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Ok a guy on my fb page has said that working on the German power grid has caused him to learn things that make him feel both frightened and intrigued, then pulls a "I can't talk about it. " BS.

So, if anyone here knows about the German power grid and why it can make someone who knows about it feel frightened, please share before this thread catches another lock for... whatever. I know the german power grid is smart and more efficient, I know Germany uses multiple power sources and is going green. The smart grid routes power far more efficiently than the dumb american grid, so I get why it should intrigue people . Where's the scary part?

Without knowing anything about the German power grid specifically, I don't think I've ever seen someone bring something up in a sensational manner and then suddenly value OPSEC when asked about the details when they weren't a bit full of it. On the other hand, the energy industry and the departments of government that deal with energy are often tied into the military and intelligence communities for obvious reasons, so I'm sure there's something spooky going on somewhere.

I honestly cant think of anything that could make the Germans energy grid any scarier than any other grid.

maybe it has ANGRIER current?

All power grids are probably a lot more vulnerable than anybody is willing to admit.

The USA power grid has its own host of problems.

It is, apparently, an aging, vulnerable infrastructure that is also an easy target for hackers.

Sounds like...most of the world probably has the same problems?

Maybe he saw a Voltergeist.

It's because the loathsome, tenebrous, sanity-blasting horror named Ampr'farad'shokohm is imprisoned in the grid, waiting for the stars to be right.

Your FB friend is undoubtedly in an asylum right now, gibbering in a language that was already long dead when the Pharaohs ruled Egypt...

 gorgon wrote:
It's because the loathsome, tenebrous, sanity-blasting horror named Ampr'farad'shokohm is imprisoned in the grid, waiting for the stars to be right.

Your FB friend is undoubtedly in an asylum right now, gibbering in a language that was already long dead when the Pharaohs ruled Egypt...

Drugs are bad, Gorgon

First of all, German power generation isn't really green - seven out of ten biggest coal based power plants in EU are German. Germany is also the biggest consumer of brown coal in the world and the second largest consumer of black coal.

But what your friend probably was referring to is not power generation, but power transmission - Germany is so under invested in that regard, that due to combined nature of EU power grid, power surges from unstable and overinvested wind and solar generation cause regular damages in Polish, Czech and Austrian grids. The historical high of abusing western Polish high voltage lines was when 50% of energy from northern wind farms was transferred to southern Germany through Polish western power lines. We had to invest significant amount of money into border transfer stations to block those surges. It was a hot topic here in 2015 and it continues to be a hot topic due to "green propaganda centric" nature of european power talks, where serious engineering problems and "unifiied EU energy politics" (still non-existent) are left unchecked year after year because everybody focuses nearly solely on CO2 trading.

nou wrote:
First of all, German power generation isn't really green - seven out of ten biggest coal based power plants in EU are German. Germany is also the biggest consumer of brown coal in the world and the second largest consumer of black coal.

But what your friend probably was referring to is not power generation, but power transmission - Germany is so under invested in that regard, that due to combined nature of EU power grid, power surges from unstable and overinvested wind and solar generation cause regular damages in Polish, Czech and Austrian grids. The historical high of abusing western Polish high voltage lines was when 50% of energy from northern wind farms was transferred to southern Germany through Polish western power lines. We had to invest significant amount of money into border transfer stations to block those surges. It was a hot topic here in 2015 and it continues to be a hot topic due to "green propaganda centric" nature of european power talks, where serious engineering problems and "unifiied EU energy politics" (still non-existent) are left unchecked year after year because everybody focuses nearly solely on CO2 trading.

Well, that's surprising.

For years the German energy program has been cited as a shining example of green power, sustainability, alternative energy sources, etc. Received ntly it was announced that Germany on one day bad produced more power from green sources than non green sources.

I've been accepting these claims because A. I want to believe them. B. The technology exists to do it and C. It was cited as an example of how america's fossile fuel corporate powers keep america from advancing in alternative energy.

Now tbat someone from the general area tells me differently I'll have to look into it more skeptically. Thanks for your reply, I'll have to look into it.


Looked into it, some alternative views were available but i'm not sure if they were valid or fossil fuel industry funded propaganda. Still need to look into it more .

nou wrote:
First of all, German power generation isn't really green - seven out of ten biggest coal based power plants in EU are German. Germany is also the biggest consumer of brown coal in the world and the second largest consumer of black coal.

