Germany generating so much windpower today that price for electricity will fall... below zero

[hunter]

34. Scrubbers were installed to control the smog. But the carbon dioxide remains.

Meanwhile Germany sustains it's solar and wind fantasy by using the rest of Europe to source and sink its wind power extremes.

Germany will reduce it's coal use with projects like this:

The NordLink project has been developed by Statnett in cooperation with grid company TenneT and investment bank KfW in Germany. The subsea cable will connect the Norwegian and German electricity markets for the first time.

The last couple of years have seen a significant increase in wind power and solar power in Germany. When the winds blow and the sun shines this creates a surplus of renewable energy in Germany, which also leads to lower prices than in Norway. Norway can then import this power and conserve the water in Norway's many hydropower reservoirs. When there is little production of wind power and solar power in Germany the need for power increases and the prices will be higher than in Norway. Norway can then produce hydropower and export it to Germany. This way we get more out of the resources on both sides of the cable.

http://www.statnett.no/en/Projects/NORDLINK/

In effect, Norway will play the part for Germany that California's nimble gas and hydroelectric plants play in the California electricity market. (Norway is the world's third largest natural gas exporter, they could just as well export gas generated electricity over HVDC lines.)

But overall the solar and wind aspect of the project is window dressing. I don't expect anywhere near the bulk of electricity flowing through the Nordlink HVDC line will be excess solar or wind power generated in Germany. The line is too valuable to use as a simple battery, useful only a few days a year. Optimistically the line will be used to export Norwegian hydro and gas generated electricity to Germany, which will reduce Germany's dependence on dirty coal more than Germany's solar will, and more than Germany's wind turbines will most days. It would be a bad thing if the line was used to export cheap coal generated electricity to Norway.

German solar has always been irrational, installed for ideological reasons rather than practical reasons. It would make a lot of sense to move those solar panels to sunnier places in the world if the actual goal is to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions.