Not only is the EU wet dream of a 100% renewable energy supply a chimera, but the case of Germany shows that the effort to achieve such a target leads to absurd conditions, such as paying your neighbors to “buy” your electricity.
As known, during nighttime, Germany is forced to import energy from its neighbors, because there is no sunshine, wind may be weak, and the fossil-driven backstop is not enough. The month of June has marked a historic record in terms of imported quantities of electricity.
However, during the day, the opposite occurs. As Tichys Einblick reports, on July 2, for instance, there was too much wind energy in the network. At noon, there was around 22 GW of wind power and 28 GW of solar power. Conventional plants, which cannot be turned off completely, were supplying 11 GW. Facing a demand of 56GW, the problem was where to put the excess power.