But what your friend probably was referring to is not power generation, but power transmission - Germany is so under invested in that regard, that due to combined nature of EU power grid, power surges from unstable and overinvested wind and solar generation cause regular damages in Polish, Czech and Austrian grids. The historical high of abusing western Polish high voltage lines was when 50% of energy from northern wind farms was transferred to southern Germany through Polish western power lines. We had to invest significant amount of money into border transfer stations to block those surges. It was a hot topic here in 2015 and it continues to be a hot topic due to "green propaganda centric" nature of european power talks, where serious engineering problems and "unifiied EU energy politics" (still non-existent) are left unchecked year after year because everybody focuses nearly solely on CO2 trading.

Actually your government is also heavily investing in coal. Mostly for political reasons. As for Germany they went out of nuclear power to replace it with coal because why not.
Then again we are no better, our nuclear plants are so old that they could be considered nuclear weapons.....

Not Online!!! wrote:

nou wrote:
First of all, German power generation isn't really green - seven out of ten biggest coal based power plants in EU are German. Germany is also the biggest consumer of brown coal in the world and the second largest consumer of black coal.

But what your friend probably was referring to is not power generation, but power transmission - Germany is so under invested in that regard, that due to combined nature of EU power grid, power surges from unstable and overinvested wind and solar generation cause regular damages in Polish, Czech and Austrian grids. The historical high of abusing western Polish high voltage lines was when 50% of energy from northern wind farms was transferred to southern Germany through Polish western power lines. We had to invest significant amount of money into border transfer stations to block those surges. It was a hot topic here in 2015 and it continues to be a hot topic due to "green propaganda centric" nature of european power talks, where serious engineering problems and "unifiied EU energy politics" (still non-existent) are left unchecked year after year because everybody focuses nearly solely on CO2 trading.

Actually your government is also heavily investing in coal. Mostly for political reasons. As for Germany they went out of nuclear power to replace it with coal because why not.
Then again we are no better, our nuclear plants are so old that they could be considered nuclear weapons.....

Which is why everybody should start building up-to-date Reactors. They're really the only practical form of mass green energy generation that can be done anywhere. All the other options are too limited or require special geographic conditions. Wind requires an area with steady wind, but is still quite unpredictable. Hydroelectric requires a large river with certain conditions that is also in proximity to where the electricity is needed, and most of these spots are already occupied by dams. Solar is also somewhat intermittent because of the weather, needs a lot of building space and proper facings, and doesn't do anything at night. Tidal generation obviously requires you to be next to the coast.

Nuclear power plants just require water, the form it flows in or where it comes from doesn't matter. Large cities are already going to have large water supplies so thats not a concern. Thorium reactors are quite safe, generate massive amounts of energy even relative to Uranium reactors, and its a massively abundant fuel.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

nou wrote:
First of all, German power generation isn't really green - seven out of ten biggest coal based power plants in EU are German. Germany is also the biggest consumer of brown coal in the world and the second largest consumer of black coal.

But what your friend probably was referring to is not power generation, but power transmission - Germany is so under invested in that regard, that due to combined nature of EU power grid, power surges from unstable and overinvested wind and solar generation cause regular damages in Polish, Czech and Austrian grids. The historical high of abusing western Polish high voltage lines was when 50% of energy from northern wind farms was transferred to southern Germany through Polish western power lines. We had to invest significant amount of money into border transfer stations to block those surges. It was a hot topic here in 2015 and it continues to be a hot topic due to "green propaganda centric" nature of european power talks, where serious engineering problems and "unifiied EU energy politics" (still non-existent) are left unchecked year after year because everybody focuses nearly solely on CO2 trading.

Actually your government is also heavily investing in coal. Mostly for political reasons. As for Germany they went out of nuclear power to replace it with coal because why not.
Then again we are no better, our nuclear plants are so old that they could be considered nuclear weapons.....

Which is why everybody should start building up-to-date Reactors. They're really the only practical form of mass green energy generation that can be done anywhere. All the other options are too limited or require special geographic conditions. Wind requires an area with steady wind, but is still quite unpredictable. Hydroelectric requires a large river with certain conditions that is also in proximity to where the electricity is needed, and most of these spots are already occupied by dams. Solar is also somewhat intermittent because of the weather, needs a lot of building space and proper facings, and doesn't do anything at night. Tidal generation obviously requires you to be next to the coast.

Nuclear power plants just require water, the form it flows in or where it comes from doesn't matter. Large cities are already going to have large water supplies so thats not a concern. Thorium reactors are quite safe, generate massive amounts of energy even relative to Uranium reactors, and its a massively abundant fuel.

