Es ist Mitte 2023 – ein guter Zeitpunkt, um sich einfach so mal zu fragen: Wie steht es eigentlich um die Energiewende? Haben wir die Energiekrise überwunden? Kommen wir mit dem Ausbau vom Stromnetz überhaupt hinterher? Und wie sieht es mit dem Strompreis aus: Sinkt der wirklich, wenn Erneuerbare ausgebaut werden? Oder ist die gesamte Energiewende sowieso zum Scheitern verurteilt?!

#TerraX #Energiewende #Dunkelflaute #Netzausbau #ErneuerbareEnergien

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Grafiken: Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell

Since last year, we have had an energy crisis.

The Russian natural gas is missing, the costs for energy are exploding, the

Federal Energy Agency is considering rationing the electricity for electric cars and heat pumps.

And what happens with the so-called dark cloud, when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine?

I always say that a successful energy transition would make energy cheaper.

But somehow we don't let them get us out of the embrace.

Many years ago there was the financial crisis.

But all the time the climate change, the climate crisis, the climate disaster was hovering in

Now the Ukraine disaster, the war in Ukraine.

So from the nice, quiet times, nothing is left.

We are suddenly in a permanent crisis mode.

If you think about it, what was done to black painting last year, then the winter was pretty good.

We saved a lot of energy, there were no blackouts.

Everything that was done in apocalyptic prophecies, was not included.

First, the CO2 emissions are rising and the Earth is warming.

You can feel it at every corner of the globe.

Second, we are dependent on the import of fossil fuels.

To be precise, we cover over 2 thirds of our energy needs through imports.

And then there are the high prices for energy.

For the first time, I think, the German population realizes that the energy transition as a reaction to climate change, to global warming, is not just a theoretical thing that takes place somewhere in the world, or even here with us, does not affect us further, but it will cost us something.

The electricity prices for private households have increased by 61% in the last 10 years.

In the last 10 years, the price has risen by 61%, but especially in the last 2 years, it has risen drastically.

The prices for electricity generation have also increased by

So from 2014 to 2019, the electricity prices have been very stable for 5 years.

That's wonderful, those were the good old days.

And that the electricity prices have increased so much afterwards, has above all to do with the fact that the gas price has increased so much.

But in 2022, gas power plants only delivered around 9% of German electricity.

Why should the gas price make electricity more expensive if the electricity generation in Germany depends on

In other words, why is the gas market so important for the electricity price?

Why is it so and why is it so difficult to understand?

The renewable energy covers about half of the electricity consumption.

We already have half of the energy transition behind us.

of the German electricity consumption, was covered by renewable energies in

But the share of renewable energies is significantly reduced.

If we look at the areas of heat, it's only 17 percent.

And the area of transport, it's 7 percent.

So if you take the total energy consumption of Germany, the actual energy consumption, then the renewables only produce a fifth of the energy that we all use in Germany.

So 4 fifths are still from non-renewable sources.

So We haven't even really started with the energy transition.

And for the climate protection goals, what we have done so far in the energy transition is still far too small.

I think the diagram over the development of greenhouse gas emissions shows quite clearly that we are still far below our capabilities.

The challenge is to get out of nuclear power, out of coal, out of gas, out of renewable energy.

There were always critical and quite justified comments about the energy transition, about the videos we made about e-fuels, e-cars, heat pumps, etc.

And this can be divided into 3 categories.

When the sun does not shine and when the wind does not blow?

And can our networks carry the electricity at all?

These are the big challenges of the energy transition and we will look at them 1 by 1.

go through this in a mantra-like way, So that it is clear what it is about.

To do this, we have to expand the renewable energy.

That means we want to get out of everything where we still use fossil resources today.

For example, we pump heat from electric cars.

For example, we need more electric energy for the transport of electric cars.

The demand is increasing because electricity will be used much more in the future than is the case today.

And the share of renewable energy consumption at the gross electricity consumption should, according to the federal government, increase by at least

We now have 2023, just as a little reminder.

Let's look at the diagram, which concerns the expansion of wind and photovoltaics.

So, if it really is about how we get ahead in the energy transition?

And it is already significant that both in photovoltaics and in wind power there were obviously phases in which the expansion has increased.

So more and more photovoltaic systems have been installed, more and more wind power systems.

And then suddenly it went back completely.

The lower 1 is the photovoltaic expansion.

As if you had stopped building photovoltaics in Germany.

You can see here that we haven't continued consistently at all.

You can see that in both photovoltaics and wind power.

The future will look like we have to constantly expand.

we will have tons of roofs in Germany with photovoltaics and also surface photovoltaics.

According to the Federal Government, the renewables must be expanded at 3 times the speed.

If you look at it, offshore, 30 gigawatts in the North Sea should be expanded by

With the Wind-on-Land-Law, the countries must in the future issue 2% of their land area for wind power.

