How many PV solar megawatt-hours in Germany 2004?

[G. R. L. Cowan]

Or 2003. I understand anyone setting up a PV solar plant
there can count on payment equivalent to US$480 per MWH
of electricity the plant puts into the German grid.

How much was put in the most recent year for which
it has been added up?


--- Graham Cowan, former hydrogen fan
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/Paper_for_11th_CHC.html --
how individual mobility gains nuclear cachet

 

[Antipodean Bucket Farmer]

Or 2003. I understand anyone setting up a PV solar plant
there can count on payment equivalent to US$480 per MWH
of electricity the plant puts into the German grid.

How much was put in the most recent year for which
it has been added up?

Apparrantly, the government agency for electricity is
called DENA. Perhaps they are the ones in charge of
the subsidies and PV-to-grid regulations.

Also, these people might have some stats:

http://www.german-renewable-
energy.com/www/main.php?tplid=29&kategorie=sonne

(Cut-N-Paste that link into your browser.)

 

[Don Kelly]

Solarbuzz and Photon-International tend to have information along these
lines. For example:

http://www.solarbuzz.com/Marketbuzz2004-intro.htm

Germany installed about 25% of 574MW in 2003 -- not quite 150MW. For
2004, we would expect this to be at least 40% higher: 210MW or so.

This doesn't directly give you megawatt hours. PG&E did a study in
California a couple years ago and found that each installed watt
produced about 1100 watts per year. (They monitored about 30
residential sites in California.) The Germans are installing more
centralized systems that may have better monitoring, maintenance, south
pointing panels, etc. But, for 2004, you'ld be talking about 600,000
MWh of electricity produced in Germany. Give or take an order of
magnitude.

-------------
I hope you meant 1100 watthours per year
this gives a load factor of about 12% Not exactly a huge impact on the
operation of the system.

As to the US$480/MWh - pretty high priced- as this works out to 48 cents/kWh
for energy which is not necessarily available when it is needed- i.e. it
wont replace the need for other sources on line- sources which are more
economical (including the effective cost of pollution and its control).

 

[Don Kelly]

Oops! Yes, I meant watthours. Thanks. Also, I meant to write 150,000
MWh instead of 600,000 MWh. (Course, I'm probably still within an
order of magnitude of being correct. :- )

Solar PV does replace the need for some other sources. Solar produces
most of its energy on sunny summer days, which is exactly when peaks in
electric demand occur. So, you do get to avoid building a couple of
natural gas turbines.

$0.48/kwh isn't _completely_ absurd. In California, PG&E charges
something like $0.36/kwh for peak summer tier 5 electricity. Germany's
basic residential electric costs are about 33% higher than California.
(I haven't yet adjusted for PG&E's new pricing this year.) Toss in
another 10% for the "green" electricity, and 10% for fixed price
electricity, and you're in the right ballpark. However, I still think
it makes sense to think of this as a way to reduce unemployment, boost
the economy, and try to capture a significant share of a market that
will be huge in the long term.

-----------
Where I am, sunny hot days are not peak load periods and that colours my
thinking. I agree that solar units can displace use of other sources when
available. California experience is not necessarily the same as elsewhere.
As to the cost per kWh - to me that is excessive as I am lucky that the
consumer price is $0.06/kWh and on the other side of the Rockies, coal and
gas are the sources, the cost may average double that.
A great deal of the problem is that gas turbines are quick and cheap to
build and for the present utility regime, long term planning and better
costs get tossed out the window in favour of getting what you can- now.

 

[Don Kelly]

Yes... I could imagine that you might not blast an air conditioner in
the middle of summer up in Canada.

The California experience is a fairly reasonable basis for thinking
about PV. California does have lower electricity prices and more sun
than Japan and Germany. But Japan (by all reports I've heard) is hot
and muggy in the summer. New York can also be hot and muggy.
Eventually, the hot and muggy summers in China will be important too.

So, there's a rather large band of the earth containing a rather large
fraction of the population, where air conditioning is widely used on
hot, sunny, summer days. And those places are, or will be, driving
demand for Solar PV.

