Slashdot Mirror
Germany Sets New Solar Power Record
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."
What percentage is generated at midnight?
It's just gigawatts, not gigawatts per hour.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
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...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is no such thing as GW/hr. Maybe they hit 22 GW of solar power. For how long? How much energy was actually delivered?
So what is this gigawatts per hour? The derivative of power?
...more like "Catastrophic overproduction by solar plants. German grid on the edge on collapsing, exporting huge amounts to neighbors, destabilizing their grids.
Meanwhile, Poland continues in their plans, to block unwanted electricity transfers from Germany"
Oh right, " the head of a renewable energy think tank "....
"German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour......"
lol
get back to your crack american
Unless there is a way of storing the energy generated, the capacity of solar plants cannot be included in the calculation of capacity to meet peak demand. In other words, 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.
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.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I would like to know how much of Germany's energy needs can be met with just renewables.
If they combined this with nuclear power they could be leading the world in terms of clean energy. instead they are going backwards.
even with large cuts in energy consumption electricity generation needs to be doubled or tripled to de-carbonise a developed nation. that challenge is even more of a challenge if you want to shut off nuclear at the same time.
Maybe they mean Gigawatt hours, rather than gigawatts per hour
The best case performance doesn't determine success, worst case does. How well do they perform when, for example, they have a month of overcast skies?
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.
Show me the data. 22 GW is an astounding amount of power. You don't just add that to the grid without having shut down dozens of other power plants. I'm thinking there was a misreading of the data and a lack of verification by Reuters before publishing.
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.
Not just Fukushima... the combination of that and upcoming state elections was what made Germany (or to be exact, the then pro-Nuke governing party) decide to abandon nuclear power. They had to do that so that their party wouldn't lose too many votes -- and one official even admitted it during a private dinner -- but they lost to the Greens anyway.
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
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
But who needs power at night !! Only the criminals, that's who !!
Germany !! GERMANY !! Above All Others !!
exceptionally hot and sunny the last two days..
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Anyway you look at it this is impressive only trolls would think it trivial.
This can only get better over the decade so expect gas and oil companies to fight this in the States every step of the way.
you have storage. What is needed is to push electric cars that plug-in and give back. To really do that, they should have capacitors, not batteries.
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That Germany was at such risk from a Tsunami or Earthquake.
I still don't understand why everyone is so up in arms about Fukushima, it got hit by a giant surge of water that leveled most towns and it was, for the most part, pretty fine. If anything it should be an endorsement of the technology.
...against tsunamis? Think of all the children who might be exposed to toxic chemicals should one of them fall over!
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Surely I am not the only person who noticed the journalist
measured energy in kw/h.
AC need is a big draw and when it's dark out you don't need it as much.
Reducing *oil* consumption is the key.
Oil comes from very oppressive and aggressive places - Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran. By buying oil we fund a future Jewish genocide. We engage Israel's enemies militarily (thus enlarging the already excessive US military, and feeding anti-Americanism) with our right hand and throw bags of money at them with our left hand. This is *extremely* counter-productive; it would be very funny if it wasn't so tragic. The government should overtax gas-guzzlers (including SUVs!), subsidise economic/flex-fuel cars and lift the barriers on Brazilian ethanol. All the money for solar subsidies should instead go to biofuel.
when energy ceases to be the problem, entropy will. You just cannot process infinite energy in a given volume. There is space left to wonder what the next major disaster will be.
Subsidising biofuels reduces carbon emissions, and add international peace
on top of that.
we built a network of superconductors between the sunniest deserts and the cold places where all the work is done...
Does anyone have any resources they could point me to that will clarify how solar is used on a utility scale? In other words, I've gathered that for consumers you have one of two choices: 1) solar charge a battery bank or 2) directly power your home and use mains power when needed. How does this translate to larger scale operations where hundreds or thousands of houses are being supplied power from solar power? Are there massive battery banks or is it directly input into the grid and somehow maintained? Sorry if that was hard to read. I am new to electronics and can't help but ask this question.
Take trains !
