What do you want to prove with one single month in a random year?
Sorry I missed this question. I didn't pick a single month in a random year. I picked the worst month with the most recent real data. Capacity calculations need to be based on bad conditions and not good conditions. A system that does not produce enough electricity in December, January and/or February is not good enough.
If you mean this document (learn to do links) then you are way off. Look at page 10. In January 2013 Germany produced about 0.0.35TWHs of solar electricity. Look at page 14. Do you see anywhere that the yellow region (solar based generation) even approaches 60%? It does not even happen in June. Look how small the sliver is in January. Look on page 6. Add the numbers up and you get solar power accounting for 6.3% of German power Production. Look at page 69. Do you see the yellow covering 60% of that graph? It would have to do that if 60% was produced by solar. Look at page 85. Total electricity production in January was 40.2TWh. Solar production was 3.2 TWh. Solar production was 8% of total production in January 2013. If you are looking at different numbers please cite the page numbers.
Obviously that month had no 5h sunlight, get over it.
I mean 5 hours of sunlight per day. This is a low estimate to calculate capacity vs actual production.
Poor people might buy only a few kilowatt-hours every day for their cooking, cleaning, short showers, and minimal heating, while wealthy people would splurge a little more.
What happens when minimal use plus keeping the room temperature over 50F is still not affordable?
How about the document I linked. Look at page 9. January production was 0.8TWh. June production was 4.8TWh. Therefore January production was 17% of June production. Those are real life figures.
It is too cheap at times. When everything is going well there is a lot of wind energy available. The problem is that when winds ate too high or too low it is very difficult to compensate for. The conventinal plants needed to back up renewable are not viable because they are used only when needed yet still have all the fixed maintenance costs. We don't have an electricity generation problem we have an electricity storage and distribution problem.
You really need to look at actual facts. Here is an example from Germany. Brown Coal 38-53 Eur/MWh, onshore wind 45-107 EUR/MWh. Wind can cost as much as 2.8 time that of brown coal.
For example, what if I want to examine footage from the time when a cop is alleged to have used excessive force when apprehending a suspect?
Then you request the specific video for that specific instance and the person involved gets to say whether you get it or not. That is far different from requesting all video from all cameras all the time.
Given the levels of regulatory capture we've been seeing, that's not an option that bodes well.
it also does not bode well to have every interaction with police available on the web.
I find it interesting that you see everyone in authority as bad but consider every civilian to be good. There are some civilians who will use these videos to do very bad things.
Hydro electric is very different from pumped storage. The reason hydro electric works is that the lift is created by placing a dam on the river and huge amounts of water go through the turbines. The large volume of water makes up for the relatively small height.
Also hydro-electric has a big environmental impact. Every new dam means another dead valley. Has anyone looked into how many more valleys are even viable as hydro-electric sites?
Here is a fact that supports my claim. Germany and Denmark are going hard on renewables. Right now they have the highest electricity costs even though they are still reliant on fossil fuel electricity production. Every renewable production method costs much more than fossil fuel. It is simple math to realize that electricity costs will only go up if more renewables are used.
The second point is from the fact that many people seem to think that temporarily shutting down high electricity demand industries is a good idea. I see it as playing with the economy. Would you buy from a business when the delivery date may or may not be met depending on the weather?
Like most article, this article concentrates on good days when the sun is out and high in the sky and the wind is blowing at a good rate. It does not look at winter when the sun is low on the horizon shining through thick clouds and the wind is blowing to hard for the turbines. During good days one will get much more electricity than needed. On bad days you still may not get enough. The problem is that producing too much can damage the grid.
They even want to use a very suspect method of dealing with low power.
The plan for the future is to have the vehicles return electricity to the grid in case of power shortages.
That would require cars to be plugged in all the time and also require the vehicle owners to be OK with not using their cars if the grid needs them.
Then there is the final question that a small installation like this does not "prove". Will is scale?
So PV more expensive to maintain than thermal or hydro power stations?
I never said PV was more expensive to maintain. I was just countering your argument that, once installed, PV electricity was free.
when a thermal station goes down, that's a whole lot of adjustment the whole grid has to make. A PV cell or panel?
I don't see how this is related to your first statement. I was talking about the fact that there is a fixed cost to maintain solar panel installations.
Pumped water storage will hold gigawatt hours easily,
These require significant height differences between the reservoirs and huge amounts of water. Denmark is a bit flat, but it's also not far from Norway.
Craggy mountains that freez in the winter do not make good places for water reservoirs.
