW wind, as well as approximately 3 GW of hydropower and 3.5 GW from biogas produced about 60% of the total electricity demand at 1 pm here in Germany.

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Tags: Germany, Germany Renewable Energy, germany tranmission, germany wind energy, power grid, stable power grid, wind power grid parity

About the Author

Thomas Gerke is a close observer of the scientific, political and economic energy debate in Germany and around the globe. Inspired by the life's work of the renewable energy advocate Hermann Scheer, Thomas focuses on spreading information that showcase the possibilities & opportunities of a 100% renewable energy system. Though technology is key for this energy shift, he also looks at the socio-economic benefits and the political, as well as structural barriers.

Bill_Woods

The federal Economy Ministry calculates internally that prices will increase by between three and five euro cents per kilowatt hour within the next 12 months, in order to finance renewable energy subsidies and grid expansion. Those increases amount to an additional annual burden of between €105 and €175 ($130 and $220) for a family of three.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-s-nuclear-phase-out-brings-unexpected-costs-to-consumers-a-837007.html
- Bob_Wallace
  
  If I lived within the strike zone of a nuclear meltdown or in a country where a meltdown could destroy the economy I don’t think I’d have any problem paying 12 to 20 cents more per day for my electricity.
  
  How many of our worries can be bought off for such a small price?
  - http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
    
    yep, studies have found they are willing to pay more. additionally, i imagine grid improvements are needed anyway, as they are in the US, and the price of electricity would go up from that alone. (note: haven’t read the spiegel article yet)
Bob_Wallace

Let me throw in a development that might change things around a bit…

“Panasonic Corporation will begin mass-production this month of a compact, secure and long-life lithium-ion battery system the company has developed for European homes. This marks the first time for the company to produce in volume such a system designed for Europe.

The lithium-ion battery system consists of the Panasonic battery module with nominal capacity of 1.35 kWh and a battery management system designed to control charge and discharge of the battery in accordance with customer needs.

The battery system stores excess energy generated from the photovoltaic (PV) power system during peak hours of PV generation and discharges the energy as needed, providing a solution as a household battery storage system that helps self-consumption of solar-generated power.

It will also enable households to reduce the dependence on grid power and facilitate the further spread of green energy. Features of the residential energy storage system include:

Life time of 5,000 cycles, based on 80% DOD and non-extreme temperatures.

Battery management provides battery status information to the controller of home energy storage system, which allows users to remotely monitor the status of the system and battery.”

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/06/panasonic-20120604.html

A lot of storage at end-user level and ….
- http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  whoa, thanks! gotta get a piece up on that. have a feeling Thomas might be interested.
- http://ronaldbrak.blogspot.com.au/ Ronald Brak
  
  A very logical idea now that generous feed in tariffs are hard to find outside of Japan. I imagine that these small storage systems will become pretty standard for point of use solar now that there is often a wide gap between what people pay for electricity and what they can sell it for.
http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan

Wow, great conversation here, happy to be hosting it.
Dr. Wiggly

While the long HVDC lines may rarely be used at maximum capacity, they will give Germany a wonderful flexibility and resilience as new power sources come on line, as storage systems are invented and installed, and as unforeseen grid faults occur.
I just wish the U.S. were doing such grid improvements much faster.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  I just signed up for a webcast that claims 50 HVDC transmission projects that will add 23,000 miles of transmission to the North American power grid are “underway”.
  
  I should be able to report something back next week.
  
  I was aware of only four, one to bring Wyoming wind westward, tying together the Pacific Intertie and Intermountain Intertie to form a loop, one somewhere in the upper Midwest to bring wind to Chicago, one in Texas to carry wind northward, and one between Oklahoma and Tennessee to transport wind to ETenn.
  
  50 is a lot. I suspect many are simply trial balloons.
Anne

I think the author has missed the obvious reason for this grid reinforcement: variability.

We will need a powerful backbone across Europe to provide the balancing of wind power with wind power (or other technologies). When it is calm in Germany, probably there are strong winds in Spain. Furthermore as Bob Wallace already pointed out, it opens up a corridor to the plentiful hydro capacity in Scandinavia.

