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Germany Sets New National Record With 85 Percent of Its Electricity Sourced From Renewables (digitaltrends.com)
Germany was able to set a new national record for the last weekend of April with 85 percent of all electricity consumed in the country being produced from renewables -- wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power. Digital Trends reports: Aided by a seasonal combination of windy but sunny weather, during that weekend the majority of Germany's coal-fired power stations weren't even operating, while nuclear power stations (which the country plans to phase out by the year 2022) were massively reduced in output. To be clear, this is impressive even by Germany's progressive standards. By comparison, in March just over 40 percent of all electricity consumed in the country came from renewable sources. However, while the end-of-April weekend was an aberration, the hope is that it won't be for too much longer. According to Patrick Graichen of the country's sustainability-focused Agora Energiewende Initiative, German renewable energy percentages in the mid-80s should be "completely normal" by the year 2030.
10 or maybe even more years ago, Germany government was funding renewable energy production to get it to a mass production level, since a couple of years they are funding energy storage.
Anyone want to complain how it's not working ?
New things are always on the horizon
10 or probably even more years ago the German government started funding renewable energy production to get it to mass production level, these days they are funding energy storage.
Anyone want to discuss how their plans are not working ?
New things are always on the horizon
Germany is so sustainable, that they may turn you into fertilizer when you freeze to death with some of the most expensive electric bills in the industrialized world (about 35 cents/kWh, Denmark costs even more).
The 200-foot high Matilija Dam (left, photo courtesy of Matilija Coalition), has completely filled in with sediment in only thirty years. It has been decommissioned and the process of removing the dam and restoring the river has begun.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Much as I dislike Bannon, I do think that's a bit of an over-reaction
They are not. Are they suggesting that we can make a new sun? It is misleading to call is something it is not.
Sadly all this is despite the German governments best efforts. For a few years recently they really tried to limit the growth of renewables. At least when it comes to small and medium network-connected installations. For small installations the credits got rather abruptly reduced. Slightly bigger Installations (>10kw) now have to pay VAT on the power they generate and use themselves. The overall amount of installed renewables got Hard-limited (I assume new installations wont get approved once its reached).
The way the credit system for the renewables works also causes really high electricity costs for private households and small businesses. Basially the cheaper electrical power on the spot market gets the more expensive the electricity gets. This is made worse by market effects cause baseline power plants to run for power export purposes. Running the plants causes the price of power on the national spot market to go actually negative but the power is then actually sold at a profit to neighboring countries.
What makes the prices even higher is the fact that big users of electricity get an exception from paying into the renewable credit scheme. In fact the more power you use the easier this is to get.
The increasing cost is used by the Government to sell the reduction in credits and the limiting of renewable installations to the voters.
Anway wikipedia has the bare facts if you want to read it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I really think that germany now needs a energy storage promotion law but it seems like the current government won't really do anything in that direction. Instead there is talk of really stupid "smart" grid schemes backed by smart meters.
"To be clear, this is impressive even by Germany's progressive standards."
No it isn't. It just shows their ongoing idiocy re: nuclear power. They could've reduced carbon (and other) emissions to zero by now if they'd increased nuclear output.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
... and this proves it too.
Fission is not cost effective and only works with massive amounts of taxpayers money. And the only real effect it has is putting power in to the hands of few to the disadvantage of many.
The world as such should decommision Fission ASAP, just like Germany is doing. The next Tchernobyl/Fukushima Fuckup is bound to happen, so we might aswell slim down our chances of that happening ASAP.
My 2 eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
And in the balance of trade, the Euros are in Germany's favour, since they produce more at peak time and therefore peak price, and buy at low demand, hence low prices.
Germany used X GWh that month. They produced 0.85X GWh from renewables.
What difference does it make, in a free market, where they sold the GWhs?
So in the weekend on the perfect day when solar and wind are at max we are covering 85% of residential consumption.
In the European Union household electric energy consumption is about 30% rest being the industry and services. Considering Germany industrial sector it will be safe to say the domestic energy consumption will be around 20% of total electric energy consumption.
So in a perfect weekend Germany was able to provide less than one fifth of electricity consumption during the week.
To cover the industry renewable capacity will need to increase at least five times to work in perfect conditions. Considering the fact the best spots for solar and wind have been already used (unless they were stupid to chose the worst locations in the first place) we are going to start the law of diminished returns.
Just adding that EU goal of being totally green and use only renewable resources is made partially by relocating production to China with their record of being "clean" I see a long way to go to reduce CO2.