Nuclear power is not about price. Nuclear is about extremely dangerous materials being stored in leaky containers. You just can't beat entropy. it's just bare plain physics laws.
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.
No, it is not that. It is just that Americans have a strong commitment to freedom, while certain European countries
sacrifice freedom in order to reach a higher (by material standards and measured by HDI) standard of living.
That is why homeschooling is generally legal in America, while in Germany there is a Nazi-era law
that persecutes homeschoolers as if they were rapists. In Germany, the freedom to teach one's own
child is less important than the benefit of having ideological uniformity in the nation, making for a stronger
society. Another example is "hate speech" legislation that makes politically incorrect ideas verboten.
Even if the USA didn't have the world's fourth highest HDI (behind only the Netherlands, Australia and Norway),
and the world's most advanced science/technology, it would still be the best place to live due to political decentralisation
(state's rights) and a strong liberty-protecting Constitution (specially the First Amendment).
Freedom trumps all.
Here is a map showing an estimate of the generated solar power in Germany per region with historical and real-time values:
http://www.sma.de/unternehmen/pv-leistung-in-deutschland.html
don't confuse them both.
There's a huge difference between france and germany.
France is encouraing cheap and wasteful electric HEATING. This is plain crazy. At best, you get a 30% efficiency considering the rankine cycle (whatever the heat source) and distribution loss. in the middle of the winter, the french grd is vry overloaded due to this (even more lossy), and french nuclear power can't keep up : THESE BASTARDS FROM EDF THEN ARE MASSIVELY BUYING COAL ELECTRICITY FROM GERMANY ! this coal should be in a much better use for direct heating, with 80% efficiency (2,5x the heat for the same coal quantity).
Germany, on the other side is pushing hard on many things :
- wood heating
- modern and very good home isolation standards (mandatory)
- penalizing electric heating (too bad efficiency)
- building all kinds of renewables like no other country except dennemark
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/25/voerde-insolvency-idUSL5E8GP8ZR20120525
That's second or third biggest aluminium producer in Germany, if I recall correctly. Remember kids, the more solar electricity Germans send to the grid, the less capacity for normal priced kinds remains ("renewables" can't be switched on and off according to demand, law assures their preferential treatment). Also, if you're from Poland or Czech Republic, kids, you're gonna pay for German ideology too, even if your government's folly wasn't that great (well, it was, German stupidity was just additional cherry on top of this shit cake).
Germany's most certainly not abandoning old gas plants (but maybe some were retired because of old age) as some good American or "Grün" tried to tell above, it's keeping them online and building new ones, same goes for coal plants on even greater scale - 14 new plants with 11 GW of installed capacity, mostly coal ones, some gas. Also it contracted reopening of already closed monsters, like Austrian mazut plant in Graz, that's right kids, mazut. But don't worry, 'tis a clean, healthy mazut, because it's backing up wind and solar, so it's okay.
Remember, it's true if Uncle Norbert says so. Oh, yeah, aunt Angie kicked his sorry ass out of gov't but we still gonna block any lowering of subsidies, as well as building of those 3600 km of high-voltage power lines, necessary for getting our grid out of state of permanent near-failure. Those Poles and Czechs will never get to installing those phase shifters nor will their grids afford to fail under overload from our sources, cause that would be BAD.
And remember: Energy Revolution is in full swing! So careful, it might hit you.
Troll 2.0 Fear my asocial networking!
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 excuse for not doing anything until everything is completely solved and costs less than the current prices for traditional power (which will continue to rise and never include all the hidden costs either...)
If you build it, they will come. New power storage systems will be created to meet the increased interest and demand. The best solution may be localized battery units (distributed;) minimizing the need to import power. A simple per-minute pricing system for the grid would lay the groundwork for a distributed market of power storage solutions. BTW, nissan is already close to having their cars double as power storage.
Heating/Cooling is the largest power user. The two could be virtually eliminated just by using the building code regulations.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I was outside the last days, and it was crazy sunny. Getting a light tan in 1 hour outside is *not* normal for Germany. So that's what it comes from.
