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.

Comments

Not bad

[Lennie]

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 ?

Re:Not bad

[AHuxley]

Germany imports its power. Germany likes to tell the world it does not import other nations "nuclear" power.
Lots of energy imports but not from other nations nuclear producers. Other nations nuclear power is consumed as produced in their own nations.
A lot of energy is also passed around the EU too. So that all changes depending on the count and destination nation and how the media presents the energy use.
Germany also needs to ensure its PV capacity keeps growing. When the sun is out and the wind is blowing its really positive news.
Then the pride in no nuclear. All that good PR covers for electrical imports.

Re:Not bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany indeed imports power. But it also exports power. A lot. Actually a lot more than it imports. In 2016 it exporte 55,5 TWh more than it imported.

Source: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/153533/umfrage/stromimportsaldo-von-deutschland-seit-1990/

Re:Not bad

[AmiMoJo]

Germany is not nearly finished with its transition. It is expected to be nuclear free by around 2023. This news is just showing that they are well on their way to that goal, with another 5 years to go before we can really judge the outcome.

If you go back 5 or 10 years on Slashdot you can see hoards of idiots claiming that Germany can't do this and will become a third world country with intermittent power and will massively increase coal dependence and is headed for the stone age. Some predicted that only the super rich will be able to afford electricity. Well, none of that has happened and they have already reached a point well beyond what many thought was even possible, and are continuing to make progress towards their goal.

Re:Not bad

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ?

You can't have what Germany has without the heavy hand of government.
Something that is anathema to you american rednecks and hillbillies.
Especially to those in both chambers of Congress.

Re:Not bad

[AHuxley]

AC try How Electricity Became a Luxury Good (Sept 04, 2013)
http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

Re:Not bad

[ShanghaiBill]

Anyone want to complain how it's not working ?

Sure, I will. Electric power in Germany is more than twice as expensive as it is in America. That is because the costs of all the subsidies are pushed onto the consumer in what is effectively a regressive tax. Maybe what they are doing has some long term benefits, but considering that more than half of every electric bill goes to subsidise the renewables and the politically driven nuke closures, by many criteria it is "not working".

So what are they getting at such an enormous cost? This "85%" figure is a statistical fluke. Most days Germany gets 45% of their electric generation from coal, and 26% from lignite or "brown coal", the world's filthiest fuel. Overall, Germany's electricity generation produces nearly as much CO2 per kw-hr as America. There was no good reason to shut down their nukes, as they were already running and already fueled. Nearly all the cost of a nuke is in the construction, and while building new nukes is economically questionable, it is silly to shut down a stable running plant. If those plants are kept in operation, they could offset nearly all the lignite. Instead they are installing solar panels in the world's second cloudiest location (the Bering Sea is first).

Re:Not bad

[Opportunist]

But it's the only way to get a discussion with an intelligent person!

Re:Not bad

[Tranzistors]

Germany is a net exporter and exports about 1/3rd of its energy production. [...] Germany is to big, to have 'no wind'.

Why is this discussion about imports and exports? Germany is in the EU common market. We might as well have discussed if Saarland is big enought to have wind.

Re:Not bad

[Opportunist]

...and me without modpoints...

Terse and to the point. This, and a million times this.

Re:Not bad

[ShanghaiBill]

Germany imports its power.

Yes and no. Germany exports peak power to other countries during the day. At night, Germany imports base load power from French nukes. The price is higher during the day, so even if Germany imports and exports the same amount of kw-hrs, they still make money.

Re:Not bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Or how about a real one.. They buy electricity from else where but don't count that since they sold renewable while it was in over supply. This really wouldn't work for all of the EU at once. Since then you really would need to store it. And even Germany requires spinning reserves.

Re:Not bad

[thegarbz]

Electric power in Germany is more than twice as expensive as it is in America.

Electric power in the entire world is twice as expensive as it is in America. Petrol and diesel even more so. Don't mistake what makes Germany unique for what actually makes America unique.

Re:Not bad

[jiriw]

Ah, so it will work here! We're located next to France ... in the Caribbean (Saint Martin) ;) . Nice to know.
And you guys have Quebec ... that seems almost French. Maybe it'll work out!