"green energy" have you forgotten the endproduct?
That is the main issue and thanks to our locations we could cover our energy bill via Hydroelectricity. Problem so far is that we can't get rid of our nuclear waste and unlike you we actually have neither the place nor the lax laws to get rid off it.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Maybe he saw a Voltergeist.

I approve of this message.

He's found out there are Troll cages and barriers up in the depths of Germany! Vast swathes of high voltage cables stretching over miles and miles of countryside for no apparent reason; cordoning off huge areas of the landscape. Preventing vast walking titanic trolls from straying into human habitation!

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

nou wrote:
First of all, German power generation isn't really green - seven out of ten biggest coal based power plants in EU are German. Germany is also the biggest consumer of brown coal in the world and the second largest consumer of black coal.

But what your friend probably was referring to is not power generation, but power transmission - Germany is so under invested in that regard, that due to combined nature of EU power grid, power surges from unstable and overinvested wind and solar generation cause regular damages in Polish, Czech and Austrian grids. The historical high of abusing western Polish high voltage lines was when 50% of energy from northern wind farms was transferred to southern Germany through Polish western power lines. We had to invest significant amount of money into border transfer stations to block those surges. It was a hot topic here in 2015 and it continues to be a hot topic due to "green propaganda centric" nature of european power talks, where serious engineering problems and "unifiied EU energy politics" (still non-existent) are left unchecked year after year because everybody focuses nearly solely on CO2 trading.

Well, that's surprising.

For years the German energy program has been cited as a shining example of green power, sustainability, alternative energy sources, etc. Received ntly it was announced that Germany on one day bad produced more power from green sources than non green sources.

I've been accepting these claims because A. I want to believe them. B. The technology exists to do it and C. It was cited as an example of how america's fossile fuel corporate powers keep america from advancing in alternative energy.

Now tbat someone from the general area tells me differently I'll have to look into it more skeptically. Thanks for your reply, I'll have to look into it.


Looked into it, some alternative views were available but i'm not sure if they were valid or fossil fuel industry funded propaganda. Still need to look into it more .

You can simply look at hard data of CO2 per capita to see that "green germany" is a myth (latest data is from 2014, Germany 8.89 tonnes, Poland 7.52 tonnes...). What is used to turn this around in media narrative is comparing CO2 emission in countries to their gross product - this way Germany indeed leads the way, but such metrics is nonsensical from historical standpoint and post soviet EU members become automatic scape goats.

@ Not Online!!!: Of course I know we invest heavily in coal. What is not true at all is that we do this for political reasons - we don't really have a viable alternative. We have quite a lot of wind power, which is totally inefficient here and by nature of wind power generation it is unstable. It is so inefficient, that we now have a program of removing existing inland turbines and replace them with off shore turbines, but Baltic is not North Sea nor Atlantic coast, there is no way to generate large enough percentage of our demand this way and Germany shows that overinvesting in those in central europe leads to availability and transmission problems. We don't have geotermal energy available for more than SPA resorts and we don't have suitable rivers for hydro energy and it is too cloudy here to even think about large scale solar production. This leaves biomass, gas, coal and nuclear. Biomass usage is increasing but limited to small local power plants, gas is a strategic topic here, because we are still heavily dependent on Russia gas and intensely try to change that for strategic safety reasons, which leaves coal and nuclear. And what is political from those two is nuclear: we do have an over funded "first polish nuclear power plant" committee operating for the last six years which have not yet establish a suitable localization for this plant (not even started on actually establishing supplier of technology nor supplier of fuel, as we will be dependent on outside know how). And because there is wide ban on discussing coal production it is not widely known, that we have actually increased efficiency of coal energy production and reduced CO2 emmision per megawatt in our largest power plants three times as much as Germany did (6% vs 2%) in the last decade, efficiently reducing overall CO2 emission more than Germany did (7% vs 5%).

And I'm really unsurprised that this thread also focuses solely on power production, which really isn't the crux behind OPs story... This is a power narrative prevalent in the world for two or three decades now, despite the fact, that power grids worldwide are usually old enough to not be prepared to efficiently deal with summer peaks of demand and the risk of large blackouts or power shortages is steadily increasing.

