Warnings about possible power outages in Germany overstated (2024)

The article begins with six paragraphs about the hardships people face when power goes out, such as last year in Hannover, when the "city of 650,000" lost power for "an hour and a half." Here, the exaggerations begin, for the entire city of Hannover has a population closer to 500,000, and large parts of the city (including downtown) had power after 30 minutes. Most people in the city apparently thought it was pretty cool judging from the Facebook website "I was at the Hannover blackout", but Die Zeit focuses on senior citizens with breathing devices that only run for an hour on a battery – and electric doors to the retirement home were inoperable when the fire department arrived with diesel generators.

It all sounds like a nightmare, and it certainly was for people in such situations. But the newspaper does not mention that no one died because of the event, and it is not until the seventh paragraph that we read the following:

The blackout in Hannover was completely unrelated to the Energiewende. It was the result of a nearby coal plant having to be shut down because of an overheating boiler. Nonetheless, the event shows what the effects of even a short power outage can be.

It also shows how unreliable coal power can be. In an impressive display of legerdemain, the author then goes on to describe a power outage lasting for several days without demonstrating that any such thing is likely.

Somehow, all of this is nonetheless related to the Energiewende; the article is even entitled "Praying a blackout won't happen." The author apparently believes that only prayers will get us through the next winter until construction on new coal plants is completed in 2013. He is not alone in believing such things; EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger has also expressed concern, and recently German railway firm Deutsche Bahn warned that it might have to cut 30 percent of its trains over the winter if one of its coal plants is shut down on schedule.

Power basics

But we have heard all of this before – last winter, the world was also supposed to come to an end after Germany switched off eight of its 17 nuclear plants, and the German grid liability reached record levels even as it helped neighboring France to avoid a blackout in the middle of winter.

The author's concerns begin to seem outright silly when we read the following:

Wind turbines and solar cells do not produce any reactive power. Theoretically, they could if they had modern electronics. But retrofitting hundreds of thousands of wind turbines and solar roofs is very expensive – and as popular among conservative engineers as stale beer.

The statement is amazing because newly installed wind turbines have been required to provide reactive power in Germany for years, and many solar arrays recently also fell under this requirement – meaning that the very thing the author says could theoretically happen is already the law. Renewables International contacted the author to explain the discrepancy, but he still did not seem to get it:

It's true that a bonus has been paid for the provision of reactive power since 2009, but most wind turbines were installed before then and therefore do not provide reactive power.… I agree that renewables will be able to provide reactive power in the future, but that will take a while.

Again, the provision of reactive power is not only a bonus – in German law, it's called the "system service bonus" – but also a requirement for wind power and has been so since mid-2010. Renewables International has not recently written about the requirement for photovoltaics, but inverter manufacturers (such as global market leader SMA of Germany; see its presentation on its website in English) say the issue is basically not a problem technologically, with the main problem being who needs to pay for retrofits. And the renewables sector itself is ready to go much further, including using solar arrays to stabilize the grid even at night.

Coal and gas not reliable

The author quotes an expert who says that a power outage can occur in Germany in long cold spells because "brown coal can freeze and hard coal cannot be transported across [frozen] rivers." How is this related to the switch to renewables? Was this not possible until recently? Is the author suggesting that, by putting an end to wind and solar, we can continue to increase carbon emissions to ensure that global warming will prevent Germany from freezing over?

Overall, such articles pander to fear-mongering. Germany may well indeed face challenges this winter, but none of what Die Zeit says is related to the Energiewende. Even the author's comments about why Germany had to switch to oil-fired plants in Austria over the winter reveal that the move was completely unrelated to renewables. Last spring, it was reported that a number of gas turbines in Bavaria were inexplicably not put into operation during those days, leading many wondering whether the grid was being manipulated. But Die Zeit now reports that the move was related to Russia being unable to make good on its supplies to Western Europe because it citizens need the gas during the cold spell. So maybe we should switch to renewables faster to increase energy security, but that's not the author's proposal.

As we see, coal and natural gas are unreliable for various reasons. The author in Die Zeit is trying to say that the sudden shutdown of so many nuclear reactors last year unnecessarily compromised German power supply – something Renewables International has said all along. But going forward, German power supply becomes more reliable each year as the country has time to fill in the gap.

Germany may very well have a power outage this winter. Or we may once again read reports about Germany rescuing its neighbors from power outages. (Craig Morris).