Germany Produces Record-Breaking 5.1 Terawatt Hours of Solar Energy In One Month 687
oritonic1 writes "Germany is rapidly developing a tradition of shattering its own renewable energy goals and leaving the rest of the world in the dust. This past July was no exception, as the nation produced 5.1 TWh of solar power (PDF), beating not only its own solar production record, but also eclipsing the record 5TWh of wind power produced by German turbines in January. Renewables are doing so well, in fact, that one of Germany's biggest utilities is threatening to migrate to Turkey."
But...but... (Score:5, Informative)
But Germany gets so much more sun than the US! We can't compete with that?!
(I wish I were kidding...) [americablog.com]
Re:NO NO NO (Score:4, Informative)
i am paying 24,26 €cents per kwh
i prefer the prieces of nuclear power.
Percentages, please (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps I should RTFA, but looking at the Wikipedia page on Energy_in_Germany, that looks to be about 10% of monthly electricity consumption, (generously, given that it's summer), and less than 2% of total energy consumption.
Re:NO NO NO (Score:5, Informative)
Well to quote the wikipedia page quoting a financial times article:
Due to the costs of this "Energiewende" Germany now has Europes highest energy costs. Costs have risen over the last 5 years even for industrial consumers who are exempted from the costs of the renewable energy subsidy that consumers pay. In 2013, energy was 4 times cheaper in the United States than in Europe, and 6 times cheaper than in Germany.
It comes at a price and the sweet spots to produce renewables have already been picked, to keep it up they must use less and less ideal areas and means. Nice to see them lead but it's not really an act the whole world can follow.
Re:NO NO NO (Score:4, Informative)
33% petroleum
12% hard coal
12% lignite
22% Natural gas, petroleum gas
08% nuclear Energy
02% Water and wind power
10% other renewables
-1% Foreign trade balance power
02% Other
Re:NO NO NO (Score:3, Informative)
Gotta love statistics. "Europe" includes a large number of countries with widely varying prices. If you compare Germany to similar north western European countries it isn't particularly expensive. Other countries happen to have some nice natural resources, or they subsidise the cost through general taxation (especially for nuclear power).
The US is a terrible polluter and has lots of fraked natural gas that have driven down prices, so isn't a very useful comparison.
Months vs years... (Score:5, Informative)
"In 2006 the plant produced 38.14 TWh". In a full year. The 5.1 TWh of solar power was for a single month.
Renewables still have a long way to go, but it's 12 times better than you think. :)
Re:NO NO NO (Score:2, Informative)
Problem isn't renewable energy, problem is the horribly bad EEG law Rot/Grün was drafting: Industries got excluded from paying renewable energy compensation, still a fixed price must be paid for renewable energy. So everytime the energy price drops at the European Energy Exchange in Leipzig the consumer's energy price rises. Yet another example how socialism fails. See http://www.lvz-online.de/leipzig/wirtschaft/strompreise-an-der-leipziger-boerse-sinken--buerger-zahlen-mehr-fuer-energie/r-wirtschaft-a-173930.html (German) for a good explanation of that fatal mechanism.
Re:Tell me when the subsidie run out (Score:4, Informative)
Are you joking? Nuclear gets the biggest subsidies of all:
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-power-subsidies-report.html [ucsusa.org]
The insurance is cappedat at ridiculously low value, meaning if there is an accident the taxpayer will have to pay.
Without the insurance cap nuclear power would not exist.
Re:NO NO NO (Score:2, Informative)
The US is a terrible polluter and has lots of fraked natural gas that have driven down prices, so isn't a very useful comparison.
Unless electricity costs matter to you more than those other concerns (the "terrible polluter" is about as polluting as the EU and fracking just doesn't seem that bad compared to normal oil drilling) at the minor levels they occur at.
Re:And it's only getting better (Score:4, Informative)
It'll be a while, it currently take more energy to make a solar panel than it can generate in it's lifespan and costs more than coal or nuclear without the subsidies.
