Thursday, August 23, 2012

German Energy Agency: Fossil-fueled Power Plants Needed to Provide 60% of Secure Capacity in 2050

The German Energy Agency, Dena, has issued as report concluding "integration of wind and solar power requires long-term restructuring of the electricity system."
That quote is from the google translation of Dena's web page on the report (here)

Dena Study on Integration of Renewables: Fossil-fueled Power Plants Needed to Provide 60% of Secure Capacity in 2050 « German Energy Blog:
The German Energy Agency (dena) presented a new study examining the consequences of the German energy policy shift of 2011 and the challenges lying ahead. The agency predicts that electricity prices will considerably rise until 2050 and conventional power plants will still be needed to a large extent to ensure the security of supply and balance the increasing amount of fluctuating renewable energy input.
The study was carried out in light of Germany’s target to increase the share of renewables energy sources in the electricity supply to at least 80% until 2050.
Continue Reading at the German Energy Blog



6 sections are discussed:
  1. 2050: Total installed capacity of 240 GW with 170 GW renewable energy und 61 GW conventional, conventional plants provide 60% secure capacity
  2. 49 GW of new conventional power plant capacity needed by 2030 at the latest
  3. Despite temporary oversupply, Germany will become net importer of electricity
  4. Higher electricity costs by 2050
  5. European capacity markets and EEG reform needed
  6. Energy efficiency and internal European electriticity market
This is not a positive report, in any sense.

1 comment:

  1. It appears that the report uses consistent demand figures throughout.
    Peak in 2011, according to ENTSO-E, was 76431 (6pm on a winter's night), so the desired 240GW is a capacity 3 times greater than the maximum annual demand, and over 4 times average demand.
    The issues of: curtailing excess supply during periods of high production from intermittent sources; dumping excess on external markets, and very low market pricing are only going to be exacerbated.
    Germany seemed to pretend eliminating the 20GW of baseload nuclear would alleviate the issues, but current reports prove it just delayed facing reality for a year.

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