Germany Sets New Solar Power Record 568
An anonymous reader sends this quote from a Reuters report:
"German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour — equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity — through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said. The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022. ... The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed."
midnight (Score:2, Funny)
Re:midnight (Score:5, Insightful)
What percentage is generated at midnight?
Midnight isn't the problem; power consumption is quite low then, and only drops more as the clock continues, only to start climbing well after dawn. Power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure has to be built for peak, and that's the problem. Fortunately, a lot of the peak load is during daylight hours. A lot of it is also in the evening as well, but it's not about finding a magic bullet, it's about helping cut back on (not eliminate) the need to use coal or nuclear power.
Re:midnight (Score:5, Insightful)
Working hours correlate well with sunlight in the summer, but winter is different - short days (less than 8 hours during winter solstice in my country (more north from Germany)) not much light during the days and everybody using more power (lighting) make solar power not practical in winter.
Re:midnight (Score:4, Insightful)
Working hours correlate well with sunlight in the summer, but winter is different - short days (less than 8 hours during winter solstice in my country (more north from Germany)) not much light during the days and everybody using more power (lighting) make solar power not practical in winter.
Very true. Here in Canada, people often rave about how we could be using solar power; they just don't get it. Solar power is not an efficient solution in Canada, wind power makes far more sense.
But Germany reaching their goal of solar providing for 1/3 of their power would be an impressive feat. There are plenty of countries that have far more solar potential then Germany. If they can do it, then other countries like Spain should be able to do even more.
Re:midnight (Score:5, Interesting)
Very true. Here in Canada, people often rave about how we could be using solar power; they just don't get it. Solar power is not an efficient solution in Canada, wind power makes far more sense.
Berlin, Germany is further north than Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Calgary, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, Charlottetown, Fredricton, and Regina. Furthermore, each of these cities receives an average of 30% more solar energy than Berlin, some as high as 60% more. So, given that our populations live at roughly the same latitudes, and we have more area in which to deploy solar, and we get more sun, why would solar be okay for Germany, but not for Canada?
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http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/275db4d0-6cdf-11df-91c8-00144feab49a.html [ft.com]
There was a surge of subsidy-driven spending in Spain’s photovoltaic sector, with €23bn invested since 2002 – a quarter of that in 2008 alone. The annual cost of subsidies for all renewables reached €5bn last year and could hit €6.3bn this year.
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/465409/spanish_nighttime_solar_energy_fraud_unlikely_in_uk.html [theecologist.org]
Spanish newspaper El Mundo found that between Novem
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Midnight isn't the problem; power consumption is quite low then, and only drops more as the clock continues, only to start climbing well after dawn.
I bet winter is a problem, although maybe not quite so far south as Germany. Power demand is pretty heavy from sunset to sunrise with a big spike in the morning that doesn't tail off until well after 9am, long before the sun is up.
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Just wait until electric cars become popular. Then we'll have a problem.
Re:midnight (Score:5, Interesting)
No, that would help solving the storage problem.
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The problem is that every graph I have seen shows THE peak at about 6pm (in every state in my country it's about 2GW higher than during the daytime peak (at around 10-11am). When people get home from work, and more importantly when the sun is already so low on the horizon even in the favourable times of the year that you won't get much out of your solar plant. I get the feeling that's what the GP was trying to get at.
Slashdot readership is a lot better than most, but the vast majority of people believe that
Re:midnight (Score:4, Insightful)
They also want their women to wear black blankets over their head in a sunny, hot climate, so I'm not sure what "Saudi Arabia wants" is worth considering.
Personally, I find what "German wants" more compelling than what "Saudi Arabia wants".
What does that have to do with anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
So how much is it when it is raining or cloudy?
It seems like 90% of this thread is arguing either for or against the notion that we shouldn't use solar power because it isn't always available. Rather than just mindlessly shouting about the relative price and reliability of solar vs. nuclear and the statistics about what times of day and times of year we have peak power usage, can we just examine this premise for a short moment?
We have a plentiful energy source which is sometimes (regularly) available to us. You are saying we shouldn't use it? Really? Your basis for that argument is that we can't use it all the time. This means we should never use it? I feel I must politely disagree with you there. Would you advise farmers not to grow seasonal vegetables because they cant grow them in winter? Would you advise people in a desert not to collect rainwater because it doesn't fall much in the desert? Would you advise me not to socialise with my friends because sometimes they have to work?