Re:Not bad

[Kiuas]

It is expected to be nuclear free by around 2023

I personally think this is their main problem. Right now the focus of all industrialized nations should be on ditching the use of fossil fuels as rapidly as possible. Nuclear power is an effective way of producing energy to cover up for what cannot be produced by renewables. Right now as they're adamant on ditching nuclear as well, their CO2 emissions are rising and they're unlikely to meet their emission goals, because increased demand has to be met with increased used of natural gas, which, while better than coal for sure, is not as good emissions wise as nuclear.

Now don't get me wrong, I think nuclear is not a permanent solution so the idea of going fully renewable is good. I just think their implementation and schedule is slightly foolish. If they kept some of the nuclear and used that to provide the rest of what they need, they wouldn't have to use natural gas, or import as much energy from abroad.

The main reason I stopped voting for the Green party here in Finland was their illogical opposition to the use of nuclear energy as part of a strategy to cut down on emissions. Because the 'green' crowd has absurd fears of nuclear due to radiation they end up favoring policies which in the short-to-mid term drive emissions up, all in the name of protecting the environment.

The challenges with storing nuclear waste are much easier to solve than the challenges we're going to amass by continuing to release CO2 in current amounts, which is why I don't favor adopting the German approach even though we do have the same goal in mind.

Re:Not bad

[thegarbz]

My point exactly. But if you want to compare the situation in Germany to the USA, they also on average use less than half the electricity per person, so that "high" cost of green energy isn't anywhere near as bad as Americans may think.

Re:Not bad

[AmiMoJo]

This is an example of the mistake I was trying to warn against making. Yes, in the short term their CO2 emissions are rising, but they are getting where they need to go very rapidly. It's a short term small rise for a long term huge gain.

As for nuclear, it's mostly about the cost. Rather than throwing more money at nuclear energy (it needs investment to keep going, with new plants and work to extend the life of old ones) they chose to invest that money in renewable generation and storage.

Rather than saying "we need nuclear because our transition to renewables/storage will be slow", they are saying "we don't need nuclear because our transition will be fast and make it unnecessary before anything new can even be built".

Re:Not bad

[Mashiki]

You know, electricity was cheap in Canada until they started pushing "green energy" too. Then it started going through the roof because everyone get's screwed over paying FiT's and rebates for the programs. Oh yes, just love the $0.188kWh, when it was 0.08kWh at peak. And now with the lying Liberal government here in Ontario, and their attempt to buy people off by taking a massive loan to give a short-term paydown, well electricity rates are going to go through the roof. Watch for the absolute shit-show that's going to happen, especially coupled with the carbon taxes being pushed. People are already at the "electricity or roof over head" stage.

What do people think is going to happen when prices go up 40% when all this is figured in and wages continue to remain stagnant. Hell over the last 10 years, the CoL in Ontario has gone up ~20% and wages have gone up by around 2-5%. The only place where wages have gone up more is in the public sector(around 10%).

Re:Not bad

[Mashiki]

Define "short term" because here in Ontario, we're at ~16 years and the costs just keep going up. It's completely screwed up the electricity system of Ontario as well. So much so that even the government that parroted it for over a decade is say well, we screwed up. You know why they're saying that? Because they're about to go from a majority to a non-party and are trying to salvage themselves.

Now the kicker is people use less electricity and the prices keep going up, just like how they claimed that "ToD" meters would make electricity cheap. And the costs of it kept going up. This whole idea of paying via FiT and green energy rebates doesn't work and only makes people poorer. Hell it drives businesses out, which means governments need to find new tax bases. So who are the first taxed? Shouldn't be hard for anyone to figure out, but if you need a hint, it's not businesses. And the Federal Liberal Party is pushing for this exact same garbage on Canada.

Re:Not bad

[Bongo]

I don't understand. What country like Germany can come to run on 90% renewables all year round?

I think there are desirable principles and beliefs, and there are practical outcomes, and I do not see how we are any closer to that goal.

