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Germany Produces Record-Breaking 5.1 Terawatt Hours of Solar Energy In One Month
oritonic1 writes "Germany is rapidly developing a tradition of shattering its own renewable energy goals and leaving the rest of the world in the dust. This past July was no exception, as the nation produced 5.1 TWh of solar power (PDF), beating not only its own solar production record, but also eclipsing the record 5TWh of wind power produced by German turbines in January. Renewables are doing so well, in fact, that one of Germany's biggest utilities is threatening to migrate to Turkey."
This can't be right, solar doesn't work, Germany is too far north, the lights must go off every night, PV is a stupid technology, nuclear is the only way!!1 How can this be happening, it must be a liberal media lie put out by the scientifically illiterate eco-nazis... it... it just can't...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yeah, it could power 4214 trips!
But Germany gets so much more sun than the US! We can't compete with that?!
(I wish I were kidding...)
[End Of Line]
"...that one of Germany's biggest utilities is threatening to migrate to Turkey."
Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Discussion of technological breakthroughs is meaningless without a discussion of the cost.
We have the technological capacity to build a hotel on the moon and run flights daily. We don't have the means to do it on an even remotely economically reasonable basis.
And in discussing costs, I mean real costs. Subsidies to the renewable energies and penalties/fees to the fossil fuel based energies are distortions to the economic picture and must be excluded for an honest discussion on the topic. Here in California I saw a state sponsored study that attempted to prove that recycling plastic bottles was more economic than treating them as trash. I actually read the study and what I found is that the authors allowed subsidies to be included in the revenues of the recycling agencies and extra fees charged to landfills (and related) to be counted in the costs of the trash side. Naturally if your agenda is recycling and you have regulatory control over the revenues and costs... you're studying your ability to exercise power: not the economics behind an industry.
a single nuclear plant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravelines_Nuclear_Power_Plant) produces 38 Twh or about 7.5 times more than ALL of Germany's solar power! Don't get me wrong, I think renewables are amazing but the numbers look impressive until you compare them to how the world really powers itself...renewables have a LONG way to go.
Perhaps I should RTFA, but looking at the Wikipedia page on Energy_in_Germany, that looks to be about 10% of monthly electricity consumption, (generously, given that it's summer), and less than 2% of total energy consumption.
If humans are mostly water, and beer is mostly water, then humans must be mostly beer.
"In 2006 the plant produced 38.14 TWh". In a full year. The 5.1 TWh of solar power was for a single month.
Renewables still have a long way to go, but it's 12 times better than you think. :)
Interesting. Actually, first incentivizing consumers at the expense of utilities, and then later doing the opposite, might make sense from the perspective of a revenue constrained country like Germany.
The trouble with California is that the rules depend on when and where you bought in. Some people are only allowed to earn back up to the connection fee.
.: Semper Absurda
I can't see Turkey putting out more energy than coal or natural gas. Surely it wouldn't be any cheaper, or cleaner, to burn Turkey than what they are using now.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
The Forbes article states "Under current regulations, electricity generated by renewable energy resources are given priority access to the grid. As a result, electricity generated by coal and gas-fired plants is only used “to make up for any shortfalls,” according to the AFP."
Does this mean that the nuclear stations have to divert their power when the wind picks up or the sun comes out? I'm certainly no expert, but I thought in the US it is the opposite, so that the wind stations have to go on bypass and the dams/nuclear stations have priority. Or is the Forbes article simply incorrect?
Germany's electricity prices are about the same as California's.
Residents in Germany are paying ~$0.35/kWh while residents in Californian are paying ~$0.16/kWh, and California isnt a good example of efficiency either.
In Europe, only the people of Denmark pay more than Germans and most of Europe pays ~40% less than Germans.
But lets not let facts get in the way of a good P.R. piece about solar power, right?
"His name was James Damore."
Are you joking? Nuclear gets the biggest subsidies of all:
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-power-subsidies-report.html
The insurance is cappedat at ridiculously low value, meaning if there is an accident the taxpayer will have to pay.
Without the insurance cap nuclear power would not exist.
Oil/coal/gas get non expiring subsidies.
