Germany Ships More Power Abroad Despite Nuclear Plant Closures
November 10th, 2012Update: Germany Powers France in Cold Despite Nuclear U-Turn
Somebody somewhere sent this in. It’s from February.
Via: Reuters:
Germany came to the rescue of France during last week’s cold snap by massively exporting electricity to its neighbour, silencing critics who slammed Berlin last year for abruptly shutting down 8 nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster.
Critics said such a decision would put Europe’s electricity supply balance at risk and waved the possibility of widespread blackouts as a result.
“The cold snap was a situation most experts feared and we managed without bigger problems,” said Stephan Schnorr, German power trader at utility Dong Energy.
Instead, it was France which suffered from supply tightness last week, pushing prices to two-year highs and prompting the grid to issue warnings urging the public to refrain from using electrical equipment, such as washing machines or coffee makers.
France, Europe’s biggest electricity exporter, reverts to imports during peak demand periods.
—
Winter might be another matter. It will be interesting to see how they do.
There are many Cryptogon readers in Germany. What is the plan if domestic energy production is not adequate during winter? France is a large exporter of electricity (mainly from nuclear power plants). Maybe this source will be used by Germany during winter, if necessary.
Via: AP:
Utility companies say Germany has exported significantly more electricity to its neighbors from January through September as renewable energies made up for last year’s closure of eight nuclear power plants.
The renewable energy supply of Germany is quite diverse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany), so I’m not sure there’d really be large seasonal variance. The major producer is wind power, whereas solar is less than 10% of the renewable energy and about 3% of total energy consumption.