Planning and approval procedures are accelerated for the expansion of wind, solar parks, etc.

You can see that this is an enormous challenge.

This must be planned, approved and it must be built.

There must be someone who builds the things.

For this, it does not only need a social acceptance, it also needs enough craftsmen and craftswomen who can do this.

We urgently need many more professionals who are able to install photovoltaic systems on roofs, build wind turbines, and make power grids.

What this is about is political will, social will, and the right staff.

These are all conditions that we can meet well in Germany.

The potential of wind power and solar energy is not yet exhausted.

But now we assume, we actually manage to take the curve in this diagram as it was shown.

So we reach our expansion goals in photovoltaics, in wind power, onshore and offshore.

What happens now when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow?

What happens with the so-called dark cloud?

going on with The energy transition is a completely new situation, which for many consumers in this country seems almost threatening.

Namely, that our energy sources are fluctuating.

In other words, at night it is dark, at night photovoltaic systems cannot contribute to the electrical power supply in Germany.

We have seasonal fluctuations and the fluctuations during the day.

We all know the day, at night it's dark, during the day it's bright.

We also have seasonal fluctuations, for example photovoltaics is in the summer, well, we don't need a physics degree for that, that the photovoltaics in the summer is of course incredibly efficient.

That means a lot of energy is basically storable if it somehow succeeds to store it in such a way that it can be distributed nicely.

Now we just have to distribute it in such a way that we have a basic load capacity again, i.e.

And for that it is necessary that there are storages.

The energy that we do not use, that is often the case.

There are days in Germany where we have so much energy that we can almost give it away.

Or sometimes we even have to stop the plants, because we don't know where to go with all the electric energy that is provided to us by nature.

That we store it in storage media and then use it when we need it.

So let's take a look at what possibilities there are.

Currently, it is the reserve power plants that ensure that enough electric energy is offered in the event of dark clouds.

These are currently coal and gas power plants because they are flexible, usable and, above all, fast to switch on and off.

Nuclear power plants would not be suitable for this.

In the future, hydrogen should even be used.

However, this will only be the case if we actually manage to produce hydrogen from renewable energies.

Otherwise, it would be nonsense to produce hydrogen with fossil resources to burn it.

Then of course it's about the question of energy storage.

How large is the energy storage demand that we have?

Energy storage is measured in the amount of energy that can be stored.

In plain language, there is the unit of gigawatt hours.

To estimate this, a gigawatt hour is a pretty large amount of energy.

For example, in Germany, in 2022, all solar plants have provided 60 gigawatt hours of energy, according to the Institute for Solar Energy, the Fraunhofer Institute.

So now you can ask yourself what amounts of energy must be stored.

It depends a little on how much the wind power contributes to it and how much the photovoltaics

How much energy does it need to be stored?

wind power and photovoltaic power are added.

If we focus more on photovoltaic power in the future, because for whatever reason no wind turbines are built, we need more storage capacity than if we had a mixture of wind power and photovoltaics.

At present, we have a storage capacity of 40 gigawatt hours, especially via pump storage in Germany.

With the excess energy, you pump water up.

It then falls back down over the turbine.

With a very high efficiency, the electricity can be generated again.

It's a great thing, but in Germany, with 40 gigawatt hours, it's almost exhausted.

In the future, power to gas will play an important role, where you can convert the excess electric energy into gas.

The regrettable thing is that the efficiency of power to gas is not that high, but if we had enough power that we would have to store, enough electric power that we would have to store, or electric energy, to be more precise, that we would want to store, then that would certainly be a means of choice, especially if it's about storing energy in the long term.

The classic energy storage we all know is the battery.

And currently, there are about 1.2 gigawatt hours of battery storage.

At least we have 5.5 gigawatt hours of home storage.

According to the study by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy, we need up to 100 gigawatt hours of battery storage by

There's still plenty of room for improvement.

The problem with battery storage is that they are too expensive.

They are important to balance load peaks.

When a lot of energy is needed, the batteries are fast and really important.

If we actually had an energy transition in the transport sector in Germany and we really would be able to get many millions of electric e-cars would drive on German roads, so really get away from the combustion engine to the e-cars, then we would have a new storage possibility, which offers quite large perspectives.

So With a number of 15 million vehicles in Germany, you would have a potential energy storage capacity of

Well, de facto is of course much less and you also need this technology of bidirectional charging and discharging.

But if that were the case, then the electric cars could significantly mitigate this problem of energy storage.

The energy transition does not only involve technical solutions, such as balancing the fluctuations of solar energy or wind power, but also how energy is distributed and how energy is used.

It is also about the role of the consumer in how to use the energy that is offered.

Ultimately, it's about the flexibility of the consumer side, how the offered energy quantities can be used.

This is a very big challenge and has something to do with how the energy quantities that are produced in 1 corner of Germany, namely in the north, where the many wind turbines are located, to get to where the energy is consumed, among other things in the south.

