(Reuters) – German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour – equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity – through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.
The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022.
They will be replaced by renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and bio-mass.
Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation’s midday electricity needs.
“Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity,” Allnoch told Reuters. “Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over.”
The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world’s leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed. Government-mandated support for renewables has helped Germany became a world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its overall annual electricity from those sources.
Nice to see someone making progress in this. I’ll never expect to see our do-nothing politicians do anything this innovative. We’re too busy running guns for Mexican Narco-Terrorists, destroying other countries for our oil addiction, or blowing money on better ways to control the citizenry. We better change this mindset fast, lest we become a footnote in history.
It gets very dark in Germany in winter.
Germany (and China) see the future – multiple, renewable energy sources feeding an intelligent, dustributed power grid.
The American sheeple are trained to suck on the middle east oil tit. Too much interest in preserving the tit. Credit the Republipuke-Bush oil cartel.
I thought raising food prices with lost crop land due to corrupted subsidies and failed alternative fuel practices was America’s prerogative.
“Utilities and consumer groups have complained the FIT for solar power adds about 2 cents per kilowatt/hour on top of electricity prices in Germany that are already among the highest in the world”… Do you want THE highest price for energy in the world? If yes, please join German sheeple. I (and every reasonable and rational person) want to pay LESS for a resource if cheaper resource is available.
Or in other terms: let’s make US industry compete with Germans using cheap oil and natural gas from right here in the US (damn the caribou, after all they are competing species). Cheap energy -> cheap production., competitive advantage,… win. Once German industry fails because of irrational taxation of the resource, they’ll wise up as well.
A lot of that “extra price” stays within Germany. Germany has a high number of solar panel manufactures based in it. Also, look at the picture with the article. The panels are installed on farmland – probably in Bavaria in southwestern Germany. The farmer “harvests” energy and sells it.
These are ways to insulate their economy from large fluctuations in commodity prices. They are both neccessary since Germany is ceasing nuclear power AND coal-fired electric plants. That tells me that they are getting away from a centralized magnetic induction generator model (i.e. established utility companies and generator manufactures) to a more distributed model which includes solar arrays on farms as shown above and energy sourced even closer to where it will be used.
Don’t use explanations like “insulate their economy from large fluctuations in commodity prices.” without any cartoons or you will lose the sheeple .
You might want to do a little digging to find out what they are really doing about fossil fuel as opposed to the verbiage.
Please note that neither solar or wind are available at all times. If you actually shut down those nuclear plants and the coal plants you are going to be turning off the electricity often at very inconvenient times for prolonged periods of time.
The Germans are no more willing to go back to medieval living conditions than anyone else.
Please note the pictures shows them converting some of their best food producing land to non food production. That means they have to import more food which is driving up the cost of food world wide. This may not continue to be a tenable option.
..Please note that neither solar or wind are available at all times. If you actually shut down those nuclear plants and the coal plants you are going to be turning off the electricity often at very inconvenient times for prolonged periods of time.
Good lord. Are the kids off on summer vacation?
“Please note that neither solar or wind are available at all times.” The surplus energy generated in daytime from the solar panels is stored. The same with wind. The batteries put voltage on the grid at night through a DC to AC conversion process in a way akin to the battery in a UPS powering a computer.
Around 2007, 25% of German farmland was used for growing rapeseed to produce Canola oil in order to make bio-diesel. I think one-half of European cars have diesel engines.
Efficiency also helps. The U.S., for instance, is on-track this year for three consecutive years of lower electric consumption. It hadn’t had two back-to-back years since the late 1950s, at least.
Do you understand the difference of a REGULATED Central localized monopoly, over a distributed system??
The power companies DONT want it. They cant control a Distributed system.
AS you take away POWER from the corps they RAISE prices to keep the over head.
The USA RAISES prices of solar power by REGULATIONS.. No competition.
Electrical power is sold, back and forth, and CANT be stored(easily)..
BUT, if you FORCE the corps to BUY Solar power, the general law says it has to BE AT A HIGHER RATE..
Think about installing Solar power sells and Small wind mills on TALL buildings..INSTED of glass panels..
Think of the Savings..
Efficiency SUCKS:
Take a small area.
All the electrical heaters are only 60%..
Someone finds a better WAY and can get 100%..
He can save 30-40% of the cost.
After a time others notice this.
And start a change over.
The electrical corp sees a Loss. and raise prices to cover. So you end up paying JUST as much.
We keep hearing that we NEED to conserve. WHY NOT EXPAND?? Because its NOT profitable. We are changing over to CFL and LED lighting.. SO WHAT!!
It only means that AFTER we save 60% on lighting, that the Prices will go UP!