The article is about how an industrialised nation has demonstrated that it is economically and industrially feasible to harvest significant amounts of energy from the sun. Anyone want to talk about that? No? Well I do. I think this is great news. Good work everyone involved. Hopefully we can look forward to power bills going down in the future but what is money compared to the future habitability of the world? If a country like Germany can do this with the climate they have, this bodes very well for equatorial countries. Germany also has significant amounts of wind power, which also works at night and during the winter. Perhaps it would have been a better idea to start shutting down the coal plants first and the nuclear ones after. That debate on that has raged on this site for many pages, I myself am unsure about the answer. I want to see both phased out. Another important question is: How can we generate more clean, fuel independent energy? More solar farms and wind farms seem like a good idea. Geothermal and hydroelectric are nice for base load although hydro can be affected by weather as well. Osmotic power [wikipedia.org] seems like an interesting variant, and Tesla's old idea of generating power from temperature gradients in the ocean seems worth a second look and maybe one day between the earths atmosphere and space, generation of electricity that is fuelled directly by global warming and works as a direct counter to it. I am getting too far into the possible future though now. The scientists have been doing good work though so far with solar and wind and I have every confidence in their abilities. Let's enjoy the good news for once, shilling for the nuclear power industry can wait till the next thread, and the next, and the next...
Re:What does that have to do with anything? (Score:4, Insightful)
Solar power is nuclear fusion power... It is just that the reactor is really far away. The problem is one of cost effectiveness. Once solar panels are price competitive people will use them. Yet it is still an intermittent energy source so you will need some storage mechanism or backup generator increasing the system costs further.
Removing nuclear fission from the equation is stupid. It is cheap and plentiful, safer than most alternatives, and you either use it or lose it. All U-235 on Earth is going to decay eventually so either we use it before it decays or we will never be able to use it anymore. Solar panels are not necessarily clean. Silicon solar panels fabrication in particular uses solvents and acids in the manufacturing process which must be disposed of or recycled at a steep cost. Given that most solar panel production is currently in China I wouldn't be surprised to find out they simply dumped the toxic waste it into a nearby pond or river.
The problem with temperature gradients in the ocean is that the temperature difference is too small for a heat engine to have decent performance. Try reading about OTEC power plants. Large and expensive infrastructure built in the ocean. Even if you use ammonia as the heat fluid the performance is crap.
Re:What does that have to do with anything? (Score:5, Informative)
Solar power is nuclear fusion power... It is just that the reactor is really far away. The problem is one of cost effectiveness. Once solar panels are price competitive people will use them. Yet it is still an intermittent energy source so you will need some storage mechanism or backup generator increasing the system costs further.
Just the other day, there was an article on Slashdot crowing about a fantastic breakthrough. allowing for a cheap, easy to manufacture efficient, stable thin film cell. Even now the cost for solar is below a $1 per watt and most sources predict a $0.50 per watt solar cell by next summer making solar a viable contender against coal for power generation. Add the recent breakthrough in cheap, nontoxic, high efficiency catalysts for hydrogen production and now we can easily convert that electricity to hydrogen to manage power storage. No need for backup generators, no need for anything but repurposed liquid gas storage
Removing nuclear fission from the equation is stupid. It is cheap and plentiful, safer than most alternatives, and you either use it or lose it. All U-235 on Earth is going to decay eventually so either we use it before it decays or we will never be able to use it anymore. Solar panels are not necessarily clean. Silicon solar panels fabrication in particular uses solvents and acids in the manufacturing process which must be disposed of or recycled at a steep cost. Given that most solar panel production is currently in China I wouldn't be surprised to find out they simply dumped the toxic waste it into a nearby pond or river.
Agreed, however, there are a lot of exciting new technologies that remove weapon production from the equation. Talk to Iran, offer them Thorium reactors with international support from the U.N. so they can have their nuclear power, and join the rest of the modern world, and we can all be safe knowing they don't intend to blow anyone up in perhaps a synagogue near by? Small reactors that are virtually run-away-proof, are going to be the preferred technology of many developing nations. They are clean, right-priced, and can be mass produced like batteries. Could it possibly get any better?