It'll be a while, it currently take more energy to make a solar panel than it can generate in it's lifespan and costs more than coal or nuclear without the subsidies.
No longer true since 2012
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
And how long does it take to pay for them?
In Melbourne AU (shitty weather, better than Germany though): 5-6 year. And this only by the cuts in the power bills.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
it currently take more energy to make a solar panel than it can generate in it's lifespan
That hasn't been true for a while.
A 200 W solar panel costs about $400 today. If that cost were entirely from the energy required to produce it, that would mean it requires 4000 kWh to produce ($400 / $0.1/khW). 200 W * 10 hours a day = 2 kWh per day. In a year, it'll produce perhaps 600 kWh (assuming 300 days of sun). Most panels are guaranteed for 20 years, so that's roughly 12000 kWh over the lifetime of the panel. 12000 kWh > 4000 kWh, no?
"Oh, the solar power haters* are going to love this oneâ"a recent study by Germanyâ(TM)s Institute for Future Energy Systems (IZES), conducted on behalf of of the German Solar Industry Association (BSW-Solar), has found that, on average, solar power has reduced the price of electricity 10% in Germany (on the EPEX exchange). It reduces prices up to 40% in the early afternoon, when electricity demand is peaking and electricity typically costs the most. Thereâ(TM)s a visual of that (in German) here:" link
AccountKiller
Any mention of solar or any other renewable energy on Slashdot brings out an army of trolls, dolts, nincompoops and people who haven't commented on a story in ages, but suddenly have a pressing need to hold forth on solar energy. People who say, "It takes 7TW just to build a goddamn solar panel!" or, "Solar's no good because it's only 10%, and since coal is 30%, then that means coal is better because clouds!!" as if we'd passed the limits of technology in the 1890's and had better just get used to what we've got. I don't know what motivates people, or what brings them out for these stories, but it's pretty clear that if there is a concerted corporate effort to spread disinformation about energy, it's definitely working.
The same people who will discuss seriously the best type of deep space drive for a manned mission to the Cygnus constellation will aver with absolute certainty that solar energy is just a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream.
If I was a sociologist, I'd study the phenomenon. But that would just depress me.
You are welcome on my lawn.
$ perl -e 'printf "%.3f DeLoreans\n", 5.1e12 / 1.21e9'
4214.876 DeLoreans
The chart says that there is 34.558 GW of solar capacity installed. They then show that 19.4Twh of energy was produced in the first seven months. Lets do some math. The longest day in Frankfurt is 16 hours and 23 minutes while the shortest day is 8 hours and 3 minutes. Therefore, on average the sun is up for 12 hours.19400Gwh / 7 months / 30 days / 12 hours = 7.4 Mw produced on average. That is 22% of capacity. That would mean that when the sun is up solar plants are producing, on average, 22% of their installed capacity. What happened to the other 78%?
Lets do the same calculation for wind power. 24200 TWh /7 months/ 30 days / 24 hours = 4.8 Mw. 4.8/30.533 = 16% (wind works after dark so not daylight adjustment). Where is the other 84% of capacity.
Here are the numbers from the chart on page 4:
Electricity production: first seven months 2013
Uranium -- 52.1 TWh
Brown Coal -- 85.1 TWh
Hard Coal -- 65.5 TWh
Gas -- 23.8 TWh
Wind -- 24.2 TWh
Solar -- 19.4 TWh
Run of River -- 10.5 TWh
Total energy production was about 280.6 TWh, renewable was 54.1 TWh (or about 19.3% of all energy production).
Also interesting is the chart on page 9, "Monthly Production Solar". It is a bar graph, so these numbers are mostly my eyeball estimates:
January: 0.35 TWh (exact number)
February: 0.6 TWh (my estimate)
March: 2.3 TWh (my estimate)
April: 3.1 TWh (my estimate)
May: 3.3 TWh (my estimate)
June: 4.3 TWh (my estimate)
July: 5.1 TWh (exact number)
So winter really is bad for solar in Germany, but other months it isn't bad. Interestingly, wind does better in Winter... chart on page 10, "Monthly Production Wind", same deal as above (mostly eyeball estimates with two exact numbers):
January: 5.0 TWh (exact number)
February: 3.2 TWh (my estimate)
March: 4.7 TWh (my estimate)
April: 3.3 TWh (my estimate)
May: 2.8 TWh (my estimate)
June: 3.3 TWh (my estimate)
July: 1.7 TWh (exact number)
It doesn't look like renewables will be able to produce 100% of power needs any time soon in Germany, but they are producing about 1/5 of all energy. More than I expected.
