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Germany sets new solar-power record
- spenrose 14y agoTotal world energy consumption is about 16 Terawatts. The article reports Germany's solar production peaked at 22 Gigawatts. That's over 0.1% of humanity's use, from a single country covering a land area smaller than California. We have just begun to exploit solar PV power generation.
- eru 14y ago> [...] from a single country covering a land area smaller than California. To be more precise: From a single, cloudy and relatively cold country. California isn't really the right comparison.
- spenrose 14y agoApparently it was very sunny that day, and cool temps actually help PV efficiency IIRC.
- SagelyGuru 14y agoYes but we are still a month away from the longest day, so the chances are that this record will be broken again, soon.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoTo be even more precise: during a period of only a few hours during an extremely sunny day.
- adamt 14y agoWhat is the "GW per hour" referenced several times in the article? Do they just mean GW or do they mean Gigawatt Hours?
- chrisb 14y agoThey mean GW. Many news articles on this subject show irritating ignorance of energy/power and the correct use of units :( GW per hour would be the rate of change of power generation, which is obviously incorrect given the context :)
- uvdiv 14y agoThey mean gigawatts of power, at some specific time. Germany has about 24.8 GW [1] of installed solar capacity, which recently peaked about 22 GW of actual power. The time-average is about 2.1 GW as of last year [1] (as 18 TWh/year), because solar panels in Germany only yield about 10-12% of their capacity averaged over the day and year. [a] So this is about the same as a (one) large nuclear reactor in electricity generated, but not peak power. Incidentally it's cost about €100 billion [2] to build this, at taxpayer expense. (Though this a future-spending figure: the subsidies aren't paid at the time a power plant is built, but deferred over 20 years -- the present value is somewhat lower). The specific subsidy rates are listed here [3] (they're set by the year the plant is installed). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany [2] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inflated-incentive-environment-minister-retreats-on-solar-subsidies-a-811530.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inflated-incenti... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_incentives_for_photovoltaics#Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_incentives_for_photov... [a] Note that the installed capacity increased a lot over 2011, so you can't do simple comparisons like dividing 2.1/24.8 -- a lot of the capacity wasn't installed at the beginning of the year, and was at the end. But see the example capacity factors in the power plant table in [1]
- blubbar 14y ago>€100 billion [2] to build this, at taxpayer expense. At energy consumers expense to be precise. 100 billion € sound scary, but it's just adds another 8,2% to the incredibly expensive German electricity bill. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strompreis https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strompreis
- ScottBurson 14y agoI suppose they could correctly say "GWh per hour", but it's simpler to just say "GW".
- Eduard 14y agoAt night, Germany's solar power equals 0 nuclear plants.
- ThomPete 14y agoActually at night it equals 10 :)
- spenrose 14y agoThat's true. Fortunately: (1) it's always sunny somewhere (2) we are increasing our ability to store power (3) industrialized countries use less power at night.
- skylan_q 14y agoHis point is that if one depends too heavily on solar, there are times when they'll have no access to power. How does one transport solar power from Japan to Germany?
- spenrose 14y agoYou don't. Instead you add wind and storage and quick-cycling natural gas.
- DrCatbox 14y agoYou put mirrors in space. But seriously, solar power generation by huge space stations that beam the power down to earth, then use mirrors to feed it where it is needed.
- catch23 14y agoI think it's been shown that it's infeasible. You'd lose too much power in the beaming process, or you'd have a death ray beam that destroys anything that flies between it... you could increase the area, but then you'd need a collector dish the size of montana. The best idea might be something like in the movie Moon where the power is stored chemically, then shipped back to earth.
- majmun 14y agoHow many energy was consumed building this thing? and in what time will this power plant produce same amount of energy?
- revelation 14y agoThat's a pointless metric. Not all energy is created equal, if you will.
