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I don't know if you read German but this report, on page 2 has the graph comparing total costs per kWh by energy source. Solar PV and wind turbines achieved lower cost than all of the non-renewable resources. Even cheaper than lignite brown coal. On the issue of reliability, assuming you know power engineering, this document provides a good summary, again on page 2.

AC, nope, wrong again. Really wrong.

Why don't you quote what matter, CO2/KWH annually? You avoid it because you know that it hasn't been improving significantly.
Because Homunculus already quoted it to you.
CO2 per KWh dropped from 1980 till 2018 roughly from 100% - 2% renewables - 20% nukes -> ~78% CO2 to 100% - 38% renewables - 10% nukes -> ~52% CO2.
So the change is from 78% CO2 producing plants to 52% CO2 producing plants. In my eyes that is a significant improvement

Plain and simple, and for that you don't need a graph. Es you probably have noticed: https://www.energy-charts.de/i... only goes back till 2008.

And that we now produce 38% last year and probably much more this year: you see yourself on https://www.energy-charts.de/ why the funk should I search you the relevant page?

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

So, now find a 1980 study yourself, or a 2000 or a 2008 what ever you want.

I really don't get why you are such a nitpicking moron and most of the time completely wrong.

However I admit I was not aware that the import/export situation between France and Germany has changed.

We started introducing wind and solar around 1980, not 2008. The law about "renewable energy(EEG)" was introduced 2000.

Reduction over that time is about 40%. But it is hard to find charts, I'm to lazy to look them up for you :D

2017 we produced 38% of our electricity CO2 free ... but the amount of water power in this equation is more or less the same like 1950.

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/ is usually a good site, but I don't find an english reference.

This link includes exported power:
https://energytransition.org/2...

Hence it says total production was 33% by renewables. Many other sites only count the power we consume ourselves, so they say 38%.

Accordingt to this, more than half of Germany's power comes from coal+gas+nuclear.

There's a lot of power being exported, but also some import - mainly from France, which means more nuclear.

Well,
I lost track about what we are talking.
The web site you link is not showing the day by day wind production. It shows two selected grid operators and how much wind/solar they feed into their grids. That has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of wind/solar power is fed into the whole german grid.
So no idea about what you want to talk.

Fraunhover is a good starting point to get informations about german grid(s): https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

France still plans to reduce nuclear to 50% - just not already by 2025 as planned by the old government.

http://www.mining-journal.com/...

While France exports a huge amount of electricity, this is mostly cheap surplus electricity at times of low demand. At times of high demand or many plants are down (e.g. during heat wave), it often critically depends on imports. In contrast, in the last years this was never the case for Germany.

http://energypost.eu/france-ca...
https://www.reuters.com/articl...

But even in total, Germany is about to overtake France as the biggest electricity exporter - especially with all the trouble France had with its nuclear plants this year.

http://www.worldstopexports.co...
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...
https://www.platts.com/latest-...

So German's electrical trade is not an objective fact, but just an opinion you make up entirely from scratch? As a great person once said, "What a maroon."

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...
https://www.cleanenergywire.or...

Germany hasn't imported more than they exported since 2002! And they haven't had two years in a row as a net importer since 95! If you can read the chart you'll find out that currently they produce almost double the electricity they use; and the increase has mostly been solar and onshore wind.

In fact Germany's usage in 2016 was 593TWh (down from a peak of 621 in 2007). Their production was 648TWh. Surely you would agree that 648 is larger than 593?!

Stop weaseling. I debunked your previous claim: "Kind of like how Germany has been buying so much electricity from France to make up for their failure to provide for their electrical demand after shutting down their coal plants." Your new nonsense is also easily shown wrong: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

I suggest to start reading german sources. No idea where you get you strange numbers from.

