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A German plan to charge more for using electricity on cloudy days has been dismissed as “crazy” by businesses.
The country is pushing the use of solar power and other forms of renewable energy, and as part of that has said people should pay more for electricity usage on days with no sun – a concept companies say will harm their competitiveness.
The economy ministry outlined its energy plans earlier this month in a project called “electricity market of the future”.
A key area involves varying electricity charges to discourage usage in dull weather.
The proposal, which has yet to be agreed upon by Olaf Scholz’s cabinet, would see transmission charges hiked at times when wind parks and solar panels are producing too little electricity.
Unlike most of its European neighbours, Germany has chosen to close down all its nuclear power plants and instead build a low-carbon energy system based around renewables.
Europe’s major economy currently produces more than half of its electricity from renewable sources and plans to raise this level to 80 per cent by the end of the decade.
Berlin insists that wind and solar are the future of cheap, reliable energy.
But critics worry that the system will be unstable and has massive hidden costs, such as the need for thousands of miles of new power lines and a back-up system on sunless days.
‘Devastating’ level of unpredictability
Germans pay some of the highest electricity bills in Europe, with transmission charges accounting for about a third of that price.
In its policy proposal, the economy ministry acknowledged that forcing demand to match supply was “essential” to ensuring that the new system works.
However, the plan has been ripped to shreds by industry representatives, who say that it would introduce a “devastating” level of unpredictability into their lives.
The plans amount to “totally crazy weather roulette”, Christoph Ahlhaus, the head of the lobby group for small and medium sized businesses BVMW, told the Bild newspaper.
He added that “machinery needs reliable electricity every hour of the day, every day of the year”.
Matching production to the weather “is either technically impossible or would lead to such low efficiency that we would be hopelessly outmatched by European competitors”, the Economic Council, a lobby group for more than 10,000 businesses, warned.
The plan is “an admission that a volatile system based on solar and wind can’t always match supply to demand”, the council claimed in a letter to the economy ministry reported on by Die Welt newspaper.
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The post German businesses dismiss ‘crazy’ plan to charge more for electricity on cloudy days appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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