German power

July 25, 2015 deserves a special place in the history of green energy. The day Germany achieved a record 74 per cent of its power generation from renewable energy sources.

As India is edging towards an energy transition, it can learn lessons from world leaders in renewable energy, like Germany. According to the International Energy Agency, Germany now produces 38,250 mw of solar power, the highest in the world. It is leading the charge through a transformation it calls the ‘Energiewende’ or the energy revolution.

This involves 30 per cent average generation from renewables and the target for 2020 is 35 per cent, and over 50 per cent by 2030. This revolution has been achieved by very modest changes to the existing power system. Germany has already had a grid so strong that power outages never occur. Intelligent technical improvements to the low-level distribution system have also enabled the German grid to have more capacity than the given current demand.

But the real contribution to this energy revolution has come from the common man. Individual citizens have made more than half the investments in the country’s renewables through solar residential roof top units. Since Germany started connecting renewables in the 1990s, the underlying strength has always been the design of the balancing ancillary power markets, which are designed to provide minute by minute balancing of the difference between supply and demand.

Are you a Green citizen? This is a question thrown around commonly in Germany. In a recent poll the Energiewende still had 90 per cent approval. Even though electricity rates rose in the EU, the annual per-capita carbon emissions were cut down by 1.2 tonnes. And majority of the German population, that is the right measure of success when it comes to Green Energy and not through the subsidies or profit margins.

Although the subsidy rates in Germany have been falling for the residential solar feed-in, energy utilities are legally obliged to pay producers of solar electricity a fixed remuneration for the solar power fed into the grid. You can earn as much as €10-13 per kWh for a small roof-top solar unit.

Due to the integration of renewables at residential level, the power flow is bidirectional; and there is a good possibility of the generation at the local residential node increasing more than the power demand at the same node. This leads to immense complexity in the grid, and with increased complexity you have higher planning and infrastructure costs. To overcome these issues, utilities have turned to advanced demand response, storage, load peak shaving and forecasting techniques. The focus in Germany is on long-term planning and modelling of networks.

This has given birth to new age smart grid companies that help utilities optimally manage their grids, while saving on infrastructure costs. And when the utilities start becoming more profitable they can care for their customers in a better way and provide higher subsidies for the people who want to contribute energy to the grid.

In a country where thousands still live without electricity, transforming the Indian grid to a European one might seem a distant dream. And in India the progress in solar has been more on the ‘Utility Solar’ (say, a solar park) rather than on residential level. So, not only policy makers but also the citizens need to strive to bring an energy revolution to India.

The writer is head of operations for Asia at Venios GmbH

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