What if it rips up a convolute and jams and the scans are unusable? To judge by the sorry state of Googlebooks scans, scanning errors are very likely even when done by professionals. Then we would need a Stasischnipselmaschine to reconstruct the original. The problem is, reconstruction of shredded paper documents is not a solved problem either. So the original could get irrevocably lost and we might not even know how important it was. Conclusion, destructive scanning of unique documents is unacceptable.

This is only single cell solar cells, multi-junction cells have breached 46%. https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/... At this point increases in efficiency are mostly masturbation, relying on complex materials/techniques that aren't worth the cost. The big transformation will occur when they get thin film solar cells that are more efficient so you can have solar cells without making ridiculous amounts of toxic waste.

It's more like 1-2 years these days, depending on type. See page 32 of https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

There is zero evidence that Germany plans to abandon burning lignite any time this century, never mind 2040 or 2060.
Yeah ... in your dreams. No idea why you post nonsense like the rest of your post.

and start replacing their first-generation wind turbines and solar installations which are reaching end-of-life
E.g. what is that supposed to mean? Wind turbines are replaced regularly and solar plants don't have an end of life.

If you want accurate numbers I would suggest to improve your google foo, or check this: https://www.fraunhofer.de/ you can switch to english and check e.g. germans energy production ...

It looks in the press release ( http://www.iaf.fraunhofer.de/e... ) that they've got about a 0.6m dish diameter, so at 4mm wavelength that's about 50dB gain and 0.5 degree beamwidth. Match that at the Rx end for 100dB total antenna gain. Use the full 1W Tx power they claim to have. Suddenly you've got a lot of room for loss in the channel.

What you probably don't know is that this is only possible because we buy tons of energy from France and other neighbors to make up the loss (lots of that isn't renewabley generated)
That is again: wrong
Like basically all your posts. Germany is a net exporter, usually also to France. The months in the last ten years where we imported more energy from France than we exported is perhaps 5 to 10.
Germany exports about 30% its power produced ... to all over europe.

You can dig around here: https://www.fraunhofer.de/ they have an english site.

and ever since our brilliant chancellor decided to close our nuclear reactors, we've compensated by building more coal and natural gas plants to replace them.
We have built new coal plant to replace old inefficient ones.
Bottom line we produce less coal power than 20 years ago and have less plants. Seems you are a "Bild Zeitung Leser" and you "build up your opinion" according to their "Leitarticles".

Nuclear energy only caused three incidents in close to 40 years of operation, of which only two released any contamination at all, and these were both extremely minor incidents with no effects on the environment or people.
Are you living behind the moon? Germany has 40 incidents per year!!. In the 1990s we escaped barely a majour catastrophe in Greifswald. If worst case scenarios had happened, Germany and -depending on wind directions - the surrounding countries would be back to be a second world nation.

over a 30 year period, coal power plants caused a very real amount of deaths or premature deaths; No one doubts that. But since the late 1970s all plants are fitted with scrubbers. As we are replacing them mainly with wind plants that issue is gone anyway soon. So the last 30 or 40 years it is very unlikely that a coal plant harmed one in Germany.

I understand ;D

But 10% sound rather low, so lets see: [1] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/... (page 5: 38.5 TWh production)

Wikipedia says we have 40.000 MW that is 40GW installed, wikipedia says 32.8 TWh production (versus the fraunhofer link above). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So, 8760hours * 40.000 MW = 350400000 MWh that is the theoretical max. if the sun would shine 24h. That is 350400 GWh, or 350.4 TWh. So with either 32.8TW (wikipedia) or 38.5TWh (fraunhofer) we are indeed in the 10% range of CF. I stand corrected, (bow).

Another interesting read: [2] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

Or a top level site: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

I understand ;D

But 10% sound rather low, so lets see: [1] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/... (page 5: 38.5 TWh production)

Wikipedia says we have 40.000 MW that is 40GW installed, wikipedia says 32.8 TWh production (versus the fraunhofer link above). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So, 8760hours * 40.000 MW = 350400000 MWh that is the theoretical max. if the sun would shine 24h. That is 350400 GWh, or 350.4 TWh. So with either 32.8TW (wikipedia) or 38.5TWh (fraunhofer) we are indeed in the 10% range of CF. I stand corrected, (bow).

