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Germany’s Got Revolutionary Power

Posted by JOE WINDISH, Technology Editor in Science & Technology.
Oct 17th, 2009 | Comments

Business Week says Germany’s building the power grid of the future. One of humanity’s boldest visions:

The electricity age is imminent in six German regions: The technology of the future for smart energy management is going to be developed and tested, under the label E-Energy, in several cities. A number of projects will kick into high gear this month. Tens of thousands of homes and hundreds of companies are expected to participate in the field tests.

Testing ‘virtual power stations’ in homes:

Residents of the cities of Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, where a government pilot E-Energy project is being tested, are already experiencing what it is like to be part a smart grid. There, 200 homes and companies have been equipped with photovoltaic systems and CHPs or fuel cells.

This model transforms the consumer into a producer who can make some money in the energy market. They are also testing a pricing model in which electricity rates depend on supply and demand. If the amount of available energy goes down, the rates go up correspondingly. Users can monitor the system on an Internet portal and generate energy whenever the price peaks, thereby also stabilizing the overall supply.

RELATED: I was on the Washington Mall last week where the Department of Energy sponsored Solar Decathlon, an international student competition to build a modern home powered only by solar energy, was underway. Twenty colleges participated. Team Germany won, beating out California and Illinois.

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jdledell

Germany is far and away the leader in solar technology. The USA sits on it's butt when it comes to making energy in a 22nd century way. As with most things, America says it's number one in everything and we have NOTHING to learn from other countries, especially Europe.

merkin

Germany pays up to fifty cents a kilowatt-hour for solar and other renewable power.

Offer the same here and you will have a bounty of solar power. Continue to agree to lie to each other about the need to develop and utilize renewable power and eventually we will pay someone else to provide our technology.

The prevailing economic and political philosophy in the US over the last 30 years has given us many deficits to pass on to our children, including the obvious monetary, infra-structure and educational ones. This is maybe less obvious but a large one, an inability of government to think big and plan for the future.

Don Quijote

This is maybe less obvious but a large one, an inability of government to think big and plan for the future.

The Conservative Elites don't want the government to think big and plan for the future, they would rather have this country turn into an English speaking version of Guatemala than let any government (Federal, State or Local) invest in the future. In their opinion, it's better to rule a third world country than to be another member of the elites in a wealthy, democratically run country in which they would have to answer to their fellow citizens...

merkin

...they would rather have this country turn into an English speaking version of Guatemala ...

Actually if the plan was to turn the United States into Mexico they can declare victory. The United States’ income distribution became as skewed in favor of the wealthy as Mexico's this last year.

shannonlee

I'm moving to Stuttgart in two months and have been looking at these new homes. They are not only quite impressive, but they are also beautiful.

DLS

"Germany pays up to fifty cents a kilowatt-hour for solar and other renewable power."

Where is the five cents or less figure? Come back to us when it's at a seriously low (cheap) level, not when it's at a level even higher than anomalies and the farthest-from-general-models like Long Island's power rates. (If you want government involved in this, the offer something similar to BPA and similar hydropower rates, or _refrain_.)

That doesn't even start to address the lack of a replacement for liquid transportation (petroleum-based) fuels. Invent a battery yielding a range of 300-plus miles at 90+ mph with recharging time of well under twenty minutes or you don't have an electric vehicle replacement ready for people yet.

There's no need for people to be infatuated to a ridiculously silly extent with pee-cee contemporary versions of solar and wind that rad-lefties have dreamed of since the Sixties.

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