Energy infrastructure

Your express article mentions wind in one sentence at the end. It's mostly about political backstabbing within the Tory party as part of the heave-ho of Borris Johnson, and the UK wanting to secure domestic fossil fuel reserves given the turmoil in the markets and the geopolitical turmoil with Russia. It has zero little relevance to your "wind energy is bad" argument.

Wind energy is displacing gas usage off our grid when the wind blows. This is good for two reasons: it's cheaper than burning gas; it doesn't release greenhouse gas emissions. When the wind doesn't blow the gas turbines run. It's really not that complicated. With more wind turbines, particularly the off-shore ones with higher capacity factors, we can burn gas less often. There is a tipping point here where increased capex costs will outweigh the reduced opex costs but were still a decent way away from that point.

You've been trotting out the same "wind is inefficient", "wind is expensive", "wind doesn't blow all the time" arguments of two and three decades ago. Those arguments had some truth and relevance then. The world has moved on but you seem incapable of seeing that the wind industry has progressed massively in the last three decades, or you're a mildy annoying troll who does this for kicks.

Wind energy has a few problems. It's not a panacea to our energy problems. I share your concerns around the unproven green hydrogen bonanza, and that in order to get 100% clean energy (by 2050) we need to majorly solve the energy storage problem or find another dispatch-able source of clean energy.

Status as a net importer or exporter isnt the full picture though - they are a net exporter because of all the renewables which when they do generate, often generate far too much. In some cases they are literally dumping excess on their neighbours at rock bottom prices just to stabilise the grid.

When they need to import however, the reverse is not the case. Net exporter implies they have too much and are self-sufficient, but they are not. They are just as reliant on foreign power to plug the gaps as we are.

2016 wow, only 5 years out of date

Meanwhile recently:

Germany export surplus shrank by 46%. No details on the prices negotiated on imports/exports via the various channels, but I'd take a guess and say its less than 2016 when German exports peaked, and before most of the nuclear plants were decommissioned

Can you point out where I ever made that claim?

"they are literally dumping excess on their neighbours at rock bottom prices" and "When they need to import however, the reverse is not the case.".

Neither of these claims can be true as Germany electricity trade is in surplus in Euro terms as well as in TWh terms.

The article is mostly about Germany's weak north-south transmission. The only thing relevant to your claim is:

"The Bundesnetzagentur’s figures do not include instances where Germany paid foreign wind farms to shut down and allow its electricity to be exported."

But - the reason is given immediately:

"This happened to Danish wind projects in 2015 as part of the integration of reserve and balancing services across international markets, said Andrews. “It doesn’t appear that there are any incidents of this recently,” he added."

I.e. it was required for engineering/grid integration work. It's NOT part of regular operations. It happened once in 2015.

The Danish "consultant" who "thinks" it's still happening is badly mistaken. His only evidence for the claim is the fact that wind turbines are being de-rated/curtailed in western Denmark "which has loads of wind". This is a daft conclusion; derating/curtailment happens during normal operations based on the spot price of electricity - not because a foreign country is bribing producers to induce a local shortage. Every country with significant amounts of wind use curtailment/de-rating to manage balancing the grid - it doesn't mean Germany is slipping the generating companies a bung to turn off the turbines in all these countries.

Just stop and think and ask yourself whether what you want to believe makes sense from a technical or financial perspective. It does not; either Germany is producing electricity cheaper than the Danish spot price which means it'll sell it into the market or visa-versa and it won't.

Anyway this is a diversion, can you back up your earlier claim that "they are literally dumping excess on their neighbours at rock bottom prices" and "When they need to import however, the reverse is not the case." with actually relevant numbers?

This claim remains untrue.

Another step forward for JET and nuclear fusion although probably still 20-30 years away as a source.

It's at 1700 at the moment, no consistency. If any of this stuff it needs consistency and a much lower unit cost, We are coming very close to the price for electricity where a diesel generator would make more financial sense than connecting to the grid.

Wind is cheap?? That will be causing alot of head scratching around the country with people getting hit with record energy bills this past month. Germany has to import Swedish Hydro and Czech Nuclear to keep the lights on for much of the time and pays top dollar. The wind energy they have to dump on surrounding grids during the rare sustained windy period returns no money for the german grid which is one of the reasons they have one of the highest energy costs in the EU

PS: Coal is enjoying quiet the rebound in Germany this past year

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-electricity-source/a-59168105

The hypocrisy of that post is breath-taking given the performance of wind energy during the past year. Your figures are also rubbish given how both base load and ramping conventional plants have to operate alot less efficiently when a grid is forced to accommodate the extreme variations in wind power