I could get on a cycle generator and pedal away for 24 hours and cover 90% of my home energy use that day...and that proves nothing, as it is just a fluke.

And people talk about storage. Where is all this storage? Are we really better off investing in developing theoretical storage technologies rather than more up-to-date nuclear technologies?

I don't understand why people are so enamoured of wind and solar. They still ruin the landscape views.

And I say this as someone who would quite like it if all the city and street and home lights were turned off at night, and we could once again enjoy good starry skies and get some natural sleep in darkness.

You can make anything work for a short time. "Green" and "renewables" and "clean" are often just adjectives used to make the thing sound pretty. Where is the truly sustainable technology??

I cannot see how CO2 is the near-civilisation-ending threat but we continue having coal stations in order to try to have time to make renewables and storage work -- that is not someone who has any sense of urgency. Nuclear is the only option. Unfortunately, it just is.

Re:Not bad

[LynnwoodRooster]

They need to do a better job, then? Because once you adjust for purchasing power of different currencies, Germany has about the most expensive electricity in the world (save for a few small island nations). Yes, it's renewable - it also is twice that of their nuclear powered neighbor, France. So kudos, Germany - you've proved that you can occasionally spike high in "renewables" generation for only twice the price of a sane, nuclear power approach!

Re:Not bad

[ledow]

You can achieve almost anything if you're willing to throw enough money and people at it.

From the Great Pyramids to putting a man on the moon.

The question to ask is not "Did these people want something and do it?" but "Was what they wanted practical and sensible?"

They are entirely different questions.

I could run a country from AA batteries, if I'm allowed to tax everyone and use government money to do it, and people get behind the idea. Whether that's sensible or sustainable is another matter entirely.

Re:Not bad

[ls671]

Also in Quebec, it is 97% renewable electricity and Quebec is several times bigger than Germany in area. So they have been deserving a /. article for years I guess...

https://www.mern.gouv.qc.ca/en...

Re:Not bad

[thegarbz]

You know, electricity was cheap in Canada until they started pushing "green energy" too.

Electricity was cheap in Australia too before they started pushing green energy. Except green energy had nothing to do with the price. Along with green energy came major infrastructure investments and the decree that we should never again have power outages. The gold plating began.

Causation vs correlation. A lot has happened in the power generation and transmission business in the past 15 years all over the world.

What do people think is going to happen when prices go up 40% when all this is figured in and wages continue to remain stagnant.

They stop running the AC and Heater at the same time? Many other countries have coped just fine, except that where I live prices didn't go up 40% they went up 350%. We are also coping just fine and then were one of the few to avoid a major recession during the crisis. The Canadians are worse than the Americans when it comes to average electricity consumption. Fortunately you're marginally better in actual emissions but you have still a way to go before you start getting an emissions footprint as good as China.

Maybe it's time prices reflected what you do to the world and then you can start looking for alternatives.

Re:Not bad

[Viol8]

A typical hysterical reaction against nuclear. Anyone would think coal power stations don't emit radioactive particles. Also didn't anyone tell you that France next door has been producing almost half of its electricity through nuclear power for 50 years?

Re:Not bad

[TheRaven64]

Quebec is a fairly special case, because of the abundance of hydro. Quebec has, on average, 14.8 people per square kilometre, whereas Germany has 229.4. This gives Quebec a much larger area to devote to hydroelectric dams per person. They also have geography that is particularly well suited to hydro power.

Re:Not bad

[AmiMoJo]

The Green Energy Act came in 2009, 8 years ago. According to Wikipedia, it likely only have a very minimal effect on prices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

In fact, all available evidence suggests that only around 3% of the cost increase was due to "green" subsidies and FiT, the majority being other incidental costs and guaranteed payments to nuclear generators.

If you really care about getting energy costs down, you should demand nuclear plants have their guaranteed payment agreements cancelled (likely impossible) and support expansion of renewable energy as quickly as possible.

Re:Not bad

[bsolar]

Ontario's energy problems are not due to the overall idea of renewables being a mistake, they actually pre-date it...