I'd like to see them meet those demands in the winter...
It's funny you mention Russian natural gas, because it was when Russia shut down the gas pipeline that runs through the Ukraine to Germany and the rest of Europe that the Germans decided they needed to get real about renewable energy in a hot hurry. Now, the Russians did it to mess with the Ukraine, not with Germany or anyone else, but the collateral damage to the latter was considerable. Wonder how good an idea the Russians think that monkey business was now, with the rest of Northern Europe coming to see their gas supplies as a strategic vulnerability?
Anyway Germans shutting down their nuclear plants started when the Greens became a significant player in the coalition government. They've been anti-nuclear for 30-40 years, so when they got power they got busy immediately realizing their heart's desire. Fukushima is quite a recent development, but far from the only thing driving Germans to go to green power.
I'm curious to see what shifting their economy to local solar, wind, and biomass power will do for their overall competitiveness. Will they lure back even more manufacturing when future oil/gas/fossil fuel shocks hit other major economies?
If not us, who? If not now, when?
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.
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.
No, it is not that. It is just that Americans have a strong commitment to freedom, while certain European countries
sacrifice freedom in order to reach a higher (by material standards and measured by HDI) standard of living.
That is why homeschooling is generally legal in America, while in Germany there is a Nazi-era law
that persecutes homeschoolers as if they were rapists. In Germany, the freedom to teach one's own
child is less important than the benefit of having ideological uniformity in the nation, making for a stronger
society. Another example is "hate speech" legislation that makes politically incorrect ideas verboten.
Yet another example is the excessive tax burden of Scandinavian countries, which amounts to
a violation of property rights.
Even if the USA didn't have the world's fourth highest HDI (behind only the Netherlands, Australia and Norway),
and the world's most advanced science/technology, it would still be the best place to live due to political decentralisation
(state's rights) and a strong liberty-protecting Constitution (specially the First Amendment).
Freedom trumps all.
(posting again because some dishonest moderator moded my original post down)
A GWh not a 22 gigawatts per hour, 22GWh. 22 giga joules per hour would have made sense though :)
Reducing *oil* consumption is the key.
Oil comes from very oppressive and aggressive places - Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran. By buying oil we fund a future Jewish genocide. We engage Israel's enemies militarily (thus enlarging the already excessive US military, and feeding anti-Americanism) with our right hand and throw bags of money at them with our left hand. This is *extremely* counter-productive; it would be very funny if it wasn't so tragic. The government should overtax gas-guzzlers (including SUVs!), subsidise economic/flex-fuel cars and lift the barriers on Brazilian ethanol. All the money for solar subsidies should instead go to biofuel.
(posting again because some dishonest moderator modded me down).
Please, mod parent underrated.
It is actually an informative post.
And it is currently at +2 Flamebait.
I have never seen a +5 Flamebait.
So please do.
So, It takes 20 Nuclear reactors to produce 22-gigawats/hour? Exactly how many solar power plants are they using to achieve this "record" amount of power? 50? 60? 100? 200? In addition, exactly how BIG are these solar plants? Although we need to find something more... innocuous, shall we say, than Nuclear power, 40 solar power plants at twice the size producing the same power as 20 Nuclear plants at half the size can do, is NOT the way to go. Not yet anyway. It should be pursued and adopted when it's more space efficient, THAT is when it should be adopted. Our world is already over populated by people (living AND dead, although the dead just take up space as apposed to space/food/water/etc.), it does not need to be over populated by power plants as well. We just don't have the space. If EVERYONE ate as much red meat as the average American, we would need MULTIPLE EARTHS just to sustain the live stock to feed us.