@ Not Online!!!: Of course I know we invest heavily in coal. What is not true at all is that we do this for political reasons - we don't really have a viable alternative. We have quite a lot of wind power, which is totally inefficient here and by nature of wind power generation it is unstable. It is so inefficient, that we now have a program of removing existing inland turbines and replace them with off shore turbines, but Baltic is not North Sea nor Atlantic coast, there is no way to generate large enough percentage of our demand this way and Germany shows that overinvesting in those in central europe leads to availability and transmission problems. We don't have geotermal energy available for more than SPA resorts and we don't have suitable rivers for hydro energy and it is too cloudy here to even think about large scale solar production. This leaves biomass, gas, coal and nuclear. Biomass usage is increasing but limited to small local power plants, gas is a strategic topic here, because we are still heavily dependent on Russia gas and intensely try to change that for strategic safety reasons, which leaves coal and nuclear. And what is political from those two is nuclear: we do have an over funded "first polish nuclear power plant" committee operating for the last six years which have not yet establish a suitable localization for this plant (not even started on actually establishing supplier of technology nor supplier of fuel, as we will be dependent on outside know how). And because there is wide ban on discussing coal production it is not widely known, that we have actually increased efficiency of coal energy production and reduced CO2 emmision per megawatt in our largest power plants three times as much as Germany did (6% vs 2%) in the last decade, efficiently reducing overall CO2 emission more than Germany did (7% vs 5%).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thebakersinstitute/2018/03/28/explaining-polands-coal-paradox/

Point in case, your government doesn't want people on the street and is anyways showing the middlefinger torwards the EU, which both is somewhat understandble, however both of it is political.

 Overread wrote:
He's found out there are Troll cages and barriers up in the depths of Germany! Vast swathes of high voltage cables stretching over miles and miles of countryside for no apparent reason; cordoning off huge areas of the landscape. Preventing vast walking titanic trolls from straying into human habitation!

Oh God, I thought was the only one who'd seen that.

Not Online!!! wrote:

@ Not Online!!!: Of course I know we invest heavily in coal. What is not true at all is that we do this for political reasons - we don't really have a viable alternative. We have quite a lot of wind power, which is totally inefficient here and by nature of wind power generation it is unstable. It is so inefficient, that we now have a program of removing existing inland turbines and replace them with off shore turbines, but Baltic is not North Sea nor Atlantic coast, there is no way to generate large enough percentage of our demand this way and Germany shows that overinvesting in those in central europe leads to availability and transmission problems. We don't have geotermal energy available for more than SPA resorts and we don't have suitable rivers for hydro energy and it is too cloudy here to even think about large scale solar production. This leaves biomass, gas, coal and nuclear. Biomass usage is increasing but limited to small local power plants, gas is a strategic topic here, because we are still heavily dependent on Russia gas and intensely try to change that for strategic safety reasons, which leaves coal and nuclear. And what is political from those two is nuclear: we do have an over funded "first polish nuclear power plant" committee operating for the last six years which have not yet establish a suitable localization for this plant (not even started on actually establishing supplier of technology nor supplier of fuel, as we will be dependent on outside know how). And because there is wide ban on discussing coal production it is not widely known, that we have actually increased efficiency of coal energy production and reduced CO2 emmision per megawatt in our largest power plants three times as much as Germany did (6% vs 2%) in the last decade, efficiently reducing overall CO2 emission more than Germany did (7% vs 5%).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thebakersinstitute/2018/03/28/explaining-polands-coal-paradox/

Point in case, your government doesn't want people on the street and is anyways showing the middlefinger torwards the EU, which both is somewhat understandble, however both of it is political.

That article is a voice of two people and is a mix of truths (the part about strategic independence from Russian gas being major concern and the political nature of atomic committee as I have already wrote earlier) and biased perspective - we import main bulk of coal used for power production and the whole part about miners is really misdirected. We do keep inefficient coal mines because of associated social problems of structural unemployment, but it does not translate onto power plant choices. No offense, but as a person living here and paying energy bills here, and being well informed in our politics (I have perpetuall access and insight into all our media and other public sources due to nature of my wife's line of work, funnily enough specifically in energy production and distribution sector as she does analyze publications about those subjects frequently for all major energy companies) I think I have a much better insight into actual reasons behind and problems of our energetic sector.

And about showing middle finger towards EU for political reasons - we do have a lot of well deserved grudges indeed and many occasions to do show the finger, but energetic security isn't one of them. It is most certainly pictured as such in the west media, but it is not how things trully are. And no, I'm not a supporter of current polish government.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

nou wrote:
First of all, German power generation isn't really green - seven out of ten biggest coal based power plants in EU are German. Germany is also the biggest consumer of brown coal in the world and the second largest consumer of black coal.

