I REALLY like the sub-title – a longer variation on “I’m here from the Government and I’m here to help you”:
Even more interference appears to be the German government’s approach to solving the power grid mess that its earlier meddling created in the first place.
Some help – reminds me of NH State Senator Jeb Bradley has done for years in our electrical generation industry – and we’ve ended up in the top five highest electrical costs in the nation. Most of these people couldn’t even run a coffee shop but there they are blithely making decisions over millions of people for simply ideological reason when they SHOULD be letting them make those decisions themselves. Government’s role is to make sure that contracts are fulfilled and honored instead of being “know it alls” (because they aren’t and refuse to have any humbleness in the matter). And how many businesses have failed all over the country, not to mention NH, because politicians thought they had to be “seen as doing something” instead of merely, at BEST, facilitating (or not understanding what “facilitating” should even mean)? My rule is “if the Private Sector can do it, Government should be doing those other things instead”.
But politicians either can’t or won’t admit the differences. And neither is the German Government (reformatted, emphasis mine):
Germany struggles to keep the lights on, looks for a law to prevent its power grid from crashing. Before the days of climate alarmism and hysteria, the job of deciding how to best produce electricity was left to power generation engineers and experts – people who actually understood it. The result: Germany had one of the most stable and reliable power grids worldwide. Green energies destabilized the German power grid.
Then in the 1990s, environmental activists, politicians, climate alarmists and pseudo-experts decided they could do a better job at generating power in Germany and eventually passed the outlandish EEG green energy feed-in act and rules. They insisted that wildly fluctuating, intermittent power supplies could be managed easily, and done so at a low cost.
Promises, promises from those that have no idea that they have no idea. What sounds good often isn’t. Sure, “free energy” sounds nice – but they never want to talk about the actual costs. Including the cost of not having any electricity at all. We just went through that at Chez Skip during our storm twice ago – out of power for three days. Good thing I had a fossil fuel electrical generation plant of my own that emitted CO2 and lots of noise. The only thing worse would have been Government telling me to switch off. You know, like California this summer. And now, Germany’s Government that was “here to help EVERYONE”:
Blackouts threaten
Fast forward to today: The result of all the government meddling is becoming glaringly clear: the country now finds itself on the verge of blackouts due to grid instability, has the highest electricity prices in the world, relies more on imports and is not even close to meeting its emissions targets. Germany’s rickety and moody power grid now threatens the entire European power grid stability, as we recently witnessed.
…So what solution does Berlin propose today? You guessed it: more meddling and interference, more outlandish bureaucrat solutions. Included among them are shutting down the remaining baseload coal-fired and nuclear power plants, and relying even more on the power sources that got the country into its current mess in the first place.
Right after the shutdown of Fukashima Daiichi nuke plant in Japan after the 2011 tidal wave in , Germany put itself in motion to shut its nukes down as well – and it turned into a crises not to be wasted even though the conditions in Germany were FAR different than those in Japan. But that ‘s what happened when the Climate Change Ragers overrode the normally stolid German engineers that actually know what they’re doing.
And new are restrictions as to when power can be consumed by consumers and industry! Energy rationing and targeted blackouts.
…A law that would allow for “peak smoothing” has been demanded by power utilities for some time now as they struggle to keep the increasingly wind and solar powered grid from careening out of control and into blackness. In other words: targeted blackouts. And as Tichy Einblick mentions, the increasing number of cars on the market will only serve to cause more extreme power demand peaks. Currently Germany is set to make a major push into electric mobility this year.
Government admits it’s not going to function
Tichy comments further: “The German government has recognized that in the future electricity system, it will no longer be possible to satisfy every demand at all times. Therefore, the control of the consumer side should be put on legal feet.” […] “Controllable consumers such as heat pumps, electric heaters and wall-boxes, i.e. charging stations for e-mobiles, would then be switched off variably at times.”
Translation: Government that is here to help will do so by taking stuff away from you. Including, for most Americans, merely keeping warm in Winter.
Green Energy: it’s the BEST!
This will be our future if the AOC’s and Dementia Joe’s have their way with the Green New Deal. Reality, as being shown by Germany right now, should trump idyllic dreams of those that have no skin in the game when it fails. And we should TREAT them like that – what is our remedy against YOU personally before you make us live to your ideology?
(H/T: Watts Up With That)