So, what do you want to do? MORE coal plants?? MORE nuke plants? MORE dams??
1, pollutes, 1 we cant get RID of the pollutants for 10,000s years, the other kills FISH..
If you want to REALLY help..GET a better way to absorb IR and UV light.
Let me know when you find a way to make anything 100% efficient.
Replace the glass with solar panels and you need to use more lights inside besides which you just removed all the windows making the working environment much less pleasant for most people.
Somebody still has to maintain a dependable way to provide the required amounts of electricity when all those scattered alternative sources aren’t able to carry the load. That is both inefficient and very hard on your back up equipment.
wow, YOU GET PAST 20% AND YOU HAVE BEAT EVERYTHING Mankind has built..
Find a way to make them transparent and we beat BOTH sides..
HOW about thin layer of Water/material that CHARGES..and is CLEAR..dont need to be silicone..
AS WELL as a comapny is making a SOLAR power and WATER heater in 1..its TUBES…think about it..
The technique needed is called BIPM – building integrated photovoltaic modules. For instance, take the south-facing wall of a building in the northern hemisphere. This is the side that would have solar cells on it to generate electricity from the sunlight. It also cools the building because sunlight isn’t heating that wall; thus saving air-conditioning costs. BIPM design principles are also concerned about aesthetics so natural light could still filter through.
It was either in Manchester or Birmingham, England that the tallest building had solar panels on the south wall. It still made enough electricity to power 75-100 homes. In the more southerly U.S., steel and glass buildings should be steel and solar panels. Also office buildings are primarily used in daytime so the storage of energy for the larger grid isn’t as much a concern.
Nice try there. We’re only sucking on about 20% middle eastern tits.
ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
Actually, even less than that. About half of the middle eastern oil we import is re-exported after refining. Only about 10% of our oil needs comes from the ME.
Refined oil products were the U.S.’s leading export in 2011. In 2000, refined oil products weren’t even among the top 20 exports.
So did Spain who was leading in solar before they had to drop the program because it along with other wastage was killing their economy. The nasty little secret is Germany may have had a spike in solar electricity on that day but they are now completely dependent on fossil fuels any time the wind doesn’t blow at just the right speed and the sun isn’t shining brightly and they are stressing the crap out of those fossil fuel plants by cycling them up and down all of which makes solar/wind power extremely costly and not nearly as green as Dallas likes to pretend.
Many are looking at the data and think mother earth stopped getting warmer some time ago because of events on the sun. It is dubious that increased CO2 has had a meaningful impact on climate. Sure some parts of the US are warmer than some years and in fact this may be the warmest year this decade but what the hey its only 2012. England and much of Europe and Asia haven’t been that lucky.
This is about us spending 900 billion to create 910 jobs.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/9-billion-stimulus-solar-wind-projects-made-910-final-jobs-98-million-job
Spain adopted the Euro around 2002. The economy boomed. The population of the country grew about 10% from 2000 to 2006, and the country created about 20% of new Eurozone jobs during this time (if I remember correctly).
The German measurements were taken on a Saturday when offices are closed.
“Many are looking at the data and think mother earth stopped getting warmer some time ago because of events on the sun. ”
I’ve also heard that the Earth continued to warm because of a change on the sun, and not from man-made causes.
Unfortunately most of those jobs seems to have been government jobs or government susidized jobs using cheap borrowed money. When it looked like they had borrowed more than they could pay back interest rates started to climb and well I think you know the current situation.
I’ve heard more than one Democrat suggest we do the same thing. Borrow as much cheap money as we can then spend it to stimulate the economy. Of course that would cause our credit score to fall, interest rates to climb, and us to have to inflate our way out taking our all savings accounts along the way.
Nobody but a total nut case would buy government bonds for a decade or more nor would other nation states accept our money so the things would be very messy.
Many of the jobs created were in the housing sector just like the U.S. had from 2002-2007.
A big reason why U.S. interest rates are at record lows is the problems with the Euro. I think if the Eurozone improved the “flight to the dollar” would decrease and that would be an upward force on interest rates.
There’s an error right there at the beginning, wondering what else the ignorant reporter didn’t catch. Gigawatts per hour is not a valid measure. It’s either gigawatts or gigawatt hours, presumably gigawatts.
Looks like a story planted by companies looking to maintain and expand their subsidies, which are being dropped left and right.
Liberals before were saying look to Denmark, then look to Spain, now it’s Hail Germany!
Spain went for renewables, especially solar, claiming it would produce lots of green jobs. The reality was the push for renewables cost jobs, and they are dropping the subsidies, some of which went to plants that produced solar power at night.
