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posted by LaminatorX on Friday August 15 2014, @02:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the bad-day-at-black-rock dept.

Coal generation down as Germany breaks yet another renewables record:

Renewable energy generators delivered 28 per cent of Germany's power production during the first half of this year, according to new figures, marking the latest milestone for the country as it continues its high-profile Energiewende low carbon transition.

Analysis by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy published this week reveals that wind and solar power projects significantly increased their levels of generation in the first half of 2014, compared with the same period last year, thanks to a combination of mild temperatures, high winds and increased capacity.

In the first half of the year, solar and wind power plants met around 17 per cent of Germany's electricity demand or 45 TWh. A further 11 per cent was provided by biomass and hydropower plants, meaning that renewables met more than a quarter of power demand.

And over in the US it is getting more expensive for homeowners to install Solar (local government fees and taxes).
Why are we letting big energy decide how power is being generated?

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  • (Score: 2) by khallow on Friday August 15 2014, @02:52AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 15 2014, @02:52AM (#81567) Journal

    This Energiewende project sounds like just another big energy project. Maybe we should just get of all those subsidies and such on all forms of energy and see what sticks around?

    • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday August 15 2014, @03:03AM

      by DECbot (832) on Friday August 15 2014, @03:03AM (#81572) Journal

      I'm sure you mean s/get/get rid/

      --
      cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday August 15 2014, @04:08AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Friday August 15 2014, @04:08AM (#81592) Journal

      Aha, you mean those that get devastating storms, heat waves, wrecked means of food production, get submerged etc. Should start claiming compensation from those that release CO2 by means of pumped fuel ?

      The problem is grid stability but it can surely be solved.

      • (Score: 2) by khallow on Friday August 15 2014, @09:12PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 15 2014, @09:12PM (#81864) Journal

        Aha, you mean those that get devastating storms, heat waves, wrecked means of food production, get submerged etc.

        That happens anyway. We shouldn't decide energy policy via the fallacy of confirmation bias.

        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 16 2014, @01:50AM

          by kaszz (4211) on Saturday August 16 2014, @01:50AM (#81951) Journal

          Have a look at the probability trend over time. Sure you can't pin a specific event to global warming (global chaos) but that's not the whole picture.

          • (Score: 2) by khallow on Saturday August 16 2014, @02:09PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 16 2014, @02:09PM (#82070) Journal

            Have a look at the probability trend over time.

            You mean the probability trend that doesn't exist [noaa.gov]? There's a good reason the IPCC abandoned extreme weather.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 15 2014, @04:12AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 15 2014, @04:12AM (#81593) Journal

      This Energiewende project sounds like just another big energy project.

      (Energiewende [wikipedia.org] is a policy, not a project.)

      Yeap, I'll stick with my solar panels. 1 year since my last bill from the network that included payments (labour/materials costs related to the switch to a smart meter, validation of panel installation, etc) - 1 year without paying a cent to the power company with a feed-in tariff of 31.5c/kWh and paying 33c/kWh consumed.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by khallow on Friday August 15 2014, @09:38PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 15 2014, @09:38PM (#81876) Journal

        and paying 33c/kWh consumed.

        And everyone who can't hang a set of solar panels (say because they don't own property) gets to pay. This sort of zero sum nonsense is a big part of the reason I strongly dislike big energy projects of any sort, including the "policy" sort.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 15 2014, @11:57PM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 15 2014, @11:57PM (#81927) Journal

          Ah, so for you it absolutely OK for everybody to pay for "gold plated power network extensions" [abc.net.au], but it's absolutely not fair that I want to take care of my wallet instead of theirs - and this because other cannot afford solar panels.

          From the linked article:

          The Australian Energy Markets Commission says the renewable energy target adds four per cent to the average electricity bill. For an average household, that's about a dollar a week.
          ...
          Federal Treasury estimates that 51 per cent of an average household bill is spent on network costs. Most of that is going towards paying off the $45 billion network companies have spent on updating our poles and wires over the last five years.

          This investment was justified by the network companies' own data, which showed that Australia's energy demand was going to increase dramatically. But in 2009, just as they were beginning to spend, something unprecedented happened. Energy demand in Australia didn't go up - it went down. And it's continued to go down every year since.
          Despite the clear reality of falling demand, the network companies insisted that demand was rising, and they carried on investing billions of dollars into the grid. Every dollar of that investment is now being recovered from consumers, via our power bills. Every dollar, plus ten per cent - a guaranteed return granted to them by the regulator.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 2) by khallow on Saturday August 16 2014, @01:46AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 16 2014, @01:46AM (#81949) Journal

            I looked through the article you mention, and I don't see any of my writings there. In particular, the linked article was written by a Jess Hill who is not me. So this is just another non sequitur, straw man argument. I might as well, while no doubt pounding my shoe on the desk for emphasis, ask why you think it's "OK for everybody to pay for 'gold plated power network extensions'" with as much justification as you did me. At least, you wrote those words which gives a very slight appearance of relevance.