For the record, I am NOT an environmentalist, I do NOT think climate change is "all human's fault", I firmly hold to the idea that people kill people WITH GUNS and people toast toast WITH TOASTERS, and that some (Chuck Norris) can do both with their BRAINS. I think compromise is almost ALWAYS the best solution and I think people who are diehard are usually placed somewhere in the middle of a scale between silly and retarded. I did not vote for Obama, I did not vote for McCain, In fact, I was only 17. Could I have voted, I would have voted for me, because I'm more qualified than any politician for several reasons: A) I'm not being paid off by any Mega Corps. B) I don't pretend to know shit I don't. C) I'm not experienced, So I don't immediately scrap ideas that are "too far fetched" D) I have actually BEEN in Grade in High School within the past decade, and, quite frankly, it held me back. Some children should be left behind, and Some children should be left unbound. E) A government is for IT'S PEOPLE. not EVERYONE. The place of government is to govern IT'S PEOPLE not EVERYONE. With that said, no government should be messing with anything that is worldwide (ex: Internet) unless a world wide vote is taken WITHOUT representatives (Because we don't need them anymore, that's actually the next point.) and passed with an absolutely, undeniably clear majority. such as 75-80%. But we would be hard pressed to do such a thing without a world government, which isn't, and SHOULD NOT happen. EVER. NEVER. EVER. as in N-E-V-E-R E-V-E-R. F) People do not need represented by other people anymore when it comes to voting, because people know enough to represent themselves. That whole system came about because, at the time, where was absolutely no way the US could. The informational infrastructure just wasn't around. Today it IS. Tangentially related: There should be a short 10 question written quiz about the two major opponents in an election. Stuff like "What is position on firearms?" where you would have to answer half of them reasonably accurately in order to vote for any elected person (Laws and other such things, not related to electing an official would not have this.) to stop the morons who vote for someone because "He's Hot". G) Bigger is not better. Things that are big tend to be far less effective. The one exception that comes to mind is Levers. Bigger levers are better.... as long as they aren't TOO big. Assuming a jump in technology to the space age, this is how government should be handled. A Galactic Government would be responsible for delegations regarding inter-species interactions (ex: Do not serve the mixed drinks known as Cyanide Clydes or Arsenic Abominations to humans, as such drinks would prove deadly to them.) and Inter-species trade, basically trade between Wookie and Human space. The galactic government would be to big to handle much more than that. so then species governments would regulate inter-stellar trade, conduct, and other such things like that, but it would, again, be too big to do much else. Planetary governments would assist the species governments, and also serve as the planet's militi
Mr. Allnoch repeated Gigawatts per hour several times in his interview for Reuters. They must have been able to supply 22GW for a whole hour.
Someone moderated me "Troll". This is dishonest. The above post is intellectually honest, fact-based and respectful.
Someone moderated the above comment "Troll". This is clearly dishonest.
The above comment is respectful, and it is my honest opinion about
freedom.
I hope the guy is caught by the meta-moderators.
>>Germany, on the other side is pushing hard on many things :
>>- modern and very good home isolation standards (mandatory)
There are some good jokes to be made there -- I think he meant insulation -- but I'd actually like some isolation standards. The main reason I couldn't live in a big city for any length of time is having your neighbors right on top of you. I need my peace and quiet.
Get that bastard up to 88 miles per hour....
For a simple analysis of electricity price comparisons, say Germany against France or Finland, see:
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Electricity_and_natural_gas_price_statistics
This extra reliance on green energy over nuclear is a likely policy failure that will impact on Germans long after the Angela Merkel is out of office. Cheap energy is what an economy needs to flourish. I for one won't weep if Germany starts going backwards in after a few years compared to nuclear embracing countries.
In the US, it seems that parents have more rights than their children, so you see home-schooling as the expression of a parent's right to educate their child as they see fit.
It is not that "parents have more rights than children". It is just that parents are, except under rare and extreme circumstances, the best people to protect their children's rights. It is like the concept of national sovereignty: the U.N. shouldn't, except under extreme circumstances, meddle into a country's internal affairs. This is not because "national governments have more rights than their citizens", it is just that national governments are better suited to protect their citizens rights than an international government. In fact, the national government should normally defer to the local government, and so on. By the way, this is another area where Americans have greater liberty: their political system is more decentralised, with each state having its own laws. This means that the laws of each state better reflects its population's values. It also means that you can easily change jurisdictions and find one that matches your beliefs. You can choose to live among rugged tea-partiers in Texas, and the corresponding laws, or among the more-leftist-than-Herbert-Marcuse-himself of Massachusetts or California. This freedom is awesome.
