
Germany sets new solar-power record - siavosh
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-solar-idUKBRE84P0FI20120526
======
mvzink
It really peeves me that there can be so little outcry (close to zero) and
such immediate government action to shutdown nuclear plants when it's proven
damn near impossible to get people to shut down coal plants. It's absurd. Coal
is _guaranteed_ to have costly negative health and environmental impacts on
surrounding areas, while nuclear merely has the _risk_. I am glad _something_
is being replaced by solar, but it is extremely aggravating that coal isn't
getting the same treatment as nuclear.

~~~
stfu
The main difference is in my opinion the visible action - reaction
relationship. If a nuclear power plant blows up, the whole area is going to
look for years to come like a scene from a apocalyptic movie, while with coal
plants you might have just people to "cough a bit more".

The only thing I do not get is why energy companies are not forced to carry
more extensive insurance policies to the long term damages/risks they cause.
Pushing this through all the way should provide enough incentives to move
towards renewables.

~~~
Eeko
> The main difference is in my opinion the visible action - reaction
> relationship. If a nuclear power plant blows up, the whole area is going to
> look for years to come like a scene from a apocalyptic movie, while with
> coal plants you might have just people to "cough a bit more".

Not really. Nuclear disasters are bad for the environment, but considerably
less bad than say... Building a city somewhere.

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120411084107.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120411084107.htm)

And "cough a bit more" is probably the understatement of a day. Those fuckers
even create more radioactive waste (which won't get collected) when they work
as intended, than nuclear plants when they break down.
([http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-
is...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-
radioactive-than-nuclear-waste))

You are on track with the insurance policy. Though it's pretty safe to assume,
that real costs of coal and carbon-based fuels are not calculated very well
for insurance purposes either.

The end-point of unstoppable climate-change could potentially render the
entire earth inhabitable via the Venus-effect. Even most apocalyptic local
consequences are pretty minor compared to those.

~~~
moe
_Those fuckers even create more radioactive waste (which won't get collected)
when they work as intended, than nuclear plants when they break down._

How about reading your own linked article before making a fool of yourself
with claims like that? It says coal plants create more radioactive waste than
a nuclear plant that has _not_ broken down.

~~~
ori_b
It's true for common failure modes. Three Mile Island, for example, did leak
less radioactive waste than a correctly working coal plant.

The problem is that it's so politically difficult to build new nuclear plants
so that old ones can be retired, that we're still using poorly designed plants
from the 1960s that are already past their design lifetime. And then people
are surprised that they're problematic.

~~~
fabjan
The reason we're still using the old plants is because even wind power is
cheaper per watt hour than a modern nuclear plant.

Finland is building one at the moment. At $4.1 billion it's now 50% over
budget.

~~~
ori_b
Your numbers are incorrect. The cost for nuclear is cheaper than oil and gas,
and only somewhat more expensive than coal, when factoring in the full
lifecycle costs.

And Finland's reactor is remarkably cheap, if it only cost $4.1B. I believe
typical plants cost closer to $10B. Nuclear plants are not cheap to build.

~~~
moe
_The cost for nuclear is cheaper than oil and gas_

That's a lie.

The equation breaks down when you factor in _any_ of the following:

A) Waste handling and disposal

B) Reactor upgrades and replacement on a sane schedule (i.e. more frequently
than the current ~35 years)

C) Hardening against deliberate attacks such as airplanes

or

D) A single catastrophic event due to continued negligence of B and C

The nuclear industry operates on the premise of being able to push the cost
for all of the above upon society at some indefinite point in the future (cf.
Fukushima). You may or may not agree with that approach (i.e. you could argue
"it's worth it"), but let's not drink their kool-aid please.

~~~
ori_b
If you didn't factor those in, then the cost would be almost nothing, even
when compared to coal. Almost all the cost of nuclear power is in the
construction and decommissioning.

When you factor those in, it becomes more expensive than coal, and slightly
cheaper than oil or gas.

