The Stromautobahn (interesting name, but has nothing to do with automobiles) actually carries high-voltage electricity over hundreds of miles of aluminum and steel cables stretching from the North Sea to Germany’s industrial corridor in the south. The project is the linchpin of Germany’s Energiewende, or energy revolution, a mammoth, trillion-euro plan to wean the country off nuclear and fossil fuels by midcentury.
But, as usual, things that “sound good” do not always produce good results. This is a major failing of the progressive/statist/altruist agenda: It sounds good, ergo we must ram it down the throats of the great unwashed masses — we know the “right” thing to do and they… well, they don’t.
Well, the “great unwashed masses” are pissed off. Why is that, ask you? Because, answer I, the lights are going off. A million German households have had their power cut off because they cannot afford to pay ever rising bills.
An online der Spiegel article (how’s your German?), the German flagship news magazine, drives home the energy hardship that German consumers are suffering, due to the rising costs of electricity brought on by the country’s hasty rush into green energies.
As well, Germany’s power companies are bleeding to death financially. Now the private German citizens are joining them. They are unable to pay for their power. A shocking situation in one of the world’s most technically advanced nations.
Citing the federal German Network Agency, more than 350,000 households saw their power get switched off in 2014. Der Spiegel blames the gallop toward green energy sources, writing in its sub-title:
The social problems of the Energiewende are growing: Last year more households than ever saw their power get switched off. The reason is the rising price of electricity.
Spiegel also provides the figures for the previous years, and they too are horrific. In 2013 close 345,000 households lost their power, and in 2012 it was 320,000. Over the past three years it all totals to be a whopping 1.025 million households!
In a country of 82 million, the figures are explosive. And let us not forget who bears the brunt of the progressive/statist/altruist “good will” and brilliant central plan. It is the poor.
And thanks to HP for sending this to me.
Roy Filly
The Rugged Individualist 
What power source generates the electricity that travels through these aluminum and steel cables? Wind? Solar?
Stromautobahn will be the hub of Germany’s Energiewende, the country’s solar energy “revolution,” which has led to Germany becoming the biggest global installer of solar panel systems.
This is a really interesting article. Thank you for posting it. It reminds me of when Obama funded Solyndra and several others, expecting this solar miracle in his terms. The Chinese lost their shirts in lost panel sales, and for a while you could have bought panels for pennies. But, the solar panels are making a comeback in the Upper Central Valley. I cannot quote you a number, but MANY ranchers and hay growers are switching to nut growing, and I think they are are using solar power to draw their well water. Meaning, they can probably water their trees with less supervision. The downside would be what happened in Fresno thirty years ago, when the area sank ten feet, and the aquifers began to run dry. I believe City Planning had not counted on so many guest pickers taking root in the area. It is a high grape/raisin area.
BTW I tried to read the Spiegel article. I got half of it. Those long combo words using three to make one were my downfall. 🙂
The sad irony is that nuclear is the safest and “greenest” energy source we have. Solar takes a big investment in manufacturing and mining and is a dilute energy source. Wind power has similar downsides. But the inordinate fear the Left generated about radiation to kill nuclear is now forcing them to support what the great Petr Beckmann called energy from moonbeams. His book, The Health Hazards of not Going Nuclear is a classic.
I’ll try to read it.