Another interesting read: [2] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

Or a top level site: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

I understand ;D

But 10% sound rather low, so lets see: [1] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/... (page 5: 38.5 TWh production)

Wikipedia says we have 40.000 MW that is 40GW installed, wikipedia says 32.8 TWh production (versus the fraunhofer link above). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So, 8760hours * 40.000 MW = 350400000 MWh that is the theoretical max. if the sun would shine 24h. That is 350400 GWh, or 350.4 TWh. So with either 32.8TW (wikipedia) or 38.5TWh (fraunhofer) we are indeed in the 10% range of CF. I stand corrected, (bow).

Another interesting read: [2] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

Or a top level site: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

We already have over 25% decrease in CO2 Emissions.
http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/...
We had an increase at 2010, followed by an immediate drop 2011 again, and an increase in 2013 followed by an immediate drop 2014 again. So we had 2 single years that had an increase in relation to the previous year.
If you count all climate relevant gasses, the decrease is 30%.

What was your point?

nuclear is still being replaced by coal
That is wrong. Even the dumbest yahoo should meanwhile have heard about Germanys investment into Solar and Wind power (and bio gas).

https://eu.boell.org/sites/def...

However you could easy look at perfect numbers from https://www.fraunhofer.de/ if you would google for it ... sigh.

Additional info as to which encoders they used:
"HEVC HM Reference Software Codebase, Version 12.1. [Online]. Available: http://hevc.hhi.fraunhofer.de/... "
"AVC JM Reference Software Codebase, Version 18.5. [Online]. Available: http://iphome.hhi.de/suehring/... "

Also, my experience with x265 encodes have been that (dark) low detail areas tend to look terrible, whereas everything else looks extremely good given the bitrate (be it high or low). I remember reading that this was a known (and non-trivial) issue in the x265 implementation at the time.

Actual data for Germany can be found here:

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

See the "Recent facts.." document (page 61, figure 52).

Take a look at this German production report. Take a look at page 248. That is a weekli production report. Notice that how much solar is actually already being produced. Notice that every day just before solar comes on and just after solar goes off there is a peak of production from other sources. Being able to shift solar production into those areas would mean less coal and gas being burned. As solar becomes more prevalent it becomes even more useful to shift solar production out of daylight hours.

Picking and choosing which power plants you want to say your power is coming from is only relevant on the spreadsheet... not reality.

No it is not. As that is the way how power trading works.

When you import that nuclear power the places you imported it from can't use that nuclear power because YOU took it.
And that place had no need for it anyway otherwise it would not have been on the market ... (*facepalm*)

Which means they have to rely on other power sources.
No, it means they had an overproduction and it was more cost benefit or earning benefit to sell it instead of ramping down a plant.

If I have a nuclear plant running at 85% max and now face a situation where I'm overproducing 20% for 4 hours, it would be pretty dumb to power down the plant. Because in 4 hours when I need the power again I can not ramp up the plant due to neutron poisoning. So it is cheaper for me to sell the power at a loss than losing 6 more hours of power production after the 4 ones I consider to schedule.

Similar for a coal plant, when I know I either can sell surplus for a certain amount of hours or run the plant at inefficient (more expensive) power levels.

What is more, I suspect many of the other countries are double counting non-fossil fuel sources by rephrasing the question or the statistics to say something in one case that outputs one number and then say something that sounds the same but is different and outputs a different number.

Would not work. No idea how you come to so brain dead ideas.

Imagine the simplest grid: a consumer a producer and a power line. The consumer has a meter and knows what he consumed and gets a bill. The producer knows what he fed into the grid, surprisingly the two numbers match, Hence we know if the power plant is a coal plant how much CO2 it produced. Actually we know where the coal is from. Also we know the efficiency of the plant.