The problem with temperature gradients in the ocean is that the temperature difference is too small for a heat engine to have decent performance. Try reading about OTEC power plants. Large and expensive infrastructure built in the ocean. Even if you use ammonia as the heat fluid the performance is crap.
I have done the reading, and as of 2009,10 and 11, respected researcher all over the map (with a high concentration in China) are saying OTECS are the wave of the future. The problem is to place them in the tropics in places with access to deep water. Here the temperature differences between warm surface water and deep water can exceed 60F. Added benefits include getting potable fresh water, high mineral seawater for aquaculture and the potential mitigation of violent storms. So besides generating huge amounts of power, OTECs can be used to provide fresh water to coastal cities in the tropics, and dramatically expand aquaculture providing whole new renewable ocean industries as well as significant carbon sequestration. Oh there are also several interesting designs for large ships/platforms using OTECs as their power source (obviously stable or slow moving), these sea platforms could be part of a new series of habitats for both surface and subsurface ocean living and exploration. Life is complicated. Every new solution brings new problems. That said, I'm hearing opportunity knocking hard and loud. I can't imagine a single viable reason why we shouldn't be answering.
We've been trolled (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's enjoy the good news for once, shilling for the nuclear power industry can wait till the next thread, and the next, and the next...
I could have replied to one of a hundred threads here, but I happen to agree with 99% of what you say so this is probably a good place to complain without being seen as a whatever-shill. As intelligent as your reply was, it ended with just that implication. If you don't agree, then you are a shill. I happen to agree, so let's get that out of the way right now.
The summary quoted a Reuter's article as saying:
German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour — equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity
They don't go so far as to say it, but a very reasonable thing that someone may conclude from this is that 20 nuclear power stations are no longer necessary. Well, no matter how much I like renewable energy, I know that is wrong. You know that is wrong. But your average Joe Blow reading a newspaper sees that and *really does* think, "Wow, we can generate that much power. We don't need nuclear! Hurray!"
When you see others posting and saying, "Oh but what happens when the sun isn't shining." quite a few of them are intelligent people. They are responding to the implication that we no longer need 20 nuclear power plants.
They are being trolled. And they fell for it. On the opposite side, who *actually* believes that if we have, say, 30% base load generation from nuclear that we can simply switch them off because we had a day where we generated 30% of our need from solar? OK, there are some pretty ignorant people in the world, but I submit that they are rare around here. Nobody really believes that. So we get all huffy when people imply that we do.
And here's the saddest part: We've got one side calling the other essentially ignorant, tree-hugging bafoons and in response we call them evil, earth hating shills. All because some asshole at Reuters decided to troll the world in order to get eyeballs. I have seen some incredibly informative and insightful conversations on Slashdot. There are some incredibly smart people around here. But it is all nullified because we just bicker about... Solar providing 100% of our energy needs??? (Almost) Nobody believes that.
Maybe someone thinks nuclear is a good option for base load generation. Maybe someone thinks that we should prioritize research and development in other potential energy sources. There are points for and against each side. Reasonable people can argue about this. Each side can learn something useful from the other. But responding to these trolls just kills any ability to have a reasonable discussion. Calling the other side names does the same. Even imagining that there *is* another side is kind of crazy. We may differ on what method we prefer, but aren't we all interested in having electricity?
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This entire subsidy crap stinks of corruption and cronyism and celebrating this is frankly sickening.
You do realise that power production from nuclear and fossil fuels is also subsidized by the government?
Re:AC need is a big draw and when it's dark out (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sorry, your peak times are wrong. You assume private households are responsible or peaks, that is not the case, it is the industry.
Peaktimes are roughly from 9am till 5pm.
Re:midnight (Score:5, Informative)
0 of course. That's when they're buying power from France's nukes though. Not to forget that they're already scrambling to find some way to subsidize [spiegel.de] all of this, [spiegel.de] because it cost too much taxpayer money. [spiegel.de] At the end of the day, the government is going off about how it'll pay all for itself, and the public is still left wondering where all the money is coming from, while the euro is tanking, and the economy looks like shit.
Re:midnight (Score:5, Informative)
The German nuclear industry was subsidized by at least 80 billion EUR from 1956 to 2007 (and 3.7 billion in 2006 alone) based on extremely conservative estimates, but likely much more. A study commisioned by Greenpeace arrived at a number of 203.7 billion from 1950 to 2010. According to WP at least, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernenergie#Deutschland [wikipedia.org]
Re:midnight (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait until we start 'subsidizing' the decommissioning of all those nuclear-waste producers...
