Six percent of Germans make their own power
While only a relatively small number of Germans already generate their own electricity, an overwhelming majority would like to – and only around a quarter of Germans think power supply should be left up to utilities.
Over at the Energy Transition blog, I reported on the ongoing popular support for Germany's energy transition yesterday. The consumer advocacy organization behind that survey has also published some additional findings about how many Germans are already taking part in the Energiewende as investors.
The poll found that only one percent of those surveyed generate all of their electricity themselves, though six percent produce some electricity on their own. 41 percent said they would like to be more independent in their power supply but cannot afford the investments. Another 15 percent said they were interested and would like to learn more.
Only 28 percent of those surveyed said that "power generation is something that should be left up to our providers." The remaining 10 percent of those surveyed had no opinion.
It would be interesting to compare these findings with surveys from other countries, but I do not know of any. If you have any information, please drop me a comment below. (Craig Morris)
My learning curve on this started in the 1990's-I already had time,intrest and background that was exellent for it.So despite-'Not a wrack left behind'(Federal judicial and police cooruption,aiding and abetting fraud)-some vital lessons and optimizations were learned.One of the main ones,renewables lend themselves exellently to incremental instalation.Vital loads first,storage and production for these.As they are met and the payback of minimial starts producing saving-those items you want(but could deffer),can be added as you install more power and storage capacity-without the loan and intrest leg traps.You also learn quicker and at lower cost by small essential load starts.As well you can increase your resilency as your capacity increases.Start with solar say,later add wind.The multiple sourcing reduces strain on battery draw.If you have a car anyway,forget the backup gen-use a jumper cabe to charge the batteries,when they below 50% cap.The idling car is as efficent as the gen set.So that capitial expence saved'pays' for more and better batteries.These total too very high leverage,by those who have the sequencing art down too a science.Works on large projects too.