The German word “Dunkel” means dark. “Flaute” means calm. Together, “Dunkelflaute” or “dark calm” is being used to describe the failure of wind turbines in Germany. The British use the term “wind lull”.
During the past ten years, Germany has been committed to “Energiewende” or Energy Transition. This is a policy to stop using fossil fuels or nuclear energy to produce electricity, and to use wind turbines and solar panels instead.
Today, Germany gets more than half of its electricity from wind and sun. It did that by building 28,677 ocean wind turbines. It also agreed to buy electricity produced by wind turbines in Denmark and other countries. At the same time, Germany down all of its nuclear power plants, and many of its coal, oil, and natural gas generators.
In short, Germany did exactly what Governor Murphy and most Democrats are now forcing us to do in New Jersey. President Biden and Democrats in Washington are paying for this with roughly a trillion dollars of borrowed money for their “Green New Deal” deceptively named the “Inflation Reduction Act”.
During the past two months, there was not enough wind to power the thousands of wind turbines in England, Denmark, Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Germany was forced to buy massive amounts of electricity from other countries to avoid a complete collapse of its grid. This was very expensive. Germany also had to pay high prices for natural gas to restart old, shut down gas generators. This caused Germans to pay as much as 93 cents per kilowatt hour.
In New Jersey, Atlantic City Electric charges an average of 23 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. This is 4 cents per kwh or 20% higher than the average of 19 cents in New Jersey. This is 9 cents per kwh or 64% higher than the cost of electricity in Florida.
The media are using “Dunkelflaute” to describe the wind disaster in Germany for the same reason they use terms like “polar vortex” to describe cold weather in America. They want to promote the narrative that wind energy is reliable, and that the earth is getting warmer. When weather events go against the narrative, the media use vocabulary that makes those weather events appear exceptional and abnormal.
However, wind lulls are very common, predictable and normal. Wind is a very weak and unreliable source of energy. It often stops for long periods of times. That is why steam ships drove sailing ships out of business so quickly in the 1860s. At that time, American “clipper ships” were far faster, cheaper, and more efficient than steam ships. However, they were not reliable because they could get “becalmed” for lack of wind at any time. Sailors used the word “doldrums” to describe when there was not enough wind to move their ships. This was dangerous as well as costly. Sailing ships sometimes ran out of food and water when they were becalmed for long periods of time.
The poem Calm Seas and Prosperous Voyage by Johann Goethe describes the terror of sailors on ships that could not move when there was not enough wind — and their joy when the wind returned. That poem was later set to music in popular works by both Felix Mendelssohn and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Right now, New Jersey gets roughly 8% of its electricity from wind and sun. Roughly 42% comes from the two nuclear generators in Salem. Most of the other 50% comes from natural gas. Because we get so little electricity from wind, New Jersey can quickly get electricity from other sources when the wind stops blowing here. Anyone who drives by the five wind turbines in Atlantic City knows that those blades are stopped many times for lack of wind.
Electricity cost more in New Jersey than in most of America because of the 8% we get from wind and sun is so wasteful and expensive. When there are strong winds, wind turbines often produced more electricity than is needed. On those days, the extra electricity is “dumped” and wasted. There are no batteries big enough to store it. When there is little wind, gas generators must be powered up at great expenses. We in New Jersey already a lot more s higher rates than in most of America because of the 8% we get from wind turbines and solar panels. Our rates would be much higher if we did not have the two nuclear generators at Salem.
About five years ago, the nuclear power plant at Oyster Creek in Lacey Township was shut down. We also blocked an 18-mile pipeline needed to convert the oil power plant at Beesley’s Point by Parkway Milepost 29 to natural gas. They we completely demolished the plant and its cooling tower. If New Jersey builds hundreds of unreliable wind turbines in the ocean and fails to replace the nuclear and natural gas power plants we just destroyed, we will soon be just like Germany during its Dunkelflaute.
The German word Dunkelflaute is also useful for another reason. Google and other search engines manipulate their searches to promote their “woke” political agendas. If you use words like “wind energy”, “wind turbine” or “ocean wind” in online searches, you will find few of the many articles from reliable sources that are critical of wind turbines.
However, if you search “Dunkelflaute“, you will find almost are articles posted on that subject. That is because “woke” leftists did not yet have a chance to manipulate searches using that word!
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