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Solar Power isn't Feasible
Topic Started: Dec 30 2013, 12:31 AM (2,238 Views)
Neutral
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Obi has made sure energy costs went up but solar nor wind will still not be a main source of energy for many.
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Brewster
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More bold, fact-free declarations from "Neut the Gullible".
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Berton
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"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."
Edited by Berton, Dec 31 2013, 08:12 AM.
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Corky52
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How about a link so we know who wrote the article and what else was said?



:smoker:

Edited by Corky52, Dec 31 2013, 08:59 AM.
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Corky52
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Again the lack of perfection and universal application mean we should junk it all and just keep burning the carbon, interesting idea, if a bit childish, kind of like a tantrum.

The coal problem in Germany is exaserbated by the Germans wanting to shut down all their nuclear plants coupled with the lack of natural gas resources.

The real trick is going to be to use the solar electric to generate hydrogen as a storable form of energy, to use like we use NG right now. Germans are figuring to be doing that in a few years, but till then the timing is a big problem.


:smoker:
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Berton
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Did you find the link?

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Corky52
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If the poster doesn't provide a link I don't look, just ignore the information as unsupported crap and move on. I guess you don't know how to paste in a link, so no point in reading the wasted bits you throw at the wall.

No link means it's woth nothing!


:smoker:
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Berton
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The link is in this thread. Apparently you are unable to read. Oh, and the link has all kinds of links to document what is in the article.

"Issue 1: Wrong place, wrong tech to start the green revolution

Renewables advocates constantly hold up Germany as an example of how large-scale rooftop solar power is viable. But the problem is, Germany’s emphasis on solar power is bad policy. I’m pretty sure other countries can do solar better, but that isn’t saying much because German solar is just awful. To be blunt, it’s a stupid place for politicians to push solar panels. I was there all last week for a work meeting, and I didn’t see the sun the entire time. From talking to the locals, it’s overcast for about a third of the year in the region near Hanover where I was staying. Their solar resource is simply bad, nearly the worst of any well-populated region in the world:

Posted Image

Between the northern latitude, the grey weather, and the Alps blocking much of the diffused morning sunlight from the south, Germany is a terrible place for solar power. When you put the US side-by-side on the same scale, you realize that Germany has the same solar power potential as dismal Alaska, even worse than rain-soaked Seattle:

Posted Image

I look at this and ask, “what on earth are they thinking?” They couldn’t have picked a worse generation technology for their climate.

But most people seem to look at it and say, “if Germany is investing so much in solar power, then it’s obvious the US should build solar panels too.” I insist we examine the contrapositive: if solar power is only taking off slowly in the US, even with significant subsidies/incentives and one of the world’s best solar resources, then the Germans should be building even less solar capacity. It’s clear their market must be severely distorted for them to pursue such a sub-optimal energy policy.

You’re welcome to disagree with my thought process here, but the simplest proof can be seen in the capacity factor, which is the percent of the nameplate capacity that is actually generated over the course of a year. The existence of nighttime means solar capacity factors must be less than 50%, and when you add clouds, dawn, dusk, dust, and non-optimal installations, 18% is the average capacity factor for panels in the continental US. [9] In contrast, Germany’s total solar capacity factor in 2011 was under 9%! [1]"

Edited by Berton, Dec 31 2013, 09:24 AM.
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Brewster
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Corky52
Dec 31 2013, 09:18 AM
If the poster doesn't provide a link I don't look, just ignore the information as unsupported crap and move on. I guess you don't know how to paste in a link, so no point in reading the wasted bits you throw at the wall.

No link means it's woth nothing!


:smoker:
No link often means it was cherry picked to give a distorted version of the truth.
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Neutral
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You can give a link and it still means nothing Noclue.
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