Also, airplanes pack very little punch compared to other things like internal
steam buildup that plants are already hardened against. In a properly designed
plant, you get airplane tolerance effectively for free.

~~~
moe
_When you factor those in, it becomes more expensive than coal, and slightly
cheaper than oil or gas._

And that magic knowledge you take from... where?

Last time I checked there was no solution to the waste issue; we simply have
no idea what to do with it in the long term. Meanwhile in most countries the
transport and "temporary" storage of the waste are conveniently paid for by
the tax-payer.

Last time I checked most reactors are destined to be running for _40 years_.
Except when, like in USA and France, they decide to extend that to _60 years_.
So much for replacing ancient reactors with safer designs.

Last time I checked most reactors were _not_ hardened against deliberate
attacks. And Fukushima was _supposed_ to be one of the few specially hardened
sites - we have seen how that went.

 _In a properly designed plant, you get airplane tolerance effectively for
free._

Bullshit.

~~~
ori_b
> _And that magic knowledge you take from... where?_

Studying the viability of, of all things, solar power, and comparing the costs
of various competing technologies. (The school I studied at is quite involved
in solar research. It's price needs to drop by a significant factor before it
becomes competitive, but it's on the way.)

> _Bullshit_

To borrow your words: "And that magic knowledge you take from... where?"

When you design a reactor to take the rather substantial internal steam
explosions (and the associated water hammer) that might happen in a complete
failure scenario, you end up with quite a solid building.

------
masklinn
20GW is nowhere near 20 _plants_ at full capacity, it's 20 _reactors_ , and is
probably more of an average.

Reactors range from 400MWe to 1600MWe, and plants generally have 2 to 6
reactors with 2 outliers at respectively 7 (Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in Japan) and 8
(Bruce in Canada, although it's only running 6 reactors right now). The 10
biggest nuclear plants all have more than 4GW installed capacity.

FWIW, France _has_ a total of 20 active plants grouping 57 reactors. The
installed capacity is almost 62GWe.

~~~
gouranga
Don't forget that the amount of power lost due to cooling systems, mining,
fuel transport and refining of fissionable materials should be considered as
it's a considerable chunk of that output.

~~~
Mystalic
The same can be said for the cost of manufacturing and delivering solar
panels.

~~~
MichaelApproved
No. The costs for the lifestyle of a solar panel are considerably less than
nuclear rods.

~~~
sliverstorm
Color me curious- what sort of lifestyles do solar panels and nuclear rods
lead?

~~~
DrCatbox
Solar panels need to be cleaned and at the end of their lifespan, several
years if not decades, need to be replaced. I dont know about nuclear rods, but
they do require security and safety measures.

~~~
jnw2
[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/should-you-spring-
cle...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/should-you-spring-clean-your-
solar.html#!/2009/07/should-you-spring-clean-your-solar.html) indicates that
solar panels mounted flat do indeed need to be cleaned, but panels mounted at
a sufficient angle will be rinsed off adequately by the rain and do not seem
to benefit measurably from manual cleaning.

~~~
plorkyeran
Average soiling loss for tilted installations is around 5%, but it can vary
quite a bit with location and rainfall patterns, so it is occasionally worth
manually cleaning them.

------
lifeisstillgood
Front page of TED.com

[http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_ren...](http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables.html)

See 9:16. He arranges the power consumption of countries by per person per sq
m. And renewables can sit on same scale, and his estimate for PV solar is
about 20% of land mass of Germany needs to be covered.

This is one of the many problems of the renewables debate - apples and
oranges. The Germans have done an incredible and positive thing. Massively
upped the feed into the electric grid from solar PV. And electrical
consumption is where nuclear plants feed - so the two methods are direct
competitors.

But electrical consumption is only about 1/3 of goal energy budget of western
countries, rest is evenly split between transport and heating and about 5% for
everything else like rocket launches.

So 50% of about 30% says that "Germany has 15% of it's total energy from
renewables, will need to increase that by 7fold, give everyone an electric car
and heating that uses electricity and not ....

Yes it's a great step forward. But really, we are going to have to change our
lifestyles beyond belief to meet even 80% energy use from renewables. Forget
driving to supermarkets to pick up refrigerated milk and tomatoes flown in
from Africa.

Watch the talk - his book is very good too.

