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Half of Germany's Power Supplied By Solar, Briefly

Posted by Unknown on from the now-imagine-if-solar-and-nuclear-worked-together dept.

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.

9 of 461 comments (clear)

  1. Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part. by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part. by BobNET · · Score: 5, Funny

      What does 22GW look like?

      About 18.2 De Loreans.

    2. Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "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.

    3. Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part. by alexander_686 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part. by Bertie · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    5. Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part. by Rei · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      "Close the door! What, were you born in a barn?" -- Police chief, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
  2. Most interesting part... by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Most interesting part... by silas_moeckel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      No sir I dont like it.
  3. What is a gigawatt per hour? by Solandri · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.