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January 23, 2013

Germany’s Green Energy Destabilizing Electric Grids

January 23, 2013
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Germany is phasing out its nuclear plants in favor of wind and solar energy backed-up by coal power. The government’s transition to these intermittent green energy technologies is causing havoc with its electric grid and that of its neighbors–countries that are now building switches to turn off their connection with Germany at their borders. The intermittent power is causing destabilization of the electric grids causing potential blackouts, weakening voltage and causing damage to industrial equipment.


The Destabilization Problem

More than one third of Germany’s wind turbines are located in the eastern part of the nation where this large concentration of generating capacity regularly overloads the region’s electricity grid, threatening blackouts. The situation tends to be particularly critical on public holidays when residents and companies consume significantly less electricity than usual with the wind blowing regardless of the demand and supplying electricity that isn’t needed. In some extreme cases, the region produces three to four times the total amount of electricity actually being consumed, placing a strain on the eastern German electric grid. System engineers have to intervene every other day to maintain network stability.

 Fluctuating output, wind and solar


To illustrate the problem that renewable energy instability can cause, here is an example. When the voltage from German’s electric grid weakened for just a millisecond at 3 am, the machines at Hydro Aluminum in Hamburg ground to a halt, production stopped, and the aluminum belts snagged, hitting machines and destroying a piece of the mill with damages amounting to $12,300 to the equipment. The voltage weakened two more times in the next three weeks, causing the company to purchase its own emergency system using batteries, costing $185,000.

These short interruptions to the German electric grid increased by 29 percent and the number of service failures increased 31 percent over a 3-year period, with about half of those failures leading to production stoppages causing damages ranging from ten thousand to hundreds of thousands of Euros. These power grid fluctuations in Germany are causing major damage to a number of industrial companies, who have responded by getting their own power generators and regulators to help minimize the risks. However, companies warn that they might be forced to leave if the government does not deal with the issues quickly.[i]

To deal with the excess electricity, eastern Germany exports it to western Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. In 2009, exports of electricity to these areas totaled 6.5 gigawatts on days with strong winds, an amount that will increase as wind capacity increases. While the eastern German region would like to channel its excess electricity to southern Germany and the industrial Rhineland area, it lacks infrastructure to do so. Because German energy laws stipulate that “green” power must always have priority on the grid, control centers cannot take wind farms off the grid when too much electricity is being generated. System operators also try to avoid shutting down their coal, gas and nuclear facilities because they rely on these power plants to produce a consistent level of baseload power at all times. Thus, they need to export the wind capacity that exceeds their demand.[ii]

Eastern German wind energy exports


Germany’s Plans for Additional Transmission Infrastructure

The German Cabinet backed a plan to build three “power autobahns” stretching north to south to move growing supplies of renewable energy across the country. The plan involves laying about 1,740 miles of new transmission lines and upgrading 1,800 miles of existing cables by 2022, bringing wind power generated in the north to consumers in the south. This plan is a scaled down version of the recommendation made by Germany’s four main grid operators, who indicated that the country’s energy overhaul required about 2,400 miles of new cables and a fourth power-line corridor,[iii] costing $25 billion.[iv] The government also wants to cut the time it takes to develop power lines from 10 to 4 years, and most recently, there have been calls to nationalize the electrical grid.

Long Lines, power grid Germany


In the meantime, Germany’s neighbors, Poland and the Czech Republic, are taking action on Germany’s use of their power grid that Germany undertook without asking permission and without paying for its use. These countries are building a huge switch-off at their borders to block the import of green energy that is destabilizing their grids and causing potential blackouts in their countries.[v] This action by German’s neighbors fragments the European electrical grid, turning Germany into an electrical island.