~~~
cbsmith
Something doesn't add up though. From those calculations, it would seem that
3% of Germany's land mass is "covered". I strongly suspect that isn't the
case.

~~~
kitsune_
Figures I heard on German television suggest 0,06% of Germany's area covered.

~~~
cbsmith
Okay, so his estimates are off by 50x... ;-)

------
InclinedPlane
This is a deceptive headline. The solar plants produced that much power during
a few hours. The article is light on details (and makes a few basic errors)
but at a bare minimum we can know that the average amount of power over an
entire day was far less for these solar plants than these peak power figures,
probably about 1/5th as much. Whereas nuclear plants keep producing all day
long.

This is great propaganda for the solar power industry but it does little to
change the fact that solar power doesn't produce power when it's needed and
storing energy is extremely expensive. This is not an indication that solar
power is ready for prime time, to serve as base load power generation, it's
just an indication that if you build enough PV panels you can get a lot of
power for a few hours on a sunny day, which is something we've always known.

------
sasvari
_Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the
rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual
electricity needs from the sun alone._

Despite the discussions in Germany about the high costs of PV for consumers,
this still shows something remarkably: a (in general) not so sunny country in
the northern hemisphere installed approximately half of the solar power
capacity of the world. It's not easy, and even in Germany there are huge
challenges lying ahead, but especially industrialized countries should take
this as a sign to accelerate their own renewable energy strategies.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
also, half of the pv capacity of the world is only 4% of the power needs for
germany.

~~~
danielharan
growing > 50% CAGR in the last 5 years. Don't write it off just yet :)

------
SagelyGuru
Germany also has a lot of installed wind power which works at nights too. Plus
new re-pumping hydro plants, which can be used to store the surplus energy of
such peak solar output. So, with such diversification, the nuclear plants
really are not necessary.

Plus with modern international energy trade, you get averaging benefits. I.e.
when it is cloudy in your country, it may well be sunny in one of your
neighbouring countries, so you can do instantaneous energy swaps like that,
reducing the need for storage.

~~~
ralfd
Sadly the nuclear plants in Germany, which provide 20% of the electricity, can
not be replaced by renewables but only by coal and gas power plants.

~~~
SagelyGuru
Why not? Does not this directly contradict your statement? > Germany became a
world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its
overall annual electricity from those sources.

~~~
Eeko
1\. Current renewable power sources need adjusting power (is that how it
translates to English?) when it's not shining or windy. 2\. Current
distribution networks for electricity do not work well enough to transport
large quantities of electricity for long distances. 3\. Due to getting rid of
nuclear, 90% of new electricity production built to Germany before 2020 will
be from fossil fuels.
([http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2012/05/germany_returns_to_c...](http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2012/05/germany_returns_to_coal.shtml))
That is what "the global leader" can achieve. And the fossil fuel plant's are
not going to be closed any faster than nuclear plants. Those investments are
for the next 60 years, and it's likely that there will be more if/when
cleantech can't really deliver out all the things we need.

And that's a pretty good result btw, truly a world champion -level
achievement. Meanwhile, Japan's nuclear phaseout is done with 99,999478% in
fossils. (The bloomberg links are down where they were calculated before, but
should be googlable with "Japan's Use of Oil May Surge by 300000 Barrels a
Day" & "Japan Will Use More Coal During Maintenance, Deutsche Bank Says".

Yes, you can get rid of nuclear, but for all intents and purposes, it has
always resulted with more dinosaur burning, not less. And that's pretty bad.

Even with all flaws, nuclear is a lot cheaper economically and environmentally
as an insurance option than what Germany and most global economies are
currently pursuing.

~~~
greedo
Don't worry. As Germany reduces its use of nuclear power, it'll just import
more nuclear generated electricity from France.

~~~
tobiasu
Oh really. In winter everyone in France turns on their electric heater and in
the summer the rivers run dry and EDF has to shut down plants due to
insufficient cooling...

