German Electric Grid Became More Reliable with Renewables

[semipro]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/12/3470070/germany-reliable-grid-renewables/

The reasons not to go renewable seem to be weakening more every day.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

I imagine it makes it harder for terrorists or accidents or even human error to knock out the power when you have many generation points instead of just a few. National security comes to mind as the most important side benefit.

 

[Doug MacIVER]

for everything you gain, you give up something. article 9 mos. old http://www.forbes.com/sites/william...g-electricity-rates-become-highest-in-europe/

 

[Seasoned Oak]

Generating your own from your own panels becomes even more cost effective as the price from the grid goes up. At those rates .40 a Kwh every home in the city should be thinking of installing panels.

 

[DBoon]

The likely cause for German, Austrian, and Dutch "high reliability" is the large amount of underground distribution, and not renewables, per se. The US has a lot of aboveground distribution which is not as reliable, primarily due to storm/wind damage.

Correlation is not causality in this case...

 

[BrotherBart]

True dat. This area always loses power due to trees falling on things. Always.

 

[renewablejohn]

for everything you gain, you give up something. article 9 mos. old http://www.forbes.com/sites/william...g-electricity-rates-become-highest-in-europe/

What a total non story. Berlin may have high electricity rates but I would suggest it is more to do with the cost of unification of the two German states.

 

[semipro]

I imagine it makes it harder for terrorists or accidents or even human error to knock out the power when you have many generation points instead of just a few. National security comes to mind as the most important side benefit.

From reading this response and DBoons it just hit me that more regional and local generation may also allow for much smaller transmission lines -- allowing more to be placed underground.

 

[flyingcow]

It would have to be very regional to work. We're geographically a very large country.

We have a wind farm in northern Maine....the transmission lines go into New Brunswick Canada. No direct lines onto the ISO New England grid.