On a timescale of days you have some warning from the weather forecast, so you can shut down some industrial processes
That would cause issues with delivery schedules making your products less desirable on the market and cause big issues in the economy.
and you can spin up cheap gas plants.
Which would have to be maintained even when not in use adding to the overall cost of electricity.
The problem is with the low temperatures and/or high pressures needed to pump enough hydrogen to transport the required energy. The technology for moving large quantities of hydrogen around is not simple.
The think you both miss is that on January the sun is much lower on the horizon causing solar panels to produce much less electricity. From these real like German numbers solar panels produced 0.8TWh in January and 4.9TWh in June. The production capacity in January was only 16% of June.
Replacing all roofs is not that great as north facing roofs would only get indirect sunlight and east/west facing roofs would only be viable half the day. Then there are the roofs that are in the shade of other buildings or trees. Just because light is hitting a solar panel does not mean that it producing anywhere near capacity.
Also, do you have any idea the cost of that many PVs?
So for winter we need more wind and thermal gradient power and in summer we need more solar power. We also need extra power for when storms come through and overspeed some of the wind based generators. We end up with necessary capacity being many time that actual energy produced. All this using technology that is much more expensive to install. That make for some very expensive electricity. Possibly much higher than the economy can handle.
They will complain if the HVAC is off for an extended time or their car in not charged enough to get to work and back. We are not talking about shortages that last a few minutes at a time but maybe a few hours or a few days.
Take a look at real figures from Germany. They have an installed solar capacity of 38.124 GW. In January 2014 they produced about 800GWh of electricity. With even 5 hours of sunlight they should have produced 5.8TWh. That means that the actual production is only 14% of installed capacity. Daylight does not mean full output.
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What do you want to prove with one single month in a random year?
Sorry I missed this question. I didn't pick a single month in a random year. I picked the worst month with the most recent real data. Capacity calculations need to be based on bad conditions and not good conditions. A system that does not produce enough electricity in December, January and/or February is not good enough.
If you mean this document (learn to do links) then you are way off. Look at page 10. In January 2013 Germany produced about 0.0.35TWHs of solar electricity. Look at page 14. Do you see anywhere that the yellow region (solar based generation) even approaches 60%? It does not even happen in June. Look how small the sliver is in January. Look on page 6. Add the numbers up and you get solar power accounting for 6.3% of German power Production. Look at page 69. Do you see the yellow covering 60% of that graph? It would have to do that if 60% was produced by solar. Look at page 85. Total electricity production in January was 40.2TWh. Solar production was 3.2 TWh. Solar production was 8% of total production in January 2013. If you are looking at different numbers please cite the page numbers.
Obviously that month had no 5h sunlight, get over it.
I mean 5 hours of sunlight per day. This is a low estimate to calculate capacity vs actual production.
So your solution is to create overcrowded slums so the people living there can afford heat. I do not believe that is a great solution.
So I request the footage and the cop says no. So much for oversight.
Cop can not say no as they are on duty.
Possibly because the cop intimidated him into refusing permission.
Possible but not probable. Anyone who is threatened by a cop would just go to the media and a shit storm would ensue.
Again, the bad uses of blanket release of video far outweigh the good.
Poor people might buy only a few kilowatt-hours every day for their cooking, cleaning, short showers, and minimal heating, while wealthy people would splurge a little more.
What happens when minimal use plus keeping the room temperature over 50F is still not affordable?
How about the document I linked. Look at page 9. January production was 0.8TWh. June production was 4.8TWh. Therefore January production was 17% of June production. Those are real life figures.
It is too cheap at times. When everything is going well there is a lot of wind energy available. The problem is that when winds ate too high or too low it is very difficult to compensate for. The conventinal plants needed to back up renewable are not viable because they are used only when needed yet still have all the fixed maintenance costs. We don't have an electricity generation problem we have an electricity storage and distribution problem.
You really need to look at actual facts. Here is an example from Germany. Brown Coal 38-53 Eur/MWh, onshore wind 45-107 EUR/MWh. Wind can cost as much as 2.8 time that of brown coal.
For example, what if I want to examine footage from the time when a cop is alleged to have used excessive force when apprehending a suspect?
Then you request the specific video for that specific instance and the person involved gets to say whether you get it or not. That is far different from requesting all video from all cameras all the time.
Given the levels of regulatory capture we've been seeing, that's not an option that bodes well.
it also does not bode well to have every interaction with police available on the web.