But, wary of the previous cost overruns at Ontario Hydro, the government decided to outsource the work of building and running the new power plants to the private sector. The private sector would be responsible for cost overruns and other construction problems in exchange for 20-year contracts from the province. The contracts essentially guaranteed that the companies would receive a certain amount of revenue – no matter how much electricity their plants produced (though they would be paid more if the province used their electricity).

The first major wave of private power plants was fuelled with natural gas. Later plants were tied to the Green Energy Act, which provided lucrative terms for wind and solar plants in a bid to build a renewable-power industry in the province.

Ultimately, the province built more plants than it actually needed. In 2014, according to the Auditor-General, Ontario had the capacity to produce 30,203 megawatts of power – but only needed 15,959 on an average day. (Even on the busiest day of the year, the province only required 22,774 megawatts.)

So the province has a massive surplus of generating capacity, but because much of it is tied up in private, 20-year contracts, Ontarians have to pay for all that electricity – whether they need it or not.

And Ontarians are still paying for the nuclear plants Ontario Hydro built in the eighties and nineties. When Ontario Hydro was broken up, its debt was hived off into an item called the “stranded debt,” which is being paid down by electricity users.

Re:Not bad

[ImdatS]

Sure, I will. Electric power in Germany is more than twice as expensive as it is in America.

The thing is that we consume a lot less electricity in Germany. You know, houses are built such that you don't need much heating in winter (though, where I live it can get -20 Celsius in winter) and we don't use air conditioning (at least not in our homes). I have yet to find a single home in Germany that has air conditioning.

When I lived in NYC, the apartment needed constant air conditioning in summer. Since everybody is using air conditioning, the city heats up and you need even more air conditioning. It kind'a sucks (vicious cycle).

The old houses in Germany never needed air conditioning (some are centuries old) and the new houses have to built such that they never need air conditioning either...

Just one of many examples...

Re:Not bad

[ledow]

Agreed. I am trying to play devil's advocate too.

However, if we were to have taken the $110 billion (adjusted for today's money) that Apollo cost, and just put it into semiconductors and materials, would the US have gotten more out of it even if it couldn't have put a man up there. The fact we haven't been back for 50 years does tell you something about the practicality of doing that very thing that we knew even back then.

Similarly, if we took the money that's going into solar, put it into nuclear, and suffered the lost-jobs of even using entirely outside labour for doing such things, would Germany be better or worse off? I'm pretty sure the difference could easily be spent on fixing an awful lot of other "environmental crimes".

Re:Not bad

[Mashiki]

Quebec if you might have noticed from those links gets the majority of it's energy production from dun, dun, dun....hydro-electric. Because it's incredibly lucky to have the terrain to support it. Hydro-electric is also cheap in Ontario, solar, wind? Not. Especially not at 0.80kWh. But hydro-electric is also only renewable when you've got an upstream water source right.

Re:Not bad

[Mashiki]

Electricity was cheap in Australia too before they started pushing green energy. Except green energy had nothing to do with the price. Along with green energy came major infrastructure investments and the decree that we should never again have power outages. The gold plating began.

You click on those links? No? Go read them. Green energy is the exact cause of it being so expensive here in Ontario. $0.50kWh+ is what solar and wind are being paid, some are still being paid at $0.80kWh. If you're running solar/wind on a reserve? They pay you at $1.356kWh. So tell me again how that's not costing everyone money when nuclear is running $0.06kWh, and hydro-electric is running at $0.04kWh on the market. That's also not counting that you're paying the subsidies to install those with every single electric bill.

They stop running the AC and Heater at the same time? Many other countries have coped just fine, except that where I live prices didn't go up 40% they went up 350%.

You never looked at a thermostat huh? Well you can only run one at a time. Many other countries aren't nearly 10m SQ km are they. Many countries don't go from 30C summers to -45C winters in the same region.

The Canadians are worse than the Americans when it comes to average electricity consumption.

You can thank Liberal governments for that one. See back years ago, they started pushing that electric heat was a great idea.

Maybe it's time prices reflected what you do to the world and then you can start looking for alternatives.

Perhaps it's time that realize that some parts of the world have more then one season.