Critics claim that Germany is paying six times as much for power, to finance all the renewables. (Per that article, 18 billion Euros paid on power that has a market value of 3 billion Euros) See also the Wikipedia article on Renewable energy in Germany.
Presumably though this is an investment and the renewables will keep providing power once their costs have been paid fully. I'm wondering if, over the operational lifetime of the solar and wind power equipment, they will wind up producing enough power that they will have actually been a good investment?
IMHO it would make more sense for them to keep the nuclear power plants and try to shut down coal plants, but that's not their plan.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Since the sky seems to fall quite often, maybe we should build skyfall power plants.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
When do the patents expire on your project?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I don't know how much the subsides are put in place to off set other taxes, fees, and administrative costs.
Your antipathy towards nuclear power makes nuclear power more expensive. I'd need a cost break down to see where the costs are happening.
Furthermore, there is an issue of large government projects being used a piggy banks. So someone wants to build a plant... to get the permit they have to agree to use certain labor or different work contracts which ultimately make someone else rich. The company can't afford that but not to worry says the politician because I'll give you a subsidy that can pay for it so its not your money.
Clear out the corruption and how me a transparent system and I'll have more confidence in your estimates. Furthermore, you need to provide some reasonable place to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. We had a place and a means of dealing with it that was responsible but the anti nuclear lobby has complicated that. So most spent fuel is being stored onsite which is not optimal.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The 900 lb gorilla in the room is the shutdown of nuclear generation. This is causing a much faster increase in coal consumption and construction of more coal burning plants in Europe.
A lot of what is being mined and burned is nasty brown stuff too.
The idea is that it's going to be replaced by renewables. Someday maybe, but I bet not in my lifetime. The upshot is that despite all this solar etc. the EU is spewing more CO2 than ever.
The Economist has a great article about it. They call it the 'Golden Age of Coal'.
I'm paying roughly $0.105/kWh here in Texas where the energy produced is only from 8% renewable (per the EFL). When I was on a 100% renewable wind contract, think I was paying $0.123/kWh hour. Of course, the actual power generation isn't really distributed to my home. But it is being used in place of fossil fuels somewhere else on the grid.
Ever since Texas had deregulated markets where the resident could chose from REPs, prices got cheaper. The trick is to keep jumping from REP to REP after each contract expires. Otherwise, you will fall back to market value prices (inflated) and the current REP won't offer you the same deal that it does for new customers. So again, to save money expect to jump from REP to REP each year. It's a painless process really. They just make shitloads of money off people too lazy or complacent in paying the bill without really paying attention. FYI, I jumped from Tara Energy to TXU. I've heard bad things about TXU, but the deal was too good to pass up. After this contract is up, I'll be jumping ship again. I recommend Tera Energy by the way. I would have stayed with them had they offered me a better deal on contract renewal, but they were too late in continued negotiations as I already signed up with TXU, but I digress.
http://www.powertochoose.org/
Life is not for the lazy.
Word of advise. If you can, time your contract renewals to not occur in the summer time. That's when prices are the highest. Or else you will be locked in high rates for the rest of the year. You'll have to do the math, but it might pay off going with a three month contract, ride out the summer, and renew in the fall for a new 12 month contract when prices have come down again.
Life is not for the lazy.
The GP is even more wrong than your citation suggests. What they're saying there is that the current worldwide power output of photovoltaics is equal to the worldwide power input for making new ones at the current rate. However, a panel lasts for years, and what the GP said was "it currently take more energy to make a solar panel than it can generate in it's lifespan". That's EROEI, which is currently 6.8 for photovoltaics. In other words, over its life a panel will produce 6.8x as much energy as it took to produce it. Even if all the energy used to produce it did come from fossil fuels, you'd still be way ahead.