Within Europe, we're very keen on childrens' rights, and thus it's more important that every child is guaranteed access to a good standard of education, and we feel that home-schooling isn't sufficient for that. [...] , it's about protecting children from parents that don't really know how to teach.
Wrong. If the point was about good standards of education, they would simply mandate periodic exams, and send low-scoring kids to the regular
school system.
It's nothing to do with idealogical uniformity
It has everything to do with ideological uniformity.
From Wikipedia:
The European Court endorsed a "carefully reasoned" decision of the German court concerning "the general interest of society to avoid the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions and the importance of integrating minorities into society."[52]
In other words, they won't allow significant portions of their society to have unauthorised philosophical convictions.
In January 2010, a United States immigration judge granted asylum to a German homeschooling family, apparently based on this ban on homeschooling. This was damn right.
Calling this a Nazi-era persecution law just shows an ignorance of European cultural values.
Wrong. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
And Universal Human Rights transcend cultural borders.
I am JOrgePeixoto. I created tis accounted to overcome the 50-comment limit (yes, I'm an addict)
It's a unit of journalistic fail.
If you don't think governments (including the US) already have control over power generation then you're delusional.
I suspect you missed the point. I think free market just cannot solve this problem, and state planification and is required. But at the UE level, you just have a free-market obsessed bureaucracy that is not held accountable by citizen. UE member state cooperation is required here, but that can be done without UE bureaucracy.
I can't remember if Germany was an overall importer or exporter of power. How does switching to solar alter the ratio? If they have reduced their exports how are their usual consumers impacted?
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 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...
For over 18 Deloreans...
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
In short:
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
will turn all those solar panels into big pieces of electronic litter.
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?
sacrifice freedom in order to reach a higher ... standard of living.
It's called solidarity, but you probably haven't heard that word before...
It's a word commonly used by socialist. But in the US socialists are communists, and communist wants to oppress and/or nuke the whole world...
Freedom trumps all.
Try teaching that to American kids who steal ketchup at school, so they can cook "ketchup soup" when they get home.
Freedom is a moot if you can't put food on the table, especially if you have kids.
Also there are different types of freedom. I my country of residence, education (including university) is paid for and students are financially supported by the government. I'm free to choose my education as I like, I'm not in any way financially dependent on my parents... That's freedom to me.
Americans *do* have greater freedom. They have *much* greater freedom of expression than many other countries (for example, "hate speech" legislation...
Yes...and no. The US government might not be able to put you in gaol but your US employer can fire you. My experience of living in the US was somewhat surprising. I certainly expected to find it as a place where people were far more free to express political ideas and beliefs.
However freedom is a two-edged sword: while you are free to express your opinions your employer is free to fire you because of them and society is free to exclude you. The result is that, outside of some socially accepted areas e.g. religion, I would say that the US has far less freedom of expression - but that lack of freedom comes from society itself not the government (at least when it's following its own constitution).
That's just enough to power 18 DeLoreans.
The German magazine "Spiegel" mentions that the GW are not a measurement, but a number extrapolated from the total of registered solar plants and their expected performance. The Reuters article mentions government support for the German solar industries, but neglects to mention that financial support was recently cut, leading to a series of bankruptcies. -- http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/solarzellen-liefern-leistung-von-20-atomkraftwerken-a-835417.html -- http://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Weitere-deutsche-Solar-Pleite-article6262036.html
Whether the cutting edge of nuclear is viable or not Germany is not going to be putting up the cash for it. What they have is old plants that cost a lot to run, so their announcement to "phase out nuclear" a little while back was really a "do nothing" option - shut down the old stuff when it costs too much to fix and not spend vast amounts of capital in huge chunks to build new stuff.
It's a very simple argument and it's not even solar vs nuclear - it's things with very small capital cost and very short lead time (a few panels at a time or tiny little turbines running on natural gas) versus things with a large capital cost and very long lead time (nuclear or solar thermal - huge amounts of steam and theoretically low price per MW but huge installations that take a long time to build to get that economy of scale).