Re:Not bad

[bsolar]

From the link you provided:

Électricité de France (EDF) – the country's main electricity generation and distribution company – manages the country's nuclear power plants. EDF is substantially owned by the French government, with around 85% of EDF shares in government hands.

78.9% of Areva shares are owned by the French public sector company CEA and are therefore in public ownership.

EDF remains heavily in debt. Its profitability suffered during the recession which began in 2008. It made €3.9 billion in 2009, which fell to €1.02 billion in 2010, with provisions set aside amounting to €2.9 billion.

The Nuclear industry has been accused of significant cost overruns and failing to cover the total costs of operation, including waste management and decommissioning.

In 2016, the European Commission assessed that France's nuclear decommissioning liabilities were seriously underfunded, with only 23 billion euros of earmarked assets to cover 74.1 billion euros of expected decommissioning costs.

Re:Not bad

[necro81]

Most of the world does not pay 0.0688 EUR/kWh as green energy subsidy

And yet it doesn't seem to be hurting their standard of living, or their economy as a whole.

Re:Not bad

[bsolar]

They are going up because the bad deals are still in force and will be for a long time:

There is relatively little the government can do to lower rates through more lasting, structural means, mostly because the Liberals have tied up so much of the system in 20-year contracts.

To be clear, I don't question that the energy policy in Ontario has been a disaster, I question attributing the failure to "renewable don't work" when the issues in Ontario are broader in scope and didn't affect only renewables.

No energy policy is going to work well if you implement it with bad planning and through overpriced non-renegotiable bad deals to private companies, be it renewables, nuclear, coal or whatever.

Re:Not bad

[LSD-OBS]

If you knew what a "regressive tax" is, I expect you would not have isolated the word "regressive" from its context.

Irony++

I have no idea what renewable energy government subsidies exist in Germany, nor do I understand their impact on taxation, but the parent comment makes the clear assertion that there is a greater relative financial burden on poorer consumers & taxpayers than on the more wealthy.

Whether or not this is true, the concept itself is internally consistent and semantically accurate.

Re:Not bad

[Mr D from 63]

Germany is not nearly finished with its transition. It is expected to be nuclear free by around 2023. This news is just showing that they are well on their way to that goal, with another 5 years to go before we can really judge the outcome.

Actually, Germany is significantly slowing down expansion of solar and wind. At this point there are sill days when solar and wind struggle to provide 5% of demand. So they have a long way to go. The costs of adding new capacity are going up because of the major transmission infrastructure adjustments that will be required to achieve a higher capacity penetration from intermittent renewables. Prices will continue to rise. With nuclear shutdowns, CO2 emissions will rise as well for quite some time. Its a big challenge. Germany has invested huge amounts but their overall CO2 output hasn't really improved much.

Re:Not bad

[Ol Olsoc]

My point exactly. But if you want to compare the situation in Germany to the USA, they also on average use less than half the electricity per person, so that "high" cost of green energy isn't anywhere near as bad as Americans may think.

They seem to be on to something, this country that is the size of a state, and yet is the 4th largest economy in the world. Most interesting when viewed per capita.

And we all can cut our electrical consumption a lot without affecting our quality of life.

Re:Not bad

[I'm New Around Here]

Maybe because it is very wrong on some points.

Germany is not "the size of a single average US State". It is larger than all but four states, those four being Alaska, Texas, California, and Montana.

Germany's population of 82,000,000 is not "a tiny fraction" of the US' 330,000,000, it's about one quarter.

Re:Not bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because there was very little scandal in Solyndra unless you listen to the conservative echo chamber. Much of the money loaned to Solyndra was eventually returned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra

Solyndra was used by the echo chamber as an example of how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was a boondoggle, except the solar program part of it ended up returning a profit for the government in the and and the ARRA was in total a broad success. Conservative keep trying to use that canard as a reason to criticize Obama when there is ample evidence to the contrary if they actually cared to look it up. If they did honest research they would find the Republicans at the time did many things to sabotage that bill, cutting out the most stimulating portions of it creating the slow recovery situation we've been living in since the Great Recession. Yet all they can do is blame Obama or HRC or anybody but conservatives or republican actions and policies.

captcha: frauds :)

Re:Not bad

[thegarbz]

You know that Americans are definitely the greatest at one thing: Making excuses.

