Mr Henryk Kalis, the energy buyer for ZGH Boleslaw, a zinc processor controlled by ArcelorMittal, said that “My boss keeps asking why we aren’t buying power from Germany, but this is practically impossible.” The Bukowno, Poland-based company pays more than USD 26 million a year for electricity.
German green power forces neighbors to bolster blackout defenses
Published on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 71 times viewed
Bloomberg reported that Germany’s drive to harness wind and solar power is producing so much electricity that it’s spilling over into neighbors’ grids and increasing the threat of blackouts.
Poland and the Czech Republic are spending USD 180 million on equipment to protect their systems from German power surges, while Austria is curbing some trading to prevent regional networks from collapsing. On a windy day, the overflow east can exceed the output from four atomic reactors.
Germany’s fivefold increase in green energy in the past decade has outpaced investment in power lines to move it across the country. Electricity is looping through Poland and the Czech Republic to reach southern Germany, where supply is constrained as Chancellor Angela Merkel shuts nuclear plants after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan. The disruptions show the limits to the European Commission’s vision of a single power market.
Mr Zbynek Boldis, the head of trade and international relations at Czech grid CEPS AS, said in an interview in Budapest that “A huge accumulation of overflow increases the threat of a blackout. The root of the situation is allowing a huge amount of electricity to be generated regardless of the capacity of the grid.”
German grid companies plan to spend at least EUR 22 billion on high-voltage power lines as they upgrade their grids to accommodate more solar and wind power before the last of the eight remaining reactors close in 2022. Nine units generating almost 10 GW, enough to power 20 million European homes, have been shuttered since 2011, with the latest on June 27. Nuclear power now accounts for 16% of Germany’s electricity, compared with 26% for renewables.
German power overflows are increasingly forcing Poland to protect its grid from overloading and triggering a blackout. The nation’s grid operator had to double the amount of last-minute changes to power-plant output to balance the surges in the Q1 from a year earlier.
According to CEPS, on the windiest days, sometimes more than 50% of the power sent from northern Germany to its southern states and Austria travels through Poland and the Czech Republic.
Polish grid operator PSE SA said that the surges take up so much of its import capacity that there’s not enough remaining for it to regularly carry lower-cost German power that could be made available to commercial users. German electricity for delivery next year is about 18% cheaper than Polish power, close to the widest gap since at least 2008, broker data show.
Mr Henryk Kalis, the energy buyer for ZGH Boleslaw, a zinc processor controlled by ArcelorMittal, said that “My boss keeps asking why we aren’t buying power from Germany, but this is practically impossible.” The Bukowno, Poland-based company pays more than USD 26 million a year for electricity.
The Poles and Czechs will by the end of next year finish installing transformers on two power lines connecting with Germany to control the unplanned flows and help free up capacity that can be traded or auctioned off to domestic customers.
While that will ease the pressure from overflows, the Polish and Czech grids still face congestion from the demand for cheap German power in Austria, which shares a wholesale electricity market with Germany.
Source : Bloomberg