            I don't think it is OK to take other peoples' money for your benefit - no matter who you are.

            • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday August 16 2014, @09:13AM

              by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 16 2014, @09:13AM (#82028) Journal

              In my understanding, you implied that - by running those solar panels - I take advantage of whatever incentives may exist (very little lately) to rob other people by selling my energy. Maybe my understanding was defective... anyway I pointed to an article showing that, if I would not have done that, I'd pay the power "networkers" for the equivalent of "bridges to nowhere" - through my nose, with 10% profit guaranteed and without any possibility to avoid it. I don't remember someone asking me if I agree with such a contract

              I don't think it is OK to take other peoples' money for your benefit - no matter who you are.

              Are you saying that "capitalism - for the sake of profit" (how else?) should be burned down? Or you don't include profit into the benefit category?
              (see, I'm not simply taking people money. I don't give money for something that I produce, consume a part of it and sell the rest).

              --
              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
              • (Score: 2) by khallow on Saturday August 16 2014, @02:04PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 16 2014, @02:04PM (#82068) Journal

                In my understanding, you implied that - by running those solar panels - I take advantage of whatever incentives may exist (very little lately) to rob other people by selling my energy. Maybe my understanding was defective... anyway I pointed to an article showing that, if I would not have done that, I'd pay the power "networkers" for the equivalent of "bridges to nowhere" - through my nose, with 10% profit guaranteed and without any possibility to avoid it.

                Ah, the "two wrongs make a right" argument. I already stated my position on this and I see no reason to change just because you came up with poor and venal rationalizations.
                 
                 

                Are you saying that "capitalism - for the sake of profit" (how else?) should be burned down? Or you don't include profit into the benefit category?

                There's a difference between taken someone else's wealth without their consent versus a trade which is mutually beneficial. Profit can come from either approach so it doesn't inherent fall in or out of the scope of my opinion.
                 
                 

                I'm not simply taking people money

                Yes, you are. You are profiting from a system that inflates the cost of electricity by a considerable amount (even your article admits that the average bill in Australia has risen by at least 4% due to such games). You just aren't as successful at it as the "gold-plated networks" are.

                • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday August 16 2014, @02:18PM

                  by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 16 2014, @02:18PM (#82071) Journal

                  You just aren't as successful at it as the "gold-plated networks" are.

                  And I'm pleased and unashamed that I don't pay them, yes. Also pleased that some coal will stay in the ground due to me not paying for it.

                  --
                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mojo chan on Friday August 15 2014, @07:30AM

      by mojo chan (266) on Friday August 15 2014, @07:30AM (#81639)

      The government is by the people, funded through taxation. Subsidising solar PV installations is just giving people their own money back.

      In Germany people are grouping together to buy grid infrastructure so it can be rebuilt in a form that favours renewable energy. The big energy companies won't do it, so people are doing it themselves. Electricity is a basic need for everyone in a modern country, and it should be provided by the government for the benefit of citizens instead of for the benefit of profit driven companies.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      • (Score: 2) by khallow on Friday August 15 2014, @09:20PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 15 2014, @09:20PM (#81867) Journal

        The government is by the people, funded through taxation. Subsidising solar PV installations is just giving people their own money back.

        As I understand it, that is called "thrashing" in financial circles - a series of transactions that don't materially change the final financial position, except to make the trader somewhat poorer. Its implication is that the series of trades wasn't worth entering and the trader would have been better off not doing anything at all. If you're giving back money that you took via taxes (you do call it "their own money"), then why not just not take those taxes in the first place?

        The point of government is not to give people their money back. It can be noble in purpose, such as providing vital infrastructure and empowering peoples' freedom, or ignoble such as maintaining a group of parasitic elites in positions of wealth and/or power.

        • (Score: 2) by mojo chan on Friday August 15 2014, @10:21PM

          by mojo chan (266) on Friday August 15 2014, @10:21PM (#81888)

          "Financial circles" know the price of everything and the value of nothing. The point of doing it through taxation, or in many cases by simply offsetting your tax so you never pay it in the first place, is to direct where it is spent and to redistribute wealth. You probably don't think the government should be doing that, but it's exactly what government is for on most developed nations.