In other words, somehow the networks have to be expanded.

The networks we have today are not enough to make this new energy landscape possible.

The network expansion is 1 of the bottlenecks in the energy transition.

The Federal Network Agency always points out that the expansion of the networks is a condition sine qua non, a condition without which the energy transition will not work.

Flexibility of consumers, especially the large consumer, will be important, so that they consume energy when it is offered, when nature offers it.

And on the other hand, the energy must also be distributed in Germany, which is still a major infrastructure measure.

And there are still apparently major obstacles, both in the political area and in the socio-political areas, that are repeatedly prevented from carrying out these great new infrastructure measures.

There is a research project called Long-Term Scenarios, And this shows, for example, that the actual demand for grid expansion is even greater than the measures planned so far.

So we are actually still below what is necessary.

And then, of course, the question arises, can the many new electric cars and heat pumps actually be supplied reliably with electricity?

Because this is a very emotional, important moment when the word rationing appears in the press.

So what would be the worst case scenario that 1 could think about?

A classic would be a cold winter evening, the heat pumps are running and many people are letting their electric cars charge.

For me, the agency in terms of energy supply.

Where the network expansion has not or has not taken place sufficiently, we have to make precautions so that the grid does not go down in this situation.

Therefore, we are currently discussing whether the grid operators may dim the power supply in the event of a subsequent emergency, it is important to dim the power supply so that the network remains in line with the requirements and the consumers pay a lower net cost for this system.

A lower net final cost for these systems.

It is important that it always stays warm, because heat pumps can handle such restrictions.

They do not have to have a constant current connection.

And the electric car will also continue to charge, maybe less quickly, but dimming does not mean switching off.

We can actually introduce a new kind of energy management in our private households to use energy in this way, when it is available, possibly even cheaper, and then reduce our energy hunger if it could get a little more difficult.

And probably without our quality of life being affected.

The digitization of the energy revolution is an important component when it comes to how the consumption behavior can be controlled in the future.

The smart grids, the networking of devices in private households, but also in economic context, will play an important role.

Of course, flexible electricity tariffs are also needed.

So we see a lot is happening in the energy transition.

We have the most important technologies or are currently developing them.

We actually need a sprint in the energy transition.

Now a section will be in the video, I give up.

I only read about it, because that's a department where I, as a consumer, am honestly completely helpless.

Why is electricity so expensive at the moment?

Electricity is traded in the European electricity market, on the stock exchange.

Suppliers buy the electricity some time in advance, we can understand that too, advance and calculate the consumer prices.

And these prices are usually fixed for a whole year.

So if something happens within this year, that the electricity prices go up, the electricity providers have a problem.

Because they have bought for a longer period of time.

More than half of the electricity price is net expenses.

And there are of course big regional differences, taxes and deductions.

Why are the electricity prices so exploded in 2022?

The Federal Network Agency writes in its monitoring report, The prices in the electricity retail market follow with this development very largely the price development in natural gas.

Because in the German electricity retail market, natural gas power plants are the most expensive in most hours.

The situation was further intensified in the middle of the year by the extremely low water levels of the Rhine and the increased supply of the south German coal power plants.

comes to droughts in summer, the rivers are empty.

I just said it again, I didn't understand it.

Is the designation for the rising sorted limit cost curve of electricity generation for thermal generators.

The electricity price on the stock exchange fluctuates quite a lot every day.

And depending on demand, generators are driven up or down.

Depending on how much renewable energy is available, or whether the sun is strong or not, or whether the wind is strong or not, and so on.

Always with the condition, here it comes, that the demand can be covered.

So at the very back, it is always determined, the demand must always be satisfied.

A gas power plant only remains on the grid and thus also secures the demand, if it can cover its high costs and thus set the electricity price as long as it cannot be replaced by cheaper generators.

That is the reason why the 1 with the highest electricity price practically defines the electricity price.

A gas power plant only remains operational if it is profitable.

Otherwise, the electricity price would have to rise so long to meet the demand until the gas power plant is back on the grid.

The coupling of gas and electricity prices can also be seen in the following graph.

We see how the gas power plants' limit costs determine how high the electricity price is.

And how the gas price fluctuates is the price we see later on in the electricity price.

That means the electricity price follows the gas price directly.

Professor Claudia Kempfert from the German Institute for Economic Research is an energy economist and expert on the energy market.

At the moment, the electricity prices are only so high because we are paying the price of the sluggish energy transition and the fossil fuels drive the electricity price up.

If we didn't have so much gas and coal in the system, the electricity price wouldn't explode so much.

And that's why you have to see that the more we change that, the more the electricity can become significantly cheaper.

It has to be, especially because we want to use it for electromobility or in the building sector.

To reduce the financial burden caused by high energy costs, the Federal Government introduced price cuts in

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Schaffen wir die Energiewende – und wird Strom billiger? | Harald Lesch | Terra X Lesch & Co