We’ll Import Power From Anywhere

Even from Austria, if need be. And need there be.

“Missing power lines” are the cause behind the missing energy being missed in Southern Germany these days, we are told. That’s why Austria is being asked to help big buddy Germany out with a little “emergency energy,” pretty please.

But Austrians do this gladly, I think, because they know that if those missing German power lines weren’t missing than those missing power lines would be transporting tons of wonderful wind energy from the high German north to those energy-hungry factories in the south (and beyond to Austria?) where it’s missing at the moment, the energy. Like I said. Or so the theory.

The missing German nuclear power plants that were shut off after Fukushima (that’s in Japan) aren’t being missed by anybody here, though. Forget about them. It’s not the missing German nuclear power plants. It’s the missing power lines that are missing, I mean messing everything up around here.

Die Bundesnetzagentur hatte vor langfristigen Engpässen bei der Stromversorgung gewarnt. Die Versorgungssicherheit bleibe durch den Atomausstieg für eine Reihe von Jahren angespannt.

Our Wind Farms Would Work Just Great

It’s just that we don’t have the cables to bring the energy to shore (nor the money to lay them).

The network operator building those giant offshore wind farms planned to be a “supporting column” in Germany’s coming-one-day-but-not-in-any-way-near-there-yet energy turnaround, is no longer able to continue “work as usual.”

Like the Dutch government before them, having learned that offshore wind power is too expensive and that it cannot afford to subsidize the entire cost, the good folks at TenneT TSO GmbH are now about to throw in the towel, seemingly unable to find financing in the private sector that would allow them to continue their over cost and behind schedule project (it’s probably them damned durn banks doing this again, or that 1%).

The connection from Water World (Wind World?) back to Planet Earth has turned out to be more complicated and expensive than politically correct planners had originally thought, in other words, provided they had even thought about it at all.

But don’t worry, Green Shirt ideologues have already assured us that “If Tennent can’t swing the offshore development, somebody else can.” Money seems to be no object here, you see. When it’s not yours, I mean.

“Wenn Tennet den Offshore-Ausbau nicht schultern kann, müssen andere ran.”