The mistake is to think that with local production you don’t need a strong grid. It’s true that each small ‘island’ can produce enough energy to cover its use, but usually generation and consumption are not sync. Sometimes it produces too much, sometimes too little. Storage technology is not anywhere near the requirement to fully compensate for this mismatch, which can be very pronounced over a small geographic area. So the islands have to help each other out by exchanging surpluses. A ‘smart grid’ is a nice buzzword, but without raw capacity, it is a lame duck. A smart grid is not a magic solution.

A reinforced grid is the best thing that can happen for renewable energy.
- ThomasGerke
  
  Hi Anne, I do think that I said that improvements to the grid aren’t neccesarry and good.
  But the proposed plan is not a silver bullet to most problems nor does it enable people to use the benefits of decentralized wind. Unfortunatly the government is very slow & too ignorant to face reality. They basicly tell people that this plan is paramount. But it’s a solution that could have work to solve the problems of today, but it won’t be here untill at least 10 years and then the situation has completly changed… wasting billions of Euro.
  
  This problem starts that the grid expansion is based on the assumption that wind can only be produced in the north and especially offshore. The structure of the scenarios that this plan is based on, is rooted on outdated ideas which were developed in preparation of the lifetime extention of nuclear power in 2009/2010. At a time when the government was on a sneaky way to phase out the expansion of renewable energy sources.
  
  In reality, wind can be produced everywhere (alot cheaper than offshore + 1000 km via the grid). And it could and should be used locally to reduce costs in a regional power system aiming for balance.
  
  That doesn’t mean that regions don’t exchange electricity… they simply don’t rely on getting 15 GW of power from the high voltage transmission grid… they might require 2 GW at times…
  
  Besides, currently onshore wind is on route to grow to a capacity of 60-80 GW till 2022 (from 29 GW right now).
  
  Those will cover more than 100 – 150% of the total power demand at several days during the windy winter months. At that point in time all the power lines in the world won’t be able to distribute the surplus power.
  
  The only thing that helps at that moment is load management, having decentralized storrage capcities & coupling the electricity grid to space & water heating in order to enable consumers to utilize as much of the cheap surplus energy from wind as possible on the local level.
  
  German households usually use central heating systems that circulate warm water which is heated by oil (:(), natural gas or electricity. Today the warm water storage tanks are highly insolated and can be heated by multiple sources… a electric warm water heater is very cheap and could replace oil & gas at times. That way warm water tanks can serve as energy storage in a way that reduces CO2 emissions, dependence from fossil fuels and cost for households and businesses.
  
  But in order to get this going they need to change the price mechanisms of the electricity market so that consumers can benefit from local overproduction…
  - Anne
    
    Thomas,
    
    Silver bullets do not exist. I don’t think anyone here claimed that it was. A reinforced grid is just a necessary piece of the puzzle.
    
    And let’s separate two concerns here: technology and ownership. There are societal and economic benefits to local ownership and self sufficiency, but from a technical perspective it doesn’t really make a difference whether a turbine is owned by RWE or a small wind cooperative. It still produces as much as the wind dictates at a certain point in time.
    
    The balancing I spoke of was not necessarily within German borders, although that already brings a clear benefit of reducing variability, as opposed to what you are claiming. Even more because winds at sea are more constant, which is a great benefit of offshore wind. After observing the growing oppsition to new onshore wind projects almost everywhere, I have come to the conclusion that part of the focus must be on offshore wind to keep moving forward. It’s nice to dream about 60-150 GW of onshore wind, but if the population resists, then all the dreaming in the world will simply not make it happen. It’s just a sad reality that the naysayers always seem to have the upper hand. In todays world, it is much easier to frustrate a process than make it move forward.
    
    “But it’s a solution for todays minor problems, since it won’t be here untill at least 10 years from now, it has to be a solution for that future situation. The situation will change alot till then…”
    
    Because the planning horizon is so long, you have to start when the problems are still manageable. If you wait until the sh*t hits the fan, you’re too late. You are right: the situation will indeed change a lot until then. One thing I can guarantee is that there will not be a decline in the demand posed on the grid. The minor problems of today will only get worse. And you ignore the access to Scandinavian hydro, which is also a necessary part of balancing out local fluctuations in production in the south of Germany. Even local producers will need that corridor. And in all probability there will be an economic benefit too. The 600 million euro NorNed HVDC line generated 50 million in revenues during just the first 2 months of operation. So everyone wins.
    