For that money we could have reached 100% solar coverage. From the Sahara.
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Absolutely. Not even the Greenpeace numbers fully account for that. Plus Germany still has no final storage facility for nuclear waste, and the previous attempts at storage (Assen, Gorleben) ended in costly failure. Who knows what an actual final facility might cost over time.
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LO fucking L.
The mods who deemed the above post "insightful" are blithering idiots. You might have been able to provide enough power for Berlin for as much, but not all of Europe. Nevermind that the first time the cable gets cut by some idiot or terrorist the whole continent would be in the stone age.
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We could have gotten 100% of Europe's electricity
He didn't say 100% of Europe's electricity - he was referring to Germany's (nuclear generated?) electricity. 203.7 billion Euros ($255 billion) would buy a lot of solar panels. I don't know if that would be enough to match whatever German electricity production figure the OP was referring to, perhaps someone will work it out.
shipped it with a 50% loss across half the globe
No, 15%: [cam.ac.uk]
An organization called DESERTEC [www.desertec.org] is promoting a plan to use concentrating solar power in sunny Mediterranean countries, and high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission lines (figure 25.7) to deliver the power to cloudier northern parts. HVDC technology has been in use since 1954 to transmit power both through overhead lines and through submarine cables (such as the interconnector between France and England). It is already used to transmit electricity over 1000-km distances in South Africa, China, America, Canada, Brazil, and Congo. A typical 500 kV line can transmit a power of 2 GW. A pair of HVDC lines in Brazil transmits 6.3 GW.
HVDC is preferred over traditional high-voltage AC lines because less physical hardware is needed, less land area is needed, and the power losses of HVDC are smaller. The power losses on a 3500 km-long HVDC line, including conversion from AC to DC and back, would be about 15%. A further advantage of HVDC systems is that they help stabilize the electricity networks to which they are connected.
Re:midnight (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait did you just quote Greenpeace? The same group that opposes any form of nuclear power whatsoever? Ah I thought you did. Now remind me that even with these subsidies how much the power in germany works out to via nuclear? I'm sure it'll be somewhere in the 0.06-0.012c/KWH range, and solar will be in the 0.40-0.90c/KWH range. I mean in Greece it hit an earth shattering $1.20/KWH for just wind, solar did hit 0.80c/KWH.
Re:midnight (Score:4, Interesting)
The German nuclear industry was subsidized by at least 80 billion EUR from 1956 to 2007 (and 3.7 billion in 2006 alone) based on extremely conservative estimates, but likely much more. A study commisioned by Greenpeace arrived at a number of 203.7 billion from 1950 to 2010. According to WP at least, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernenergie#Deutschland [wikipedia.org]
Care to add up the numbers we've spent on the military during that same time frame as in percentage of the budget compared to Germany? If we spent the same percentage on the military as Germany and took the savings and spent it on alternative energy we'd have such an energy glut we'd be powering Canada and Mexico as well and trying to figure out how to export electricity to Europe. Fiscal will is all that has held us back. Germany has it we don't.
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Re:midnight (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually France has been struggling to meet peak demand with nuclear in recent years due to the hot summers we have been enjoying. Nuclear plants need to dump a lot of heat and when the ambient temperature gets too high they either have to drop to idle mode or dump hot water into lakes and streams, killing off the local wildlife and generally trashing the environment.
Of course this flaw does not mean nuclear is useless. I'm not a nuke-you-mentalist who writes off every other technology because it isn't perfect. However, this does highlight solar PV's strength - you get the most power when you need it.
Re:midnight (Score:4, Insightful)
However, this does highlight solar PV's strength - you get the most power when you need it.
People have to remember that many parts of the world (Germany, especially) actually uses *more* energy in the winter (and it's more important that it be available - AC for the most part is a modern convenience, but heat it necessary to survive), it's just not traditionally via electricity generation. Natural gas and heating oil are also non-renewable hydrocarbon-based energy sources. A long term solution to power needs to replace *all* form of non-renewable, CO2-generating energy...
Re:midnight (Score:4, Informative)
There is still an enormous amount of "low-hanging-fruit" in energy conservation by better insulation with modern materials.
