Solar ... In the news

EricMears

spgsc531 wrote: »

I wonder at what point cardew will 'cease and desist'

I wonder at what point he will realise for all his constant whining and bleating, that actually the world is carrying on (and loling at him).

(i) Shortly after Hell freezes over ?
(ii) Soon after (i)


Almost tempted to switch off my ignore button and see what I've missed

Cardew

ed110220 wrote: »

Ok, so how would you prefer electricity to be generated without causing serious air and greenhouse gas pollution?

After all, if the indirect costs of fossil fuel burning were paid directly, it would make fossil fuel generation very expensive indeed.

'Solar is wonderful; fossil fuels are bad' is the same old cry; as well as 'look how much FIT money I get for saving the world' and 'I don't even have to feed anything back to the Grid for that subsidy I get!'

However Solar generated electricity is unavailable at night, and is unreliable during the day; and attracts large subsidies.

It doesn't contribute anything to the UK's generating capacity; we still need 'conventional' generating capacity to cope with the maximum load on the grid.

Of course there are problems with all forms of electricity Generation; albeit getting it from French nuclear power stations is as good as it gets! It is just that solar with its high costs and generating limitations has the most problems.

ed110220

Cardew wrote: »

'Solar is wonderful; fossil fuels are bad' is the same old cry; as well as 'look how much FIT money I get for saving the world' and 'I don't even have to feed anything back to the Grid for that subsidy I get!'

However Solar generated electricity is unavailable at night, and is unreliable during the day; and attracts large subsidies.

It doesn't contribute anything to the UK's generating capacity; we still need 'conventional' generating capacity to cope with the maximum load on the grid.

Of course there are problems with all forms of electricity Generation; albeit getting it from French nuclear power stations is as good as it gets! It is just that solar with its high costs and generating limitations has the most problems.

You still haven't said how you'd prefer electricity to be generated in a way that doesn't produce unacceptable pollution, apart from French nuclear (which also requires large subsidies and cannot be modulated, so it produces as much at 0400 as at 1800).

For what it's worth, 50% of world solar PV installation is expected to be in Asia-Pacific this year, mainly China (8GW). Think what you may of the Chinese government, but they are hardheaded people and no fools. If the Chinese government is saying yes to solar and Cardew is saying no, I know which way the wind is blowing.

Ed

spgsc531

EricMears wrote: »

(i) Shortly after Hell freezes over ?
(ii) Soon after (i)


Almost tempted to switch off my ignore button and see what I've missed

Nothing much, just the same whining and bleating cardew has always done

Cardew

A game two can play!

Grey Lady Paints a Grim Portrait of Green Germany




Germany’s green revolution—its energiewende—has been sputtering for some time, but the chorus of media voices decrying the ill-thought-out green policy is getting deafening. Der Spiegel lashed out at length at the renewable energy plan earlier this month, and last week the FT added its two cents on the ugly effects of propping up expensive renewables. By guaranteeing solar and wind energy producers minimum prices with feed-in tariffs, the German government has overseen an explosion in zero-carbon energy production. But the costs of this program—higher electricity prices—are being borne by German industry and German households. The situation has gotten so bad that even the New York Times is taking notice:


German families are being hit by rapidly increasing electricity rates, to the point where growing numbers of them can no longer afford to pay the bill. Businesses are more and more worried that their energy costs will put them at a disadvantage to competitors in nations with lower energy costs, and some energy-intensive industries have begun to shun the country because they fear steeper costs ahead.

Newly constructed offshore wind farms churn unconnected to an energy grid still in need of expansion. And despite all the costs, carbon emissions actually rose last year as reserve coal-burning plants were fired up to close gaps in energy supplies.

A new phrase, “energy poverty,” has entered the lexicon.