If (when?) the electric cars take off, I guess the charging stations will be available also at the parking lots. If (when?) cars will become automated, they should be able to find charging stations on their own at the middle of the day, when sun is the brightest and traffic is minimal.
Germany used X GWh that month. They produced 0.85X GWh from renewables.
No they didn't. They touched 85% for an instant when the wind kicked up on a Sunday morning before people got up and increased consumption.
It wasn't 85% for the month as you imply, and it wasn't even 85% for the weekend as the headline implies.
> Instead they are installing solar panels in the world's second cloudiest location (the Bering Sea is first). Forget the clouds and just look at the geographic latitude. Germany is closer to the arctic circle than to the nearest tropic.
For one place it might be the abundance of solar. For others the abundance of mountains. Others their tidal shores, or wind.
The USA being vast gives them absolutely the ability to connect the entire continent and use wind solely and alone, since there will never be a USA that suffers enough loss of all wind resource as to fail to supply demand that is in any way sourced as appropriately supplied as any sane grid would do.
Insane grid paucity is how California got bilked. And that was with fossil fuels. Nothing stops the power company fucking things up deliberately to generate better profits in the USA because any such regulation would never get past the propaganda against it.
Of all the things to worry about, this is the least worrisome. Birds that learn to avoid the deadly white spinning things will survive. The rest will die. In the future, all birds will know to avoid the deadly white spinning things.
Oh and power lines do the exact same thing. They've been frying critters since the 1880's.
Turns out Germany uses a shit-ton of carbon based energy sources:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/ho...
Call me when renewables make a dent in their existing carbon based energy sources.
Before anyone accuses me of working for the carbon-based energy folks - I have a Model 3 on order - but I have no illusions as to what will be generating the electricity that I will use to charge it. In my area it's mostly Nuclear and Coal.
I expect more critical thought from Slashdot readers.
Only about 70% of migratory birds are surviving one annual migration at the moment. The mass extinction of birds is currently on the way. Loosing large birds gliding magnificently above a town is the same loss as loosing the trees, bees, rivers, etc.
Limiting power consumption via LED lamps, lighter vehicles, smaller heated (air-conditioned) areas in houses by smarter architecture, etc. could produce more than enough electricity for decades without making this wonderful planet ugly.
Hey look, with ToD the peak rates are considerably more, but look at how much less your off-peak rates -- savings!
Whatever your current usage pattern, it ends up costing more than what you are doing now. Only after insane time shifting do you even break even. When it was offered to me, ToD was a scheme to raise my rates.
But that's the point of these schemes -- to raise revenue.
Thanks to the E.U., the rest of Europe slips further into the stone age.
Only about 70% of migratory birds are surviving one annual migration at the moment.
In 2003, wind turbines killed 33,000 birds a year. Glass windows killed 97 million.
The mass extinction of birds is currently on the way.
Due to habitat loss. Wind turbines don't even register on the scale.
Loosing large birds gliding magnificently above a town is the same loss as loosing the trees, bees, rivers, etc.
That's "Losing". To your point: trees are necessary for temperature control and erosion resistance. Bees are necessary to pollinate fruit trees. Rivers power dams and harbors fish. Large birds... they eat small animals, just like foxes, cats, snakes, wolves and bears. They're not necessary.
Limiting power consumption via LED lamps,
CFL's, which people already use, are almost as efficient (8-12% vs. 8-15%). Lighting is only 7% of electric usage anyways.
lighter vehicles,
99.85% of cars don't even use electricity.
smaller heated (air-conditioned) areas in houses
Heating is usually natural gas. But even if you include it, residential heating plus air conditioning only accounts for 6% of all energy use.
...could produce more than enough electricity for decades
Yeah no. Not when the world population is set to reach 8 billion by 2025 (a 14% growth).
Here is the quote from the scientific source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... "Worldwide, such facilities have been responsible for the deaths of 140,000 to 328,000 birds and 500,000 to 1.6 million bats, raising questions about their effects on population sustainability."
Sure cats and windows kill times more, and this problem is being addressed too. But wind turbines kill large valuable rare birds. This is the issue. Again the quote from the same article of 2016: "Eagles tend to use that habitat around the turbines. It's windy there, so they can save energy and soar,..."
As for the CFL lamps, - they contain toxic mercury. They are not on sale anymore, it is LED lamps nowadays.
It's easy not to need AC when the summer averages 22C (73F). NY summer average is slightly higher, without the open air to allow cooling breezes. Most of the US has much higher temperatures in the summer. Kansas averages 32C (90F) and usually has a high humidity too.
