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Yesterday I published a piece by Fred F. Mueller on Germany’s out-of-control renewable energy transition and how it is in fact transitioning over to a disaster.

What follows below is a graphic that proponents of the offshore wind energy industry don’t want anyone to see. It tells the whole story about how (in)efficient and (un)reliable German offshore wind energy really is (Hat-tip: www.achgut.com):

Chart shows the installed nameplate offshore wind capacity (shaded green) and the actual output (blue shaded area) since 2009. Wind’s poor performance and unreliable, wildly fluctuating supply disappoint and risk sinking Germany’s “Energiewende”. Chart source: R. Schuster.

The above chart was prepared by Rolf Schuster, an industrial engineering designer, who during his free time has started a wind power databank in order to check the rosy claims being made by the wind power lobby. The results are not something any fast-talking salesman would want any potential buyer to see. The power that was input (blue) is a mere fraction of the rated capacity (green).

Schuster writes:

If you divide the power fed in (blue) by the rated capacity (green) you get the percent of the rated capacity that actually gets fed into the grid. The linear trend shows a negative tendency – towards 20 percent of the rated capacity. That means: Despite the massively increased capacity in 2014, hardly more power has ended up getting delivered compared to the start of the year. Only one fifth of the rated capacity actually gets fed in.”

Many proponents used to argue that the wind is always blowing at the North Sea, and so a steady supply was a sure thing. Now we have real results coming in. That “steady” wind is only delivering 20% of the installed rated capacity. A fiasco.

Schuster also says that offshore turbines have serious technical problems as well. Foundations are being washed out from underneath; there’s corrosion, and overloads that lead to turbine shutdowns. The harsh conditions of the North Sea a proving much tougher to handle.

There are also major problems with the high-voltage direct current systems that have yet to be solved, Schuster writes. One entire North Sea wind park has been disconnected from the grid as a result. This, Schuster says, “makes one ask if the installation of a major power transmission line from North Germany to South Germany would be a high risk gamble for the German energy supply“.

Green power goes AWOL again!

Also a look at online energy portal Agora here also tracks renewable energy that gets fed into the German power grid. A look at today’s graphic for the last 31 days tells us that once again wind and solar have gone AWOL, and so conventional fuels such as gas, nuclear and coal have to jump in to bail out.

The above chart shows German energy supply and consumption for the last 31 days. Solar power that was fed into the grid is shown in yellow. Wind power is shown in blue. Cropped from Agora.

Yesterday, February 4, we saw very little wind power getting fed into the grid, less than a gigawatt from a nameplate capacity of some 55 gigawatts of installed capacity – less than 2%! On February 4 wind and solar together virtually fed in almost nothing into the grid. If it had not been for coal, gas and nuclear, the country would have gone dark.