Germany's Successful Wind Industry Averaging Less Than 15% Of Rated Capacity -- February 19, 2015

When I first started the blog, many, many years ago, I did not know what "nameplate capacity" meant. Don explained it to me.

Yesterday I was sent an interesting link from another reader on the "success" of the wind industry in Germany. Wow, this is quite incredible. If these numbers were being posted in any other industry in the US, some folks would be going to jail for violating SEC regulations or CEOs would be moving.

This is the story behind that "successful" wind energy in Germany.

Vernunftkraft is reporting:

Die durchschnittliche Einspeisung (arithmetisches Mittel) beträgt über alle 25.000 Anlagen hinweg gerade einmal 14,8 Prozent der Nennleistung. 

Yes, you read that correctly: "einmal 14,8 Prozent der Nennleistung."

NoTricksZone caught the story and posted the important data points with this headline: Germany 2014 Report Card Is In! Its 25,000 Wind Turbines Get An “F-“…Averaged Only 14.8% Of Rated Capacity! 

It looks like the wind is not blowing where the German wind turbines are. Without a doubt, the hot air is blowing in Berlin. 

Most disturbing, this final line:

One does not even see any real available baseload – a sort of reliable minimum output to rely on.”

Germany is also going non-nuclear which means a lot of coal-burning power plants to provide the baseload as well as provide electricity when the wind is not blowing -- which seems to be a lot of the time.

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The Expense of Wind

But just think about that: wind is more expensive than coal in best of circumstances, when wind farms actually produce at their rated capacity. But imagine how much the wind energy sector is costing Germany taxpayers -- when the farms are producing at less than 15% rated capacity. I doubt the American experience would be all that different than Germany's experience.

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Athens: A Portrait of the City in Its Golden Age

Christian Meier, c. 1993

The golden age of Athens: significant changes occurred after the Battle of Marathon, 490 BC. Tragedies were transformed, made "modern." Sculpture moved from kouros to critius. Vase painting emphasized Dionysius and maenads. And a particularly noteworthy change in politics in 487 BC, when an interesting alteration of the procedure for appointing archons was made. From then on, a fairly large group of men, probably one hundred, was elected -- ten from each phyle -- and nine archons were picked by log from among them.

Quite interesting. There's always an issue of term limits in US politics, but I've never cared for term limits, except perhaps for the presidency. The bigger problem for me has always been the lack of change (or more accurately, the very, very slow change in the leadership in the US Senate and House of Representatives. I am convinced that much of the gridlock we have (and gridlock can be good) is due to intransigent personalities of the demi-gods that lead the Senate and the House year-after-year-after-year. Wouldn't it be interesting if the top three or four leadership positions were determined by lot every year. We would have the same elected representatives in Washington, but the leadership would be much more dynamic. Boehner, McConnell, Pelosi, Reid have over-stayed their welcome.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

Regular readers know that our older granddaughter is interested in marine biology. Hold that thought.

A few weeks ago she and I were discussing Socrates and Plato because that's what her class was studying. I had not thought about Socrates and Plato in a long time but there was one particular question that caught my interest. Coincidentally, completely unrelated, I was back in my "Greek" reading phase, re-reading The Wooden Horse: The Liberation of the Western Mind, From Odysseus to Socrates, Keld Zeruneith, c. 2007, which tackled the question I had: where did Socrates stand with regard to the issue of "gods" and how did he come to that way of thinking?

The Zeruneith book takes one from the Trojan War to Socrates/Plato. It turns out there is a new book that continues the story: The Lagoon: How Socrates Invented Science, Armand Marie Leroi, c. 2014.

Socrates, inventing science, could be argued, was the first "scientist." His area of interest: biology. He very specific area of interest: marine biology. 

Our older granddaughter was thrilled to hear that. 

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Connecting The Dots

Right now, circulating in the conservative social media is a list of twenty Obama quotes that suggest to the compiler that President Obama is a Muslim. It's a pretty persuasive list, especially considering that the President has never defended his own religion, Christianity, with the same fervor and/or clarity.  I was not going to comment on the list, but I was reminded of it when I googled the spelling of Boehner's name and the first hit today -- the very first hit -- was of a Salon article: Boehner and Bibi's blunder: the  problem is much bigger than not giving Obama a "head's up."  

The dots now connect. The bigger problem -- and almost the only problem -- is the fact that President Obama is unable to come to terms to the "Islamist problem" and sees Netanyahu as directly confronting the president's religious upbringing and core beliefs.