Half of Germany's Power Supplied By Solar, Briefly

assertation (1255714) writes with this interesting tidbit from Reuters about the state of solar power in Germany: 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.

Comments

Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[jeffb (2.718)]

I've seen headlines elsewhere that just say "Germany Now Gets Half Its Power from Solar". "Now" is misleading in that context.

This is a noteworthy milestone, and a good sign, but let's not exaggerate it.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Motard]

What does 22GW look like? If all of the collectors and ancillary equipment were in the same place, how many acres would the facility be?

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[alexander_686]

Is it a good sign? Why? It is my understanding that Germany has passed the point where solar makes any sense.

Solar tends to be expensive in relation to other electrical sources. The only reason why German has so much solar is because of expensive subsides from the government - which I would argue could be spent better on improving the efficiencies on the user side..

Also, adding more solar won't cut down on C02 emissions. Solar power is variable and in Germany is backstopped by coal power plants. Coal power plants in standby mode still chomp though a fair bit of coal, so adding more solar is not going to help there.

Of course, all of what I am saying is based on how things are today. I hope and believe that tomorrow's technology will address these issues. But for today..

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[remus.cursaru]

"Now" is misleading when the article is 2 years old?

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Mr D from 63]

produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour — equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity

And for the entire week, those same solar cells produced the equivalent of about 3 or 4 nuclear stations. For a week in mid-winter, it is more like the equivalent of 2 nuclear stations. Luckily, they have their new coal plants that are cranked up when the solar is not producing for a large portion of the day.

As of 2011, Germany had already spent over 100 billion Euros subsidizing solar. This level of subsidization could easily produce over 20 nuclear plants and would basically end the further need for carbon free electrical energy spending, while offsetting much more carbon in a shorter period of time. Not to mention the vast economic benefits to the country from supplying a majority of the plant components versus buying from Asia. But, Germany will continue to spend even more, sending vast sums of money to Asia in efforts to just 'keep up', while their electricity prices continue to skyrocket, resulting in higher costs for business and manufacturing.

Apart from the low lattitude band of land where the solar conditions are optimal, a combination of wind, gas, and nuclear is the most effective and practical approach to significantly reduce carbon emmissions. If you are one who is against nuclear no matter what, then wind and gas are the next best option. In all cases, energy efficiency improvement investment is signfiicantly undervalued in terms of carbon reduction return. Alas, many will still prefer the green badge of solar honor over the practical solutions.

This article spells it out as well, albiet with over-use of negative adjectives. The facts are correct;

In 2012 Germany had one third of the world's solar panels, and at one point these panels generated over half of Germany's electricity demand. This is how things are normally put. But it as rather like talking about a third rate golfer and only referring to the time he almost won the US Masters. Yes, Germany got 50% of its electricity from solar one afternoon. Throughout the year it only produced 5%. The 5% is what really matters. The 50% gets all the headlines.

And solar is an awful source of energy in a country as cloudy and as far north as Germany. Electricity has to be available when we want it. Germans, like many Europeans, most want the stuff around 6 pm on a cold Winter evening. This is an incredibly reliable peak in demand. Yet, the electricity supplied by Germany's solar panels at 6 pm on a cold December is also incredibly reliable: zero

http://theenergycollective.com...

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[BobNET]

What does 22GW look like?

About 18.2 De Loreans.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Expensive" is very different from "too expensive". Some countries (probably most of them other than America) value things other than money. Things like "not risking dying from radiation sickness" and "not poisoning the world for future generations" are often high on that list.

I'm actually quite pro-nuclear, but I'm even more for safer, renewable sources. Nuclear is a stopgap, and if we can push enough research to improve alternative technologies (which is starting to happen "thanks" to things like Fukushima) and just leapfrog it that would be great. Even if it's expensive.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Thanshin]

In the US, on average, 61,6 acres.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[gnick]

Simply solved: Just ban people from turning on their lights when it's dark.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Thanshin]

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13o...

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[raburton]

yes - http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.co...
(via wikipedia)

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[ZeroPly]

We have more than enough people telling us how difficult things are and how we shouldn't try - yours is just another voice in that cacophony.

What we need are people who tell us how to make it work. Nuclear plants might be necessary for a very long time, but they should be secondary to renewable sources.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[alexander_686]

No, expensive is expensive when there are cheaper and better options available.

If I can cut a ton of carbon emissions by switching to solar for a $40 subsidy or by adding insulation to an attic for $20 why chose the more expensive option? Why not opt for more wind power or more efficient appliances? I have found that many Greens focus on feel good actions instead of focusing on the cold hard results. Actions (and money) is spent on nice sounding projects with mushy ill-defined goals and measurements.

In particular, why spend money subsidizing solar if adding more solar is not going to reduce carbon emissions or other issues with coal? Now you are just burring money for no good reasons. In Germany's case, it implies that money needs to be spent in other areas such as upgrading the power grid to efficiently use the solar and wind power that they already currently have.

This is one of the reasons why I advocate a carbon tax. Or, if you have a different concern, tax & regulate that.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[aliquis]

"Now" is misleading when the article is 2 years old?

lol :D

Oh well, more recently they hit 74% with all renewable energy combined:
http://thinkprogress.org/clima...

Maybe the 50% is correct for this year or other pages have just picked up the hype and not checked the sources or noticed the dates either.
http://www.thelocal.de/2014061...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/qu...

Did I Fucking Love Science got it wrong?
http://www.iflscience.com/tech...

More 2012:
http://www.marketwatch.com/sto...
I can't see a year here:
http://theweek.com/speedreads/...

Anyway, even if it has happened recently too it's less impressive when it has already been done more than 2 years ago..

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Layzej]

In Germany citizens and co-ops own about half of the solar capacity. So it is the average tax payer who both pays for and benefits from the subsides. It represents a real democratization of the energy market. "Not only has energy production in Germany been pried from the hands of the “Big Four,” namely the four utility giants that had dominated the German energy market, but it is now also radically decentralized." - http://climatecrocks.com/2014/...

It is amazing what they have achieved. Especially in the face of doubters who predicted rolling brown outs that never materialized. The next revolution needs to come in storage. I'm optimistic.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Mr D from 63]

PV energy in mid winter is no where near the 50% you mention. Last winter nov, dec, jan are about 10% of the production may,jun, jul and that was without any snow covering the cells.

I know that, but actually leaned on the side of error in favor of solar just to appease the fanboys. The point is still easy to make even with that.

Kudo's for paying for your own power. Rich folks in the US think its OK to have taxpayers cover up to 1/3 of their energy bill via credits for solar, while many who live much more energy efficiently in apartments and condos don't have that opportunity to get the hand-out.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Firethorn]

but how does gas significantly reduce carbon emmissions?

An energy source doesn't need to be 'carbon free' to reduce CO2 emissions. Coal is essentially pure carbon, while natural gas is a carbon fixed to four hydrogens. Burning Coal yields pure CO2(in theory), burning CH4 gives you CO2 and H2O
Burning coal:
C + O2 -> CO2. Approximately 2,249 lbs per MWh.
CH4 + 2 O2 -> CO2 + 2 H2O Approximately 1,135 lbs of CO2 per MWh, or half that of Coal.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Roger W Moore]

If I can cut a ton of carbon emissions by switching to solar for a $40 subsidy or by adding insulation to an attic for $20 why chose the more expensive option?

If you could insulate a loft for $20 this would not be a discussion: at that price I'd pay for my neighbours as well! Unfortunately the real cost of insulating is far higher, try several thousand dollars and on most newish homes is standard - our loft is basically half full of polystyrene balls. Also the house construction in the US and Canada is typically wood which provides far less insulation than the cavity walls construction used in the UK and the cost of fixing that would be really prohibitive.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Bertie]

They do both.

I live in Berlin. It can be damn cold there in the winter. My apartment building is around a hundred years old, but it's been fairly recently refurbished, so it's well insulated. As a result, my heating bills are around €100 a year. The only radiator I really use is in my bedroom, and it only gets turned on halfway at most.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[LordLimecat]

"Expensive" is very different from "too expensive". Some countries (probably most of them other than America) value things other than money. Things like "not risking dying from radiation sickness"

This risk is blown up so much as to be comical.

There are probably more people who die every year from falling off of roofs while installing solar panels, than get sick yearly from radiation.

If you total the number of people, all time, who have died in nuclear power incidents-- including post-exposure deaths-- you probably wouldnt break 10,000. Excluding Chernobyl, I dont think theres been a single death (actual or projected) from nuclear power-- certainly none in the last 20 years.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Rei]

Of course, carbon taxes hurt your goods competitiveness internationally. Which is why I support CAT (the carbon equivalent of VAT), or more generally, PAT (Pollution-Added Tax). All goods get taxed on embodied pollution when they enter a PAT zone and refunded when they leave a PAT zone. Thus nobody gets a competitive leg up by gutting their environmental regulations. And it should be in compliance with existing WTO rules.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Noah Haders]

What does 22GW look like? If all of the collectors and ancillary equipment were in the same place, how many acres would the facility be?

An actual answer:

if you converted all of Central Park in Manhattan to solar it would generate about a GW at Peak. So Germany's 22GW record is roughly equivalent to 22 central parks. Or, approxmiately the size of Manhattan. Or, about 29 sq mi, and you can search google for "what is the size of X" to find your favorite metric.

source, an earlier poster linked to this NREL paper saying that an average solar footprint was 8/MW peak.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[LordLimecat]

We have more than enough people telling us how difficult things are and how we shouldn't try - yours is just another voice in that cacophony.

I think hes explaining why its dumb to rely on solar in a fairly northern, cloudy country when there are so many better options.

And Im not seeing the categorical difference between his post and yours, in terms of naysaying-- you're naysaying nuclear as a long term option-- except that he gives good reasons for his opinions. You're simply stating that nuclear is a bad option, with no real reasoning applied

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[mlts]

It verges on astounding. I've read for years that Germany has ceded sovereign control of its land to Russia for natural gas, and that German citizens would freeze by the tens of thousands if Putin turned off the taps. However, Germany is still going strong and doesn't have brownouts or rolling blackouts as naysayers have been saying would be a certainty.

This doesn't mean nuclear power is bad. The ideal would be to work on the latest generation plants, maybe even thorium plants. However, due to NIMBY syndrome and fearmongering, any advances in nuclear power are swept under the rug, while anything that might happen bad with 50-60 year old plants that (by moratoriums in place) cannot be upgraded/replaced will be blasted on the front pages of any periodical or website.

I do agree about storage. I'm hoping Germany is a frontline player when it comes to higher energy density per volume and weight when it comes to batteries. If a battery is made that even comes within an order of magnitude of gasoline or diesel's energy by volume, this would fundamentally change transportation as we know it.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[alexander_686]

I think you missed my point on the carbon tax. Right? Let's unpack your argument which has some good points.

Increased efficiency => increased productivity => Increased GNP => Increased Energy Usage.

Increased energy usage implies, but does not mean, increased carbon emissions. Increased efficiency can be applied either to the production (e.g. solar cells) or use (e.g. energy efficiency). Increasing either does not automatically reduce carbon emission. I can point to places in Africa where installing a few simple solar cells has drastically increased productivity, raising income where people can buy motorcycles and cars – dramatically increasing population.

So neither choice offers a magic bullet which is where a carbon tax comes into play. A carbon tax would help optimize the mixture of production and consumption improvements that need to be made.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[rolias]

Indeed. Renewable energy supporters often sound like they aren't convinced that their solution is actually better - just that it's more ethical - and fail to bring up the measurable benefits. Non-renewables right now enjoy an implicit subsidy because all the damage they do isn't showing up in their price at the pump or electric bill - it's being absorbed in higher taxes, medical bills, business expenses, and the like. A carbon tax is a way to make that cost explicit and make the energy market more functional with better information.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[BlackPignouf]

So it is the average tax payer who both pays for and benefits from the subsides.

No, it is the average renter (who doesn't have any roof to put photovoltaic modules on) who pays extra taxes, while chinese manufacturers and german landlords benefit from the subsidies.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Rob Y.]

If you can cut a ton of carbon emissions by adding insulation - great. Do it. Then cut another ton by switching to solar... So now you've cut two tons for $60, which you couldn't do with insulation alone.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Anonymous Coward]

You may be setting your heat lower than adjacent apartments, therefore receiving their heat and costing them more! I did this myself for two years when I got my first apartment. I had a small apartment with other apartments on all sides. It never got below 45 even on the coldest days. I'd bring a small space heater between rooms and only turned it on when I was freezing. I used heavy blankets on the couch and the bed. When I got my own home I tried the same thing, but since I had no heated adjacent spaces my pipes froze and cost me a mint in repairs.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Sibko]

Are you fucking kidding me?
"Nuclear is a stopgap" and "not poisoning the world for future generations"?