The German decision was about putting a "green" front on what they were going to do anyway for purely economic reasons. Consider Margret Thatcher's action on nuclear power in the UK for an example without the window dressing.
There isn't actually a ban on homeschooling in Germany: they just require the teacher doing said homeschooling to be certified. The German couple apparently was unable to achieve the teachers certification so they went elsewhere. You're welcome to have them.
The EU court decision was about a different item, dealing with the integration of minorities in society (assimilation). While this is certainly a hot debate, the US does not do it all that different. The bombing of MOVE in Chicago and the attack on the WACO campus being a case in point. The Black Panther party, the FBI's COINTELPRO operations against anyone suspected of not agreeing with the official POV, the Japanese internment camps during WW2... all point to a less than rosy picture about your freedoms in the USA as an unpopular minority. And I won't be mean and discuss the treatment of Mexicans and LBGT people over the past 20 years.
The EU decision basically said: a member state has the right to prevent a minority from setting up an alternative state (competition to their own power). Said right already existed because the member state has the military might to prevent it. The EU just confirmed that you can make laws preventing people from separating themselves from the rest of their country because they don't like the general consensus. Choices you have are: you participate in changing consensus, OR you conform to them, OR you leave. You don't get to retreat into a sulk and close the doors like some angry teenager.
In the EU people are more free for everything that matters in practice: free from hunger, free from extreme poverty, free from disease, free from persecution for having the wrong ideas, free to do whatever you want in private. In the USA you're free to pursue some theoretical freedoms but for everything that matters you're out of luck. Except when you're rich. The USA has more freedoms for rich people than the EU. But most people aren't rich.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
It is just that parents are, except under rare and extreme circumstances, the best people to protect their children's rights.
Says who? Did they receive formal training in doing so? Why should they be better at it than someone who has?
As a father who loves his daughter dearly and would do whatever it takes to make sure she has the best life possible; I will gladly concede that I am not necessarily the best person to help her under all circumstances. I allow the state to take some of the responsibility (while keeping a very large chunk of it myself) and, with every other member of society, keep an eye on the state to make sure it's correctly doing the job that we've asked of it.
My daughter is a human being with her own rights, and even if I wanted to, I should not be allowed to limit those rights beyond what society has deemed is acceptable for her own well being.
By the way, this is another area where Americans have greater liberty: their political system is more decentralised, with each state having its own laws.
So does Germany. Just our Federal laws here tend to be broader in scope than those in the US. We do however also have State laws (in each of our 16 states), so something allowed here in Lower Saxony might for example be disallowed in Bavaria, or vice-versa.
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Could relying too much on solar energy be a national security threat, since solar energy is weak against weather modification techniques ?
The German government just decided to radically cut subsidies for solar energy. New gas and even coal power plants are being built all over the country. Fracking is all the rage. Germany is not serious about switching to renewable sources. And when they do, it often results in a farce: Vattenfall intended to import firewood from West Africa(!) to burn in a Berlin power plant. Of course the firewood would be transported in ships that burn fuel oil, which is about the dirtiest form of propulsion there is. They only abandoned those plans because of public protests.
produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour — equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity
This affirmation seems dishonest at best.
A nuclear power plant usually runs between 4 and 6 reactors, and at full capacity a modern european PWR delivers more than 1.2 GW ... So even if solar production could be sustained 24/7, it would only be equivalent to 3 or 4 nuclear power stations.
"...Midnight isn't the problem; power consumption is quite low then..."
OMG, how much more of a spin could this be?!? It's opinions like this that are wasting billions of dollars that could be spent better elsewhere.
