Domain: germanenergyblog.de
Stories and comments across the archive that link to germanenergyblog.de.
Comments · 7
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Re:DOE report says fusion is likely uneconomical
Wind and solar will never compete with coal and fission.
But actually they do. In Germany coal planets get decomissioned because they can no longer compete.Germany was found to be giving state aid. Also is it really old inefficient coal plants or more modern ones that can't compete. I think its a good idea to get rid of them for various reasons but the pricing structure in Germany seems atypical at the very least and designed to make some solutions more cost effective than others. This could be argued to be a more accurate reflection of cost to society but that does involve some crystal ball gazing.
Storing energy from coal or fission akes no sense either (unless you refill a pumped storage
... because you will need it the other day, but for that you prefer a baseload plant at night)Fission is baseload.
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Re:Falling energy prices and weak demand?
Hint: it is cheaper to sell power for a negative price than not producing and selling it
...... that is interesting, isn't it?It isn't, it's just pure horseshit. If cost of stopping manufacture is zero (as is the case for wind power), keeping the wind turbines running is pure nonsense, provided that grid stability isn't in danger. Running wind turbines isn't entirely free - it wears the machine out. Look, it's really no that not complicated: as long as the wholesale price does not drop below approx. -8ct/kWh to -5ct/kWh, they make money, simply on the feed-in-tariff. Remove that feed-in-tariff and they'll stop feeding in pretty damn quickly.
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Re:Winter is coming
With a really large economy, without losing much GDP.
I was curious about this, so I did a quick bit of research. Germany solar power subsidies vary with the size of the installation, but are typically around 20 c/kWh (source). Their solar power output in 2011 was 18 billion kWh, or 3.2% of total production (source). That implies a subsidy of 3.6 billion Euros per year.
The GDP of Germany - in 2013, which should be close enough - is 3.2 trillion USD (source), equivalent to 2.3 trillion Euros. So this subsidy cost them 0.16% of GDP, which is pretty trivial - about a month's growth. Scaling up to 100% of total production (ignoring the storage issue), to convert completely to solar power would cost them 5% of GDP, which is a bit more significant - for comparison, the US lost 4.3% of GDP during the 2008 crash (lazy source). So, converting to solar power would (optimistically) be equivalent to a medium recession - but, as you say, not bad enough to make a country drop out of the first world.
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Re:What a nonsense post...
> BTW, they are also paying about 35 cents per kilowatt hour,
Most of that is taxes.
Current German solar feed in tariffs for solar range from 11.8 to 17.5 Euro cents per KwH. The 11.8 cents (which is what larger installations get) is actually cheaper than new coal plants.
http://www.germanenergyblog.de/?page_id=14068
If you want to see how an upper bound on how much renewables are really costing German consumers, look at the EEG surcharge. That funds all the feed in tariffs paid to renewable producers. I say upper bound, because renewables get no credit for the downward pressure they put on conventional electricity prices (google merit order effect).
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Re:What a nonsense post...
> BTW, they are also paying about 35 cents per kilowatt hour,
Most of that is taxes.
Current German solar feed in tariffs for solar range from 11.8 to 17.5 Euro cents per KwH. The 11.8 cents (which is what larger installations get) is actually cheaper than new coal plants.
http://www.germanenergyblog.de/?page_id=14068
If you want to see how an upper bound on how much renewables are really costing German consumers, look at the EEG surcharge. That funds all the feed in tariffs paid to renewable producers. I say upper bound, because renewables get no credit for the downward pressure they put on conventional electricity prices (google merit order effect).
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Re:Nuclear power is corporate welfare
[...]There are no economically viable nuclear plants without heavy taxpayer subsidies.[...]
What you say is a candid mistake, and you should know it. what nuclear plants need from governments are taxpayer guarantees, meaning that for example they are not saddled with overruns because a political side "conveniently" drags on the authorization process, and so on and so forth.
think about it; if what you said was true, no nuclear plant would be in operation today, because it's impossible to hide for a long time a big and continous level of subsidies, especially to an industry so much under the lens as nuclear power production. They operate because they're cheap to operate, and the electricity produced is cheap.
Want proof? Angela Merkel exchanged an extension of useful life on nuclear reactors with a tax, evidently accepting the fact that without further taxation the gap between nuclear energy and the second cheapest energy source was too much to handle. When she did an about turn after Fukushima, she retained the tax, and already lost a preliminary ruling in court.
Another article here., but the story can be found in more generalistic sources, go ahead and look. -
Re:What could possibly go wrong?
37.8 TWh is the figure I got for wind turbines in Germany in 2009.
Not all renewables in 2010.
http://www.germanenergyblog.de/?p=3063For context that's 6.5% of Germany energy.
Until recently 26.1% of germanys energy came from nuclear.
Now let's ignore that wind farms get built in the best locations first and assume they do even better over the next ten years with wind than they did in the last 10 years.
lets say they build just as many extra wind farms.
that still leaves them supplying only half the power they were getting from nuclear.On a side note:
http://xkcd.com/605/