No longer true since 2012 [acs.org]
Re:And it's only getting better (Score:5, Informative)
A 200 W solar panel costs about $400 today. If that cost were entirely from the energy required to produce it, that would mean it requires 4000 kWh to produce ($400 / $0.1/khW). 200 W * 10 hours a day = 2 kWh per day. In a year, it'll produce perhaps 600 kWh (assuming 300 days of sun). Most panels are guaranteed for 20 years, so that's roughly 12000 kWh over the lifetime of the panel. 12000 kWh > 4000 kWh, no?
Solar power reduces electricity price .. (Score:4, Informative)
Page 71 (Score:2, Informative)
Take a look at page 71 of the report. Notice that as solar becomes more prevalent there is more electricity being imported.at dawn and dusk and more surplus exported around noon. What if every country tried to do that? There would be shortages at dawn and dusk and massive surpluses at noon. This is why I say that electricity generation is not the problem; electricity storage is.
Nuclear (Score:5, Informative)
The 900 lb gorilla in the room is the shutdown of nuclear generation. This is causing a much faster increase in coal consumption and construction of more coal burning plants in Europe.
A lot of what is being mined and burned is nasty brown stuff too.
The idea is that it's going to be replaced by renewables. Someday maybe, but I bet not in my lifetime. The upshot is that despite all this solar etc. the EU is spewing more CO2 than ever.
The Economist has a great article about it. They call it the 'Golden Age of Coal' [economist.com].
Re:And it's only getting better (Score:3, Informative)
You're all trying to calculate EROEI [wikipedia.org]. It's already been done. It's 6.8 for photovoltaics.
Re:NO NO NO (Score:5, Informative)
Nice to see them lead but it's not really an act the whole world can follow.
Sure it can. At the cost of higher energy price.
There's lots of related stories.
I just read in a somewhat recent magazine (0-2 year old) how here in Sweden/Scandinavia I think they was often recycling 90-95% (or just 95%) of the building material when they broke down a building.
In the rest of the Europe they was trying to reach 50-95% (or 50-90.)
In the US? 20%.
There's also that story about that plastic stuff in the pacific.
Over here in Sweden almost all aluminium cans are recycled, you pay 1 SEK for them when you get your drink and you get 1 SEK back when you recycle them. When people go out and drink (and just throw or put down their beer somewhere) or maybe leave their soda cans some people browse the cities for cans and look through the trash cans to pick them up and return them.
We do the same for glass (1 SEK) and PET (1 or 2 SEK) bottles.
We have had the same system for beer, cider and wine bottles to. I don't know how it works atm because I don't buy them anyway.
I'm supplied with a compost bag holder and free paper bags to put my compost in and suppost to drop that content into a compost box outside. At the parking lot (same area) I can also leave all packaging which is made of plastic, metal, glass, cardboard and papers&magazines. If you live further out on the country side there's bigger ones like these: http://www.orebro.se/310.html [orebro.se]
Around the city there's places like this:
http://www.orebro.se/305.html [orebro.se]
They are made like this:
http://www.orebro.se/download/18.1ae77d4612f5d50ab538000632/Atleverket_karta+%C3%B6ver+ramp+och+containrar.pdf [orebro.se]
http://www.orebro.se/download/18.1ae77d4612f5d50ab538000634/Mellringe_karta+%C3%B6ver+ramp+och+containrar.pdf [orebro.se]
http://www.trollhattan.se/Documents/Tekniska/renhallning/avc_detaljplan_stor2.jpg [trollhattan.se]
Here's a photo of one:
http://www.orebrohus21.se/att/Hovstas%20nya%20%C3%A5tervinningscentral.JPG [orebrohus21.se]
http://www.emmaboda.se/upload/Om%20kommunen/Kommunala%20bolag/MHAB/Kopia%20av%20IMG_3356.JPG [emmaboda.se]
There you can leave more or less everything. Electronic (everything with built in battery, TVs, ..), dish washers, fridges, freezers, things you can burn (mostly wood and furniture), plastic, asbestos, metal, light bulbs and FLs, I assume there's also room for things like garden left overs for people with no compost of their own, batteries, paint, thinners, oil, ..
