Re:Netherlands rations electricity to ease power grid stresses
by vrighter on Tuesday July 22, 2025 @09:47AM
(#44646849)
Electricity cannot be delivered to spec anymore in Malta, where I live. If you put a voltmeter in an outlet it's quite normal to see 200 volts on there. It's also quite normal to see 260. That's beyond the 230V +- 10% that it's supposed to be. When anyone notices a problem, the utility company just switches them to one of the other two phases, which will inevitably destabilize too after a while. Meanwhile OVRs became mandatory, but because the supply is so out of spec, you'll have the utility guys setting the limits so wide that it effectively becomes equivalent to the piece of wire it replaced.
Also noteworthy is that the problems in one country are also problems in other countries, as these grids are all interconnected.
European countries need major investments in Electricity generation and their grids, Energy costs need to come down for European manufacturing to survive.
Personally I think that solar and wind energy are good technologies, but the specific ways that that transition has been implemented, at least here in Germany, was abysmal. Plagued by incompetence and mismanagement, this has had a severe impact on the economy and the ability of German energy intensive companies to survive.