Yes, agreed. And also better storage technology is needed, especially with intermittant renewables such as solar and wind.
Re:midnight (Score:5, Informative)
The technology is here already, molten salt thermal storage.
We just need to build a utility grade facility to get the engineering challenges ironed out and to measure the real world performance of a full scale system.
Countries like Australia could be 100% solar with 24/7 electricity generation by coupling solar thermal concentrators with molten salt storage, by using some of the vast tracts of high sunshine hour desert land in the outback.
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The problem will be in the winter months in the morning and the evening, when the sun isn't shining and electric heating is running in some places. Well, last winter showed that this mostly becomes a problem in France, since they get power from Germany at these times, and use a lot of electric heating because of the low state-controlled electricity prices.
While I am ok with the switch to solar power in principle, it just does not work that easily
It's Just Gigawatts (Score:4, Informative)
It's just gigawatts, not gigawatts per hour.
Re: (Score:2)
It's just gigawatts, not gigawatts per hour.
I was thinking that. Maybe they meant that average power output, over one hour, was 22 GW?
Re:It's Just Gigawatts (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly, the original german data said that on Friday, 25th in the hour between 12 and 13 the average output of solar power was 22.145 Megawatt (MW) or roughly 22GW.
Windmill output in the same time was 4378MW. Was not a very windy day in germany. At least around Frankfurt...
Re:It's Just Gigawatts (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of people seem to intuitively like to think of energy capacity in terms of energy generated per hour, which seems to be what causes the confusion. You can use Joules per hour, but J aren't used conventionally in electricity generation; instead watt-hours, kilowatt-hours, and gigawatt-hours are used. But then if you want to talk about energy generation per unit time, you'd talk about how many gigawatt-hours per hour are being generated, GW*hr/hr. Which is of course just gigawatts. But now you have something that doesn't sound like "energy per hour" again, unless you know that a watt is a unit of power, and that power is already energy over time.
Re: (Score:3)
Why do these anecdotal "people" find it easier to visualize "energy per unit of time" than "power"?
One joule is one watt times one second? It's more relatable for most people to visualize one watt for one hour than one watt for one second. A joule is a ridiculously small unit of energy. One joule is 2.78x1E-7 kWh - if the electric bill they receive says they used 1000 kWh, that's 3.6 million joules. If they pay for electricity, they're more used to the unit kWh.
Re:It's Just Gigawatts (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not arguing specifically for Joules, just that in most cases when a rate is used, it's explicit: miles-per-hour, km/hr, m^3/s. Power is a somewhat odd case because a derived unit, J/s, is given its own name, W, which wraps the fact that it's a rate into the unit, "burying" the per-unit-time portion of the unit, rather than keeping it explicitly written out as in km/hr or m^3/s.
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1000kWh is actually 3.6 billion Joules. (Or 3.6 milliard Joules if you're using that logical European system which no one in the US understands.)
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A contestant on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader? once got the question "How many watts are there in a kilowatt-hour?"...
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Easy. 1000 hours. Wait, what?
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Or, to make the obligatory joke... Wait, watt?
Re:It's Just Gigawatts (Score:5, Funny)
Not because I am bad at teaching.
Usually I get through the first part, and then ask myself - "Why am I doing this to myself again?
Then I switch the subject to sports.
everyone walks away happy.
The Winter of our Disconnect (Score:3, Informative)
That's awesome! For summer...
I don't know how many of you have been to Germany, but it has a LONG winter, with heavy clouds going well into spring. Some places on earth it makes sense to try to fall back so heavily on solar, but Germany is not that place. They are SCREWED come the next long winter. They are either going to be paying out the nose for France's nuclear power, or having quite a lot of rolling blackouts...
Re:The Winter of our Disconnect (Score:4, Funny)
Germany has a long term plan to eliminate the long winter problem:
Global Warming.
Re:The Winter of our Disconnect (Score:5, Interesting)
As opposed to US politics, there is a consensus in German politics. Namely that politics is for the benefit of the people and society. Business is a part of that society, not the other way around.
Re:Americans have greater liberty (Score:5, Insightful)
Sort of.
I'd rather say, Americans have got a strong commitment to the appearance of freedom, and thus, to implement most real world policies they have to jump through so many hoops that the resulting freedom is actually less than with a straight forward solution and costs more. And people are actually proud of that. I'd call it the "freedom theatre", akin to "security theatre".