In general the rest garbage is burned for long-distance/district heating (and there's places which burn more nasty stuff to.)
As for land fills those exist to but with clay in the bottom and they put stuff above and so on but I guess that may be the case in many places. But as I understand things we've actually got a bigger demand for garbage to burn (though I assume we get some pollutans/filter material by doing so) than garbage so we import garbage ..
They are rebuilding the largest one (?) in VÃsterÃ¥s:
http://www.malarenergi.se/sv/om-malarenergi/vara-anlaggningar/kraftvarmeverket/Valkommen-till-fornyelsebloggen/ [malarenergi.se]
I don't know where to find the nice looking schematics picture but whatever.
Re:Nuclear (Score:4, Informative)
The shitty part about it all, though, is that because nuclear has such a bad reputation (thanks to people like you), Fukushima overshadowed the tsunami itself which killed over 15,000 people. Fuck the power plant, the tsunami was the actual disaster.
Background Info (Score:5, Informative)
Some more info - I am a German living in Germany, and I've been following non-mainstream media on this very topic for quite a while.
Solar and wind are exploding, much quicker than anyone expected. In fact, so quickly that it has the government in panic, probably courtesy of the big energy corporations. You see, most solar and wind power is decentralized, deployed in small batches by thousands of small companies or private owners. The plans for big off-shore wind parks are moving ahead much, much more slowly.
So, the government broke their own promises, retro-actively(!!!) changed the law and reduced the subsidies for clean energy. When you read "subsidies" you should realize that both coal and nuclear are also heavily subsidized. With the recent changes, more so then renewable energy.
In addition, a law that exempts the really huge energy users in the industry was massively expanded and these days most energy-heavy industrial users are exempt from energy taxes. This makes electrical power a lot cheaper for them then for the consumer, who of course needs to pay for the difference. The purpose of this is obviously to reduce public support for renewable energy, because it has all been accompanied by a massive PR campaign about rising energy costs.
The fact is that the actual price of electricity has come down. If you look at the power exchange (like a stock exchange, just for energy prices), there were days when the price of electrical power was negative for several hours. Yes, that's right, there was so much energy being produced that the producers paid you for taking it off their hands. Sounds insane, isn't - electrical energy can't be stored easily, and you can't just make it vanish. If supply and demand aren't in balance, the stability of the energy network is in danger.
Of course, private consumers didn't notice and weren't given cheap energy. See above.
There's a massive political tug-of-war going on within Germany right now. On the one hand there are hundreds of mostly small or medium-sized companies that are driving the renewable energy market, building and installing wind turbines and solar panels. On the other hand are about half a dozen big old energy-power companies who simply missed the boat and are still heavily invested into coal and nuclear. There's a whole story there about the Germany government's flip-flopping on nuclear power over the years, too much to include in this post.
Re:NO NO NO (Score:4, Informative)
i prefer the prieces of nuclear power.
You have never seen the price of nuclear power. From massive subsidies to develop nuclear technology (both civilian and military) to subsidised insurance to low-balling decommissioning costs, nuclear energy has been so heavily subsidised, it's not even funny. And that's not even talking about nuclear waste storage, which still is an open problem wherever there are working nuclear installations.
Re:NO NO NO (Score:5, Informative)
your table is for total energy consumption, not for electricity.
This explains the huge amount of oil in there. Nobody in his right
mind uses oil for electricity generation.
JFTR, here's the breakdown for electricity in 2012:
source [PDF] [ag-energiebilanzen.de] - includes an interesting row for "percent renewables",
rising from 3% to 23% since 1990.
So yeah, still a long way to go (lignite? really?), but working hard on actually going it.
Re:NO NO NO (Score:3, Informative)