Germany’s Renewable Program

Germany is planning to get 80 percent of its energy from renewable energy by 2050 and phase out its nuclear program by 2022. Despite significant investment in wind and solar power, Germany still faces an energy shortfall because the renewable energy it invested in does not work in the cold winter weather when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. Further, the shift to renewable energy is taking a toll on family budgets.[vi] Germany increased a special tax levied on consumers to finance subsidies for green energy by almost 50 percent this year, increasing electricity prices by 10 percent. There are also growing concerns that price increases are hurting businesses, although the German response has been to charge some consumers with much more of the burden than favored industries.

Ironically, to back-up the wind and solar energy, German utilities are using coal because it is cheaper than natural gas in Europe. For the most part, natural gas is moved through pipelines in Europe, and tends to be used close to where it originates. It is priced regionally and often linked to the price of oil. Many European gas contracts were negotiated years ago with the Russian gas company, Gazprom, and remain high. For example, in the summer of 2012, natural gas prices in Europe were more than three times the gas price in the United States and definitely more expensive than coal. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, at the beginning of November 2012, utilities in Germany were set, on average, to lose €11.70 when they burned gas to make a megawatt of electricity, but to earn €14.22 per megawatt when they burned coal.[vii]



The German government recently cut its 2013 growth expectations to 0.4 percent from an earlier estimate of 1 percent. Germany was prospering in 2011 with growth at 3 percent, but it dropped to 0.7 percent in 2012. While the European economy as a whole and the switch to the Euro has affected Germany, one wonders how much the country’s energy program is contributing. Perhaps, the United States should use the German experience as a warning regarding the right choice of energy policy.

[i] Spiegel, Grid Instability Has Industry Scrambling for Solutions, August 16, 2012,

[ii] Wind energy surplus threatens eastern German power grid, March 26, 2011,

[iii] Bloomberg, Merkel Cabinet Backs Power-Line Plan to Absorb Renewables Growth, December 19, 2012,

[v] International News, Poland and Czech Republic Ban Germany’s Green Energy, December 12, 2012,

View Comments
  • Perhaps those limitations lead to innovation:
    Electricity has been alway much more expensive in Germany than in the US (even during in the nuclear era), gasoline is also 2 times more expensive than in the US, but we have the
    better and more efficient cars; sun shines less in Germany, so we have the cheapest PV on
    the planet. The energy transition program (“Energiewende”) is a great challenge (the minister in charge compared it to the “Apollo” program) and will trigger lots of innovation: advanced system control, storage technologies, load management etc.

    • I think when we as a globe actually has a nuclear era the comment would make some sense. China just getting cranked up with many new planmts and a brnad new grid.

  • by the way: there never has been a blackout in Germany during the last 50 years

    • Article did not say “black out”, but an unstable power grid causes havoc.

    • jmdesp

      Really ? So you mean this doesn’t exist : ?

      One important thing, such a rare event must have been caused by something really exceptional. Except that … nothing really special was going on on that night, no extraordinary outage, no very high demand.

      Except for one single thing : It was one of the very first time wind power was a significant part of electricity production on the European grid,

  • Really? No blackouts in Communist East Germany? Interesting.

    • AAHHHH – no Communism in East Germany since 1990, over two DECADES ago. Where have you been??

  • We run servers in both Europe and the US. The ones in the US are frequently hit by power outages, where as the ones in Europe are very rarely if ever affected.

    Believe me, it costs far FAR more to deal with those power outages than the differences in electrical costs. It always makes me wonder how often people in some States have to throw away the contents of their freezers.

    Surely having wind and solar closer to where the electricity is being used would be a big improvement to the US grid? |Takes a big load off the grid when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. Think what Solar would do on homes for places like California? A) shade the roofs from direct sun reducing the HVAC load which often overloads the grid there and B) generate that load exactly at the times it’s needed most to bloster the grid.

    Bit of an obvious no brainer isn’t it? It is actually that simple.

  • Oh and we run off of one of the UK’s biggest off shore wind farms here. It’s brilliant and they are just starting on trebbing it’s size. The wind comes with a change in the weather and the sea breeze, which also pretty much coincides with lighting up times and increases in heating loads. Haven’t you noticed your house gets colder when the wind is blowing or the sea breaze blowing one way when everyone is getting up or in the evenings it’s blowing the other way when they settle down for the evening?

