Germany’s
shift to renewable energy has been hailed as an historic policy move
— but its neighbors don’t like it.
The
country’s move away from nuclear power and increase in production
of wind or solar energy has pushed it to the point where its existing
power grids can’t always cope. And it’s the Czech Republic,
Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium and France that have taken the
brunt.
“If there
is a strong blow of the wind in the North, we get it, we have the
blackout,” Martin Povejšil, the Permanent Representative of the
Czech Republic to the EU said at a briefing in Brussels recently.
Germany’s
north-south power lines have too limited a capacity to carry all the
power that is produced from wind turbines along the North Sea to
industrial states like Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg and onto
Austria. That means the extra electricity is shunted through the
Czech Republic and Poland.
To put an
end to the often unexpected power flows from Germany — so-called
loop flows — the countries are taking the matter into their own
hands. Concerned about the stability of their own grids, additional
costs and the ability to export their own power, the Czechs, for
example, are installing devices to block the power from 2016 onwards.
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