Please, do society a favor and do not vote.
this refers to peak power - the actual percentage of solar power in the German grid is around 3% - bought for around 100 billion euros of subsidies which created a bloated, non-competitive 'solar industry' which is going belly up company by company as we speak
the German government's absurd "energy turnaround" was fueled by a completely overblown representation of the Fukushima accident in the German media, and nodded off by an "ethics commission" which had two bishops on board, but not a single energy expert. Result: 8 German nuclear plants taken offline prematurely, and the German grid importing French and Czech nuclear power over red-hot transmission lines. A German power company even booked an already mothballed Austrian oil-fuelled power plant last winter as reserve capacity.
All this translates into exploding cost of electrical power, and increased instability of the power grid - read as: milking of ratepayers, de-industrialization, and industries sensitive to brownouts moving offshore.
And of course, the green conscience feeling satisfied.
Whoever thinks this reckless political blundering with core infrastructure of an industrial nation is a role model should see a doctor.
Your post is so full of ideological cant it's breathtaking. Freedom means absence of constraint. Anything that twists freedom into something that involves stealing from someone (e.g. free from hunger) is abuse of the English language.
That single sentence shows that you have no concept of the meaning of "right", and invalidates your whole post. Repeating the ages old maxim, "Might does not make right."
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You are an idiot. When the sun is out great for solar power. I was in Germany this year and asked the locals about the solar panels and wind mills. This is what I was told during christmas time in 2011 the country did not know if they where going to have enough power for the people to use. That means they have no reserve energy if there is no sun or wind. Sure when it's sunny OK but on an every day base that is not what is needed.
The German Goverment has stopped funding renewable sources because it is not worth the expense. The cost benefit is not there.
"22 gigawatts of electricity per hour"
Power is energy per unit time. Did they mean "22 gigawatts of electricity every hour for X hours"?
Can't Reuters get these things right?
This is a bullshit record.
One nuclear power plant has nearly the same power, I have no idea why they claim "20 power plants":
Isar 2 alone produces 19GW which is close enough to the 22GW photovoltaic output. What kind of "20 nuclear power plants" did they compare to? Microscopic ones?
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
So are coal powered plants. So are fission powered plants.
All we need to do is figure out what powers fusion and go for that. Think ahead people.
Well, in germany we try to differentiate beetween prooven historic facts and freedom of speech.
First: many times in History scientists have been wrong. Forbidding the spread of ideas because they
have been "proven wrong" is absurd. Also, forbidding Holocaust denial is stupid and counter-productive,
as it allows the anti-semites to say "historians may largely agree about the Shoah, but only because
dissent is forbidden". Note: I in no way dispute the Shoah.
Second: I was not thinking about German anti-Holocaust denial laws, I was thinking of "hate speech" legislation
that exist in countries such as the UK (an possibly Germany, but I don't know). Censoring "hate speech" is a violation
of human rights. You may think that it is awesome to censor a guy who says "sodomy is wrong", because he is such
a moronic bigot, but how would you feel it the situation was reversed? How would you feel if conservative governments
censored people for saying "abortion is OK", claiming that to be hate speech against unborn babies?
For example your "homeschoolers" and "rapists" that is a typically PI tactic for labelling one to be concived as the ill-prosecuted. Why not just write that "homeschoolers are prosecuted in Germany because in Germany there is a law which states every kid shall attend school to the age of at least 14 (Schulpflicht)"
That would be just the facts, because in germany not only hoomschoolers and rapists are prosecuted so are thieves, fraudsters and even speeders.
Throwing people in jail and abducting their children because they disagree with the ideology taught in public schools is a totalitarian act.
And it was in fact instituted by Hitler, because he wanted every kid to learn Nazism.
Choosing the education of one's children is a human right according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
(JOrgePeixoto here, posting as anonymous so as not to hit the 25-comment limit)
It is amazing that you can't see the inherent contradiction in your statement. Is being naked in public not an act of self expression?
There are many kinds of expression. The most important kinds, and those that must be fiercely protected,
are expression of scientific/philosophical/religious ideas (because this kind of expression is needed for people
to enlighten their minds), and expression of criticism of church/society/government (because this kind of expression
is needed to avoid tyranny).
