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Originally Posted by Trex
A good example of people governing by their hearts rather than their heads. I suspect that a killing could be made by buying depressed nuke stock when the plants close down. In Germany, unlike California, demand-driven blackouts would probably come in mid-winter.
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No, in summer, or when too many different producers from too many different ends feed their electricity into the powergrid simultaneously.
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Out of curiosity, how extensive is the European electrical grid? North America has, I know, almost one unified system.
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Germans used to think their powergrid is amongst the best in the world, and one of the most redundant system in Euorpe - we used to watch with smiling faces when there was another blackout in the US reported. But that grid was designed for diffrent demand and feeding-in patterns than those that have appeared over the past 10 years, and are to appear in the near future. Germany faced it's first major blackout since aeons three years ago, during the extreme record winter we had back then, and snow broke poles and cut wires all over the North, due to old, worn-out material. 50km NE of where I live, in regions around Osnabrück, friends of mine needed to live without electricity and heating for several days. Just one year before, their were first alarming signals during the record summer we had, water turbines failed due to low water levels, and ventilators and air conditioning were running day and night. And maybe around one year ago, there was another blackout that worked it's waythrough much of the European powergrid, starting in Germany by technical problems during a major powercable beeing cut off in a wrong way becasue it had to be deactivated for some huge sealiner passing under it when leaving the dock.