You know how many people have died over the past 60-odd years from radiation poisoning? Direct deaths, including incidents like assassinations and laboratory accidents? 10,000, maybe? Nope. 5000? Nigga we ain't even close yet. 1000? Keep going. 500? Hahaha, get real buddy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Over 60 years of nuclear power and widespread use of radioactive material and there are less than 400 (estimate 200-300) deaths from direct radiation exposure. You can bump it up to ~10,000-20,000 when you include estimates on cancer related deaths. But you know what? If we're going to count cancer related deaths for nuclear, then how about we count pollution related deaths for coal, oil and gas?

Think you can guess? Maybe 100,000 per year?
Try 7 million: http://www.who.int/mediacentre...

Even if you went batshit crazy with estimating nuclear's impact - with crazy greenpeace numbers like a million deaths that they pull out of their collective asses. You still come NOWHERE NEAR coal, oil or gas. In fact, by metrics like amount of power produced per death, Nuclear is the safest we have available. Nothing else beats it, including Solar, Wind and Hydro.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/...
http://motherboard.vice.com/en...

Enough with your bullshit FUD. There is nothing wrong with, and there has never been anything wrong with Nuclear. All the facts are stacked against you and all you've brought against it are lies and bullshit fearmongering to convince people who are ignorant of what the nuclear statistics actually look like. I'm fucking sick and tired of you anti-nuclear liars. All you do is help ensure we keep guzzling oil, coal and gas. I don't think the oil industries could've gotten better shills if they paid for them.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Eevee]

Excluding Chernobyl, I dont think theres been a single death (actual or projected) from nuclear power-- certainly none in the last 20 years.

I'm sure everyone working for JCO in Tokaimura is happy to hear that, as are the residents of the town.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[LordLimecat]

My apologies; 2 died there, 1 recieved a severe dose, and everyone else got doses under half of the annual maximum limit.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Shoten]

What does 22GW look like? If all of the collectors and ancillary equipment were in the same place, how many acres would the facility be?

It looks like about 2 percent of total generation capacity in the United States (which has a bit more than 1,000 GW).

And this is something that makes me crazy when talking about Germany's initiatives. I think what they're doing is fantastic, and definitely the way of the future, don't get me wrong. But there are posts in Slashdot that are the equivalent of, "Oh, let's just do the same thing here to...it looks easy!" And nothing could be farther from the truth.

Issue 1: Geographic size.
Renewables are great in that they *can* be cheap and are, almost always, quite clean. But in the US we have a couple of challenges. One, the best place for wind farms is not too close to large population centers. Sure you can put a few wind turbines here and there, but if you want meaningful amounts of power, you need to take advantage of lightly-populated regions with lots of reliable wind...and these aren't exactly close by to cities. Given the amount of area that a solar farm takes up, the same holds true there as well, though not always to the same degree of distance. Now, enter VARS. Without voltage support, the power won't travel these long distances. T. Boone Pickens made this mistake...he got ready to build out large wind farms, and then suddenly discovered that the distance over which the power had to travel to get to the people who needed it was a nightmare.

Issue 2: Balancing.
Power grids must keep generation and load in balance. Otherwise, you get multiple bad things, including underfrequency and overfrequency events. I won't go into the full details of that (it's a rabbit hole) but suffice to say that it is very very bad. And the balance doesn't just have to be within X power company, as they are interconnected with their neighbors. Entire groups of such companies themselves are organized into managed groups under the control of a Balancing Authority. In some markets there's energy trading, and in others it's more tightly regulated so that such speculation isn't permissible.

But I digress. Under the old way (nuclear, hydroelectric and fossil fuel generation) load was variably predictable and uncontrollable by the power companies, but generation was something they had solid control over. If load went up, they either increased output at a plant or spun up reserve capacity...if load went down, they went the other way. But when you have renewables, you lose a degree of that positive direct control. The wind slows down and your wind turbines suddenly push less power. The sun comes out and you suddenly have more watts on the grid than you want to have. In Hawaii, HECO has issued a moratorium on new solar panels on homes, because it's so bad that it's threatening to destabilize their grid...the only grid on the planet where one single modern power company has control of the whole thing. (Hawaii isn't interconnected because, well...see above over 'nightmare of pushing power over long distances'.) And just the number of people who have their own photovoltaic panels on their homes is causing them grief. Because of how unpredictable sunlight is...in Hawaii. Yeah, it really is that freakin' bananas. It was expected based on their ideal combination of zero interconnectivity, steady weather and fairly stable power consumption levels (not having industrial facilities makes load prediction pretty easy) that they could support 20% penetration of distributed power generation using PV. They're at 10% now, and in trouble.