And guess what, all grid feed ins, regardless from where and by whom are announced hours if not days ahead by the power producers, so the grid operators know how much "reserve", "balancing" or "compensation" energy they have to provide.

So as I said in another post, there is no "greenwashing". Everyone involved knows europe wide which plant produced how much power at what time of the day. Hence statistics of http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/ and others are accurate down to less than a ton of coal.

The only people who don't all know this are the idiots writing the FUD web sites against renewables in the USA.

(And: grid operation in the USA works exactly the same as in Germany/Europe. You also have preannounced "feed in" schedules and accumulated "grid schedules")

The idea that Europe wide where a coal shifting mafia producing more CO2 than "we publish" is completely idiotic. After all everything is billed, taxed, has tariffs, and is recorded by the WTO.

Sorry, you are mistaken, very mistaken.

But you have no idea how much coal power you're sucking down unless you appreciate where your power imports come from?
That is exactly what we are doing. How can you be spo dumb and reiterate the same wrong stupid argument again and again? If I'm a grid operator, buying Polish power *now* for 4 hours: I know exactly from which power plant it comes!!! So I know exactly if it produced CO2 and how much.

what is more this notion that the renewables are not a fucking nightmare to manage in the grid is nonsense:

Who cares about american FUD links?
Go to this site: http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/d... switch to english. Read it a for a month or so, and feel free to ask questions.

How can a renewable grid be a nightmare to manage when Germany already produces 34% of its energy with renewables? An Portugal and Denmark even more so?

WTF, learn something about the topic and stopp falling for every dumb denier link.

It is for balancing the grid.

It is also for shifting supply to demand. When supply is higher than demand the excess electricity is stored by pumping water. When demand is higher than supply the water is run through the turbines to meet the demand.

If there is more demand for 50GW and only 25GW can be produced then there is a problem. If the reservoirs are dry because they have been used there is a problem. Therefore capacity and amount of electricity produced is very important.

The article contents that all electricity need for California can be fulfilled by solar power. They do not differentiate between daytime demand and nighttime demand. They make no reference to and difficulties in integrating large amounts of solar into the grid.

EXACTLY! and hence your and others' claims that wind and solar does not work without extensive storage is: NONSENSE

Let me fix that for you

hence your and others' claims that very large amounts wind and solar does not work without extensive storage

Take a look at any production graph in this report. Notice that at all time there is a significant amount of conventional production. The article contends that all daytime demand can be fulfilled by solar. At no time Germany does 100% of electricity come from solar/wind therefore Germany has never had to ramp up or down as fast as necessary if solar fulfilled day demand. Germany is not an counterexample as the scenario is very different.

More than 5% pumped storage are not needed.

Germany alone has like 25 pumped storage plants (only 2 listed in that article) and we are also in the 20GW and something like 400GWh range.

Where do these numbers come from? Are they based on a day, week, month or year?

Here is some real data for germany. Lets take January (pg 89). Pumped storage production per week = 0.6TWhrs. Total production per week = 43.5TWhrs. Therefore pumped storage contributed 1.4% to weekly production. 1.4% is almost insignificant.

That is very unlikely. I suggest to use links like this one: http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e... [fraunhofer.de] to figure CFs

Lets use last year's data. Installed wind capacity was 35.678 GW. Actual production was 42.6 TWh. So 35.678*365*24= 312.54 TWh possible production. 46.6/312.54 = 13.63% CF. That is using real world numbers. By the way at the end of 2013 they had 32.5 GW of wind installed. Even using that number and ignoring the capacity installed in 2014 we get a capacity factor of 14.96%

Erm, you don't get it? You use REAL DATA not a CF.

If you use real data to calculate the CF then you are using real data to make a decision.

You don't do that at all. Every technology has its well known advantages and disadvantages, you don't need a CF to figure that.

