(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.
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!
Life in Germany is very expensive, thats’ something that has always kept me away from living there.
There are no leaf blower opportunities for you there. Stay put and keep getting paid in cash.
Hahahaha. Your comment from your momma’s basement carries so much weight that I just got depressed , hahahahahahaha
You guys really need to resolve the tension between you.
I will send Dullass a photo of me with a Jesus drawing on the back while Jesus & me both flip the finger
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.
Not to mention how much China has its hands in South American & African oil wells. But sheep be sheep.
They are also drilling in the Caribbean in Cuban waters while the Feds won’t allow it in their waters nearby. Not to mention trying to get an outlet for that shale oil that Obama rejected with the Keystone pipeline.
Great, they can almost produce half of the power they need in the middle of the day the week os the solstice (the longest day with the most light).
Too bad peak power demands are in the winter when the sun has gone down. Remember this is Europe, not the US sun belt, they are not running air conditioners.
I would also like to see them break down home heating. How much is currently electric that will change to gas because of pricing?
Nuclear could be made much cheaper and simplified (therefore safer). You would just need more facilities that are smaller, therefore easier to harden and contain. You could build a small number of ‘mega facilities’ – such as in Nevada – far away from any earthquake or tsunami surge. Nuclear plants were never meant to be big, they had to get big because they were so hard to get built. The fact that each one is unique means there is no way to make them cheap.
The fact remains that unless we discover some magic way to store electricity that non-combustion/fission will always remain until it is beamed down from space.
Running guns for terrorists? Oh yes, because I remember the magical years prior to 2008 when Mexico didn’t have gangs, guns, and drug lords. ROTLFMAO. What a made up story. Dude, Mexico’s drug lords have half their ARMY in their pockets, they’ve NEVER needed the handful of boxes of guns from the U.S. to fill their needs. Before the whole George W. Bush (yes) Fast & Furious program they ALREADY had plenty of machine guns, submarines, helicopters, explosives. Lord man, you HAVE the Google. (sigh)
They already withdrew their statement that AG Mukasey and the Bush Admin knew about it.
If the gangs are so well supplied, then why are they sending gunrunners to the US to buy?
So they will continue to be well supplied.
Sounds reasonable
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/residential_electric_forecast.png
The future of renewable energy.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
The more efficiency you get, the more a product is used. Peak oil has not yet arrived, and even when it does you still have decades of oil after that.
I’m reading Superfuel: Thorium the green energy Source for the future. Basically shows what could be a great new source of energy that won’t happen in our lifetimes. Instead of getting rid of old reactor tech, we’re just going to extend and pretend that the current, aging nuclear plants are just fine leaking tritium into the groundwater and not let anyone else play in the sandbox, no matter how much better the tech may be.
The DOE controls the market so tightly that the only people who can run the DOE come from the business. Any new tech is untested so there’s no way they’ll issue a license to operate. The only way to test the technology is to get a license.
A perfect example of the failure of the US fascist state.
…The DOE controls the (nuclear energy) market so tightly …perfect example of US fascist state..
Damn these government regulators ! I have this nice & cheap nuclear reactor design made from aluminum siding and PVC pipes but the damn liberal fascist state is in the way.
My company, Nice & Cheap Reactors, LLC. can employ at least 12 people too.
marcus–you introduce the term “absolutist” and use it in your own way==but it does make sense. Yes, I agree, poor people often pay disproportionately all for the benefit of the richer. I don’t know what makes that absolute in its clear dictionary meaning, but a wealth transfer it is.
Absent that issue which is present in most issues, people “should be” allowed to spend their money as they please. Hard to even identify what the “waste” is if you produce electricity from solar on your own property. There is no absolutist transfer in that scenario.
Its an excellent area of debate though–regulating the market by fiat or by free market? Pros and cons to all we do.
NewformatSux informingly says:
6/22/2012 at 12:46 am
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
The more efficiency you get, the more a product is used. Peak oil has not yet arrived, and even when it does you still have decades of oil after that. //// Excellent exhaustive review that eveyone should bookmark. Then we need to add to it the RELEVANT addition of how much more carbon can we burn before we poison ourselves? “IF” we had free oil from magical spouts we would RIGHT NOW have to determine how much of it to burn before we poison ourselves. We may be too late already.
I said: “MAY BE.”==but unlike peak oil, there is peak burning. If not already, someday …. soon.
Its PHYSICS — a type of science.
Feel the burn.
@bobbo: I meant absolutism in the historical sense, meaning the time of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great, not as a verb.
I think our problem in understanding evolves around the problem, that Germany does such crazy things, when it comes to green stuff right now, that a good common sense American like yourself can’t really understand it.
To make it as simple as possible: my neighbor can make money, which the government forces me and the other peons to pay to him, by putting solar panels on his roof and using the produced power to heat the air in his garden. That has nothing to do with saving the palnet and is not in any way benificial to the country.
One other thing: a lot of you guys wrote, that Germany has the benefit of developing it’s solar industries, creating jobs etc.
That argument was used a lot in Germany, when they tried to explain the high cost, but in the last to years it turned out to be BS.
About one in three solar panel producers closed in the last two years, because of the Chinese. And the Chinese can produce cheaper because of one main fact: cheaper electricity!
The Chinese also use solar the self, and their numbers look big on paper, but if you compare them to the number of new coal and nuclear plants they build, that number looks very small.
It’s hard to have a reasonable conversation with someone that needs to be explained what Absolutism means and in what contest you used it.
What about Thorium Reactors – not Uranium or Plutonium ???
Many countries are going green whether that’s solar, wind or fuel based products. Some are even paying handsomely if you wanted to start a business there. Unfortunately these all have their dark sides that the public contends with. Cheating…errr, paying out for peoples homes, demolishing landscapes, killing birds with…j/k
Then there are the cab drivers somewhere in Italy that takes used oil from restaurants and coverts it to fuel. How many fast food places do we have?
Spain is doing quite well with their green jobs initiative. While on the subject of Spain, can you spare some Euros to bail them out?