- maebert 14y agoCan't tell you that, but here's an interesting article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparisons_of_life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparisons_of_life-cycle_green... Basically, Greenhouse gas emission including construction, material acquisition, maintenance etc. per kWh im g CO2: Solar: 32 Nuclear: 66 (which assumes that enrichment is done with conventional energy)\ Coal: 960
- morsch 14y agoThis page [0] discusses this question. It's in German but the Google translation is not bad. The energy required to produce both solar and wind energy has decreased significantly in recent years. Solar power in Germany (the page claims) takes between 15 - 100 months to generate as much energy as producing them takes. I assume 100 is for old panels, and with modern (=more efficiently produced) panels it's more like 15. Wind power takes just 3 - 23 months to establish this "energy payback". The page has more detailed figures and sources. [0] http://www.volker-quaschning.de/datserv/kev/index.php http://www.volker-quaschning.de/datserv/kev/index.php
- jws 14y agoAbout 1 to 2 years. Highly variable by technology. There is a persistent myth that solar panels take more energy to fabricate than they produce in their lifetime. It is shown false with minimal effort (consider if the entire cost of a panel was energy. no labor, not capital equipment overhead, no raw materials… they still have payback periods shorter than their lifetimes).
- vilda 14y ago
- nextparadigms 14y agoAlthough many of the Fukushima stories may have been sensationalist I welcomed them. Because in a way nuclear energy generation is also a status quo industry and an idea, although less so than coal. But we needed something to nudge people into wanting solar power, even over nuclear. The more demand there is for it, the more research will be made for it, and new ways will be found to make solar more efficient and cheaper. We already hear about such new discoveries every few months now. Imagine if many more countries and Government were committed to solar energy and would make the solar industry boom because of it. We're still very early in this, and the potential is enormous.
- DanBC 14y agoWhat's wrong with nuclear? Concentration on solar is great but has some sub-optimalities. Concentration on an energy industry that could also provide materials for a cold war arms race was clearly a bad idea. Why aren't people working on thorium reactors?
- lliiffee 14y agoInteresting. Are you saying that the technology for thorium reactors wouldn't be so closely related to weapons technology?
- jpk 14y agoIn fact, that's one of the advantages of thorium reactors and fuel cycles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#Advantages_as_a_nuclear_fuel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#Advantages_a...
- DanBC 14y agoThorium can't, as far as I know, be used for bombs. Unlike plutonium or uranium.
- SagelyGuru 14y agoAnd there you have the real answer why it is not used and why uranium/plutonium is. It has very little to do with the economics and safety of energy production.
- SagelyGuru 14y agoGermany also has a lot of installed wind power which works at nights too. Plus new re-pumping hydro plants, which can be used to store the surplus energy of such peak solar output. So, with such diversification, the nuclear plants really are not necessary. Plus with modern international energy trade, you get averaging benefits. I.e. when it is cloudy in your country, it may well be sunny in one of your neighbouring countries, so you can do instantaneous energy swaps like that, reducing the need for storage.
- ralfd 14y agoSadly the nuclear plants in Germany, which provide 20% of the electricity, can not be replaced by renewables but only by coal and gas power plants.
- SagelyGuru 14y agoWhy not? Does not this directly contradict your statement? > Germany became a world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its overall annual electricity from those sources.
- cygx 14y agoWhy not? Because there's too much fluctuation in solar output in Germany. What is needed to make renewable enery viable in Europe (mainly solar, wind, waves) are better energy storage mechanisms and integration of national grids.