But what your friend probably was referring to is not power generation, but power transmission - Germany is so under invested in that regard, that due to combined nature of EU power grid, power surges from unstable and overinvested wind and solar generation cause regular damages in Polish, Czech and Austrian grids. The historical high of abusing western Polish high voltage lines was when 50% of energy from northern wind farms was transferred to southern Germany through Polish western power lines. We had to invest significant amount of money into border transfer stations to block those surges. It was a hot topic here in 2015 and it continues to be a hot topic due to "green propaganda centric" nature of european power talks, where serious engineering problems and "unifiied EU energy politics" (still non-existent) are left unchecked year after year because everybody focuses nearly solely on CO2 trading.

Well, that's surprising.

For years the German energy program has been cited as a shining example of green power, sustainability, alternative energy sources, etc. Received ntly it was announced that Germany on one day bad produced more power from green sources than non green sources.

I've been accepting these claims because A. I want to believe them. B. The technology exists to do it and C. It was cited as an example of how america's fossile fuel corporate powers keep america from advancing in alternative energy.

Now tbat someone from the general area tells me differently I'll have to look into it more skeptically. Thanks for your reply, I'll have to look into it.


Looked into it, some alternative views were available but i'm not sure if they were valid or fossil fuel industry funded propaganda. Still need to look into it more .

You really didn't know that ? Their "green energy" kills tens of thousands of people each year because of its danger for breathing. Everyone should do like the French and build nuclear plants; cheap, safe and truly green energy. Only few wastes. But no, a little communication, a little marketing and everyone think coal is green...

Since Germany decided a smart political move would be to disown nuclear power they’ve become even more reliant on gas, they’re one of the worlds biggest importers and in particular Russian gas accounts for about a third of their demand. Apparently they’re the biggest buyer of Russian gas in the world.

Given how often the Russian threaten to pull the plug on gas supplies into their European neighbours it’s no wonder Germany drag their feet somewhat when we’re trying to take a hard line against their aggressions.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Since Germany decided a smart political move would be to disown nuclear power they’ve become even more reliant on gas, they’re one of the worlds biggest importers and in particular Russian gas accounts for about a third of their demand. Apparently they’re the biggest buyer of Russian gas in the world.

Given how often the Russian threaten to pull the plug on gas supplies into their European neighbours it’s no wonder Germany drag their feet somewhat when we’re trying to take a hard line against their aggressions.

This is exactly why Poland invested large sums into LPG import via sea transport and why there is North Stream 2 debacle going on.

 gorgon wrote:
It's because the loathsome, tenebrous, sanity-blasting horror named Ampr'farad'shokohm is imprisoned in the grid, waiting for the stars to be right.

Your FB friend is undoubtedly in an asylum right now, gibbering in a language that was already long dead when the Pharaohs ruled Egypt...

Resistance is futile ...

So, not sure what this guy was on about but, during a research project during the course of my MBA program, the German power grid was one area that I came upon.

So, perhaps what follows may (or may not) spur additional discussion, but I readily admit this knowledge is limited to the few academic studies I read during this project.

As Germany is transitioning to more renewables and green alternatives, a few in academia have noticed a few "fatal flaws" in the overall structure and delivery of power to consumers. Big one currently is that they are a heavily centralized power grid. Access and control of power generation and distribution is centered on a few key areas.There are plans apparently already in place, with some test study sites in Bavaria to see how well a heavily decentralized grid works.

So, currently, someone wanting to disrupt say, wind farm production (ie, delivery to a home on the grid) would only need to go to or compromise a single entry point and could knock out hundreds of turbines. . . Under a decentralized system, they'd be able to get 5-15 from a single entry point on the network.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Overread wrote:
He's found out there are Troll cages and barriers up in the depths of Germany! Vast swathes of high voltage cables stretching over miles and miles of countryside for no apparent reason; cordoning off huge areas of the landscape. Preventing vast walking titanic trolls from straying into human habitation!

Oh God, I thought was the only one who'd seen that.

You're not the only one, I instantly knew what movie he was going on about. I thought it was a lot of fun too!


On topic, I know where I live in Michigan our power grid is so old it's crazy. I worked a sumber locating under ground utilities for the local power company and I was blown away at the gak pile I learned about how they keep it all going. Kind of reminds me of having my furnace running with all my windows open. My furnace will only keep pumping heat for so long.