Closing the supply gap with wind energy?
Swissgrid warns of a possible electricity supply gap this winter. The industry association Swiss Eole wants to close this gap with wind energy in future years.
Swissgrid assesses the current grid situation and the energy supply for winter 2015/16 as tight. Energy reserves are tight due to a chain of special circumstances. Due to the outage of the Beznau 1 and 2 nuclear power plants, there is a large shortage of base load energy in the 220 kV grid. This must be replaced mainly from Swiss storage lakes, as imports can only be used to a limited extent to compensate.
The wind industry association Suisse Eole wants to close this gap with wind energy in the future. This is because two-thirds of the production of wind turbines occurs between October and March - in other words, when hydro and solar plants produce the least but energy consumption is at its highest.
Suisse Eole is therefore calling for the two decommissioned nuclear power plants to be replaced by wind energy in the future instead of drawing CO2-intensive electricity from the European power grid. This would require 120 wind farms with 5 to 10 turbines each.
At the same time, however, according to the association, greater importance is to be attached to energy efficiency in the future - for example, replacing electric heating with solar and wood heating systems and heat pumps.