    You propose load management as an alternative. Load management has its limitations. The hot water tank is a nice example, but sort-of the only viable and worthwile example that I can see in households. And what can businesses do? On a scale that matters? Most other options will require people to change their habits and I don’t think people will easily, say, skip taking a shower because there is not enough energy. Only an extreme price signal (eg. 2 euros per kWh) might make people to stop and think.
    
    “Those will cover more than 100 – 150% of the total power demand at several days during the windy winter months.”
    
    ‘Several days’ is simply not good enough. A year has 365 days. Pointing to these once-in-a-while occasions make for good publicity, but you can not base your plan on them. To cover, say, 60% of Germany’s electricity needs with wind power will require something in the order of 250 GW. This can at times produce 4x as much as Germany consumes. And it will routinely produce more than 100% of Germany’s consumption, for days on end. You can’t heat the water to more than 100 degrees. And there can be days or even weeks of persistent, dreary, cloudy, calm weather in which neither wind, nor solar will yield much. People will not stop taking showers in these times. So what’s the plan then?
    
    I still maintain that the only viable long term solution is a strong European grid to even out the fluctuations. Connect the islands. Oh, and yes, I also think it must start today.
    - ThomasGerke
      
      Anne,
      
      Indeed silver bullets do not exist, but at the moment the german government, the big power corporations and a huge chunk of the media are claiming that this grid expansion is one…
      
      You made some points that I want to address:
      1.You said that ” let’s seperate technology & ownership” and that it doesn’t matter if RWE builds offshore windfarms with a capacity factor of 40% or if a municipal utility builds onshore wind with a capacity factor of 22%.
      But you can not seperate the economic use of technology from the ownership structure when it comes to renewables
      Renewables unfold their wide ranging economic and social benefits due to the fact that they can be used locally, because this reduces (not eliminates) the need to use the power grid which causes 40% of pre-tax electricity costs right now.
      Seperating the two is an oversimplification that suggests that renewables would (like huge power stations) require a high voltage transmission grid to be any use.
      In reality offshore wind is at least twice as expansive to build, maintainance is more expansive and it requires transmission lines which add the before mentioned costs to consumers.
      
      That doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done where it makes sense… but considering that there are alternatives, it replaces a macro-economic benefit with a micro-economic advantage for offshore windpark owners & grid operators.
      
      2. There is Nimbyism in Germany aswell, but it never grew to a meaningful extent, despite the fact that it’s fed by one-sided media reports and some polticians. Considering that a huge majority of all windpower capacity is owned by those “small cooperatives”, citizens-funds, local midsized businesses or farmers, it seems that Nimbyism gets deliberately overstated in the public perception.
      
      Besides, 60-80 GW of onshore wind are in no way nice dreams. That’s the amount that will be installed untill 2020 according to the different state governments goals.
      Just consider this:
      Since 2011 many large inland states have ended their year long opposition that blocked permits for the economic use of wind turbines… instead they have now allocated 1-3% of their land area as priority areas for windpower. Something that will streamline the permission process.
      In 2011 (before those changes had any effect) 2 GW of onshore windpower capacity were installed.
      
      Is it just me, or are state goals and a slight increase of installations more than realistic?
      
      3. “And in all probability there will be an economic benefit too. The 600 million euro NorNed HVDC line generated 50 million in revenues during just the first 2 months of operation. So everyone wins.
      Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1dg4f)”
      Who wins? The grid making revenue is not an economic benefit for the real economy… it’s a burden until it translates into a net benefit.
      Besides, the government and this plan IS NOT addressing the possibility of connecting offshore & onshore wind in North Germany to Norwegian pump storage. That would be alot better than the “deliver wind from the windy north to the consumers in the south”… especially since onces it’s finished the south will have local wind capacity that is cheaper at the same time (becuase germany doesn’t really have that many weather zones… when it’s really windy in the north, it’s usually also windy in the middle & south of Germany.. especially at 80-130m above ground)
      
      4.” ‘Several days’ is simply not good enough. A year has 365 days. Pointing to these once-in-a-while occasions make for good publicity, but you can not base your plan on them.”
      Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1dg4f)
      
      I talked about interconnecting overproduction from electricity from wind with the energy needs for space heating & hot water.
      
