Reposted from the NoTricksZone
By P Gosselin on April 13, 2021 Share this…
From Blackout News
(Translated, edited by P. Gosselin)
Due to the government-mandated phase-out of coal, 11 coal-fired power plants with a total output of 4.7 GW were shut down on January 1, 2021. However, the phase-out from coal only lasted 8 days, after which several power plants had to be reconnected to the power grid due to a long period of low winds.
The Heyden coal-fired power plant near Petershagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, had to be restarted six times by the end of February. Photo: ChristianSchd, CC BY-SA 3.0
The affected large Heyden power plant had to be restarted six times by the end of February in order to secure the power supply.
The Federal Network Agency has now confirmed that it has classified the already closed power plants Heyden, Datteln, Walsum 9 and Westphalia as systemically relevant and must now remain on standby as reserve power plants. The owners must therefore continue operations at short notice.
Never mind that these sporadic operations of these coal-fired power plants are terribly inefficient and costly, as you will learn below.
Shutdowns of coal-fired power plants have increased the instability of the grid frequency
The large power plants should primarily provide their rotational energy, ie run at full speed, but not feed electricity into the grid. The rotational energy is urgently needed to bridge the time that the medium and peak load power plants need to deliver the missing power to the grid by adjusting the load accordingly. Smaller systems simply have too little flywheel mass to be able to offer this compensation. We have described in more detail how to stabilize a power grid in the article “Stabilizing the power grid”. The number of these critical frequency drops has already risen sharply this year.
Consumers have to bear the costs
The Federal Network Agency adds: “The costs for the provision in the network reserve as well as for the conversion to a rotating phase shifter are borne by the electricity network customers, since these measures serve to ensure safe and reliable network operation.” It is therefore clear that these costs also exceed the Electricity price must be financed.
The planned operational readiness to only be able to provide the flywheel mass as a rotating phase shifter in critical situations is an economic catastrophe for the operator. This is because these have the costs for the system and the maintenance of the systems and practically no income, as only a power supply in the range of a few seconds and / or a few minutes takes place to bridge the net frequency drops. So you have to subsidize these plants. This is paradoxical as these power plants generate the cheapest electricity to date and get by without subsidies. That is why we now have the most expensive electricity in the world.
Government accelerated the exit
The federal government was politically driven by protests on Friday for the future and other NGOs and accelerated the phase-out of coal. The coal commission that decided on the exit did not include electricity grid experts or representatives from electricity producers.
More plants are to be taken off the grid
In 2022, the last nuclear power plants and other coal-fired power plants with a total output of 1.5 GW will be taken off the grid. These power plants could generate around 3% of the total electricity demand. In addition, around 6000 wind turbines with an installed capacity of 16 GW will be dismantled by 2022, since the feed-in subsidies for older turbines have expired. These generated around 7% of the total electricity demand in 2020.
However, not enough green energy crops are added
The planned new construction of eco-power plants will not even come close to compensating for this performance. If the electricity demand increases to the level of 2019 after the Corona lockdown, it will be particularly exciting in the coming winter. Because then there will be a capacity shortage of between 10% and 15% on the generation side.
Some people then have to learn that the laws of physics apply – even if they don’t understand them.
A power outage is only a matter of time. So prepare early.
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