There are other kinds of expressions, such as aesthetic artistic expression, or commercial advertisement,
or pornography, or showing off one's genitals. I would say that pornography and genital exhibitionism are
the least important kinds of expression. You can still criticize the government, or enlighten your mind,
with your genitals covered.
If I were to choose between a country where saying "abortionists are murderers" is forbidden "hate speech", but
showing off one's genitals is legal, versus a country where "abortionists are murderers" is legal
but showing off one's genitals is illegal, I would must surely choose the latter.
And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
It emphasizes the freedom of expression of _opinions_, _information_ and _ideas_.
You can still express your ideas with your genitals covered.
(I am the original poster, I am anonymous to avoid hitting the 25-comment limit)
True. I am usually against government intrusion in the economy, but for the reasons
I exposed and for that which you exposed, I support government action to
curb oil burning.
The tebagger interpretation of "free market" as a market without regulation is either a tautology or an oxymoron, but I'm not sure which.
UE is fond of free and undistorted competition. This is how free market must be understood in the UE context. This is almost unregulated: there are antitrust rules so that competition thrives
it has been mentioned that solar power is bought with state intervention - however, without state intervention there obviously would be no nuclear power, either, and I didn't hear many conservatives complaining then.
States' rights are one of the most puzzling pieces of doublethink in American political thought.
You missed the point. It is not that states have more rights than their citizens, it is that states are better suited to protect their citizens rights than the federal government. Just like the U.N. should not intrude into the American sovereignty without strong reasons, the federal government shouldn't intrude in Texas or California without good reason. A local, smaller government is easier to check, and it better reflects its citizen's values. Compare the laws in Texas with those of California - the laws are different because Texans are different from Californians, and this is good.
If a state is upholding slavery, then we can argue that it is a human rights violation and a higher level of government can intervene.
But if you don't like the fact that (say) marijuana is partially legal in California, you shouldn't ask for federal intrusion.
People keep bringing slave-holding Confederate states, but they forget that many times, free states _resisted_ federal mandates
to capture fugitive slaves and send them to slave-holder states. People also forget that the greatest atrocities in human History
were perpetrated by uncheckable centralized governments - Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, etc.
As an aside, the federal government currently presses state governments to set the legal drinking age at 21. This is an example of
absurd federal intrusion.
slavery was justified not just with that century-old collection of mediocre fantasy novels known as the bible
And you conveniently forget that churches in free states were actively anti-slavery.
Except the child's freedom to not be helpless when they turn 18 and haven't received a decent education. Children aren't humans until then (they are self-propelled dolls for their parents whims), so their freedoms don't matter.
If the point was to ensure a good education, the state would simply mandate periodic exams and send low-scoring kids
to the regular school system.
There is absolutely no logical justification to forbid homeschooling, other than the totalitarian desire to ensure ideological
uniformity.
Yes...and no. The US government might not be able to put you in gaol but your US employer can fire you. My experience of living in the US was somewhat surprising. I certainly expected to find it as a place where people were far more free to express political ideas and beliefs.
If your boss fires you for being politically incorrect, you can still get another job.
If the national government arrests you for being politically incorrect, you are hopeless.
Or are you copying the Daily Fail where they insist that the entire price rises in UK heating costs are solely due to the tariffs on renewables (£3) rather than the increase in fossil fuels (£50).
And they built more solar power this year, whilst having shut down their nukes the year before.
Therefore, VERY unlikely to be a net importer this year.
Falling by one meter per second per second for an hour.
A nuke plant normally comprises between 4 to 8 units. A unit has in the past has had a max output of about 1000 Megs( 1 Gig ) So if this claim were true, it would be the equivalent of only about 3 nuclear plants. An interesting display of dissembling. Also the statement (if true) does not claim 22gigawatt hrs, only that it reached a peak of 22 gigawatts for possibly a few seconds. Another fine point of dissembling (ie deception)
...but what about sustained power generation during rain?
Now how do I harness those 22 Jigawatts of energy into my delorian?
remember when giga was pronounced ji'ga ? That was good times.
I wish I had a 2,000 Jigabyte HD. no one would want to say terabyte, jigabyte is just so much more fun.