    LMAO! You don’t need to be a weather man to work it out!

  • Pingback: Renewable Energy Interrupts the German Power Grid and Puts A Heavy Load on German Family Budgets but They Still Continue Renewables Anyway | Are We Aware Yet? Political News Blog-Current News Political News Blog()

  • Love the peaky graph btw, As Germany is relatively unhit by recession those solar peaks tie very nicely with the most industrous and power hungry times of their day. Aren’t they the times non renewables countries normally have to have stations running idly on standby overnight to service and the times of most of the hottest US states have black outs?

    Lol, back in ’87 we had a blackout of the nearest (now soon to be decommissioned) Coal fired plant and they actually discovered it couldn’t be restarted without power on the grid at all… Bit of wind power would have been handy back then! 🙂

    But then Fukushima had the same problem with the reactors, no power, They are just about to install wind turbines off the coast there (and yes these things are built to survive tsunamis. The devistation isn’t as bad off the coast and even If you took a couple out the others still generate power. Maybe they should be a must near any nuclear station.

  • Interesting! Even in the face of blatant problems, the “green” fanatics still can’t face the music. Even without the problems, what is the point of producing energy that cost’s three times what the more stable energy sources cost? Oh yes, the rational is that when everyone is “doing it” and when all the bugs have been worked out, the world can breathe easy. Talk about living in a fantasy world! And by the way, the world’s going to end if we don’t listen to Al Gore!

  • Pingback: Green energy destabelise electricity grids | Groep T - Master thesis blog()

  • The solution is simply for the power industry to invest in the technology required to store renewable energy and adapt to the fact that power from renewables will be more dynamic than the nor of the last 60 years or so.

    Go back 75 years (1938), and nationwide distribution of electricity was in its infancy. I’m sure people complained then about all of the near-term problems associated with it at the time – access, price, stability of the grid, etc.

    Folks just need to steep back and try and think a little more long term – this engineering problem will sort itself out in a remarkably short amount of time if you think about it with a long-term prospective.

    The German government did a good thing when they put there long-term energy polices in place – now they just need to keep the long-term in mind as they continue down the road.

  • Alejandro

    Very partial article. There is solutions and Germany will address these problems. What the h do you think, that a so high dimension Revolution would be just a piuece of cake ? This is the way to assure energy for ALL comming generation !!!

  • James Moore

    So what i am seeing is a fight between old and new energy output stations, with the Green Energy being the leader in outputing 41% of the energy grids source energy. This is truly remarkable if I am understanding the story correctly…
    Now , wind energy has just taken steps of becoming efficient. If this Green energy market creates this much havok in industrial markets, I want in!!!!

  • Daniel

    this article shows only negative aspects.. Please look at the pro sides before you believe this..

  • john rietheimer

    So the problem is wind produces way too much power? Only a site funded by the Koch brothers and dirty energy production would try to make it generating too much power into a negative. They know if the German movements keeps succeeding like it is all their investment in dirty energy is doomed. Give them credit, Joseph Goebbels would be proud of their ability to tell the biggest lie possible over and over.

  • Matt

    No. Energy has to generated when its consumed; that’s the problem. The problem is that wind creates energy during a significant amount of time when there’s nobody to take it all. That’s a negative because that means you either have to feather/shut off your windmills; shut off your other power plants that can make energy when you need it, and/or; you have to store the energy somewhere so you can get it when you need it. Before you get too excited about storage, do some math first. Estimate how much it would cost to store the difference (e.g. batteries, a very popular method that almost always excitedly offered up as the solution without completely describing how much it really costs) between what’s needed and what’s generated. And don’t leave anything out, like charge/discharge losses, equipment maintenance, depreciation/equipment useful life, disposal, and the cost of money. Just do some simple math first. See what you come up with.

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