Germany's Solar Power Generation Hit Record High at Weekend - Slashdot
source link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/05/30/1712203/germanys-solar-power-generation-hit-record-high-at-weekend
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Germany's Solar Power Generation Hit Record High at Weekend
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Last time I checked...like a year ago...solar was approaching 10% of Germany's total energy portfolio.-
Depends on the size of the panel. A panel could be several meters long for commercial installations or a single meter for residential. Or they could be calling the entire array a panel.
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Was that before or after they had to reopen the coal plants?
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That wouldn't change the number of panels either way.
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In 2022 solar provided 11.4%
https://www.enerdata.net/publi... [enerdata.net]
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As a bonus, invading armies can threaten to use your own power plants as a weapon like the Russians have done in Ukraine.
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You should stop using the Simpsons as your data source, it just makes you look stupid when you try to talk with grown-ups.
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Um... so back on the topic of solar, measure the difference between maximum daily solar output and minimum daily solar output, and multiply the result by the cost of that much energy storage, and you'll have some idea of the scale of the challenge posed by variable renewables.
According to one source [wordpress.com] (outdated, but let me know if you have more recent data), maximum solar power is about 50 times higher than minimum solar power, and the minimums are grouped together with other periods of low output that are
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It's a big problem, it's true.
How about electric aluminum smelters that only operate seasonally?
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So pay for the capital costs all year, but only operate seasonally -- seems like there might be a cost/competitive issue with this scheme. Heck, why not just smelt aluminum in countries like China who are building new coal-fired power plants weekly to support electricity demand year round?
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Right, the plant would need to be designed to be as efficient as possible for intermittent operation. Of course it would not be as efficient as a fulltime operation with cheap energy - that cost difference is the price of energy 'storage.' Like a peaking power plant, in reverse.
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They will probably convert to green hydrogen once they can make enough
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There are various schemes that could work for long-term power storage of excess solar power. Now, most methods are lossier than, for example, batteries that charge during the day and discharge at night. The first method, that would make things nice and simple, is to just get reliably rechargeable metal-air batteries up and running. The chemistries work (but need additional refinement to actually be rechargeable with continuous cycles and have energy densities an order of magnitude or more higher than lithiu
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LOL. You are shit talking nuclear reliability when solar never works at night? You know nuclear has the highest reliability of all energy sources? Of course you know. You just don't care.
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and nuclear never shuts down for maintenance and refuelling for a month or so.
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Will there be cake?
Cuz if there isn't I have a hard time taking this seriously.
A celebration without cake ? garbage time
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The cake is a lie.
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Damn it. Who hired the vegan chef?!!
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This is Germany. If there's no beer, then they celebrate by nodding once at each other.
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Germany's thousands of solar panels set a new production record on Saturday.
Well we know what to thank for this rise in output - without global warming, Germany would not have the increase in sunny warm days it needs to increase solar power generation.
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"Well we know what to thank for this rise in output "
Putin?
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You, uhhh, know global warming isn't about the energy input from the sun changing.... right?
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https://www.iea.org/reports/no... [iea.org]
Norway has an almost entirely renewables-based electricity system, with renewable resources accounting for 98% of generation in 2020, of which hydro is the dominant source at 92%.https://www.umweltbundesamt.de... [umweltbundesamt.de]
In 2022 renewable energy sources provided 254 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and account for 46.2 per cent of German electricity demand.-
It's easy to get to such high reliance on renewable energy when there's climate and geography beneficial to hydroelectric power. Hydroelectric dams can adjust output quickly, unlike big steam power plants like coal or nuclear fission. Hydroelectric dams offer long term energy storage, much like the big tanks of natural gas, piles of coal, or rods of uranium ceramics for these same steam power plants that most nations use for the base of their electricity supply. With plenty of hydroelectric dams to make
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Ok forget Norway, France has the same conditions as Germany and is outputting 10-20 times less CO2 the whole day
https://i.imgur.com/oAE5aPI.pn... [imgur.com]
(from https://app.electricitymaps.co... [electricitymaps.com])How about Czech Republic, same conditions (except no off-chance of shore wind and poorer): just around 50-100g/kWh worse on average during the last 12 months despite having almost no wind and little solar.
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For once, I don't disagree with much of what you say, but I would point out one thing. In your following sentence, the third option is a subset of the second:
"Germany is going to have to figure out lower cost energy solutions, continue to export wealth in exchange for energy, or turn to nuclear fission as that provides reliable and low CO2 energy."
Using nuclear fission is an example of exporting wealth in exchange for energy. The fissile materials (and lots of the expertise) is found overseas. I'm sure you'
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Norway is sitting out there with 97.2% of its energy from renewable resources vs 46.2% for Germany.
"But that doesn't count!" you say, "it's all hydro!"
OK, Denmark is sitting out there at 60.5% from renewables, and only 0.1% from hydro.
"But Germany is the leader in solar!" you say.
No, that's Malta - 14.6% vs 9.0%.
Germany is third in Europe for Wind % (behind Denmark and Lithuania).
But, hey! Germany is the leader in one category across Europe - coal!
"But Germany is the leader in number of GWh of renewables!"
Only true of Europe - China, US, India, Canada, Brazil all beat it.