The myth that the GP states is one of the great zombies of the Internet. Maybe it was true 20 years ago or something, but anybody who wants to say "them greenie wusses know nothing, solar is like so stupid" trots out the myth. For real cognitive dissonance, tell him that very few locomotives burn coal anymore.
You're all trying to calculate EROEI. It's already been done. It's 6.8 for photovoltaics.
What if every country tried to do that? There would be shortages at dawn and dusk and massive surpluses at noon.
Good thing we live on a sphere then. Instead of, you know, on a flat two-dimensional surface.
And then there's this.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
your position is almost entirely ideological.
So is yours.
I'm not even going to try to discuss this topic with you, because you're simply going to claim that anything that I say is opinion, whereas anything you say is a fact. QED.
So long.
Ah yes, crony capitalism. Like all of the cronies who have collected the ~$10T we've pissed away over the past decade on such national treasures as our multiple ongoing wars, an unmatched prison-industrial complex, corporate welfare and bailouts for billionaires, and national defense and security. A hefty price tag, but I guess we did get a lot for our money. We got a new surveillance state, militarized police forces, dismantling of the constitution, and a recession bordering on depression while the elite have never been richer or contributed less. Let's also not forget that we nailed down the #1 spot on the Incarceration Rate Hot 100 (not to mention the #1 spot on many other prestigious charts), and as a bonus, our global resentment is at an all time high!
But I hear you, let's focus on the negative waste like green energy subsidies that cost less than what is filtered to war profiteers every month to keep Operation Occupy Afghanistan running indefinitely. We should also probably bitch about even thinking about providing healthcare to our citizens, and don't even get me started on those leeching retirees who demand a monthly cash handout just because they worked their whole lives paying into social security. What a waste.
Warranties I've seen typically state 90% at 10 years and 80% at 25 years.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Some more info - I am a German living in Germany, and I've been following non-mainstream media on this very topic for quite a while.
Solar and wind are exploding, much quicker than anyone expected. In fact, so quickly that it has the government in panic, probably courtesy of the big energy corporations. You see, most solar and wind power is decentralized, deployed in small batches by thousands of small companies or private owners. The plans for big off-shore wind parks are moving ahead much, much more slowly.
So, the government broke their own promises, retro-actively(!!!) changed the law and reduced the subsidies for clean energy. When you read "subsidies" you should realize that both coal and nuclear are also heavily subsidized. With the recent changes, more so then renewable energy.
In addition, a law that exempts the really huge energy users in the industry was massively expanded and these days most energy-heavy industrial users are exempt from energy taxes. This makes electrical power a lot cheaper for them then for the consumer, who of course needs to pay for the difference. The purpose of this is obviously to reduce public support for renewable energy, because it has all been accompanied by a massive PR campaign about rising energy costs.
The fact is that the actual price of electricity has come down. If you look at the power exchange (like a stock exchange, just for energy prices), there were days when the price of electrical power was negative for several hours. Yes, that's right, there was so much energy being produced that the producers paid you for taking it off their hands. Sounds insane, isn't - electrical energy can't be stored easily, and you can't just make it vanish. If supply and demand aren't in balance, the stability of the energy network is in danger.
Of course, private consumers didn't notice and weren't given cheap energy. See above.
There's a massive political tug-of-war going on within Germany right now. On the one hand there are hundreds of mostly small or medium-sized companies that are driving the renewable energy market, building and installing wind turbines and solar panels. On the other hand are about half a dozen big old energy-power companies who simply missed the boat and are still heavily invested into coal and nuclear. There's a whole story there about the Germany government's flip-flopping on nuclear power over the years, too much to include in this post.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"I'm sure in the future you can just generate nineteen point twenty one jiggawatts from a windmill, but in the 1950s it's a little hard to do."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
70% of that is taxes and subsidies for almost every kind of energy (including coal)
Energy production and usage won't effect 70% of the price, so if you want to have a better comparision, you'd need to compare the price without taxes.
bickerdyke