- Eeko 14y ago1. Current renewable power sources need adjusting power (is that how it translates to English?) when it's not shining or windy. 2. Current distribution networks for electricity do not work well enough to transport large quantities of electricity for long distances. 3. Due to getting rid of nuclear, 90% of new electricity production built to Germany before 2020 will be from fossil fuels. (http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2012/05/germany_returns_to_coal.shtml http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2012/05/germany_returns_to_c...) That is what "the global leader" can achieve. And the fossil fuel plant's are not going to be closed any faster than nuclear plants. Those investments are for the next 60 years, and it's likely that there will be more if/when cleantech can't really deliver out all the things we need. And that's a pretty good result btw, truly a world champion -level achievement. Meanwhile, Japan's nuclear phaseout is done with 99,999478% in fossils. (The bloomberg links are down where they were calculated before, but should be googlable with "Japan's Use of Oil May Surge by 300000 Barrels a Day" & "Japan Will Use More Coal During Maintenance, Deutsche Bank Says". Yes, you can get rid of nuclear, but for all intents and purposes, it has always resulted with more dinosaur burning, not less. And that's pretty bad. Even with all flaws, nuclear is a lot cheaper economically and environmentally as an insurance option than what Germany and most global economies are currently pursuing.
- sasvari 14y agoGermany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone. Despite the discussions in Germany about the high costs of PV for consumers, this still shows something remarkably: a (in general) not so sunny country in the northern hemisphere installed approximately half of the solar power capacity of the world. It's not easy, and even in Germany there are huge challenges lying ahead, but especially industrialized countries should take this as a sign to accelerate their own renewable energy strategies.
- michaelbuckbee 14y agoThat's a very good insight that I didn't consider, it's as if Maine had achieved the highest level of PV usage in the US.
- celoyd 14y agoIn fact, most of Germany gets less sunlight than most of Maine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Insolation.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Insolation.png
- aaronblohowiak 14y agoalso, half of the pv capacity of the world is only 4% of the power needs for germany.
- danielharan 14y agogrowing > 50% CAGR in the last 5 years. Don't write it off just yet :)
- nknight 14y agoYeah, but there just isn't much installed PV capacity in the world yet, Germany is one of the few countries to have anything like a concerted effort toward it. It's also very much a first-world country in terms of power usage. Importantly, the same investment Germany has made would get you a lot more power in sunnier places. Just within Europe, Spain, Italy, and southern France could be significantly more efficient, nevermind places like Africa, the Middle East, Australia, and the Americas.
- mvzink 14y agoIt really peeves me that there can be so little outcry (close to zero) and such immediate government action to shutdown nuclear plants when it's proven damn near impossible to get people to shut down coal plants. It's absurd. Coal is guaranteed to have costly negative health and environmental impacts on surrounding areas, while nuclear merely has the risk. I am glad something is being replaced by solar, but it is extremely aggravating that coal isn't getting the same treatment as nuclear.
- spenrose 14y ago350.org and others are working on it -- help them!
- stfu 14y agoThe main difference is in my opinion the visible action - reaction relationship. If a nuclear power plant blows up, the whole area is going to look for years to come like a scene from a apocalyptic movie, while with coal plants you might have just people to "cough a bit more". The only thing I do not get is why energy companies are not forced to carry more extensive insurance policies to the long term damages/risks they cause. Pushing this through all the way should provide enough incentives to move towards renewables.
- SagelyGuru 14y agoThe reason is that the costs of a failure of a nuclear power station are such that no insurance company would take on such a risk on commercial basis and even if they did, no energy company would be able/willing to pay the premiums. It all works only because government(s) get their bombs, energy companies in cahoots with the government get their unrealistically low 'production costs' and the suckers taxpayers pay for any accidents and cleanups, whose costs are therefore never included in the accounting when making the comparisons. German electors still have some say in the matter and they did their sums.
- VMG 14y agoIf you think the government isn't in cahoots with coal and solar, I have bad news for you.
- jfoucher 14y ago"22 gigawatts of electricity per hour" ?? WTF? As soon as I read that the credibilty of the whole post went waaay down... But anyway, very cool.
- archivator 14y agoMaybe they meant gigawatts-hour, a unit of energy, although a bizarre one to use in any case.
- mietek 14y agoWhy is it a bizarre unit? I'm billed for my electricity use in kW/h.
- jules 14y agoNo, you're billed in kWh.
- philwelch 14y agoIn SI, energy is measured in joules, and power is measured in watts. One watt is one joule per second. It's indirect to say "watt-hour", because in effect you're saying joules per second times hours when you could have just said joules.