I'd think gas turbines in Canada would be good long range planning.
You've got cheap, plentiful natural gas, and it's rather clean and
efficient. 'course, us Americans will keep driving up the price of
your gas... On the other hand... when the artic ice cap melts, you can
sell us your gas and import gas from Russia. ( ;-) )

But, fear not. About 10 years after PV becomes widespread in
California, it will become widespread where you live.

--------
That depends on a lot of factors.and may not be either economic or practical
on a large scale. Certainly large grids do add benefits with the use of
solar power.

I'd think gas turbines in Canada would be good long range planning.
----------
Gas turbines - even when gas was cheaper than it is now, were not considered
as suitable for base load- while they have a low capital cost and are quick
to build and quick to start up, over a longer period, the fuel costs become
prohibitive. Their natural place in a load cycle is as peaking plant.
Alberta has lots of gas but the main plants there were and still are coal
fired (low sulphur but high ash and can be found anywhere). Some use a gas
ring of burners for technical reasons and there are gas fired steam plants
in use. Proliferation of gas turbines is based on the quick and cheap
installation rather than any long term strategy.

You've got cheap, plentiful natural gas, and it's rather clean and
efficient. 'course, us Americans will keep driving up the price of
your gas... On the other hand... when the artic ice cap melts, you can
sell us your gas and import gas from Russia. ( ;-) )

But, fear not. About 10 years after PV becomes widespread in
California, it will become widespread where you live.
--------
Winter peak loads. Daily peak about 5-6 pm - when it is often dark. Morning
loads- when everybody gets up - still dark. Possibly we would be able to use
California PV energy fed through the NW grid

When the artic ice cap melts where will New York, LA etc be? There may be a
drastic reduction in energy consumption

 

[Don Kelly]

In order to make PV cost effective, you need to use PV where the load
matches the Sun. Your example is an example of using PV where the load
matches the sun: daytime electricity is more expensive than nighttime
electricity in your example.

Don's right... PV can only displace day time dispatchable electric
generation: hydro and natural gas. If you had a locale that had
off-peak electric consumption during the day that was provided by
baseload nuclear or coal plants, displacing the baseload electric
production would simply drive up costs during the nighttime, offseting
any advantage from the PV.

However, the Canadian Electric Association suggests that even in Canada
peak loads occur during the daytime.
[http://www.canelect.ca/english/Pdfs/CEA Wind Paper (December 2004).
pdf]
And it sounds like Don might be from someplace where a significant
amount of hydro electricity is generated during the day.

Fortunately, in most of the world, load follows the sun. And, remember
that the nuclear and coal industries have spent quite a bit of
advertising doing their best to shift the load to non-daylight hours in
order to even out the load and maximize the amount of base-load
electricity they can produce. In a PV intensive world, some amount of
electric consumption would move from night-time hours to daytime hours.

The last load time curves that I saw for a Canadian ut5ility still ended up
with the annual peak in late afternoon in December. Certainly inplaces like
Toronto, Oshawa, etc, the daily work schedule in industry dominates the load
pattern which puhes the peak earlier during the day. However, the paper is
pretty vague as to day and night - If 6Am or 6PM is day, it can be pretty
dark in mid winter.
I note that wind penetration is greatest in Alberta where the availability
of fossil fuel is highest. Deregulation there has raised its ugly head along
with costs to the consumers. BC is presently mainly Hydro- for how long??

It has been a long time since I attended a CEA meeting. They were always
quite enjoyable and informative.

Oh yes -you got me- arctic ice alone won't do any more than make Florida a
hanging chad.

 

[Fred McGalliard]

The thermal expansion effect will increase sea level as average
temperature increases. Each degree(C) of warming will increase sea
level by several feet.

But the only water being heated is the top 50-100 feet, right? Won't that
make this effect pretty small?


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....

Here is a good source of knowledge.
It tells what happens when your crazy ideas are confronted with facts:

An atheist does not believe there is a god. This is a mistake that, if he is
honest in his disbelief, God can and will correct as He sees fit, and we
need only stand by to help.
An apostate believes there is a God, but what he believes of that God is so
wrong that it angers God. The apostate cannot be dissuaded of his error by
any of our arguments, but again, God must destroy those beliefs to make room
for the truth.

I have always thought the creationists are apostates, believing the wrong
things about God, and about truth.