The Energy Should Always Work Twice | Nature

From a (premium content) article by David Lindley on combined heat and power (CHP):

A common question is whether a distributed generating system with many small seasonally variable suppliers can ensure that peak demand will be met.

But, says [German energy consultant, Thomas] Ackerman, in a reversal of the standard cliché about free-market United States and socialist Europe, “we don’t talk about guaranteeing power from wind or other sources all the time – we just believe that the market will cope.” In Germany, he says, peak demand is about 74 gigawatts and the market can supply about 120 gigawatts, so that as demand waxes and wanes, more expensive producers enter and leave the market, and the price of electricity rises and falls. … “The US system looks like our system did maybe 25 years ago,” says [head of Denmark’s state-run Energinet.dk, Per] Lund.