You should try paying the same as everyone else for electricity and petrol and we'll see if you sit around and make excuses or actually solve the underlying engineering problem of poorly insulated, poorly constructed housing, and cars that use more fuel just to start their engine than many overseas cars use to commute to work.

For the greatest country on earth you certainly seem to have a lot of unsolvable problems that the rest of the world has dealt with without issue.

Re:Not bad

[PopeRatzo]

You know, electricity was cheap in Canada until they started pushing "green energy" too.

Electricity's also gotten more expensive in places where they're not "pushing "green energy"".

Are you sure the price of electricity hasn't gone up due to Canadian hockey teams getting worse?

Re:Not bad

[angel'o'sphere]

I have no idea what renewable energy government subsidies exist in Germany
Close to none.
The money comes from the customers, the grid operators pay fixed feed in tariffs to wind and solar producers. And those are broken down on the over all energy price.

Re:Not bad

[Ol Olsoc]

Who says you pay just the same? It costs a little more than the median US average price, and a lot lower than nearly half the states. And therefore they use less, get just as much (they are, if anything, getting more: it's colder on average over all Germany than it is on average over all the USA, even including Alaska), and pay less overall.

There's no need to sign you up. You don't sign up to use less. You just use less. You sign up to get more out of what you DO use by insulating your home, avoiding wasteful use of power (the sun and wind dry clothes just fine), and not being a stupid fuck, basically.

Some folks just don't get it. As I have pointed out many times, my energy conservation tactics have resulted in a net profit for me. I use less electricity than I did 15 years ago, and my bill is only ten percent more than my neighbors, who are in town for only a few days a month - they are paying almost the same as me for a home in maintenance mode, while I even have a hot tub spa. and am home every day except when on vacation.

It's fine I suppose if a person wants a huge vehicle that gets 10 mpg or less, and is satisfied with paying a hellava lot of their hard earned money ot an oil company. I just don't have a lot of sympathy when they bitch about the obvious solutions.

Every year technology has made strides in energy generation and storage, and every year the inertia crowd's whinging has become more hollow. Coal will stay in the ground, and Oil will become feedstock. Even if we did go balls to the wall oil and coal, we'd just reduce the recoverable amounts to a level that would be too expensive and not enough supply and do it sooner. And as a last thought, I don't know if this will be decried as cultural appropriation, but damnit, never ever bet against the Germans in matters of technology.

Re:Not bad

[Ol Olsoc]

>And we all can cut our electrical consumption a lot without affecting our quality of life.

I am glad you have declared yourself overseer and know everything about everyone. Is the next step God?

Who's an overseer? And I only give counsel to Gawd. There's no force here. If you want to burn Tungsten instead of LED - or if you really want to go full bore, put arc lamps in your house - by all means do it. If you want to buy a diesel truck, and modify it so that you pump a shitload of fuel into it so you can roal coal at the smug muthafucks in their Prius, do it; and if you want to heat your house in Alaska with all the windows open all winter - hey, be my guest. just don't go whinging about it when you are broke.

freezing in the dark

[harvey the nerd]

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).

Re:freezing in the dark

[Sique]

Austria, whose electric energy generation is 70% based on renewables, has energy prices of about 20 ct/kWh. It's not the way Germany generates energy, it's about how Germany taxes energy.

Re:freezing in the dark

[dunkelfalke]

Whence did you get the strange idea that electrical heating is widely used over here? Moreover, Germany is not a very cold country and many houses are insulated quite well because upgrading insulation was sponsored by the government a while ago. The typical heating bill for a rented apartment (that's how the majority of Germans live) is about 700 EUR a year and quite a bit less than that if the house is insulated and it is paid as a part of the rent anyway.

Oh, by the way, just to rub it in your face: in the USA, the land of the free, where electricity is dirt cheap, on average 1500 people freeze to death every bloody year. In Germany 100 hypothermia deaths would be considered serious.