CF will give you a rough idea of how much energy from each type is needed.
Say you need to produce another 10GWhs of electricity per month in an area. How much solar capacity would be needed to cover it? How much coal capacity would cover it?

Even if you only plan a small roof top solar installation or as a farmer a small wind mill, using CFs (from where ever you wanna pick them) gives you much to much margin of errors for any useful calculation of ROI.

Sure if you use a single CF number to calculate. There are daily and monthly CF that can get a much more accurate picture. We are also not talking about ROI but actual production to meet needed demand.

That is very unlikely. I suggest to use links like this one: http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e... [fraunhofer.de] to figure CFs

Lets use last year's data. Installed wind capacity was 35.678 GW. Actual production was 42.6 TWh. So 35.678*365*24= 312.54 TWh possible production. 46.6/312.54 = 13.63% CF. That is using real world numbers. By the way at the end of 2013 they had 32.5 GW of wind installed. Even using that number and ignoring the capacity installed in 2014 we get a capacity factor of 14.96%

Erm, you don't get it? You use REAL DATA not a CF.

If you use real data to calculate the CF then you are using real data to make a decision.

You don't do that at all. Every technology has its well known advantages and disadvantages, you don't need a CF to figure that.

CF will give you a rough idea of how much energy from each type is needed.
Say you need to produce another 10GWhs of electricity per month in an area. How much solar capacity would be needed to cover it? How much coal capacity would cover it?

Even if you only plan a small roof top solar installation or as a farmer a small wind mill, using CFs (from where ever you wanna pick them) gives you much to much margin of errors for any useful calculation of ROI.

Sure if you use a single CF number to calculate. There are daily and monthly CF that can get a much more accurate picture. We are also not talking about ROI but actual production to meet needed demand.

Notice the wind capacity factor for Germany based on real historical data is just under 17.5%.
That is very unlikely. I suggest to use links like this one: http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e... to figure CFs ... you will realize that the term "capacity factor" does not occur in the PDF. The reason is pretty simple: no one in the energy industry (at least in germany) is using this metric. It is a useless metric.

As I said, there are plenty of wind farms that have a CF above 100%, e.g. http://enbw.com/ 's Baltic I and Baltic II offshore wind farms in the baltic sea. (Data to them you find on ENBWs web site, in english)

Me: "Everyone working in that industry simply uses the hard number of MW produced"
You: "Sorry but that is complete nonsense. No intelligent grid planner would consider solar panels installed in New Mexico the same as solar panels installed in Alaska."
Erm, you don't get it? You use REAL DATA not a CF. Obviously I have the real data as load profile for both installations. Such data I have for every day. Because if the PV plant is not sun tracking the first of january and the first of august produce complete different load profiles, see below. And even if it is tracking the 1st of january is a "shorter" day than the first of august. So using CFs helps no one.

How would you propose to compare to different technologies when the "name plate" capacity is calculated so differently and the actual ability to produce electricity is dependant on very different parameters?

You don't do that at all. Every technology has its well known advantages and disadvantages, you don't need a CF to figure that.

To compare plants you either use historical real data aka "load profiles" or estimated prognosis data of "load profiles".

Even if you only plan a small roof top solar installation or as a farmer a small wind mill, using CFs (from where ever you wanna pick them) gives you much to much margin of errors for any useful calculation of ROI.

Coal is used mostly for base load. It's pretty slow to ramp up or down in respond to demand - once you shovel in a certain amount of coal to start it burning, you cannot stop it from burning. Nuclear is like that too.

Turning down production on a thermal plant is quite easy. One just shunts the steam directly to the cooling towers instead of the turbines. Yes it is wasteful but this method is called standby capacity. It can be quick ramped up and down depending on where the steam is directed.

Take a look at this real world report. Look at page 213 and onward. You will see that hard coal is used to follow demand. Look at page 213 in particular. That week was quite peaky.