"Ra ra" is not an argument, by the way, because by this logic USSR was certainly the best place to live (hint: it wasn't, even though there were some good things).
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I'd rather say, Americans have got a strong commitment to the appearance of freedom, and thus, to implement most real world policies they have to jump through so many hoops that the resulting freedom is actually less than with a straight forward solution and costs more. And people are actually proud of that. I'd call it the "freedom theatre", akin to "security theatre".
I think you are being excessively cynical/pessimistic. Americans *do* have greater freedom. They have *much* greater freedom of expression than many other countries (for example, "hate speech" legislation is unconstitutional in the USA, as it should be everywhere), have greater freedom of religion (which is good), freedom to homeschool (which is a very important freedom), freedom to bear arms (I have no strong opinion on this one), and their tax burden is quite smaller than in Scandinavian countries. And Am
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Hm. I've been to Germany. And to the US. Guess which one involves me getting felt up on entering?
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How is the freedom to express one's ideas restricted in Germany?
And by being free of religion I mean being able to say that I'm an atheist without being looked at askance, without religion dominating a large part of politics, etc.
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Germany has a long term plan to eliminate the long winter problem: Global Warming.
I'm not sure that's going to pan out. Solar panels generate power from light, not heat. (adding heat actually reduces the amount of power they can generate)
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The lesson there would seem to be: you cannot account for all externalities. And thus, long term planning is generally useless.
Re:The Winter of our Disconnect (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry to disappoint you - sentences exactly like this have been spewing from the nuclear industry since the decision. Coupled with many scenarios of doom that would happen as soon as the first nuclear power generators were disconnected. Coupled with how the power price would immediately increase (it fell since then, even though the industry tried to keep it up).
And you know what - nothing happened. Germany is happily exporting power (even to the french with all their nuclear power. Because on really hot and cold days they do not have enough capacity. Kind of funny when thinking about it ) - and there are even some gas power plants that are being abandoned because we still have too much capacity (they are not viable at the current power prices).
So - no, we are not screwed in the next long winter, we will not be needing french nuclear power and we certainly won't be seing rolling blackouts.
Re:The Winter of our Disconnect (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Winter of our Disconnect (Score:4, Insightful)
People should also pay attention to the effect of energy prices: Germany has high electricity prices. If electricity is used for heat, it's in low-energy (well-insulated) houses and with heat pumps. France has cheap electricity. The pressure to use the electricity efficiently isn't there, so the French have much less insulated houses and resistive electric heating, which is less efficient than heat pumps, is ubiquitous. In cold winters, France has energy shortages, in spite of the numerous nuclear power plants. Their cheap electricity policy has caused a very seasonal energy need, for which nuclear power is far from ideal. To meet peak demand, they have to build so much capacity that they end up having to sell the surplus very cheaply most of the time.
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This winter, dispite germany having shut down nuclear reactors, it was france importing electricity from germany. Not the other way around. the french have a bigger problem with cold winters, since they are using electrical heating excessively
Link regarding france importing electricity from germany:
http://climatecrocks.com/2012/02/14/renewables-helped-france-avoid-freezing-in-the-dark/
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I don't know how many of you have been to Germany, but it has a nighttime too.
What nonsense units. (Score:2)
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Well, it the 22 GW was the average output over some hour, then it's:
(2.2E10 Watts ) * (3.6E3 seconds) = 7.92E13 Joules.
I think.
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Energy graph for part of the day on which that happened. [heise.de]
solar is yellow.
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Actually, there is such a thing as GW/hr. Look at your electric bill...the measurement unit used there is kWh, or "kilowatt hour." One thousand of those is a GWh, or gigawatt hour. But that's a measure akin to volume; what is being discussed here is more like flow, so it's not accurate to call it that. Unless they're monkeying with the math...saying that a car reached "300 miles" in speed, letting us insert the "per hour" in our minds when in reality it went 15 MPH for 20 hours. More likely, they're ju
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No...because what they are talking about here is generation capacity. Generation capacity isn't measured in terms of units alone, but in terms of rate of delivery. This is important because generation and load have to stay in balance; that's a HUGE challenge with renewable resources like solar and wind, where environmental factors can cause generation to drop with little or no warning. It's also a challenge because peak load is what the grid has to be able to support; there are no significant resources a
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So multiplication is the same as division?