Re:freezing in the dark

[Opportunist]

You might want to add that Austria is pretty rich in hydroelectricity due to its rather mountainous landscape with lots of rivers that allow building hydro plants, along with a long standing tradition of using wood as a primary source for heating due to having extensive forests.

Austria and Iceland, and maybe Sweden, are countries that you should not use to compare energy generation and consumption. It's not that easy for everyone.

Re:freezing in the dark

[JaredOfEuropa]

Austria generates around 2/3rds of its electricity with hydro, by far the easiest and cheapest form of large-scale renewable power. Hydro power generation doesn't vary between day and night; daily weather conditions do not affect it (their plants do produce less in winter though). Also, at the moment, hydro is pretty much the only solution we have to the big problem that plagues any large deployment of other renewable power sources: energy storage. That means having a lot of hydro facilities affects the economics of your solar and wind farms too, in a big way. If you want to compare how countries are doing on renewables or how cheaply they are able to generate it, you do have to account for hydro capacity as it is a huge factor. My own country's capacity sadly is pretty much zero at the moment, though there are plans to dam and drain parts of the North Sea: not useful for generating energy, but it can be used to store it.

Re:freezing in the dark

[thegarbz]

Germany is so sustainable that they don't do stupid things like try and inefficiently heat houses with electricity. No one freezes to death, actually the houses are quite warm, well insulated and have very low running costs. While the cost of power is high the average consumption of a German house is half that of the USA.

By the way I am paying 0.24EUR / kWh which converts to 26c/kWh not the 35c/kWh you quote.

Congratulations, you're paying more for electricity than we are. Are you freezing to death?

hydro-electric

[phantomfive]

Hydroelectric isn't renewable. Sediment fills up the dams over time, and they are done. See for example:

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.

Re:hydro-electric

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

Hydroelectric isn't renewable. Sediment fills up the dams over time, and they are done. See for example:

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.

RTFA!

Scientific studies predict that without the reservoir, sediment deposits in the main channel upstream of the dam could be flushed out in as little as five years (CEA). The actual time is dependent on the future hydrologic events occurring in the Colorado River Basin.

But still it ,might not have been a good place for a dam, but you can't generalize this to all dams. The Lake Homs Dam was opened in 284 AD and is still running "Remarkably, the reservoir has suffered very little silting since" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... so when they eventually have to remove it to flush out the silt, I'm pretty sure it has paid for that and the reconstruction. What the average lifespan for a dam is, i have no idea.

Re:hydro-electric

[phantomfive]

That sounds to me like a problem that can be solved with good engineering and proper design, just like many of the other environmental problems. I have spent something like a minute thinking about it.......

Engineers have been thinking about the problem for decades and haven't solved it. What are the chances you solved it with little thought?

And if I, with no expert knowledge, can think of what may well be a plausible way to address the issue, how much more could a proper team of engineers come up with, if they tried?

See this and this.

Re:hydro-electric

[swillden]

That sounds to me like a problem that can be solved with good engineering and proper design, just like many of the other environmental problems. I have spent something like a minute thinking about it.......

Engineers have been thinking about the problem for decades and haven't solved it. What are the chances you solved it with little thought?

Try closer to a millenium... and they have solved it, in more or less exactly the way jandersen suggested.

Engineers have been aware of the [silting] problem for centuries. A dam built in Spain in 1394 is still operating because it was built with a gate at its base so sediment can be flushed out. Some modern dams, including the giant Three Gorges Dam in China, incorporate similar systems. But American engineers, while ingenious at storing and moving water, essentially ignored sediment.

Source: http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.6...

Re:Nuke the Nazis

[shilly]

Much as I dislike Bannon, I do think that's a bit of an over-reaction

Impressive...

[jez9999]

"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.

Re:Impressive...

[GuB-42]

Yeah, I wouldn't call a country shutting down nuclear power plants and building new coal plants "progressive".

If you look here : https://www.electricitymap.org... you'll see that most of the times, Germany is not that good. Right now it is at 414 gCO2/kWh, which is worse than the US (388) and 6 times worse than France (66). Ontario, Sweden and Norway are even better but they have the advantage of a high hydro capacity.
What all the good players have in common : nuclear power of course.