      Last time I checked there aren’t 365 days of winter in Germany. That means you don’t need space heating all the time… maybe for 100-120 days.
      Space heating amounts to 70% of all energy usage of private households and to about 30% of the total energy consumption in Germany.
      
      This January windpower peaked at 25% of all days throughout the days and at 40% of the days it was above 15 GW.
      
      Considering the propable 100-150% increase of windpower capacity and the technological advances in turbine design, you reach a reality when wind power will be in surpluss at more than 30-50% of winter nights.
      
      You can heat water at those times and reduce fuel costs for the regular gas or oil based heating system.
      
      A water heater is an investment of a few hundred euros and a well insolated heat storage is a good investment at all times. That way you can shower at all times.
      
      Yes, water only goes up to 100°c under normal pressure, but that’s not bad… you don’t shower at that temperature nor do you heat your house with 100°c. And nobody says that the heat has to be stored in the water…it just needs to heat water at the end.
Bob_Wallace

Thomas, IIRC Denmark exchanges wind produced electricity for Sweden’s dispatchable hydro. By using it in that fashion hydro becomes “loss-less storage” and Denmark needs waste no wind generation.

Germany is next door to that share system. Is it reasonable to hook in as well and let Sweden furnish the fill-in power when wind and solar are under producing?
- ThomasGerke
  
  I don’t know about plans with Sweden, but it’s definatly possible with Norway. In fact Statkraft (I think that’s the name of the norwegian power company) already considers investing in retrofitting their pumpstorage power plants with new generators… a rather cheap way which would be enough to create a rather big energy storrage.
  
  Unfortunatly the current conservative Government under Angela Merkel doesn’t follow up on such possibilites. They are not really into the renewable energy revolution as it’s developeing in Germany since 2000.
  So they are more about slowing it, (mis)manageing into a direction that suites their agenda… which is a mixture of ignorance, outdated political positions and too many links to the “energy industrial complex”.
  
  http://cleantechnica.com/2012/04/05/energiewende-road-to-2020/
Captivation

Isn’t this really just a problem of energy storage? And can’t that problem be solved with old technology such as flywheels or uphill water pumps? There are so many myths that need to be deconstructed and one of them is the idea that it is uneconomical for the average person to store more than a few minutes worth of electric. Hopefully the falling costs of electric cars will provide an unexpected solution to the storage problem. Fill up on the windy and sunny days and rely on storage on the cloudy / still days.
As a side note, a four years ago cleantechnica published an article about using molten salt from concentrated solar to store power for 12 hours. If that system can be extended to perhaps 3 days, this alone might be enough to even out the peaks and valleys.

http://cleantechnica.com/2008/06/29/molten-salt-may-be-solution-to-solar-energy-storage/
- ThomasGerke
  
  Indeed there are many viable solutions that could be applied.
  From very straight forward ideas: Improving the distribution grid not the transmission grid.
  To current day storage ideas: Pumpstorage hydro, flywheels, …
  
  To very straight forward energy solutions that cross different forms of energy use.
  For example using excess windpower that could not be distributed via the grid to heat thermal storages for district heating instead of using biomass / natural gas for the same purpose.
  
  The problem is that the conservative government lacks smart politicans in leading positions. Thus they rely heavily on “experts” that see the world through the eyes of the conventional energy industry. That industry is deeply stuck in the paradigm of seperating the energy market for power, space heating and transportation. They are also stuck in the paradigm of centralized production and long distance transmission + distribution.
  The industry sticks to this paradigm due to self-preservation, because they can not keep their dominant marketshare in a distributed energy system.
  
  The current conservative government sticks with this due to ignorance and what the layman would call corruption… or at least far to strong ties between the parties “energy experts” and the big energy corporations.
  
  Sad, very sad indeed. They would rather waste billions of tax payer funds than accept that their political rivals have good arguments or the fact that they were wrong.