Munich Blacks Out! Welcome To The Future Of Germany’s Energy Transition! Harbinger Of What Green Energy Holds?

Today DIE WELT reports that large swaths of Munich saw the power go out this morning starting at 7:01 a.m. local time, leaving thousands in the dark and the affected areas paralyzed for about half an hour.

Just a simple short circuit? (Photo source: Robert Lawton, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license).

Computer screens went black, trains stopped, electric doors trapped people, elevators stopped, factories ground to a halt, and traffic signals ceased to operate, thus leaving half of Munich in total chaos.

Germany’s electric power infrastructure not long ago was considered to be one of the world’s best engineered and most reliable. Since I’ve moved here 23 years ago, I can recall the power going out maybe once. Power outages here are almost unheard of.

But all that is changing today, thanks to Germany’s hysterically driven energy transition away from steady nuclear and fossil fuel power sources over to “clean” and environmentally friendly wind and solar power. Unfortunately in the wintertime, when there’s little sun and often times little wind, and overall demand is high, bottlenecks in the supply of energy are becoming increasingly common and posing a real and mounting threat to grid stability.

The exact cause of this morning’s blackout is still unknown, and knowing the religious fervor driving the green power movement, the real cause may never be made public. The drugged-up-on-green media are playing down the situation as just an event that could happen to anyone, anywhere.

Munich’s city utility claims to have found the cause. DIE WELT writes:

In the meantime the Munich City Utility has released the cause of the power outage: There was a defect with a 110,000-volt supply line between Munich and Moosburg, which is located to the north.”

The Munich fire brigade reports that the blackout was caused by an explosion at a transformer station. “Three isolators exploded at a 110 kV transformer station.” According to DIE WELT, the city of Moosburg, home to 18,000 residents, still remained without power even at lunchtime. Later at 12:30 DIE WELT reported that service had been restored.

The online Bild daily reports:

‘The power outage hitting large parts of Munich is traced back to a technical failure in the power line system north of the city,’ said the head of the Munich City Utility (SWM), Stephan Schwarz. …’Details are still unclear.’ [...] ‘It was probably a power spike that passed through.’”

A power spike? Where would that come from? Bild adds:

Schwarz emphasized that ‘the incident had nothing to do with the energy transition and the entire discussion about a secure power grid.’ A reference to the energy transition is ‘completely wrong’. ‘What happened today could have happened 20 years ago.’”

Strangely, Schwarz has already begun pointing the finger at a possible culprit, saying that “if it turns out that E.ON Bavaria is responsible for the outage, then it has to start thinking about questions of liability.”

You see folks, it’s the big bad power companies again. Let’s all blame them.

Companies and industry may wish to think again about moving operations to Germany. Sure malfunctions at stations can occur. But it is indeed a bit strange that power outages, many lasting just a few tenths of a second, have been on a hockey stick increase lately ever since Germany started force feeding the uneven supply of wind and solar power into its grid and switching off an array of nuclear power plants.

Energy experts have been warning for months that Germany will be dangerously vulnerable to power outages more than ever, especially if this winter turns out to be a hard one. The instability of the green energy supply has led power companies to intervene hundreds of times to keep the grid up. It’s only a question of time before the big blackout hits.

Just be sure to have a good supply of candles on hand.


12 responses to “Munich Blacks Out! Welcome To The Future Of Germany’s Energy Transition! Harbinger Of What Green Energy Holds?”

  1. Laura

    Scary stuff, especially since this may happen more and more often if there is a bad winter. I feel for the German people. They’re at the mercy of a government that seems out of control with their renewable energy agenda.

  2. John F. Hultquist

    It is estimated (USA) that 42 home candle fires are reported every day and that 166 deaths occur each year. It is also reported that our public schools don’t function very well and students have a poor understanding of basic science. Maybe there is a connection.

    Instead of a good supply of candles, you might want to encourage battery power. It is somewhat harder to start fires and kill folks with flashlights than with candles. And discourage folks from dragging a charcoal grill indoors for heat and cooking. Big problem there. Good luck with the power outages, though.