Fail.
Re:What nonsense units. (Score:5, Informative)
No, you're completely wrong. In fact, it's difficult to even parse what you're trying to say.
Yes, there are units called "kilowatt-hours". Really, that's just a kilowatt multiplied by an hour. The existence of such a unit has absolutely no bearing on this discussion, since we're talking about "gigawatts per hour". To put it in units more familiar to you, the phrase "miles per hour" makes perfect sense. But the phrase "mile-hours" is basically meaningless.*
A gigawatt per hour isn't a unit of "flow". It would be more akin to a unit of acceleration. If your power plant generates 5 GW/hr, then that would mean it starts off generating nothing, and after an hour its producing 5 GW, and after 2 hours it's producing 10 GW, and so on. That's clearly not what the summary is trying to suggest.
*Before anyone gets pedantic, yes, GW/hr and miles*hours and cubits*Rankine/Farads are all meaningful in the mathematical sense. But in the practical sense, they're meaningless.
Solar doesn't replace other power sources. (Score:5, Interesting)
And by the way, hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy storage media... meaning it could very well be used to store solar energy.
Re:Solar doesn't replace other power sources. (Score:5, Informative)
That's why they do, indeed, build in ways of storing the energy. In fact, they do the same with every other type of power plant, so they can run at only peak efficiency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage [wikipedia.org]
Re:Solar doesn't replace other power sources. (Score:5, Informative)
Not certain where you are but in North America (Canada too) peak electricity consumption is during the hotest summer days and typically during the afternoon to early evening (3pm to 7pm).
20 years ago you were correct. Air Conditioning, however, completely changed that.
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Seasonal affects: electricity demand is usually peak in the summer when people kick their air conditioners in.
Air conditioners? Well, I guess if you live in California, in which case solar may well work well. I know for a fact that peak demand is highest in winter in the UK (where I live). Given its mild climate I suspect that is the same for Germany too.
Re:Solar doesn't replace other power sources. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does everyone think that renewable energy sources will be the first technology ever that works completely the first time, solving all the problems right out of the gate? Nothing else has ever worked that way. You have to start somewhere...meeting a significant part of the needed generation part of the time is the first step to doing it much of the time. And then comes most of the time, and then maybe, heaven forbid, all of the time. Not all phones are VOIP yet either; that doesn't mean that VOIP is a failure as a technology. They haven't started blowing up their CTs and other fossil-based generation facilities just yet...
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Why does everyone think that renewable energy sources will be the first technology ever that works completely the first time, solving all the problems right out of the gate?
Gosh, well, where do I start?
1. We all have to pay big and mandatory subsidies. Those subsidies are the main reason, why renewables are being built.
2. When the renewables are built and operational, they don't solve the problem, which is energy production 24/7 based on demand.
3. Renewables have the right to sell their energy even when there's no demand, but not an obligation to produce, when it is needed.
4. Renewables cause disruption in the power grid.
5. Renewables are marketed as a replacement for proven a
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even if the solar at peak could meet all your needs, you still can't retire any of the old plants, because the solar capacity is useless when the sun isn't shining.
True, but you could keep the old plants mostly idle on sunny days, and save fuel and/or reduce pollution that way.
I agree that in the long run we need a efficient energy-storage solution, though.
Re:Solar doesn't replace other power sources. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are half right. There are three types of solar power. You have PV panels which, as you say, provide whatever power is available from the sun at that instant and have no storage. Then you have solar thermal which can run all night because is stores energy in molten salt. Finally you have solar heating for water and buildings, which stores energy in said water or building.
You also have to remember that cooling is a major use of electricity in many countries. Since temperature is strongly correlated with light levels solar PV is actually ideal for covering peak demand in many places.
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Gigawatts per hour? (Score:3)
Maybe they mean Gigawatt hours, rather than gigawatts per hour
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No, they mean gigawatt hours per hour.
And it's only twice as expensive (Score:3)
As I understand it, Germany's Feed In Tariff on green energy is almost the retail price of power (they buy energy produced by solar panels at hugely subsidized prices and charge consumers the tariff to cover it).
Oh, and combine this with other generation systems? Good luck with that; taking half your generating capacity offline for an hour or two (but not every day, and not always half) is a major problem.