"Solar's production curve does not match the peak user curve of electrical power."
One can make such claims - or look at actual data:
http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e...

Other evidence: pumped-storage is currently under-utliziled in Germany:
http://www.icis.com/resources/...

But don't let yourself be confuded by facts...

If you mean this document (learn to do links) then you are way off. Look at page 10. In January 2013 Germany produced about 0.0.35TWHs of solar electricity. Look at page 14. Do you see anywhere that the yellow region (solar based generation) even approaches 60%? It does not even happen in June. Look how small the sliver is in January. Look on page 6. Add the numbers up and you get solar power accounting for 6.3% of German power Production. Look at page 69. Do you see the yellow covering 60% of that graph? It would have to do that if 60% was produced by solar. Look at page 85. Total electricity production in January was 40.2TWh. Solar production was 3.2 TWh. Solar production was 8% of total production in January 2013. If you are looking at different numbers please cite the page numbers.

Obviously that month had no 5h sunlight, get over it.

I mean 5 hours of sunlight per day. This is a low estimate to calculate capacity vs actual production.

How about the document I linked. Look at page 9. January production was 0.8TWh. June production was 4.8TWh. Therefore January production was 17% of June production. Those are real life figures.

The think you both miss is that on January the sun is much lower on the horizon causing solar panels to produce much less electricity. From these real like German numbers solar panels produced 0.8TWh in January and 4.9TWh in June. The production capacity in January was only 16% of June.

Replacing all roofs is not that great as north facing roofs would only get indirect sunlight and east/west facing roofs would only be viable half the day. Then there are the roofs that are in the shade of other buildings or trees. Just because light is hitting a solar panel does not mean that it producing anywhere near capacity.

Also, do you have any idea the cost of that many PVs?

Take a look at real figures from Germany. They have an installed solar capacity of 38.124 GW. In January 2014 they produced about 800GWh of electricity. With even 5 hours of sunlight they should have produced 5.8TWh. That means that the actual production is only 14% of installed capacity. Daylight does not mean full output.

Lets use some German numbers. They have an installed solar capacity of 38.124 GW. In January 2014 they produced about 800GWh of electricity. With even 5 hours of sunlight they should have produced 5.8TWh. That means that the actual production is only 14% of installed capacity. The average household electricity usage in Germany is 3,612KWh/r. With a 20% premium for heating in winter we come up with 12 KWh/day. So you would need 12,000/10 watts/square foot / 5 hours / 12% efficiency = 50,000 square feet of panel. That is a lot of pannel.

This looks like it would have that problem covered, along with a lot of other concerns like data encryption...

http://www.omnicloud.sit.fraun...

You may be interested in the actual data from German wind production;

http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e...

Slide 28 shows the wind variability by week, and slide 40 shows the variability by day.

And before you try to make up more stuff

http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e...

Look at slide 78. If your contention were true there would be a correlation between Wind generation and peak, but there is clearly no correlation. The correlation is with conventional. There are periods of low demand with high wind output, and period of high demand with low wind output. So, you'll have to explain that. I'm sure you'll try to get creative.

What was your source for your contention? I certainly backed up my point with real data.

http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e...

Slides 35-38 clearly demonstrate my point and show that conventional sources are used to offset the intermittent of wind and solar. No sane operator would choose to ramp conventional up and down that much for any other reason, the reason is offset and it is obvious from looking at those pages. It is also clear that there would be no benefit from shutting down wind generation for peak management, as it is quite clear conventional is quite capable (as it was before renewables were added). You contended conventional source could not follow demand in that manner, but clearly that assumption was wrong and is quite ill though out since many countries manage their peaks quite fine without renewables. I am sure you will simply choose not to believe, and rationalize some other reason for the great variability in conventional generation, rather than accept what is quite obvious.

http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e... Look at slide 38, wind totals for German Wind production. Argue with them if you don't believe it.