A German industry group is calling for a complete overhaul of the system after the conclusion of this month’s national elections. Addressing this green policy failure will be at or at least near the top of the agenda for the new German Chancellor. The energiewende has been held up by environmentalists around the world as a triumph and an example of what can be accomplished if politicians buy in to green thinking. But what’s happening in Germany should serve as a warning to leaders around the world: subsidize nascent technologies at your own peril.

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

A game two can play!

Quote:
Grey Lady Paints a Grim Portrait of Green Germany

Germany’s green revolution—its energiewende—has been sputtering for some time, but the chorus of media voices decrying the ill-thought-out green policy is getting deafening. Der Spiegel lashed out at length at the renewable energy plan earlier this month, and last week the FT added its two cents on the ugly effects of propping up expensive renewables.

Myth-busting Germany's energy transition

Major English-language media have been propagating a false narrative about the stunning success of Germany's transition to renewable energy: the Energiewende. To hear them tell it, the transition has been a massive failure, driving up power prices, putting Germany's grid at risk of blackouts, and inspiring a mass revolt against renewables.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The biggest offender is Der Spiegel, a German newsweekly that resolutely scrounges up every shred of support for its anti-renewable story, while touting fossil fuels and nuclear power as the only sensible paths forward.

Mart.

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

Of course there are problems with all forms of electricity Generation; albeit getting it from French nuclear power stations is as good as it gets! It is just that solar with its high costs and generating limitations has the most problems.

Glad you mentioned France, nice timing:

UK sidelined as French President calls for ‘Airbus’ approach for solar industry

France’s President Francois Hollande has called for an ‘Airbus’ style model of collaboration for the European solar industry.

On Tuesday, Hollande said collaboration with Germany in the energy sector would be a “beautiful alliance”.

"Germany has a head-start in renewables, but we have our vanguard in energy storage and power grids," he said.

Mart.

Cardew

This from Forbes no less!

Loads more on this link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/10/04/should-other-nations-follow-germanys-lead-on-promoting-solar-power/

Should Other Nations Follow Germany's Lead On Promoting Solar Power

Answer by Ryan Carlyle, BSChE, Subsea Hydraulics Engineer



Ryan Carlyle, BSChE, Subsea Hydraulics Engineer

The answer is the most forceful possible no.

Solar power itself is a good thing, but Germany’s pro-renewables policy has been a disaster. It has the absurd distinction of completing the trifecta of bad energy policy:
1.Bad for consumers
2.Bad for producers
3.Bad for the environment (yes, really; I’ll explain)

Pretty much the only people who benefit are affluent home-owners and solar panel installation companies. A rising tide of opposition and resentment is growing among the German press and public.

I was shocked to find out how useless, costly, and counter-productive their world-renowned energy policy has turned out. This is a serious problem for Germany, but an even greater problem for the rest of the world, who hope to follow in their footsteps. The first grand experiment in renewable energy is a catastrophe! The vast scale of the failure has only started to become clear over the past year or so. So I can forgive renewables advocates for not realizing it yet — but it’s time for the green movement to do a 180 on this.

Some awful statistics before I get into the details:
•Germany is widely considered the global leader in solar power, with over a third of the world’s nameplate (peak) solar power capacity. [1] Germany has over twice as much solar capacity per capita as sunny, subsidy-rich, high-energy-cost California. (That doesn’t sound bad, but keep going.)

•Germany’s residential electricity cost is about $0.34/kWh, one of the highest rates in the world. About $0.07/kWh goes directly to subsidizing renewables, which is actually higher than the wholesale electricity price in Europe. (This means they could simply buy zero-carbon power from France and Denmark for less than they spend to subsidize their own.) More than 300,000 households per year are seeing their electricity shut off because they cannot afford the bills. Many people are blaming high residential prices on business exemptions, but eliminating them would save households less than 1 euro per month on average. Billing rates are predicted by the government to rise another 40% by 2020. [2]



•Germany’s utilities and taxpayers are losing vast sums of money due to excessive feed-in tariffs and grid management problems. The environment minister says the cost will be one trillion euros (~$1.35 trillion) over the next two decades if the program is not radically scaled back. This doesn’t even include the hundreds of billions it has already cost to date. [3] Siemens, a major supplier of renewable energy equipment, estimated in 2011 that the direct lifetime cost of Energiewende through 2050 will be $4.5 trillion, which means it will cost about 2.5% of Germany’s GDP for 50 years straight. [4] That doesn’t include economic damage from high energy prices, which is difficult to quantify but appears to be significant.