Solar plants could end up increasing CO2 emissions, as during peak demand times or when the sun isn’t shining, the plants use diesel or natural gas powered generators to make up the difference. If you put the subsidies high enough, you can make money while shining a light on your solar collectors. It wouldn’t surprise me if a large amount of this solar power was just someone plugging in a diesel generator and collecting the subsidy. They make money, and the followers of the green religion are happy.
Spain would be dropping the subsidies because the overall economy is in bad shape especially with the high unemployment rate which I don’t think had much at all to do with renewable energy subsidies.
If a solar plant is producing at night maybe it’s using surplus energy that was stored in batteries during the day.
Maybe in Germany, the fuel for the diesel generators that you mention was bio-diesel from the farm-grown Canola oil.
Springtime for Helios and Germany…
They should have put those solar panels in the other field where the sun is shining.
Hehe.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/storage/haitidomrep.jpg
“It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion. I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use. The greens use guilt. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting CO2 in the air.”
James Lovelock, who no longer is quite as alarmist about global warming as he was before, now that he realizes he was lied to.
nothing wrong with solar power, if it bothers you so much forget all the green bullshit, it’s economiclaly rewarding now in the netherlands without subsidy, plus it’s self empowering and decentralizing.
Not unless you are willing to run stand alone. As long as you are tied to the grid and expect the grid to provide all the power you want and need, solar is going to have to be an expensive supplementary power source.
Please note that for many island location or isolated locations off the grid solar and wind are going to make economic sense but you are going to have to limit when, where, and how you use electricity.
Hi,
I want to add my opinion to the discussion, since I am one of these Germans: the whole thing is a giant scam. Or better a series of scams. Here is a little list:
1. Tax Scam
People in Germany only put solar on there roofs, because you can deduct it from your taxes. Nobody uses it’s one eltrical power so, because the electrical companies have to pay you a guaranteed price of a little over 40 cents per kw that you serve into the grid.
So, rich people get extra money(a normal installation is between 40-50.000 €) and poor(the working poor that is) pay.
2. Eco scam
The eco
2. Eco scam(hit submit button)
The eco side of these things isn’t that great either, for a lot of reasons, but the most pressing is, that you need a normal powerplant( motley gas and coal) for an equal amount as they produce, because the often don’t produce. That it’s not necessary with normal plants and hugely expensive.
3. Unreliable
The really don’t work great, when it is cold and when they are covered with snow. Also our normally extremely reliable German power grid is getting very unreliable, because with solar you can get really nasty spikes and drops in production.
4. Overproduction
There are a lot of times, let’s say sunday afternoon, where people just don’t need as much power, as these things produce. But since the power companies have to buy it(government) and therefore the people have to buy it, you sometimes pay a 1000 € per unit.
5. Endangering industries
The resulting high price means, that you just can’t do certain things any more. Specially the production of aluminum isn’t possible at such prices. But wait, we have a corrupt government, so why not give businesses a rebate(half the price of) and let let the stupid working poor pay the bill…that will work)
6. Resumé
I know, it’s hard for americans not to be in the avantgarde of a big folly like this, but believe me: you are lucky not to be, where we are!
another point is the OLD WAYS..
we can build homes that are MORE solar friendly..
Radiant heating is the BEST.. they call it Solar passive. as easy as a SUN ROOM
Certainly, Germany adopted the subsidies as a way to promote the German solar industry, particularly in manufacturing. Compare that to solar manufacturing in the United States.
Germany along with Spain and Portugal also became test beds in solar subsidies and finance. The price guarantees are interesting. The city of Gainesville, Florida was the first locale to model a subsidy program in the U.S. like Germany’s.
Certainly, the U.S. can learn from Germany in the construction of the U.S. “smart grid”.
I think that the entire solar experience would work better in Florida, for instance, given what can be learned from Germany.
Response to #1: Is there a way to calculate how much of the 40 to 50 thousand Euro deduction stayed in Germany? Manufacturing, Installation, etc. I think there was an effort for the solar manufacturing facilities to be built in the former East Germany, for instance.
I use solar power for everything, we live in New Mexico and we have over 300 days per year of sunshine.
Love not getting a electric bill
Sheila
http://www.survivingsurvivalism.com
Solar panels are a decent investment if you build them yourself and you expand your system capacity over time.
Commercial installation of solar power is still too expensive to get a return on investment that makes economic sense.
Congratulations. Are you entirely off-grid in New Mexico?
Germany produces half its power with solar energy……
on Saturday……
for a couple of hours…..
on Friday it produced one third its power requirements…
for a couple of hours…….
at the summer solstice.
Performance during cloudy mid-winter days is thought to be somewhat less.