And here is one of your beloved PDFs

http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e...

Page 46 clearly states that solar PV in Germany operates at an equivalent of 970 full power hours/year. 970hours/365days = 2.657 hours/day

Why is this so much different than your calculation? Because you can't use the weather charts to indicate solar insolation.

The links I gave you where actual real world data.

Sorry, I don't get your point. You want to tell me when a month reports 260 sun shine hours, there actual was no sunshine but clouds! How is that supposed to work? Either it is a sunshine hour or it is not, at simple as that.

You don't use 'hours of sunlight" alone because the sun intensity curve differs from region to region based on latitude and cloud cover.
First: we did not talk about that. We talked about hours of clear skies with sunshine, I debunked your wrong numbers.
Second: your impression regarding latitude and its influence is wrong. You simply tilt the panels according to the latitude, the difference between a super intensive place close to the equator and a less good place in north Germany is less than 30% (And has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of sunshine hours per day or per year anyway, and that was the topic)

And please stop to write nonsense like this: "the fact that you don't know ..." Fact is: you don't know what I know, perhaps you should start reading my previous 200 posts to this topic. I'm the expert :) you are the novice.

The average in Germany is not 3.5h but 4.75h of sun per day over the course of a year. So you don't 'stand' at all, not even to talk about 'solid'

Every claim of you for _every_ place you mentioned regarding sun hours: was wrong. You must suffer from a interesting mental illness that you don't read or don't grasp the links I posted. Hint: the links in my previous answer are in plain english and are from the united states.

The link you posted 'this time' tries to show how much energy you can gain per year as an average ... based on actual sun hours (not clouded), and that has nothing to do with our previous discussions :) nice try!

Perhaps you like to start reading here: http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e...

And please, refrain from posting till you have read and understood two or three of the PDFs!

The problem is that increasing the amount of installed and connected renewable capacity requires equivalent amount of spinning reserve to also be connected to the grid.

That is nonsense.
First of all: we already have the spinning reserves, that are the plants replaced by renewables.
Secondly: you don't need a particular extra amount on spinning reserves. The amount on spinning reserves and other reserves only depends on the peak load of the grid and the capacity of the grid.
Which results in massive build up of burner-based power plants and restarting many mothballed older coal plants.

Wrong, Germany is reducing its coal based electricity production since decades. We mothball more and more plants, nothing is reactivated.
Nukes being taken down is a part of it. Renewable build-up is another part of it.

Wrong premises lead to wrong conclusions ...
Title is misleading, it covers all power production: http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e...

Once Solar PV penetration gets to the point where about 5% of all electricity is coming from solar PV..

Uhm. You realize you're talking almost a (not even taking into account rising consumption) 20-fold increase right?

Germany is already past that.

http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e...

In 2013, Germany got 5.3% of their total electrical energy from Solar PV.

Why do I get this funny feeling that the "178 TWh/year" figure is from the rated capacity factors and not the actual production?
Because you are an idiot? But for all idiots the old saying is true: google.com is your friend.

I must be one of the idiots because I cannot find your 178 TWh/yr production either.
However, I can get close to that. Looking here:
http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e...
I see this:
"The first half of 2014 was marked by mild temperatures and high electricity production from wind and
solar energy. Solar power plants have increased their production compared to the first half of 2013 by
28%, while wind power grew about 19%. In June solar systems have produced twice as much electricity
as wind turbines. In the first half of the year solar and wind power plants together produced more than
45 TWh or approximately 17% of the net electricity generation. The renewable energy sources solar,
wind, hydro and biomass produced a total of about 81 TWh and accounted for approximately 31% of
the net electricity production. The renewable share of the gross electricity production including the
industrial power plants is approx. 28%."

That's the first half of 2014, so twice that is 162 TWh.

However, tis statement of yours is wrong "Germany can now meet demand without any nuclear and without additional gas imports."
They can't do that this year or the next.

