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MrsS, your opinion please - gree energy
Topic Started: Feb 23 2012, 09:54 PM (914 Views)
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This was posted on another forum by someone opposed to alternate energy sources:

Many households in Germany are no longer able to pay their electricity bills. As a result, around half a million households are sitting in the dark. http://www.thegwpf.org/international-news/5035-green-germany-half-a-million-families-sitting-in-the-dark.html Go green, go dark
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Banandangees
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Hey! It ain't easy..... it - just - ain't - easy!
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i am curious if the reasoning is correct on this one or if there are other reasons.
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Banandangees
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Not sure what you mean?
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Chris
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Which reason are you asking about?

a) half a million households are sitting in the dark because they can't pay bills
b) half a million households are sitting in the dark because they want to go green
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b, obviously since that is what the original poster is implying the reason is. i have no idea if he is right or wrong or somewhere in between. Hence the question for someone who lives there.

I imagine there are a couple million households in the US & Canada also in the dark because they can't pay bills as well. we know the reason for that one since we live here.
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tomdrobin
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Didn't Germany just decide to shut down all their nuclear reactors? It will take awhile to get enough green energy up and running to replace that power.

I just listened to a piece on China and energy the other day. China is going great guns on green energy. The reason being their populace wants the modern life, and to do so with just fossil fuels is not possible.
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Banandangees
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Apparently they've just "retired" one portion of their attempts at "green energy."

Quote:
 
One of the world's biggest green-energy public-policy experiments is coming to a bitter end in Germany, with important lessons for policymakers elsewhere.

Germany once prided itself on being the "photovoltaic world champion", doling out generous subsidies - totaling more than $130 billion, according to research from Germany's Ruhr University - to citizens to invest in solar energy. But now the German government is vowing to cut the subsidies sooner than planned, and to phase out support over the next five years. What went wrong?

There is a fundamental problem with subsidizing inefficient green technology: it is affordable only if it is done in tiny, tokenistic amounts. Using the government's generous subsidies, Germans installed 7.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic (PV) capacity last year, more than double what the government had deemed "acceptable." It is estimated that this increase alone will lead to a $260 hike in the average consumer's annual power bill.

According to Der Spiegel, even members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s staff are now describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rösler, Germany’s minister of economics and technology, has called the spiraling solar subsidies a “threat to the economy.”

Germany’s enthusiasm for solar power is understandable. We could satisfy all of the world’s energy needs for an entire year if we could capture just one hour of the sun’s energy. Even with the inefficiency of current PV technology, we could meet the entire globe’s energy demand with solar panels by covering 250,000 square kilometers (155,342 square miles), about 2.6% of the Sahara Desert.

Unfortunately, Germany - like most of the world - is not as sunny as the Sahara. And, while sunlight is free, panels and installation are not. Solar power is at least four times more costly than energy produced by fossil fuels. It also has the distinct disadvantage of not working at night, when much electricity is consumed.

In the words of the German Association of Physicists, "solar energy cannot replace any additional power plants."

Edited by Banandangees, Feb 24 2012, 12:46 AM.
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MrsS
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Frankly, I was very surprised.

In the link it says: Because of unpaid bills an estimated 600,000 households in Germany had their power cut off in 2010, , so I went to the

original link from "DIE WELT online", a paper which I consider a credible source, and they wrote that in the end 62 000 households were cut off for

unpaid bills. I wonder why that should have something to do with green energy - it`s just bad planning of the household-budget!

BTW, the power from our local power provider consists 25% of renewable energy.


tombdrobin, not all nuclear power plants were shut off in Germany, just maybe 2 or 3 of the oldest ones.

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Brewster
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I wonder just how old the information in that article is? If it's more than six months, it's wrong.

Solar panels are getting cheaper every day - China is now producing panels for less than a coal plant, and then there's no cost for coal afterward.

I suspect the guy in the article is quoting the cost of the original panels, before they were mass produced.
Edited by Brewster, Feb 24 2012, 01:32 AM.
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