------
spenrose
Total world energy consumption is about 16 Terawatts. The article reports
Germany's solar production peaked at 22 Gigawatts. That's over 0.1% of
humanity's use, from a single country covering a land area smaller than
California. We have just begun to exploit solar PV power generation.

~~~
eru
> [...] from a single country covering a land area smaller than California.

To be more precise: From a single, cloudy and relatively cold country.
California isn't really the right comparison.

~~~
spenrose
Apparently it was very sunny that day, and cool temps actually help PV
efficiency IIRC.

~~~
SagelyGuru
Yes but we are still a month away from the longest day, so the chances are
that this record will be broken again, soon.

------
jfoucher
"22 gigawatts of electricity per hour" ?? WTF? As soon as I read that the
credibilty of the whole post went waaay down...

But anyway, very cool.

~~~
cbsmith
It's not uncommon for people in the energy business to say "gigawatts" as
short hand for "gigawatt hours". In that context this sort of makes sense. At
their peak (likely when the sun was just right and the clouds were parted over
most of Germany), it produced 22 gigawatt hours in a one hour time period.
Without the implied "gigawatt hour", saying it just hit "22 gigawatts" isn't
really that impressive, because that could just be a momentary spike. Being
able to sustain it, even for an hour, is impressive.

~~~
kragen
They didn't say "gigawatt hours". They said "gigawatts per hour", which would
be a rate of change of power generation. For example, if the sun came up and
in 6 minutes your solar power station went from producing 0 to producing 2.2
gigawatts, that would be an increase of 22 gigawatts per hour. I strongly
suspect that the author of the article is just ignorant.

~~~
cbsmith
Yes. Gigawatt hours would be meaningless. I'm saying that the "gigawatts" was
a short form of "gigawatt hours", which means what they were talking about was
"gigawatt hours per hour", which is really just average gigawatts over an
hour, but that is quite meaningful as compared to straight up gigawatt.

~~~
kragen
It clearly carries a certain meaning, the same meaning as if a news story
referred to "the country of Africa" or "Pablo Picasso, a well-known classical
composer": its meaning is that the person who uttered it is too innocent of
reality to be a reliable source of information on the topic.

~~~
cbsmith
...or too familiar with industry jargon to realize that they aren't being
clear to a wider audience.

Like I said, it isn't unusual for people to say "gigawatts" and actually mean
"gigawatt hours" when it comes to the power business.

------
spoiledtechie
You know what makes me happy? Germany's Solar Power. Germany's Political
system. I personally believe this country is on the best path possible over
all other countries even being an American my self. They are by far the most
advanced politically than any other country I know, and that helps them
advance it other areas of the country.

I applaud them!

~~~
SagelyGuru
I agree. It is very beneficial for the healthy outlook of any large and
powerful country to badly lose a major war on its own territory. However, I
don't really expect any Brits or Americans to even understand what I am
talking about.

------
nextparadigms
Although many of the Fukushima stories may have been sensationalist I
_welcomed_ them. Because in a way nuclear energy generation is also a status
quo industry and an idea, although less so than coal. But we needed something
to nudge people into _wanting_ solar power, even over nuclear. The more demand
there is for it, the more research will be made for it, and new ways will be
found to make solar more efficient and cheaper.

We already hear about such new discoveries every few months now. Imagine if
many more countries and Government were committed to solar energy and would
make the solar industry boom because of it. We're still very early in this,
and the potential is enormous.

~~~
DanBC
What's wrong with nuclear?

Concentration on solar is great but has some sub-optimalities. Concentration
on an energy industry that could also provide materials for a cold war arms
race was clearly a bad idea.

Why aren't people working on thorium reactors?

~~~
lliiffee
Interesting. Are you saying that the technology for thorium reactors wouldn't
be so closely related to weapons technology?

~~~
DanBC
Thorium can't, as far as I know, be used for bombs. Unlike plutonium or
uranium.

~~~
SagelyGuru
And there you have the real answer why it is not used and why
uranium/plutonium is. It has very little to do with the economics and safety
of energy production.

------
Eduard
At night, Germany's solar power equals 0 nuclear plants.

