Germany Gets Creative with Renewables
by Jesse Fox, Tel Aviv, Israel on 02.23.08
Is Germany on its way to genuine energy independence and 100% reliance on renewable energy sources? An experiment conducted by the University of Kassel in cooperation with three energy companies challenges the conventional wisdom on renewable energy and suggests that nuclear and fossil fuel energy can be fazed out and replaced with renewables - without disrupting the supply of electricity to the national grid.
Renewable energy has its limits. On cloudy days, the sun doesn't reach solar panels, and sometimes there is no wind to power windmills. Germany's scientists, however, have put together an experimental "Combined Power Plant" which draws its energy from 36 different solar, wind, biogas and hydroelectric power plants located in different parts of the country. The goal is to prove that renewable energy can provide a consistent and reliable supply of energy, in all weather conditions and in the face of fluctuating demand.
And, for now, they have proven that it is possible, at least on a small scale. The experiment provides enough energy to meet 100% of the annual needs of a small town with 12,000 households. Says Professor Jürgen Schmid of the University of Kassel:
If renewables continue to grow as they have done in the past, they’ll provide around 40% of Germany’s electricity needs by 2020. We could therefore achieve 100% by the middle of the century.
One interesting innovation is a mechanism for storing wind energy during times when more electricity is being produced than is demanded by the grid. Excess energy is used to pump water up a hill, where it is stored in a large reservoir. The stored water is then released during peak electricity consumption hours, flowing downhill to create additional energy. "Storing" energy in this way improves the consistency of supply of electricity, regardless of the weather.
Via:: ecoworldly, Biopact
Every country should try to serve its power needs on its own. Too many wars are just fought for not doing so.
This is fascinating!!! Alternative types of energy are so under utilized, it is great to see a project like this in development.
It would be better I think if the biogas was distributed to households too for cogeneration of energy and heat, especially in winter.
This was a really smart experiment to put together, not that it really pushes any new technology, but simply because it is a great way to demonstrate a concept to the public. This group at Kassel needs encouragement and more funding.
Previously, a few papers were published by another young researcher at Kassel, Gregor Czisch, which used historic hour by hour electricity demand data for Europe for several years. It used computer optimization routines (linear programming) to select from a hypothetical set of renewable supply sources, transmission lines and storage to match up with the hour by hour demand. They showed that Europe could be served by 100% renewables with only a modest increase in electricity prices... the scheme would have HVDC connecting North Africa for solar and use lots of pumped hydro in Scandinavia... among many other diverse resources. A well engineered system rather than a silver bullet.
Certainly with the abundance of renewable resources in the U.S. (solar, wind, biomass, hydro, geothermal) we would have a potential for the same.
Unfortunately, no one to my knowledge in the U.S. has funded the same type of analysis that Dr. Czisch performed. It would seem a no brainer that funding one if not multiple universities to do this type of work would be included in any energy bill. I don't believe government should mandate exactly which plants get built, but doing this type of analysis could easily dispel the myth that we can't afford a renewables future. It would give us the equivalent of the "Solar Grand Plan" recently published in Scientific American, but one based on extensive computer analysis rather than back of the envelope (or Excel) calculations. This type of work could go further and help analyze various strategies for decommissioning carbon intensive electric plants without grid interruption and at the lowest economic penalty. Many people that estimate the cost of going 100% renewable don't factor in the stranded assets and long term contracts of existing facilities.
We need a congressional energy plan based on facts and analysis, not one based on public wishful thinking combined with the lobbying power of countless special interests.
One of the most serious barriers to widespread renewable deployment is that the U.S. is broken into as many as 500 different control (load balancing) regions... I saw that figure somewhere recently, but need to confirm it. While the concept of a "virtual power plant" is very sound... the boundaries of each of these regions, due to procedures, regulations and contracts, poses a wall that separates matching up renewables from different regions. We need to consolidate many regions and we need to build new transmission lines.
Does the US or any other country have some kind of similar system like this?
That could be really helpful.
Quikboy,
From a technical standpoint this sort of load balancing goes on all the time. Pumped water storage for instance is used in many places around the world.
It is more the regulatory and business side of things that isn't set up to recognize a "virtual electricity plant." For instance, even if someone could match up solar in U.S. Southwest with wind in the Midwest and hydro storage in Northwest and prove that it could provide baseland... this would span many individual load balancing regions and it would likely be prohibitively complicated if not outright impossible to bundle these resources and sell it as baseload. All these components are being built, but their true economic value may not be recognized.
"One interesting innovation is a mechanism for storing wind energy during times when more electricity is being produced than is demanded by the grid. Excess energy is used to pump water up a hill, where it is stored in a large reservoir."
This is not a recent innovation. This is something that has been done for decades and pumped hydro energy storage was mentioned in my hearing many times in the 1970s. Perhaps the Germans have come up with some new wrinkles on an old idea but your article does not make that clear.
Alberta has such an image problem with the tar sands. They have sponsored wind and biogas plants. There up to .3% generating capacity. A few hundred more are going up each year. The first wind mills produced power at 18 cents a kilowatt and the critics were all over it. But the new windmills are doing it for 4 cents and the silences is deafening.
One thing that makes me happy even though Alberta's Tar sands have created a huge image problem with this beautiful province, is that In Calgary, Alberta gets 75% of it's electricity is from Wind Power. I don't know If thats just from the power company Enmax,. But seeing as everyone I know gets there power from that company here that is still it is very impressive In my Opinion. I also just got a letter from them saying that by 2010 90% will be from wind power in Calgary.
It's funny, Gas Prices in Alberta are higher then anywhere else in Canada that I have been, even though we produce such a high portion of Oil and Gas in this country.it's common to see prices hang around $1.10-1.25/ litre or more.
Jeff & Surfcam: I'm sure there are plenty of people in Alberta who support renewables and oppose the tar sands projects, but the provincial gov't and the extraction companies outweigh them. It's like the BP gas pipeline that is discussed in a later post. The natural gas could be used for electricity generation and home heating, but instead it's being used to generate oil from the tar sands. We go from the best fossil fuel option (nat. gas) to the worst (oil from tar sands) in a single step.
I don't think there will be much change in this unfortunate situation until we have a carbon tax or a carbon cap & trade system. If you have to add in the CO2 emissions to the cost of the fuel the tar sands oil might not look like such a bargain.