[idownvoted]

Ah Sweet, the old “exportweltmeister” scam never seems to get old.

Germany is exporting so much energy because (and only because) without the base load provided by conventional power plants it’s energy grid routinely is on the brink of collapse, whenever there are weather based shifts in renewable energy production.

This causes the electricity price to routinely go negative because our neighboring countries don’t want to have it either.

What a failure. And what a failure that people still fall for that exportweltmeister lie

[pizzapill]

Do you have a source for your claims? I mean its obvious that renewables are dependent on the weather, but that's no issue since a neighbour can always produce & Germany is building up power storage capacity. Including a fat line to Norway where Germany sends wind power and receives renewables power when there is a need.

Additional the German power grid is super stable, black- or brownouts simply don't happen.

> This causes the electricity price to routinely go negative because our neighboring countries don’t want to have it either.

This has and probably will always happen. For example Aluminum smelters are getting paid to burn electricity almost since the beginning of the industrialization, otherwise this industry wouldn't exist.

> What a failure. And what a failure that people still fall for that exportweltmeister lie

So building up massive renewable capacity while starting to sell more and more of it is a failure to you? Either your expectations are crazy high or very low...

[idownvoted]

> Do you have a source for your claims?

Apparently googling things is extremely hard if the search results confront ones own bias...

Here you go: https://postimg.cc/qttW8tSm

(Even the pro Energiewende org “agora” has a problem hiding the facts in their charts (https://www.agora-energiewende.de/service/agorameter/chart/p...)

[pizzapill]

Yes it is hard, can you provide comparison data from < 2000 and the search words you used? Is the Y axis price or usage?

[tlamponi]

Y-Axis is €/MWh (Euro per megawatt-hour)

And, while yes, the prices tend to spike into negativity for short periods, that's actually pretty normal to happen for countries which partake in the Synchronous grid of Continental Europe then and now.

The base issue, or at least a bigger part of that then wind/solar is, of that is actually coal. A coal plant needs tens of hours, up to days to shut-down; and then another few days to start up again - and such starts-stops are quite taxing on the plant; it can only survive a dozen of those before requiring major maintenance to happen.

Wind can actually be turned off quite dynamically (rotate the blade such that the angle of attack for the wind goes down to zero), not milliseconds, but a few seconds to minutes.

For the reverse you need storage, things like batteries or hydro (pumped storage) can and are used for that already.

Using terms like "Exportweltmeister" (export champion) in context of the European energy market is just rather non-sense, Germans energy politic is far from perfect, but it was never trimmed for export.

[labster]

This is why you build continent-sized electric grids. It’s always sunny somewhere.

Making a nation-sized renewable-based electric grid is very hard to stabilize, because you’re not working at the right scale. It’s the same with other large infrastructure like freeways: they’re only worth the investment if you connect vast areas.