I find it interesting that you see everyone in authority as bad but consider every civilian to be good. There are some civilians who will use these videos to do very bad things.
Hydro electric is very different from pumped storage. The reason hydro electric works is that the lift is created by placing a dam on the river and huge amounts of water go through the turbines. The large volume of water makes up for the relatively small height.
Also hydro-electric has a big environmental impact. Every new dam means another dead valley. Has anyone looked into how many more valleys are even viable as hydro-electric sites?
Why would you shut it down?
Wind turbines have a maximum wind speed they can handle. Above that they are shut down to protect them.
Here is a fact that supports my claim. Germany and Denmark are going hard on renewables. Right now they have the highest electricity costs even though they are still reliant on fossil fuel electricity production. Every renewable production method costs much more than fossil fuel. It is simple math to realize that electricity costs will only go up if more renewables are used.
The second point is from the fact that many people seem to think that temporarily shutting down high electricity demand industries is a good idea. I see it as playing with the economy. Would you buy from a business when the delivery date may or may not be met depending on the weather?
That covers for a lot of lost capacity.
Each "edge" generator compensates for one not working. That is not a lot.
According to this Denmatk imported 5.2TWh of electricity in 2012. Care to cite anything showing net export?
Like most article, this article concentrates on good days when the sun is out and high in the sky and the wind is blowing at a good rate. It does not look at winter when the sun is low on the horizon shining through thick clouds and the wind is blowing to hard for the turbines. During good days one will get much more electricity than needed. On bad days you still may not get enough. The problem is that producing too much can damage the grid.
They even want to use a very suspect method of dealing with low power.
The plan for the future is to have the vehicles return electricity to the grid in case of power shortages.
That would require cars to be plugged in all the time and also require the vehicle owners to be OK with not using their cars if the grid needs them.
Then there is the final question that a small installation like this does not "prove". Will is scale?
So PV more expensive to maintain than thermal or hydro power stations?
I never said PV was more expensive to maintain. I was just countering your argument that, once installed, PV electricity was free.
when a thermal station goes down, that's a whole lot of adjustment the whole grid has to make. A PV cell or panel?
I don't see how this is related to your first statement. I was talking about the fact that there is a fixed cost to maintain solar panel installations.
Pumped water storage will hold gigawatt hours easily,
These require significant height differences between the reservoirs and huge amounts of water.
Denmark is a bit flat, but it's also not far from Norway.
Craggy mountains that freez in the winter do not make good places for water reservoirs.
On a timescale of days you have some warning from the weather forecast, so you can shut down some industrial processes
That would cause issues with delivery schedules making your products less desirable on the market and cause big issues in the economy.
and you can spin up cheap gas plants.
Which would have to be maintained even when not in use adding to the overall cost of electricity.
The problem is with the low temperatures and/or high pressures needed to pump enough hydrogen to transport the required energy. The technology for moving large quantities of hydrogen around is not simple.
You would need to pair a normal wind turbine with a high wind turbine to maintain power which means turbine power would cost twice as much.
The think you both miss is that on January the sun is much lower on the horizon causing solar panels to produce much less electricity. From these real like German numbers solar panels produced 0.8TWh in January and 4.9TWh in June. The production capacity in January was only 16% of June.
Replacing all roofs is not that great as north facing roofs would only get indirect sunlight and east/west facing roofs would only be viable half the day. Then there are the roofs that are in the shade of other buildings or trees. Just because light is hitting a solar panel does not mean that it producing anywhere near capacity.
Also, do you have any idea the cost of that many PVs?
So for winter we need more wind and thermal gradient power and in summer we need more solar power. We also need extra power for when storms come through and overspeed some of the wind based generators. We end up with necessary capacity being many time that actual energy produced. All this using technology that is much more expensive to install. That make for some very expensive electricity. Possibly much higher than the economy can handle.
You should read up on maintenance procedures for solar panel installations. One does not put up hundreds of panels and walk away.
They will complain if the HVAC is off for an extended time or their car in not charged enough to get to work and back. We are not talking about shortages that last a few minutes at a time but maybe a few hours or a few days.
Do you have any idea how low the energy density of hydrogen is? One would have to pump a lot of hydrogen under very high pressure to move much power.
Take a look at real figures from Germany. They have an installed solar capacity of 38.124 GW. In January 2014 they produced about 800GWh of electricity. With even 5 hours of sunlight they should have produced 5.8TWh. That means that the actual production is only 14% of installed capacity. Daylight does not mean full output.