  3. thebiggreenlie

    The beginning of the “back to the cave” mentality of the Green Scammers is upon us!
    We humans eat too much, drink too much, consume too much and use too much energy!……according to the eco-zealots!
    Until these “do-gooders” (idiots) start to offer themselves up first to live in caves, heated by candles and only eat non living food and drinking recycled urine, not to mention, only have one child per family, I for one will continue to use excessive electricity to keep warm and cook my food, drink huge amounts of clean water from an aquifer and live in a house that is ten times bigger than the eco-whackos concept of a mini pod!
    Oh, and BTW………I will pay for all this myself with my dollars and not ask anyone to help me! That’s called our “modern society”!

  4. Green Energy Reality now!………..BLACKOUTS! « The Big Green Lie

    [...] Munich Blacks Out! Welcome To The Future Of Germany’s Energy Transition! Harbinger Of What Green E… [...]

  5. Edward.

    Baseload gone, not replaced.

    Intermittent and surging renewable sources are too much for an old grid.

    = power surges and transmission supply failure = outages.

  6. Ulrich Elkmann

    Actually, this is the start of the cure, not the onset of madness.

    “Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown.[1] Today, ECT is most often recommended for use as a treatment for severe depression that has not responded to other treatment, and is also used in the treatment of mania and catatonia.”

    The acting principle is taken over from homeopathy, where you make sure that the agent causing the symptoms is NOT applied. A few dozen of these sessions will cure this mania once and for all (one hopes). If the patients have not yet been subjected to a complete mental lobotomy.

  7. DirkH

    “Just be sure to have a good supply of candles on hand.”

    I have something even better – a Philips LED flashlight with a handcranked dynamo and battery. Works great! 17 EUR. Survival equipment for a renewable energy society. I use it all the time.

    Available from many companies:

  8. Markus

    Well well,
    so you see the cause for this failure in Germany’s transition to clean energy? What a smart person you seem to be. Ever thought of the fact that such errors also happen (FAR more often) in the U.S. grid?

    1. The reason that the blackout lasted for hours is due to the damaged transformer. Replacing this simply takes a couple of hours, since utilities don’t have 110kV transformers lying around.

    2. Just because Germany took a (admittedly kind of hysterical but nevertheless absolutely righteous) turn towards green energy, does not mean that every problem that occurs suddenly can be attributed to the renewables. That is such a convenient argument of someone arguing for the old system.

    3. Your source of information is the newspaper “BILD” ?? That’s the rainbow press. You believe in BILD but you put in doubt the statements of the officials and try to construct a conspiration theory? Here is another one for you: the Big Four (energy companies in Germany) are deliberately provoking these blackouts in order to discredit the Energiewende. Does that sound any better?

    4. Why do you put “clean” solar power in quotes? Is it not clean?

    The problem is, that people like you and Mr. thebiggreenlie are always agitating with general and exaggerated, emotional and scary arguments. This completely prevents a serious, solution oriented discussion.

    Just leave us and let serious engineers do their work.

    1. DirkH

      Serious engineer Markus, why are you not able to design products that can be sold without robbing the German ratepayer of 20 billion Euros a year?

    2. DirkH

      Or do you say 20 billion a year is an “exaggeration”? How many engineers does 20 bn a year buy? 200,000, or for you, Markus, just so you don’t get confused, in German locale: 200.000. 200 thousand.

      So tell me Markus, what have you and your 199,999 colleagues to show for it?

  9. Casper

    I think it’s not enough for Michaels, but I hope it was just a prelude ;)

  10. Rick F

    Allow me to also remind of the fact that the earths orbit around the sun fluctuates in how close we are to the sun, which I think may have something to do with global temps. To think that man made influence on our planet is so powerful as to change it’s big beautiful majesty is straight up egotistical. The sun, moon and the magnetic poles moving along with volcanic eruptions I think need further study.

    Check this out!