But hey! Germany can claim to be the leader in one energy category in Europe - coal! It uses almost as much coal as the rest of the EU combined. Way to go, Germany!
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(grumble, grumble Slashdot editing bugs...)
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i'd mod this up if i had points!
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Germany is the leader in communication strategy. They are massively behind targets for CO2 emissions (I am talking about actual emissions, not any % of reduction), are still burning tons of coal, and their masterplan is to replace coal with gas. Gas, which although emits 2-3 times less CO2 than coal, is still a fossil fuel, and still emits a shit ton of CO2...
But I guess they like to send their subsidies to China, by buying their solar panels/batteries.
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The official targets are in % reduction. So what targets are you talking about?
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Climate doesn't care if you reduce your emissions by 23%, or 43%, or 77%. It only cares about how much CO2 are emitted in total in the atmosphere.
For instance, to meet the target for the +1.5C scenario (sources in last IPCC report) by 2100, we have to limit our emissions to 3000 billions tons of CO2 since basically the period of WW2 (CO2 being extremely stable, cumulative emissions are a very good first order approximation for temperature/climate change). Of those 3000 billions tons of CO2, we already emitt
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You realize that if you start from high emission and reduce a certain percentage, then this is more reduction in absolute numbers than if you start with less emission.
So your complaint is that they could have reduced more. This is true but if you compare - say - the US then the US is much worse in terms in any measure (including cola use).
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Germany started with a very dirty grid. Part of that was by design, to make them dependent on other European countries. The origin of the EU was a coal treaty between Germany and France.
They are making far more effort to transform their energy supply than many other countries. They deserve credit for that.
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All true. But what Germany actually did was investing into renewables when they were still expensive, helping to create an economy of scale which brought cost down substantially.
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The story does say "European leader," but then the link in the article says "G20," which does not include Denmark, Norway, Malta, or Lithuania. (What particular benchmark Germany leads in the G20, I don't know.. the link is paywalled.)
Roughly the G20 Is "large" economies. I would guess the "% of energy from renewables" leaderboard is dominate at both the high and low end by small nations, since they are basically taking an average of a smaller number of things (less variation in climate, natural resource
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Pretty sure it's 40 gigawatts.
US english uses the decimal point, not comma. Comma is used to separate groups of 3 digits.
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There IS a standardized notation, by International Standards Organization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Numbers consisting of long sequences of digits can be made more readable by separating them into groups, preferably groups of three, separated by a small space. For this reason, ISO 31-0 specifies that such groups of digits should never be separated by a comma or point, as these are reserved for use as the decimal sign."
Following this standard, there will be no confusion, no matter if the decim
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If you take a look at https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
* France had 85 gr CO2 per kWh in 2022
* Germany had 386 gr CO2 per kWh in 2022 (4.5 times more)
Germany should reopen its nuclear reactors... but they won't.-
Nice lie you have there. Simply ignoring all the electricity France had to import will give you that. How repulsive.
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Nice lie you have there. Simply ignoring all the electricity France had to import will give you that. How repulsive.
Let's expose some actual lies.
France only imported 16.5 TWh of electricity in 2022 [euractiv.com], to be put into perspective with the total of 445.2 TWh they used in 2022 (I will save you the trouble, that means they had to import 3.7% of their electricity in 2022). After being a net low-carbon electricity exporter for the past 50 years. For instance, in 2021 they exported 43 TWh, so ~3 times what they imported in 2021...
Also, most of the imports in 2022 were concentrated in July, August and September (same article I previously linked), which means the electricity was mostly coming from low-carbon energy sources (solar/wind, see I am actually in favor of both renewables AND nuclear), mainly from Spain in that case.
Funnily enough the French never bragged when they exported all that electricity to their neighbors in the past 50 years. But as soon as they import a tiny amount of it for 1 year (2023 looks like a year where they will be net exporter again), crazy people like gweihir start to make a scene.
With all those facts and data, let me tell you that it is indeed a fact that the CO2 emissions from Germany linked to electricity generation are a lot higher than France, as the original poster pointed out.
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Fixing my typo:
"in 2021 they exported 43 TWh, so ~3 times what they imported in 2022"
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If Germany can't clean up without nuclear power, we are all screwed.
There a lot of countries that can't have nuclear power. They don't have the infrastructure, it's too expensive, or other countries don't want them to have access to the technology.
We can't expect them to forego a Western lifestyle and standard of living. If nuclear is required, they will use cheaper fossil fuels instead.
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Say you.
The fact that you are leading a personal vandetta against a proven technology, and would rather see people die from climate change is on you.
Fortunately, the trend we are seeing is more countries taking a sensible approach with intermittent electricity sources(solar/wind) AND baseload ones (nuclear and hydro where possible). But please keep on renting on slashdot, I am sure that makes a difference to actual politics in play.
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Says common sense. Also, legacy of colonialism across the globe, particularly in Africa.
Most of the increase in global population in coming decades will be centered in Africa.
A region famously known for its political stability and access to water needed to run the steam engines that are nuclear reactors.Nuclear is only viable for developed countries with a nuclear fleet and arsenal - thus being heavily subsidized under the guise of "national security".
That is why France, despite being further to the south r -
aaaahh.. the baseload myth.. an euphemism for fossil plants that can't shutdown down/turn on in a timely manner
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absolute 0 at night
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