The Germans, Their Renewables, and Much Ado About Nothing

Germans produce power semi randomly.
They then put strain on the power-grid and pretend it’s renewable.

Customers didn’t and won’t get any money from the power companies, instead they paid the same rate they always do.

The negative price happened a level higher up, at the electricity exhange Epex Spot. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPEX_SPOT) it’s in Liepzig.

This is where power companies buy and sell electric energy and here, they could actually get paid if they were able to accept and use electric power.

It’s the wholesale price (you get delivery in mega-watts hours) not the retail price who indeed pay the same rate all year round…

The market speculators are the ones who really made the money.

I know this because I used to communicate with utilities about electricity consumption a lot. I used to electricity options when I designed manufacturing plants.

There’s a marketplace of electricity where they sell it like bananas and stuff.

I think it’s great that Germany is pushing R&D on renewables, but I haven’t seen any evidence to date that suggests if everyone goes solar that it will make any sort of double digit percentage impact on humanity’s CO2 emissions.

If anything it’s a distraction from carbon capture requirements on coal plants, something we must push the government into doing.

I’m just hopeful that humanity starts getting rid of coal and taxes carbon credits. The solar and wind hype won’t have an impact on the carbon emitted by dirty sources.

My point here is not knocking solar but simply pointing out that it’s the wrong battle to think solar vs. coal/oil. This sort of rhetoric, passion, and lobbying should be spent on regulating carbon capture requirements to make extreme impacts on CO2 emissions.