So, yeah...in short: Germany's done a great job leading the way. But their power grid is 1/20th the size of ours in terms of power generation/usage, and their nation is also a fraction of ours in size. So what they did can't just be copied and pasted into the US to get us to the same proportion of renewable generation.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar power is low hanging fruit. The 10 panels on my roof provide 60% of my yearly consumtion.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Dr. Spork]

Remarkable that they had the wisdom to replace zero-emission nuclear power with a dozen new gigantic coal plants, including several that burn brown coal? Congratulations, welcome to the 18th century! While the greenhouse emissions from the USA are falling like a rock in the last 5 years, Germany's CO2 output is spiking upwards and reaches record levels every year. And for all this, Germans have to pay some of the highest electricity costs in Europe. I'm not saying that Germany can't eventually get their act together, but to me it looks like they're off to a very bad start.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[joh]

All of Europe uses the comma as the decimal mark. To be more precise only in English speaking countries the period is the decimal mark.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Uecker]

No, expensive is expensive when there are cheaper and better options available.

With external costs to society and unclear investment risks, it is not always easy to say what cheaper and better is.

If I can cut a ton of carbon emissions by switching to solar for a $40 subsidy or by adding insulation to an attic for $20 why chose the more expensive option?

This is only a useful comparison if you heat with electricity, which almost nobody does in Germany.

Why not opt for more wind power or more efficient appliances?

As Germany does. Wind and solar complement each other fairly well. By sudsiding solar with a tax on energy price, Germay also encourages more efficient appliances. With nuclear, the subsidies came from general taxes, which reduces energy price and encourages more energy use.

I have found that many Greens focus on feel good actions instead of focusing on the cold hard results.

Germany's energy policy is producing convincing results.

Actions (and money) is spent on nice sounding projects with mushy ill-defined goals and measurements.

Really? Energy policy has been debated for decases in Germany and there is a well-defined goals and a lot of monitoring (and there have been many feasibility studies).

In particular, why spend money subsidizing solar if adding more solar is not going to reduce carbon emissions or other issues with coal?

I am not sure what you are talking about. Scaling up solar obviously reduces carbon emissions. It does not automatically solve the issues with coal - which in Germany is really cheap and secures a lot of jobs. The problem with coal in Germany is that it competes with gas. But this is a different problem.

Now you are just burring money for no good reasons

I don't think so and you did not bring forward any convincing argument.

In Germany's case, it implies that money needs to be spent in other areas such as upgrading the power grid to efficiently use the solar and wind power that they already currently have.

True. But you haven't really pointed out how spending the money on other areas would be better... Most things you mentioned Germany is also doing and the mix seems reasonable to me.

This is one of the reasons why I advocate a carbon tax. Or, if you have a different concern, tax & reg

There is a carbon tax in Europe. You have to buy carbon certificates. Unfortunately the price is low because of lobbying and the recession.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[UrsaMajor987]

Another side benefit is becoming less dependent on natural gas (from Russia). Imagine if a significant amount of our energy came from a source that Putin controlled.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Khashishi]

Improving energy efficiency improves quality of life.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Radtastic]

Finally, something that can be measured in Libraries of Congress! (284, assuming 540 miles of 12" shelving. (http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/wash/dc79.htm) )

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[hweimer]

Nuclear is the safest we have available.

Oh, then I'm sure you'll find an insurance company that will cover the risk of Fukushima-style accidents. Oh wait, no you don't, because such an insurance would make nuclear energy totally uneconomic.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Mr D from 63]

Also, in regions like most of Germany, there is significant cloud cover for a good part of the winter. I've spent a decent amount of time in France and Germany, and I describe winter travels there as; "you see the sun before you descend for landing, then you see it again when you take off and get above cloud level".

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[Shoten]

Over production has always seemed like a poor excuse to me. Using up power is not even a difficult problem. Run a turbine, shoot a laser into space, pump some water up hill. Heck, just desalinate some water. It doesn't have to be water you rely on, but a bit of fresh water isn't going to hurt a place like Hawaii.

Of course, the ideal solution would be to pump water uphill, and then use it to generate power during low spots.