- orijing 14y agoThat's true. I just think of kilowatt-hours as a single unit, like Joule. That way it's no more bizarre than saying Newtons instead of kg m/s^2
- ScottBurson 14y agoJournalists routinely confuse energy and power units. Occasionally I write to one of them about it; maybe I'll write to this guy since his email address is readily available. But yeah, if you look for it you'll see this in maybe 70 or 80% of news stories about power generation.
- 14y ago
- masklinn 14y ago20GW is nowhere near 20 plants at full capacity, it's 20 reactors, and is probably more of an average. Reactors range from 400MWe to 1600MWe, and plants generally have 2 to 6 reactors with 2 outliers at respectively 7 (Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in Japan) and 8 (Bruce in Canada, although it's only running 6 reactors right now). The 10 biggest nuclear plants all have more than 4GW installed capacity. FWIW, France has a total of 20 active plants grouping 57 reactors. The installed capacity is almost 62GWe.
- gouranga 14y agoDon't forget that the amount of power lost due to cooling systems, mining, fuel transport and refining of fissionable materials should be considered as it's a considerable chunk of that output.
- rimantas 14y ago1. It it most "considerable chunk" 2. We don't pick solar panels in the forest either.
- Mystalic 14y agoThe same can be said for the cost of manufacturing and delivering solar panels.
- MichaelApproved 14y agoNo. The costs for the lifestyle of a solar panel are considerably less than nuclear rods.
- sliverstorm 14y agoColor me curious- what sort of lifestyles do solar panels and nuclear rods lead?
- DrCatbox 14y ago
- elric1v 14y agoThis is impressive, but I would guess that this was an especially sunny day. I'd like to see what the average output is.
- blubbar 14y agohttp://www.unendlich-viel-energie.de/uploads/media/AEE_Strommix-Deutschland_2011_Jan12.jpg http://www.unendlich-viel-energie.de/uploads/media/AEE_Strom... This is in German, but the only source i could find. It says PV produced 3% of the procuced energy in 2011. It is said the capacity grew about 30% since q4 2011, but the stats seem to be pending. [BS] In 2010 604,0 TWh where consumed [1], so that would be 604,0 TWh * 3% / 8760 h = 2 GW as a conservative estimate. But note the stats are all a bit out of date. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedarf_an_elektrischer_Energie#Deutschland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedarf_an_elektrischer_Energie... [/BS] As the graph says 612 TWh where produced, so 612 TWh * 0.03 / 8760h = 2 GW.
- qrush 14y agoAnyone else have a sudden urge to play Power Grid?
- malkia 14y agoWeather is a factor here, for example this lasted for a very long period for us humans - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age But then technology advances so fast, so it might be the right stuff.
- malkia 14y agoWhy downvoted? I'm not against it, just noting that weather affects such technology much more than other.
- lancewiggs 14y agoThe real insight for me is the success of the feed in tariff program. These reward suppliers at higher than market rates for feeding electricity back into the grid. E.g. You get paid retail prices, where you really should only get wholesale, which excludes transmission costs. For personal generation a well designed feed in tarrif should provide incentive to build solar panels/wind turbines on your roof etc. A million households producing a little power each makes it a lot easier to get to sustainability.
- greedo 14y agoYes, the FIT is great if a) you're a solar equipment provider that can't compete with other energy technologies or b) if you're a energy provider that has hitched its wagon to solar energy, and can't compete with other technologies on a cost basis. For consumers, it's not so great. Germany has some of the highest electricity prices before the FIT, and the FIT just makes it worse.
- Kroem3r 14y agoKind of meh that the HN commentary is 'blah blah nuclear blah blah.' There are, IMHO, other aspects to this that are actually interesting: The effectiveness of subsidy in spurring a tech sector; the importance of cultural values; concrete rebuttal to the 'energy incident per solid angle crowd'; etc.
- philip1209 14y ago> 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour I'm cringing.