~~~
spenrose
That's true. Fortunately: (1) it's always sunny somewhere (2) we are
increasing our ability to store power (3) industrialized countries use less
power at night.

~~~
skylan_q
His point is that if one depends too heavily on solar, there are times when
they'll have no access to power. How does one transport solar power from Japan
to Germany?

~~~
DrCatbox
You put mirrors in space.

But seriously, solar power generation by huge space stations that beam the
power down to earth, then use mirrors to feed it where it is needed.

~~~
catch23
I think it's been shown that it's infeasible. You'd lose too much power in the
beaming process, or you'd have a death ray beam that destroys anything that
flies between it... you could increase the area, but then you'd need a
collector dish the size of montana.

The best idea might be something like in the movie Moon where the power is
stored chemically, then shipped back to earth.

~~~
moe
We actually already have energy-storage technology (in your macbook, too!) -
it's just terribly inefficient.

I think the most common technology in use today at powerplant-scale is the
"Pumped-storage hydroelectricity plant". You basically pump water uphill when
you have energy - and let it flow downhill again, through your energy-
producing turbines, when you need it back.

Either way, there is tons of research in this area (e.g. SmartGrid). It seems
like a problem that we will solve eventually.

~~~
mchannon
Energy-storage technology isn't inefficient. Energy-storage technology is
expensive.

~~~
skore
"Efficiency in general describes the extent to which time or effort is well
used for the intended task or purpose."

Comparatively high cost is the main factor why it is still be considered less
efficient although that is slowly changing.

~~~
mchannon
If you go on to the next paragraph in the wikipedia article you copy-pasted
without citation, you'll see "The term "efficient" is very much confused and
misused with the term "effective". In general, efficiency is a measurable
concept, quantitatively determined by the ratio of output to input.
"Effectiveness", is a relatively vague, non-quantitative concept, mainly
concerned with achieving objectives."

------
SagelyGuru
You need not even postulate any terrorist scenarios to realise that the
nuclear plant risks are frighteningly real.

There are some 50 reactors in the US of the same vintage and design as
Fukushima, including the spent fuel rods storage right next to the reactors.

Nuclear reactors produce very large amounts of heat concentrated in a small
volume. Thus when the cooling system stops working, for whatever reasons, the
core is going to melt down, guaranteed.

Despite the secrecy of TEPCO and their friends in government, many people now
believe that the cooling failed the moment the earthquake struck. Mostly due
to the poor state and maintenance of the cooling pipes. The backup diesel
generators to run the cooling circuits (again the same as in the US), with
known shaft/bearings problems, packed up within minutes. After that, there is
nothing anyone can do, as we had seen. The tsunami probably provided just a
creditable scapegoat excuse.

------
Kroem3r
Kind of meh that the HN commentary is 'blah blah nuclear blah blah.' There
are, IMHO, other aspects to this that are actually interesting: The
effectiveness of subsidy in spurring a tech sector; the importance of cultural
values; concrete rebuttal to the 'energy incident per solid angle crowd'; etc.

------
ph0rque
_Critics also complain growing levels of solar power make the national grid
more less stable due to fluctuations in output._

DaniFong, I hope your company Light Sail Energy has some deals with Germany in
the works for your energy storage product.

------
elric1v
This is impressive, but I would guess that this was an especially sunny day.
I'd like to see what the average output is.

~~~
blubbar
[http://www.unendlich-viel-
energie.de/uploads/media/AEE_Strom...](http://www.unendlich-viel-
energie.de/uploads/media/AEE_Strommix-Deutschland_2011_Jan12.jpg)

This is in German, but the only source i could find. It says PV produced 3% of
the procuced energy in 2011. It is said the capacity grew about 30% since q4
2011, but the stats seem to be pending.

[BS]

In 2010 604,0 TWh where consumed [1], so that would be 604,0 TWh * 3% / 8760 h
= 2 GW as a conservative estimate. But note the stats are all a bit out of
date.

[1]
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedarf_an_elektrischer_Energie...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedarf_an_elektrischer_Energie#Deutschland)

[/BS]

As the graph says 612 TWh where produced, so 612 TWh * 0.03 / 8760h = 2 GW.

