Is there a danger that the industry over-sizes and comes up with persistent problems in optimising the wind component of the overall power mix. What is the expected maximum % wind component of wind (capacity and production) that is integrable into the overall power mix without leading to power loss on calm days? How much excess capacity needs to be build in and - at the margins - how will this be funded.
E.g. could wind supply (say) 30% electricity production on a pan European basis before excess capacity becomes uneconomic? notes from no w here
The technical solutions to wind integration are known - it mainly involves reinforcing the grid to link the wind-producing regions to the rest of the network, and introducing more intermittency management tools in the system.
Spain regularly deals with more than 50% of its electricity coming from wind; it has also dealt with that proportion falling brutally from 50% to very little in a short period (because winds were too strong and triggered the safety cutoff speed of turbines).
The capacity to deal with periods of low winds already exists - it is the current system, which will simply be used less when the wind blows. There's a hell of a lot of hydro and gas in the system, and these work fine to step in when wind is absent. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
This is a bit skewed, though, as the three city-states get much of their electricity from neighbours, which happen to be the top five.
(But Schleswig-Holstein, Niedersachsen = Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern are the three states to get further significant boost from off-shore.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