- bane 14y agoI wonder if the nuclear plant will become the new unit of measure for popular discussions of energy production in a similar way that the Library of Congress is a unit of measure for data. What's really impressive here is that Germany of all places is producing this much solar energy. One would better predict a sunnier climate as the place to do this. It's great work, but I can imagine that maintaining base-load is is still a difficult thing for the Germans. Anybody know how they are handling storage for distribution during winter months/nighttime/inclement weather conditions?
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoFront page of TED.com http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables.html http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_ren... See 9:16. He arranges the power consumption of countries by per person per sq m. And renewables can sit on same scale, and his estimate for PV solar is about 20% of land mass of Germany needs to be covered. This is one of the many problems of the renewables debate - apples and oranges. The Germans have done an incredible and positive thing. Massively upped the feed into the electric grid from solar PV. And electrical consumption is where nuclear plants feed - so the two methods are direct competitors. But electrical consumption is only about 1/3 of goal energy budget of western countries, rest is evenly split between transport and heating and about 5% for everything else like rocket launches. So 50% of about 30% says that "Germany has 15% of it's total energy from renewables, will need to increase that by 7fold, give everyone an electric car and heating that uses electricity and not .... Yes it's a great step forward. But really, we are going to have to change our lifestyles beyond belief to meet even 80% energy use from renewables. Forget driving to supermarkets to pick up refrigerated milk and tomatoes flown in from Africa. Watch the talk - his book is very good too.
- cbsmith 14y agoSomething doesn't add up though. From those calculations, it would seem that 3% of Germany's land mass is "covered". I strongly suspect that isn't the case.
- ph0rque 14y agoCritics also complain growing levels of solar power make the national grid more less stable due to fluctuations in output. DaniFong, I hope your company Light Sail Energy has some deals with Germany in the works for your energy storage product.
- zaroth 14y agoIt's relatively easy to produce 22GWh for a couple hours each year. Try doing it 8,760 hours straight. According to Reuters, solar provided 18TWh in 2011 (up 60% from 2010) which was 3% of total power output.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoThis is a deceptive headline. The solar plants produced that much power during a few hours. The article is light on details (and makes a few basic errors) but at a bare minimum we can know that the average amount of power over an entire day was far less for these solar plants than these peak power figures, probably about 1/5th as much. Whereas nuclear plants keep producing all day long. This is great propaganda for the solar power industry but it does little to change the fact that solar power doesn't produce power when it's needed and storing energy is extremely expensive. This is not an indication that solar power is ready for prime time, to serve as base load power generation, it's just an indication that if you build enough PV panels you can get a lot of power for a few hours on a sunny day, which is something we've always known.
- spoiledtechie 14y agoYou know what makes me happy? Germany's Solar Power. Germany's Political system. I personally believe this country is on the best path possible over all other countries even being an American my self. They are by far the most advanced politically than any other country I know, and that helps them advance it other areas of the country. I applaud them!
- SagelyGuru 14y agoI agree. It is very beneficial for the healthy outlook of any large and powerful country to badly lose a major war on its own territory. However, I don't really expect any Brits or Americans to even understand what I am talking about.
- SagelyGuru 14y agoYou need not even postulate any terrorist scenarios to realise that the nuclear plant risks are frighteningly real. There are some 50 reactors in the US of the same vintage and design as Fukushima, including the spent fuel rods storage right next to the reactors. Nuclear reactors produce very large amounts of heat concentrated in a small volume. Thus when the cooling system stops working, for whatever reasons, the core is going to melt down, guaranteed. Despite the secrecy of TEPCO and their friends in government, many people now believe that the cooling failed the moment the earthquake struck. Mostly due to the poor state and maintenance of the cooling pipes. The backup diesel generators to run the cooling circuits (again the same as in the US), with known shaft/bearings problems, packed up within minutes. After that, there is nothing anyone can do, as we had seen. The tsunami probably provided just a creditable scapegoat excuse.