It ain't that easy to throw away 25Mw of generation at the drop of a hat. And even if it was, that only covers generation spikes...which are relatively easy to deal with compared to generation drop. How do you deal with the generation drop when you've got 3 minutes to avoid an overfrequency event...but it takes 20 minutes to spin up the demand CT asset because some cloud cover just moved in over Oahu?

Sorry, but I think that the power company knows better than you how to manage a power grid. And nobody in the industry faults HECO for how they're handling it.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part.

[jez9999]

Why do we need to cover the risk of Fukushima-style accidents when we're NOT BUILDING 50-YEAR-OLD NUCLEAR PLANTS??

Winter is coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be more impressive in February.

Re:Winter is coming

[i kan reed]

Is there a point to this post, exactly? I mean, I get the capacity variation is both a real concern and a common kind of FUD regarding solar, but this data point isn't about that.

It's about how rapidly a changeover in energy production to sustainable can occur. Germany was one of the world's biggest nuclear energy producers(France being the leader of that pack), and they've gone from that to one of the biggest solar producers in only a year or so.

With a really large economy, without losing much GDP. The point that's being demonstrated is that a power infrastructure changeover can be done without sacrificing being a first world nation along the way.

Re:Winter is coming

[ChunderDownunder]

It's summer in February, you insensitive clod!

(At least in my hemisphere.)

Re:Winter is coming

[i kan reed]

I'm not anti-nuclear, but I am pro-solar. More investment in solar promotes more research in cheaper solar, promotes more solar. All very tidy.

Shutting down every nuclear power plant in the world would have tragic consequences: no more radiographic medical treatments, the loss of ability to breed plutonium for things like rovers, ice breakers, aircraft carriers, and yeah, bombs, no ability to create a number of specialized scientific instruments.

No one actually wants that, unless they're unaware of the consequences.

Re:Winter is coming

[camperdave]

Are you sure? Maybe you have hot, sunny winters, and cold, snowy summers.

Gigawatts per hour

[AvitarX]

Amazing, in 24 hours it'll be 528 gigawatts, amazing ramp up of production.

Re:Gigawatts per hour

[ganv]

Good to see I wasn't the only one who noticed the bad units. :) For those who missed it: Power is measured in Watts, which is energy per unit time (J/s). If you have 22 GW/hr, that is a rate of increase of power provided, so AvitarX calculated that after only 24 hours they would have 22*24=528 GW of solar power being produced, which is ridiculous, but that is what the post indicates.

More sunlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but everybody knows they get more sunlight than the U.S... fox news said so ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYDVdqWOXxY

@foxyloxy

Re:More sunlight

[Motard]

Behold the power of Angela Merkel's sunny disposition.

Gigawatts per hour

[enriquevagu]

Note that gigawatts are power units; gigawattshour are energy units and gigawatts per hour is wrong and misleading. I would expect that the editor would correct such basic mistakes, even tough they come from the linked article.

Most interesting part...

[rahvin112]

The most interesting part about Germany's Solar deployment is that they have almost no utility scale deployments. Almost every deployed panel is on the roof of a building of a privately owned residence or business.

This is contrast to the US were better than 50% of the deployed panels are utility scale deployments. Fact is if everyone deployed panels on their homes and businesses south facing roof's we'd have more power than we could ever use. Germany is proof of that.

Re:Most interesting part...

[silas_moeckel]

Might have something to do with the ridiculous pricing in the US. Every licensed installer in my state charges 6-10x the wholesale panel price and will only do a fixed bid install that is about 4x the T+M labor cost. To get any of the government subsidies you must use a licensed installer. In effect I can put up the 100 or so pannels to meet my current needs for 30k including skilled labor yet the cheapest installer it looking for 100+ with the government programs taking it back down to 80 meaning they are making 70+k on whats quoted as a 2 day job with a 5 man crew.

We need to put a stop to the installer language on the government subsidies, simply having the various trade inspectors sign off seems ample proof, but that is a whole different discussion.

that was 2 years ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great editing job /.! The article is more than 2 years old...

bad headline - most of Germany's power not electri

[raymorris]

It wasn't nearly half of the POWER used in Germany at that moment. It was, for a moment, about half of the public ELECTRIC grid, in a country where electric is unpopular because it's becoming outrageously expensive. Most of the power used in Germany is not from the public electricity grid.

