After Berlin blackout - Kemfert calls for emergency power obligation for new buildings
The Berlin power outage affected around 45,000 households in winter. Claudia Kemfert, energy economist and head of the Energy, Transport, Environment Department at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), draws a clear conclusion from this: emergency power should become mandatory for new buildings. From their point of view, it is not so much the networks that fail as the preparation for an emergency. That is why she is calling for binding rules to cushion defaults in the future.
Kemfert says clearly: "What we need is prevention". Germany often only reacts when damage is visible, and that is exactly what gives crises too much space. In addition, the blackout shows that crisis routines are rarely practiced. This increases the risk that a local outage will spread quickly.
Ed Milivolt is likely to be paying attention to this wizard eco-argument - "it is not so much the networks that fail as the preparation for an emergency."
Sounds as if solar panels, a heat pump and a standby generator or a big battery could eventually become the minimum level of equipment for new buildings in Germany. Presumably further afield too - all new houses perhaps.
"What we need is prevention." Something like that, yes.
4 comments:
A big battery in the basement of a block of flats: what could possibly go wrong?
Solar panels are of little use in winter (Mad Ed should know that). Heat pumps likewise, and they need a lot of electricity. Generators - definitely - but keeping a supply of fresh fuel can be problematical. Batteries (and generators) need regular checking under load (something I'm currently doing). In Berlin's case moving those critical cables to a more secure location should be the first priority. But much of this danger to life is directly caused by slavish devotion to "Net Zero" policies, a road Germany has gone down with enthusiasm...
And yet centralised electrical power generation is cheaper per watt and more efficient, producing less pollution. So distributed 'standby' generation with a local fuel source is inherently anti-Net Zero because it produces more emissions.
And that's before you add in the capital and carbon costs of manufacturing standby generator sets, which will only be used rarely, if at all.
What I believe Claudia Kemfert avoided saying was that future bureaucrats should not have to put up with interrupted power supplies. Modern day lèse-majesté perhaps?
Anon - yes, a disaster lurking in the basement.
Dave - I reckon Mad Ed already suspects we may have to become used to blackouts but doesn't care, the Net Zero vision comes first, we come a distant fourth.
DJ - yes, Claudia Kemfert did avoid admitting that. Her social class will probably provide themselves with some form of standby generation or batteries and no doubt many have done that already.
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