But already 20% of the country’s annual electricity usage. No doubt. This is a major source of electricity right now.
I am really not against solar, but in Germany you are forced to buy your neighbors solar power for a price far beyond other sources.
Solar 40 cents
Nuclear 2 cents
That’s without network cost, value-added- and eco-tax…
What this means is that Germany is among the countries maturing the technology and the infrastructures involved. Of course there are going to be issues and growing pains, but sooner than you think they and a small handful of other countries (including China) will be selling us all our solar systems when they do get good enough (or other energy gets expensive enough) for us to pay attention. By that time we will have lost all technical initiative in the space and will be beholden to others. That’s among the reasons I detest pussy luddite asswipes who think stupidity is strength.
Exactly. These will be the same people bitching about why we didn’t do something sooner.
You dude are hilarious. China sells solar equipment at subsidized prices. They run on coal. The last I checked they were still building coal plants at a huge rate.
@wmde: in Winter, when these things are covered in snow, you get zero energy out of them. Also in the evening and in the morning, when people need lighting, there is normally very little sun…
Rolls eyes. You give Germans a bad name
Your comment has nothing to do with the facts so if you agreed with him, you know doubt would have withheld your cheap-shot.
It just depends where the panels are. In the more southerly latitudes, High Germany, there are more installations like the type in the picture; i.e. on private farms. Maybe, the subsidy system has to change if one is elsewhere.
It’s still remarkable that this source of electricity is 20% of annual production.
I live in Germany and I am paying out my a$$ for electric… so something ain’t adding up.
Prostitution is a method of payment in Germany?
For the twelve minutes or so that they met 50% of their electricity needs, it was great! Then, reality set in…
That’s twelve more minutes than anybody else.
Solar energy production peaks out about that time in the Northern hemisphere every year about that date and it would be about bottoming out in the Southern hemisphere for the same reason.
The days are now getting shorter in the Northern hemisphere. It’s the equinox.
summer solstice
Why doesn’t this have the BS meter on it.
50% at low peak on a sunnny day. FTA
“Government-mandated support for renewables has helped Germany became a world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its overall annual electricity from those sources.”
So they are only getting 20% from all Renewable total.
Yea, the article was a press release from some company that wants to keep its subsidies, or perhaps a group that wants to proselytize the green religion.
They mix solar and renewables back ad forth. Solar cells appears to be about 4% while all renewables is 20%. Even the 22 Gw they say here only results in 30 % of total usage, not 50%.
Again, a very high percentage when compared to the U.S. with much of that money, I believe, staying within the country.
At least they’re taking a whack at it, boondoggle as it may seem.
Of course the intermittent nature of solar, wind etc. is a problem, and always was. But if they can at least _begin_ to figure out the energy storage problems thereof, they will eventually end up ahead. It’s a long haul kind of thing, I think.
I saw my first wind turbine a few months ago, and it was awesome! I told my skeptical sister that if they put a few of those things in my window view, I’d be pleased as punch.
(I will always love things that look like airplanes)
Now, if we could only learn how to store the excess power for when the panels are covered with snow. Lots of capacitors maybe.
If is a mighty big word.
If frogs only had wings they wouldn’t bump their butts so much either. A solution is not in sight.
Just checking my own lectric bill: 12cents per killawatt. 40cents as Marcus says would be quite a hit. 2 cents would be nice. We had a nuke plant here, Rancho Seco, a few miles outside of town, don’t know why it was shut down.
I do remember the promise of Nuke: energy so cheap, it won’t be metered. That was back when we would have more spare time than we would know what to do with it. No one knew the RICH BASTARDS would grab all new net worth and productivity after 1998.
In the future: “the world” has to get off carbon. China might do it just to backstop their monopoly on solar manufacturing. How to coerce the others to do so will be the hat trick for 2020’s.
The future comes whether you want it to or not.
The effects of carbon usage will come whether you want it to or not.
Oil will become too scarce to be wasted on consumers.
Ain’t reality a bitch?
>between November and January, 4500 megawatt hours (MWh) of solar energy were sold to the electricity grid between midnight and seven in the morning.
Just think of how much was sold at day by the operators who weren’t total idiots. That’s what happens when you offer a price higher than its worth.
@bobo: these are the production prices, right now we pay about 26 eurocent per kw. That’s close to 33 us-cent(which is the magic number 🙂
But because of solar, the price is supposed to double in the 8 years, maybe even less.
This is the mix-price, a purely solar price would 40 €-cents + transport + electric company profit + backup plants + eco tax(high) + value added tax(high). So pure solar would run you above one euro.