Here's a thought experiment:
Germany could shut off all of their generators, so there is no electricity on the public grid.
They could then attach a single 9-volt battery to the grid, so the only power on the grid would be a few watts from that little battery. The headline could then be:
100% of German electricity provided by one 9-volt battery!

What Germany has actually done is simply a less extreme case of the thought experiment. They've shut down generators, so less power is available. It's not that solar is providing the needed power, the power simply isn't available like it used to be. By supply and demand, as well as tariffs, electricity has become far more expensive, so people have turned more and more to other sources of energy. You won't see a lot of people driving electric cars in Germany because the cost to charge them makes it prohibitive.

After Fukushima?

[fahrbot-bot]

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.

I didn't realize Germany was in Tsunami territory.

No such thing as gigawatts per hour

[bertd]

Unbelievably lame. There is no such unit as a "gigawatt per hour".

You can't even be sure what this means, if anything.

What is a gigawatt per hour?

[Solandri]

The units on gigawatts/hr works out to energy/time^2. I'm not even sure what that means. Rate of acceleration of energy use?

Assuming the Reuters reporter never took physics and the actual figure is 22 gigawatts, while it's an impressive amount, it's peak production. Solar has just about the worst capacity factor (ratio of average production to max peak production) of any energy source. If you look at Germany's solar statistics, they produced 31400 GWh in 2013. The average of their 2012 and 2013 installed (peak) generating capacity was (32.643+35.948) / 2 = 34.296 GW (averaged to take into account new plants coming online through the year).

34.3 GW * 8766 hours (1 year) = 1.08 * 10^18 joules
= 300673.8 GWh of potential solar production - i.e. how much the plants could have produced if they were operating at max capacity the entire year.

So their solar capacity factor is just 31400 / 300674 = 0.1044.

Compare to U.S. average capacity factors of
0.9 for nuclear
0.7 for geothermal
0.64 for coal
0.4 for hydro
0.35 for offshore wind
0.22 for onshre wind
0.145 for PV solar in the U.S. (not on chart)

So if Germany's peak solar production was equivalent to 20 nuclear plants, that means their entire installed base of solar plants has only eliminated the need for two nuclear plants. (There's some wriggle room here because they're comparing a peak load power source to a base load power source, but I'm just rolling with the comparison they made.) This is why you don't compare power production technologies based on peak production. It's like comparing the fuel efficiency of different cars only when they're going downhill - it unreasonably favors cars with low drag coefficients even if they may have inefficient engines. You should be comparing average production through the year (equivalent to peak production * capacity factor). Just like you should be comparing the average fuel efficiency of cars across all use cases.

Re:bad headline - most of Germany's power not elec

[silas_moeckel]

Strangely those other sources probably pollute far far more than the fission power plants they are replacing.

This link is 2 years old

[ab8ten]

...and Slashdot covered it at the time: http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...
I think the submitter meant to post this story, which is about the new record of 24.2GW: http://www.iflscience.com/tech...

Re:This link is 2 years old

[BBF_BBF]

...and Slashdot covered it at the time: http://hardware.slashdot.org/s... I think the submitter meant to post this story, which is about the new record of 24.2GW: http://www.iflscience.com/tech...

Yep, I can see Slashdot's new tag line:

News for geeks, aged for at least 2 years cause our editors suck.

Re:Economically impossible! Government is bad!

[jittles]

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. They are an economic powerhouse with strong exports, a union-based worker's economy, and now they've shown you can run 50% of an industrial economy off the power of the sun, in something less than ten-twenty years. WHILE they absorbed a pauperized East Germany after the Soviets finally gave up. Oh yep - they innovate like mad. With health care for everyone. Randites, avoiding the No True Scottman fallacy, examine why you are wrong on this. Seriously, before your wreck us beyond repair.

Uhh you understand that this was over a holiday weekend (3 day weekend) and that they were only briefly meeting that demand on an especially sunny afternoon? Germany has a lot of cool and cloudy weather. I spent almost a month of June 2013 in Germany and it was cloudy and cold 70% of the time.

Re:Thank you for that.