------
bane
I wonder if the nuclear plant will become the new unit of measure for popular
discussions of energy production in a similar way that the Library of Congress
is a unit of measure for data.

What's really impressive here is that _Germany_ of all places is producing
this much solar energy. One would better predict a sunnier climate as the
place to do this. It's great work, but I can imagine that maintaining base-
load is is still a difficult thing for the Germans. Anybody know how they are
handling storage for distribution during winter months/nighttime/inclement
weather conditions?

------
lancewiggs
The real insight for me is the success of the feed in tariff program. These
reward suppliers at higher than market rates for feeding electricity back into
the grid. E.g. You get paid retail prices, where you really should only get
wholesale, which excludes transmission costs.

For personal generation a well designed feed in tarrif should provide
incentive to build solar panels/wind turbines on your roof etc. A million
households producing a little power each makes it a lot easier to get to
sustainability.

~~~
greedo
Yes, the FIT is great if a) you're a solar equipment provider that can't
compete with other energy technologies or b) if you're a energy provider that
has hitched its wagon to solar energy, and can't compete with other
technologies on a cost basis.

For consumers, it's not so great. Germany has some of the highest electricity
prices before the FIT, and the FIT just makes it worse.

------
adamt
What is the "GW per hour" referenced several times in the article? Do they
just mean GW or do they mean Gigawatt Hours?

~~~
uvdiv
They mean gigawatts of power, at some specific time. Germany has about 24.8 GW
[1] of installed solar capacity, which recently peaked about 22 GW of actual
power. The time-average is about 2.1 GW as of last year [1] (as 18 TWh/year),
because solar panels in Germany only yield about 10-12% of their capacity
averaged over the day and year. [a] So this is about the same as a (one) large
nuclear reactor in electricity generated, but not peak power.

Incidentally it's cost about €100 billion [2] to build this, at taxpayer
expense. (Though this a future-spending figure: the subsidies aren't paid at
the time a power plant is built, but deferred over 20 years -- the present
value is somewhat lower). The specific subsidy rates are listed here [3]
(they're set by the year the plant is installed).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany>

[2] [http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inflated-
incenti...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inflated-incentive-
environment-minister-retreats-on-solar-subsidies-a-811530.html)

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_incentives_for_photov...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_incentives_for_photovoltaics#Germany)

[a] Note that the installed capacity increased a lot over 2011, so you can't
do simple comparisons like dividing 2.1/24.8 -- a lot of the capacity wasn't
installed at the beginning of the year, and was at the end. But see the
example capacity factors in the power plant table in [1]

~~~
blubbar
>€100 billion [2] to build this, at taxpayer expense.

At energy consumers expense to be precise. 100 billion € sound scary, but it's
just adds another 8,2% to the incredibly expensive German electricity bill.

<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strompreis>

------
zaroth
It's relatively easy to produce 22GWh for a couple hours each year. Try doing
it 8,760 hours straight.

According to Reuters, solar provided 18TWh in 2011 (up 60% from 2010) which
was 3% of total power output.

------
majmun
How many energy was consumed building this thing? and in what time will this
power plant produce same amount of energy?

~~~
jws
About 1 to 2 years. Highly variable by technology.

There is a persistent myth that solar panels take more energy to fabricate
than they produce in their lifetime. It is shown false with minimal effort
(consider if the entire cost of a panel was energy. no labor, not capital
equipment overhead, no raw materials… they still have payback periods shorter
than their lifetimes).

~~~
vilda
For the newest, most efficient panels, it's about 5 years.

~~~
kitsune_
Where do you get this number from?

~~~
jws
I don't have a number, but the exotics that are used in space applications may
never pay back their production energy. But it takes a lot of extension cords
to reach geosynchronous orbit.

------
philip1209
> 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour

I'm cringing.

------
malkia
Weather is a factor here, for example this lasted for a very long period for
us humans - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age>

But then technology advances so fast, so it might be the right stuff.

~~~
malkia
Why downvoted? I'm not against it, just noting that weather affects such
technology much more than other.

------
qrush
Anyone else have a sudden urge to play Power Grid?