By way of comparision, in the USA during 2013, we produced 522 TWh with renewables
http://www.eia.gov/electricity...

ooo, look, I included links for my assertions instead of just pulling numbers out of my hat.

So again, we ask: where did you get your number of 178 TWh?

Take a look at this real world data from Germany. Take a look at page 10. In July they produced 5.1TWh. In January they produced .35TWh. So in January they produced 7% of what they produced in July. Also notice they overall they produced 29.7TWh with and installed capacity of 35.65Gw. Here is the math 35.65*365*24=312TWh of capacity. 29.7/312= 9.5%. So the actual production was 9.5% of capacity. So using real world data your figures are at least off by an order of magnitude.

A the answer is some combination of storage and/or a high-efficiency long range distribution grid. Both of which are technologies under active development.

You are absolutely correct. The problem is that the storage problem has not been cracked yet. Pumped hydro needs a lot of water to be pumped and can only be done in certain mountainous wet areas. If the area is too dry the surface water just evaporates. It also had major environmental impact as it floods areas and uses lots of water. Compressed air reservoirs have been found to leak and be inefficient. Batteries are too expensive (even metal salt) to store Terra Watt Hours of energy. While there is some research into electricity storage there is not enough and that is a problem. Long range transmission can be done with high voltage DC but even that has losses. It is also very expensive as it has to be converted to AC for general use. At every conversion there is a loss. DC does not step up or down very well.

Arizona's insolation doesn't vary all that much over the year, and you'd only need to cover 60% of it with solar panels to provide the entire nation's energy needs.

Sorry but you forget conversion/transmission losses. Also, 14% is not a small number. Much of Arizona is unsuitable for the installation of solar panels. Hills pointing the wrong direction, mountains, cities, farms, etc. Arizona is not a blank slate.
Have you run any number on how much it would cost to install a nation wide HVDC network and install all those PV installations? The US population is about 314million. Even using your figures of 142 sqM/person that comes out to 44,600sqkm. Lets look at the cost of just the panels. Here is a basic panel with an area of 1.6 SqM at $417. Lets play with the cost a bit. lets quarter the cost for bulk by and double for high efficiency. Therefore half the cost. Here is the math 44.600sqkm/1.6sqM*417/2= $5.8Trillion. And that is just for the panels and not a lot of other costs involved with installation. Here is a simpler calculation. Take a real world installation. It produced 626.22 GWh in a year and cost of $1.8 billion. You propose to generate 28,308,670GWh. To produce that would require about 626 such plants costing about $1.1 Trillion. Then there is the cost of transmitting that power. Where will that money come from?

Another point you might want to look at is the efficiency of that plant in Arizona. It has an installed capacity of 290 MW and produced 626.22Gwh. 290*24*365= 2540.4GWh. That works out to a 25% efficiency even in Arizona on an optimal site.

It seems Germany is leading the way in showing, by example, that every bit of American futzing about solar power and unions is, to put it down hard, a load of cultish crap designed to make rich people much richer.

Couldn't one say the same about solar in Germany? After all, Germany is paying 36.25 cents per kWh, the USA is paying 8-17.

and now they've shown you can run 50% of an industrial economy off the power of the sun

Actually they've shown that you can reach 50% during a sunny national holiday when most of the industrial equipment is turned off. Going by annual energy production they're more at 5%.

Hawaii would actually be a bit better, but they have their own problems relating to having so much solar installed it's a threat to grid stability.

And I say this as a guy who was seriously looking at putting panels on my roof. In Alaska.

Have you looked at how much Amazon charges everyone?

No I haven't, because I'm not an author.

As for 5$ per month for unlimited phone calls, keep in mind that HE-AAC only requires 24kbit/s for mono and HE-AAC v2 only requires 12kbits/s for mono, so it's a lot less bandwidth for one minute of conversation than you think. With HE-AAC v2, one minute of talk is only 90 Kilobytes.