Germany, Norway to share renewable energy across subsea cable

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Interconnecting grids like this decreases the need for storage

The idea is that if the wind is not blowing well in one place (say Germany) it may be blowing well some place else (say… Norway) and vice-verse.

http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/news/news-2012/interconnected-european-grid-acts-as-storage

[font face=Serif][font size=5] Interconnected European Grid acts as Storage for Renewably Generated Electricity [/font]

[font size=3]Hamburg/Freiburg, 13th August 2012. “The interconnected European grid increasingly often acts as storage for electricity from renewable sources”, stated Professor Bruno Burger from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg. “During the week from 30th July to 5th August 2012, up to 5 GW electric power was exported from Germany to its European neighbours around midday, whereas electricity was imported in the morning and the evening. As the import-export balance for the whole week was almost zero, the interconnected grid is acting as storage capacity for electricity from renewable sources and simultaneously ensures that the load on conventional power plants remains almost constant.

The energy transition has led to increasing amounts of electricity from renewable sources being input into the German national grid. The fluctuations in solar energy, wind power, hydroelectricity and electricity from bio-fuels with time do not compensate each other completely. Therefore, additional pumped-storage hydroelectric plants are needed and both the grid itself and the number of connection points to neighbouring countries must be enlarged.

“The energy transition has been implemented very successfully with regard to electricity generation. During the first half of 2012, renewable energy sources contributed 25 per cent of the generated electricity”, explained Burger, who analyses the data from the European Energy Exchange EEX in Leipzig for Fraunhofer ISE. “Now we must intensify our efforts concerning storage and grid extension. This is much more economically viable than originally projected, according to an article which appeared in the ‘Financial Times Deutschland’ on 8th July 2012. The German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) has calculated that sixty per cent of the grid extension would have been needed anyway and that only forty per cent can be attributed to electricity from renewable sources.”

Electricity Production in Germany: Calendar Week 31[/font][/font]

http://renewables-grid.eu/documents/docsstudies.html