Re:Impressive...

[swillden]

Yeah, I wouldn't call a country shutting down nuclear power plants and building new coal plants "progressive".

If you look here : https://www.electricitymap.org... you'll see that most of the times, Germany is not that good. Right now it is at 414 gCO2/kWh, which is worse than the US (388) and 6 times worse than France (66). Ontario, Sweden and Norway are even better but they have the advantage of a high hydro capacity. What all the good players have in common : nuclear power of course.

And those numbers don't even take into account another element of Germany's anti-nuke idiocy: the focus on renewables has created very high electricity prices in Germany, which has contributed greatly to Germany lagging behind the rest of the rich world in adopting electric vehicles. Meanwhile, nuclear-powered France (with electricity prices half of Germany's) is the hottest market in Europe for EVs. EVs are sold in small enough numbers everywhere that they don't yet make a significant difference in carbon emissions, but the electrification of transport is still a very important issue now, because as the emissions of industry and electricity generation fall transportation threatens to become the primary emitter, and the conversion of millions of privately-owned vehicles is going to take a great deal of time. It's important to push the transition now.

Not bad but far from being good

[a_claudiu]

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.
 

Not really 85% of power used

[tomhath]

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.

Re:Not really 85% of power used

[Mr D from 63]

Energy systems are only as good as their performance in high demand situations. They must be designed to handle the demand profile and therefore looking at the 'easy' times doesn't reflect the entire picture. Let looks at some other numbers besides that typical "we hit a hit percentage on a spring Sunday when little power was being used" scenario;

Spot production; (other sources or imports not listed);
May 8 at 23:30 Solar 0%, Wind 2.1%, Conventional 92%
May 10 at 1500 Solar 0%, Wind 0.04% Conventional 92%
These are not outlier moments, these are typical daily occurrences.

Total Electrical Production January 2017;
Solar 2%, Wind 7.95%, Conventional 80%


That is a glimpse of what 300 billion Euro in wind and solar achieves from a system capability standpoint.

Re:Not really 85% of power used

[Mr D from 63]

Lets looks at some full day productions percentages (Twh) for Germany;

Jan 6 2017: Solar=2.2% Wind=7.0% Conv =75.2% T=1.61 Twh
Jan 8 2017: Solar=0.3% Wind=3.2% Conv=79.0% T=1.46 Twh
Feb 5 2017: Solar=3.5% Wind=8.9% Conv=71.8% T=1.41 Twh
Mar 7 2017: Solar=2.8% Wind=6.7% Conv=75.4% T=1.60 Twh
Apr 4 2017: Solar=8.7% Wind=2.9% Conv=71.3% T=1.51 Twh

As we can see there are still many days in Germany where wind and solar struggle to provide even 10% of demand, and at times during those days actual contribution is less. I hope these numbers don't surprise anybody. They are exactly what we should expect.

Re:Not really 85% of power used

[Lennie]

Almost looks like they able to handle the peaks by using renewables ?

Re:Not really 85% of power used

[angel'o'sphere]

Water power is about 1% of germanies power production. Biomass is not much higher.
That is actually easy to google.

In an EU wide market, actually spanning over into Mongolia and China, we don't need "backing up".
However most of the time it is cheaper to power up a local coal plant than to buy power from Russia or Mongolia.

I simply don't get what your crusade is about.

Germany over the course of a year produces roughly 30% of its total power via renewables.
That is a matter of fact.

Your ranting wont change it, and we will continue until we have 100% covered by renewables. And your ranting wont change that either. So what is your damn point in posting random days where the production of power by wind and solar was particular low?

Not fake news, but agenda news

[zerofoo]

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.

Re:Nuclear Fission is a distraction ...

[Trailer Trash]

... and this proves it too.

Fission is not cost effective and only works with massive amounts of taxpayers money.

Yeah, unlike solar and wind <eyeroll>

In case you missed it, Germans pay the highest amount for electricity in the world due to their solar/wind investments, which provide less than 10% of their power. They make up for it by burning the world's dirtiest coal. I know, doesn't fit the narrative...