Coal's making a resurgence, so this is just a temporary thing. [/s]
Contrary to popular belief, fission is renewable too. Just wait 2 billion years or so until the Sun explodes and scatters the heavyish byproducts out into the void where they will eventually collect into a dust cloud, light up as a new a star, and get reprocessed back into Uranium. One more explosion to form an earth type planet complete with whales, and there ya go, fresh new fission fuel, go ahead and dig it up.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Highly unlikely this is true. It is possible that for a split second during national holiday in the middle of low power demand they have touched whatever article claims.
"Eagles tend to use that habitat around the turbines. It's windy there, so they can save energy and soar,..."
That quote of yours does not make any sense.
Wind turbines are either at sea: there is nothing any eagle wants, unless it is a fish eagle, but for that the turbines are usually to far out, or they are placed on farmer fields: nothing lives there that is hunted by eagles.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
When you see a soaring eagle it is flying usually not for hunting but for manifesting itself for different reasons, - finding a mating partner, guarding its space, etc. At least I was told so at a training course by a professional ornithologist.
And an eagle is not the only big protected bird, there are other endangered species.
And none of those big bird is flying anywhere close to a modern windmill, they have no reason for that ...
If you would complain about crows or other birds living in human farmland, you had a point.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No, this is a silly example of American exceptionalism.
The absolute figures are irrelevant: only the densities matter. If you think otherwise, then divide up the country into Germany size chunks, solve those and you'll find it's solved for the whole country.
Now about population density, it varies in the US. Sure in the middle of Montanna, you've got 1 person and 3 cows per square parsec, but in big cities, the population is way way higher than even rural areas of Europe with much higher internet speeds.
There's no excuse for the cities to be crap.
Likewise, Mr North Dakota Survivalist's hut off the grid is never going to get grid electricity all the way from El Paso, but so what? How much solar could you get from (say) the land within 100 miles of the Dallas city limits relative to the energy use of Dallas.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
More realistic numbers from Wikipedia:
1300 raptors are killed annually, among them 70 golden eagles
Not tiny numbers, but nothing like what you're suggesting.
The small turbines used at Altamont are dangerous to various raptors... As of 2010, a settlement has been reached... Nearly half of the smaller turbines will be replaced by newer, more bird-friendly models.
And the problem doesn't even apply to new turbines we're building now.
However, while the end-of-April weekend was an aberration, the hope is that it won't be for too much longer. According to Patrick Graichen of the country's sustainability-focused Agora Energiewende Initiative, German renewable energy percentages in the mid-80s should be "completely normal" by the year 2030.
This weekend is at the intersection "not hot enough to run air conditioning" and "not cold enough to run heat" (both of which are largely electric in Germany, I believe), and being on the weekend countless offices and businesses were closed, driving demand way down.
This interesting report will be the year-long daily percentage of Germany's power needs that are supplied by local (generated within Germany's borders, not imported). Once renewables are able to provide, consistently, every day for 12 months, a minimum of 50% of Germany's power needs, this is nothing more than a mildly interesting milestone.
In 13 years it is hoped this self-described 'aberration' will become the norm, which makes this story premature, and as I often say, "Premature is rarely a good thing!"
Ken
The actual word "nazi" didn't appear so the ruling is that the thread can continue.
This is an inspiration! Meanwhile, in other news: "A news report says Japan's tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant was so unprepared for the disaster that workers had to bring protective gear and instruction manuals from elsewhere and borrow equipment from a contractor. The report, released by operator Tokyo Electric Company, is based on interviews of workers and plant data. It portrays chaos in a desperate and ultimately unsuccessful battle to protect the Fukushima plant from meltdown, and shows that workers struggled with unfamiliar equipment." "Scientists have found traces of radioactivity in fish off the California coast that migrated from the waters off of Japan, site of the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster of 2011, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The researchers say the evidence is unequivocal. The young tuna were found to be contaminated with two radioactive forms of the element cesium from Fukushima." http://content.usatoday.com/co... "Japanese whalers caught 2 animals along the northern coast that had traces of radiation from leaks at a damaged nuclear power plant, officials said. 2 of 17 minke whales caught off the Pacific coast of Hokkaido showed traces of radioactive cesium, both about 1/20th of the legal limit, fisheries officials said. They are the first whales thought to have been affected by radiation leaked from the Fukushima nuclear plant since it was hit by a 3/11/11 earthquake and tsunami."