I didn’t tell you about the other model the have: If you have solar on your roof, and use it yourself, you get 20 cents from the taxpayer for every kw you use. So a rich person can put solar on his roof, and get 20 cents for every kw he puts in thinks like heating his driveway and terrace(i know people who do this), or for running his fountains or keeping the light on…all of these things are of course very good for the climate 🙁
One tip from a completely disarmed German to you Yankees: you still have the right to carry arms – USE IT!
12 cents is a bit on the high side. Now double it and maybe double it again to get the impact of solar energy. China is not going to pay more and more energy for solar power itself. They merely want others to do so, just as they want others to sign up for a clean development mechanism so they can collect lots of money to make chemicals and then destroy them.
As far as the effects of CO2 the key isn’t to make carbon energy so expensive no one will use it, but to make non carbon energy so cheap everyone will use it. Subsidies and tariffs and mandates will not produce that. I suppose you could nuke countries that do not comply.
20 years ago an incumbent president lost reelection after he was hectored for not signing on at an environmental conference in Rio. Now, the President is not even attending the conference, and it is basically not on the radar of the media.
Canada has come off its low carbon future plans also and its terrible.
marcus — interesting anyone would get paid to use solar electricity they generate and use themselves. That certainly would be an incentive to get solar on line. How could using that energy to run fountains, lights, or driveway heaters have any effect on climate? Its carbon neutral. Extended arguments/links can be made, but nothing directly.
Some day, even someday sooner now, every roof will be all solar feeding into grids and batteries powering car and everything else. Excess to create hydrogen to be used as backup in fuel cells.
The future is so bright, I gotta use my 3D web connected enhanced reality Google Glasses.
I like it.
bobbo asks:
“We had a nuke plant here, Rancho Seco, a few miles outside of town, don’t know why it was shut down.”
From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco_Nuclear_Generating_Station
On 20 March 1978 a failure of power supply for the plant’s non-nuclear instrumentation system led to steam generator dryout. (ref NRC LER 312/78-001). In an ongoing study of “precursors” that could lead to a nuclear disaster if additional failures were to have occurred,[1] in 2005 the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded that this event at Rancho Seco was the third most serious safety-related occurrence in the United States[2] (Behind the Three Mile Island accident and the cable tray fire at Browns Ferry).
The plant operated from April 1975 to June 1989 but had a lifetime capacity average of only 39%; it was closed by public vote on 7 June 1989 (despite the fact that its operating license did not expire until 11 October 2008) after multiple referendums.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Building a nuclear power plant seems _incredibly_ expensive, including costs that go on for a LONG time after the design life of the facility (waste storage/disposal). I wonder what would be the cost of building the equivalent capacity in solar. Or other renewables for that matter.
Exactly right Uncle–Nuke is cheap if you don’t include all the ancillary costs.
So–it got shut down before I came back to roost. I wonder what contractor rip off caused it to never be able to fully power on AND if that is why at 12 cent/kilowatt my lectricy is comparatively expensive? Paying for Roncho! Figures.
LONG term vs SHORT term thinking. Another personality based difference between libs and cons.
Thanks–and pardon me, I really didn’t mean to make anyone look it up. Hope it was pure curiosity? Does make me wonder how many other USA Nukes have been taken off line. How many other Nukes are of the same design? Stuff people can look up if they have the interest?
Look at the Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant in Florida. The plant’s own workers tried to saw a side of a building instead of calling in outside experts. The plant may not even restart again. And in Florida, electric bills have gone up to pay for a proposed plant that might not even get built. Just after approval a few years ago, the price of the plant somehow doubled.
wow, when I lived in Germany in the mid 80’s they were doing a lot with wind turbines. I wonder if they are still working on that as well.
I remember one gigantic one outside Bremerhaven that had a single blade and a counterweight, that thing look scary, really scary.
@bobbo: yes it is, but what I criticize is that you can really waste that energy on whatever you like, and Joe-Smoe has to pay you for it. It’s pretty much like being back in absolutist europe, where the poor peasants had to pay high taxes, so every little Duke or Count had his private versailles. Also I have defend absolutism a bit: taxes back then where considerably lower than today…
There are a thousand more crazy things going on in eco-fashist-germany, but that would fill a blog in it’s own right.
>China might do it just to backstop their monopoly on solar manufacturing.
Hahahaha. That’s what happens when you think policy first, reasoning later. You grasp at straws. Chinese use of regular fossil fuels is increasing apace. Already the number one carbon emitter with over 1/4 of world total, and still growing. You are right, the countries that look to promote solar, are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the big picture. US Europe Japan South Korea Australia Canada combine for less than 40% of world CO2 emissions and this number is dropping.