[cyberchondriac]

You think the US is doing nothing about alternative energy? You're not paying attention then. But from a pragmatic view, for now, the traditional methods of power generation still have priority because demands must be met and only oil/coal/nuclear can meet them in a sustainable manner. You can believe that when the oil wells begin to show signs of running dry, the energy companies will bust a move. They'll go nuts looking for other ways to provide energy. Yes, they're driven by profit, that's kinda what businesses do. But if solar/wind/geothermal can make them money too, they'll embrace them wholeheartedly, and they'll have the resources and motivation to catch up, if needed. I don't see us getting left behind in anything. This headline was misleading in what solar can actually provide, it was little more than a PR stunt. It'll be a long way off before truly green, sustainable energy is a reality. Placing current technology in large scale scenarios isn't likely to prove very useful, the tech still needs to mature.

Re:Economically impossible! Government is bad!

[Firethorn]

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.

...but they still have all the disadvantages

[Roger W Moore]

Things like "not risking dying from radiation sickness"

For this to be true you also need all your neighbours to stop using nuclear power and unfortunately Germany is right next door to France which has a huge nuclear power generation capacity. Remember how far the radioactive fallout cloud from Chernobyl went? The result is that Germany now still faces all the disadvantages of nuclear power without receiving any of the advantages.

Re:...but they still have all the disadvantages

[durrr]

You're not going to die from radiation sickness unless you try. In any disaster not being global thermonuclear war you're going to be able to walk away from the radioactive materials.

Re:bad headline - most of Germany's power not elec

[LordLimecat]

Their price of electricity is $0.36/kWh, which is absurdly high by US standards. Theyre like one of the top 10 most expensive places for electricity, according to this.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the

[alexander_686]

For nuclear plants, the fuel is the cheap part. An Germany can buy fuel from a wide variety of sources. If it dislikes the ethics or warmongering of one supplier of uranium to can go to another. It does not have that option for natural gas – they must buy the bulk from Russia.

Numbers don't look right

[Firethorn]

Every licensed installer in my state charges 6-10x the wholesale panel price and will only do a fixed bid install that is about 4x the T+M labor cost.

Citation? Which state? My Anecdote: I walked into the solar place in my town and the first thing they proposed when I laid out my situation was that I do the install myself. About the only labor I couldn't do myself would be the final hookup. They'd provide the plans and instructions.

I'm not seeing any requirements to use a licensed installer here. It might be a state/city requirement.

In effect I can put up the 100 or so pannels to meet my current needs for 30k including skilled labor yet the cheapest installer it looking for 100+ with the government programs taking it back down to 80 meaning they are making 70+k on whats quoted as a 2 day job with a 5 man crew.

100 panels? How much electricity do you use? 25 would cover the average household in the USA(10,837 kWh/year, each panel producing 437 kWh/year, even in the middle of the country). Standard panels today are 250-300 watts each. Even the cheapest pallet of 20 300 watt modules will run you $5,270, or $26,350 in panels alone, without racking or inverters(~$4.5k). Checking other online sites shows similar pricing.

As such, wanting it done for $30k means the workers would be doing it for free. The $70k worth of 'labor' does seem inappropriate.

Sensible choice on part of the Germans

[golodh]

As always there are other considerations apart from purely economical ones. In Germany they are given weight while in the US their weight is often set at zero until there is a crisis.

There's a big difference between the US and Germany: the US has an awful lot of territory, so it can afford to waste and pollute large tracts of it (which it still does on a regular basis), yet have sufficient clean land for other purposes. Germany is a lot smaller and more densely populated, and it has to exercise a lot more caution with its environment than the US

Besides which, Europe as a whole seems to import 33% of its oil and 48% of its gas from Russia. Now consider that Russia seems to be sponsoring environmental groups in Europe that oppose fracking. Why would that be, you think?

Given Russia's showdown with the Ukraina (annexing the Crimea and turning the screws on by jacking up the price of natural gas) and Putin's determination to err ... restore Russia's political clout and former "glory", wouldn't you do your level best to try and worm your way out of energy dependence on Russia? The Germans seem to be doing exactly that.

In other news ... China is busily overtaking the US as largest economy, and it has no oil, no gas, but loads of coal. It's also the world's manufacturing hub. And then there's India growing steadily. Population growth in Asia is still massive (in absolute terms) and its prosperity is steadily rising. With that inevitably comes an increased energy footprint.

I believe than in the coming 10-20 years energy prices will be determined by what happens in Asia, not in the US or Europe. And the only way I see oil prices go in that period is up. Way up. Solar seems to be a pretty solid investment from that point of view.

So on balance I'd say that Germany's investment in solar energy is not a stupid move and should probably continue.