•Here’s the truly dismaying part: the latest numbers show Germany’s carbon output and global warming impact are actually increasing [5] despite flat economic output and declining population, because of ill-planned “renewables first” market mechanisms. This regime is paradoxically forcing the growth of dirty coal power. Photovoltaic solar has a fundamental flaw for large-scale generation in the absence of electricity storage — it only works for about 5-10 hours a day. Electricity must be produced at the exact same time it’s used. [29] The more daytime summer solar capacity Germany builds, the more coal power they need for nights and winters as cleaner power sources are forced offline. [6] This happens because excessive daytime solar power production makes base-load nuclear plants impossible to operate, and makes load-following natural gas plants uneconomical to run.


Large-scale PV solar power is unmanageable without equally-large-scale grid storage, but even pumped-storage hydroelectricity facilities are being driven out of business by the severe grid fluctuations. They can’t run steadily enough to operate at a profit. [2,7] Coal is the only non-subsidized power source that doesn’t hemorrhage money now. [8] The result is that utilities must choose between coal, blackouts, or bankruptcy. Which means much more pollution.

So it sucks on pretty much every possible level. If you’re convinced by these facts, feel free to stop reading now and go on about your day. This is going to get long — I haven’t even explained the half of it yet. There are lots of inter-related issues here, and the more you get into them, the worse the picture gets.

Nice to have a balanced discussion on 'Solar in the news' instead of solar industry propaganda.

Cardew

A German perspective - from Der Spiegel

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-solar-subsidies-to-remain-high-with-consumers-paying-the-price-a-842595.html

Solar subsidies cost German consumers billions of dollars a year and are widely regarded as inefficient. Even environmentalists are concerned that Berlin's focus on solar comes at the detriment of other renewables. But the solar industry has a powerful lobby, and politicians have proven powerless to resist.
-
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Photovoltaics are threatening to become the costliest mistake in the history of German energy policy. Photovoltaic power plant operators and homeowners with solar panels on their rooftops are expected to pocket around €9 billion ($11.3 billion) this year, yet they contribute barely 4 percent of the country's power supply, and only erratically at that.
When night falls, all solar modules go offline in one fell swoop; in the winter, they barely generate power during the daytime. During the summer, meanwhile, they sometimes generate too much power around midday, without enough storage capacity to capture it all.

Now hasn't that been mention on MSE before?


The biggest culprit behind this increase is the German government's misguided subsidy policy. To the delight of the solar industry


Many environmentalists, too, believe solar subsidies need to be cut drastically -- for the sake of the environment. Despite the drop in the price of solar modules, solar power is still the least efficient of Germany's renewable energy technologies, yet it's the one that receives the most funding. Nearly 50 percent of all green energy subsides go to solar power, which yields only 20 percent of the energy generated by subsidized technology.



Other green energy technologies have the opposite economics. For the same amount of money, wind power produces about five times more energy than solar power. Hydropower generates six times more, and even biomass power plants are three times as effective as solar power.

This means photovoltaics' contribution to protecting the climate is correspondingly negligible, as calculations by Magdeburg-based environmental economist Joachim Weimann show.


To save one ton of CO2, Weimann explains, we could either spend €5 on insulating an old building, €20 as investment in a new gas-fired power plant, or around €500 on photovoltaic arrays. The benefit to the climate is the same in all those scenarios. "From a climate standpoint, every solar plant is a bad investment," Weimann concludes.

Cardew

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Myth-busting Germany's energy transition

.

No vested interests in that publication then;)