
On Clean Energy, the Wind Blows from Germany - T-A
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-30/wind-and-solar-are-gaining-ground-in-germany
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rodionos
Similar graphs for Denmark, covering the last 15 years. Daily records in 2015:

\- Wind:
[http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=10](http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=10)

\- Conventional:
[http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=11](http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=11)

Notice that you really have to have a) substantial spare installed capacity
and 2) interconnects to survive a day without wind.

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stuaxo
It puts the UKs disappointing approach in perspective. The current government
promised to be the greenest ever, but has cut renewable subsidies and is about
to override local democracy by pushing through with fraking in Lankeshire.

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ygra
Subsidies are only needed to push a technology to market where it wouldn't be
economically feasible in the beginning. At least in Germany the current state
is that renewable energy is on par or cheaper than coal and nuclear, even
without subsidies. In such cases it makes sense to cut the subsidies. Don't
know whether that's the case in the UK already, though.

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tmalsburg2
The graph is pretty interesting. It shows that the contribution of wind can
outweight other renewables by a huge margin. It also shows that the
contribution of wind can range between almost 0% to more than 50% depending on
the weather. The storage capacity needed to smooth out these differences must
be breathtaking. Hard to believe that lithium-ion batteries can make a
meaningful contribution to that.

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the8472
During the summer solar can stack on top of the wind energy, but obviously
only during daytime. This causes even more uneven distributions. Select weeks
30 and 31 on [1] for example. The overproduction caused quite a spike in
exports.

Storage is one part of the solution, but not the only one. Adaptive
consumption and simply building overcapacity are additional options.

[1] [https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm](https://www.energy-
charts.de/power.htm)