Re:And it's only twice as expensive (Score:4, Informative)
Germans are paying
So the question is what do New Yorkers get from their tax dollars, besides goofy politicians?
Meanwhile Floridians pay about
All in all, still pretty impressive.
December (Score:5, Informative)
Talk to me in December when the sun is low on the horizon and there is a a major storm passing through Germany. How is that different than the quoted article?
1. Sun being lower produces less solar power.
2. Storms block most of the sun decreasing output of solar power plants
3. Snow accumulation can completely stop solar power production.
4. Winter causes higher demand for electrical heat.
5. Darker skies cause more use of lighting.
Taking the increased usage and decreased production into account power production from solar plants could easily drop from 1/3 or requirements to 5%. Instead of touting the optimal power output on a clear sky cool day they need to look at the worst case scenario. The issue with solar power is that you can not turn it on when you need it and that will never change.
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That's when the wind mills might come in handy...
Nothing like a good storm to turn them blades...
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If come winter Germany is crippled by blackouts or utterly dependent on imported electricity I'm sure someone will post a story about it. On the other than if nothing bad happens and the grid works perfectly we probably won't hear anything. Well, fear not, I'll post a story about it, and link back to this story and your comment.
One of us is going to look stupid in about six months.
Re:December (Score:4, Interesting)
Good job Germany isn't totally reliant on solar then. In the winter there is plenty of wind. And before you say it, there is never a time when there is no wind anywhere. Never. So as long as you have diversity then it's fine.
I take your point about peak figures, but they are still useful. In particular France will be interested as it may help cover their peak demands during the summer when nuclear plants are forced to shut down in high ambient temperatures.
Energy costs are rising also in Germany (Score:2)
I don't read German, but Google Translate does. Looks like energy costs have gone up by 57% in the past decade; taxes on energy have gone up 1000% in the last 15 years.
http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/kostenexplosion-merkels-strompreisluege-seite-all/6663536-all.html [handelsblatt.com]
steveha
All worthless UNLESS (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition, a very smart move is to have cheap batteries and thermal storage. With thermal storage, you can change excess electricity into heat (alabit at a loss of efficiency), and then convert again back to electricity as needed. The real advantage is that Natural Gas (including coal converted to methane) can be burned on those days when AE and the storage does not meet demands. In fact, the ideal situation is if you have days in which you KNOW ahead of time that it will likely need extra energy (such as hot days to run ACs), you heat the thermal at night and use that as well as the NG.
Do not discount a Smart Distrbuted Grid (Score:3)
A next-gen grid like Germany is aiming to have will be able to move power from sunlit areas to cloudy areas and from windy areas to calm areas. A large distributed power grid capable of smart utilization in addition to these smart devices adjusting their usage will go a LONG way. Too many people forget completely about the significant gains that can be made simply by having intelligence applied to grid for the 1st time.
Power storage is not as huge of an issue as people like to make it into-- promoted as an
Are these solar plants adequately protected... (Score:3)
...against tsunamis? Think of all the children who might be exposed to toxic chemicals should one of them fall over!
Scientific iliteracy (Score:2)
Surely I am not the only person who noticed the journalist
measured energy in kw/h.
The measurement is almost meaningless (Score:4, Interesting)
22 GW of power produced during very favorable periods. I would be MUCH more interested to find how much the MEAN power over the course of a full year is, and how large a fraction of 22 GW is. I imagine a pretty goddam small fraction. For half of every day, solar power is zero. For many days of the year that are completely overcast, solar power is reduced to a very small part of nominal noonday.
I.e., annual solar energy production is a much more meaningful measurement than PEAK solar power production.
Wow, that's enough (Score:3)
Power vs. Energy for /.ers (Score:3)
In short:
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Luckily, there is no Global Warming on the horizon.
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Not only that (which is bad enough), but we're also depleting the world reserves of very valuable chemicals used in all kinds of manufacturing, like plastics, medical drugs, etc... Burning this valuable stuff just to get some energy is extremely short sighted.
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Take it to North Korea communist freak. America is built on free markets. If those free markets are a problem for Israel: too fucking bad.
Even if we forget our compassion to the Jews, don't you think that economically smothering Israel's enemies would make the region safer,
thus allowing the US Armed Forces to be shrunk, thus decreasing the tax burden?
The US spends a ridiculous percentage of its GDP on the military.