          --
          const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
          • (Score: 2) by khallow on Friday August 15 2014, @10:35PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 15 2014, @10:35PM (#81895) Journal

            "Financial circles" know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

            Value is what others will pay for it. Financial circles have that as right as they'll ever need to have it. Here, you have something so valuable that you have to force people to pay for it. I might be getting a little sarcastic here.

            The point of doing it through taxation, or in many cases by simply offsetting your tax so you never pay it in the first place, is to direct where it is spent and to redistribute wealth.

            To what end? There are both good and bad ends.

            • (Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday August 16 2014, @07:11AM

              by Pav (114) on Saturday August 16 2014, @07:11AM (#82017)

              Energy security (ie. not relying on those pesky Saudis, Russians etc...), less CO2 and polution in general, less fracking/open pit mines/environmental degradation, democratisation of energy production (eg. aiming for solar on every roof).

              Unfortunately the invisible hand doesn't pick up the bill for environmental mitigation measures or society wide strategic projects. These are precisely the reasons government exists.

              • (Score: 2) by khallow on Saturday August 16 2014, @02:06PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 16 2014, @02:06PM (#82069) Journal

                Unfortunately the invisible hand doesn't pick up the bill for environmental mitigation measures or society wide strategic projects. These are precisely the reasons government exists.

                And government also exists for a number of nasty reasons too. It's hard to control and exploit a populace without a system.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by hash14 on Friday August 15 2014, @05:53AM

    by hash14 (1102) on Friday August 15 2014, @05:53AM (#81617)

    The US (as a country) is consumed by greed. It's entire economic and social architecture is constructed upon greed. No good will initiative (of measurable scale) will ever succeed in the US as it's always the bottom line that determines what (or who) lives and dies. If it doesn't provide an economic benefit, it won't see the light of day.

    Call it an unsustainable culture if you like. If the sole factor for getting behind an initiative is based on whether it benefits you monetarily, then inevitably you will find yourself in a situation where you will only pursue something bad for you, which is ultimately what the coal, fossil fuel, etc. industries are doing right now. Unfortunately, it also harms everyone else, on a 100% global scale. In fact, it's hard to think of things which could be more destructive.

    We hear non-stop that it's just not monetarily feasible to develop an environmentally sustainable economy. Well, here's the thing that these people don't understand: you can't buy another ecosystem. Once you trash it, it's gone. Remember that as you decide what is and isn't economically feasible.

  • (Score: 2) by khchung on Friday August 15 2014, @06:54AM

    by khchung (457) on Friday August 15 2014, @06:54AM (#81630)

    Knowing the France already have ~80% of it energy coming from nuclear, and that Germany had NEW coal plants turning on. It is kind of hard to get excited about this news of just 28%...

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 15 2014, @08:13AM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday August 15 2014, @08:13AM (#81655) Journal

      Nuclear != renewable.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 1) by subs on Friday August 15 2014, @11:02AM

        by subs (4485) on Friday August 15 2014, @11:02AM (#81690)

        Well so freakin' what? What matters are results [imgur.com] and in that area France has had Germany beat for well over 20 years now. That graph is even biased a bit against France, because it compares per-capita consumption in Germany, which takes trade balance into account, to per-capita generation in France, which doesn't and both countries are net exporters (so part of their CO2 emissions from generation are actually used up by other people). The French don't need to do a single damn thing to their electrical generation infrastructure and can sit idly by, as they've already met and exceeded, twice over, their Kyoto protocol obligations in this sector.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Dunbal on Friday August 15 2014, @01:05PM

        by Dunbal (3515) on Friday August 15 2014, @01:05PM (#81713)

        Well neither is solar, for that matter... the sun won't be around forever either. But yeah the usable nuclear isotopes will probably have been spent long before the sun dies.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Blackmoore on Friday August 15 2014, @02:29PM

      by Blackmoore (57) on Friday August 15 2014, @02:29PM (#81731) Journal

      I think you are missing, was that Germany shuttered it's nuclear plants, and set a national policy to grow electric production through renewable sources; and efficiency improvements. They too had a large base load generated by nukes - and they will have to expand these sources by another magnitude to get near the type of generation numbers. in the mean time they are bringing coal on line to deal with current demand.

      • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 15 2014, @05:49PM

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday August 15 2014, @05:49PM (#81806) Journal

        in the mean time they are bringing coal on line to deal with current demand.


         
        The summary and article disagree with you.
         
          Coal generation down as Germany breaks yet another renewables record

        Meanwhile, fossil fuel energy plants all saw a decline in generation compared with last year. Gas fired power plants in particular produced a quarter less power than in the first half of 2013, and half as much as in the first half of 2010, marking a declining trend.

        Production from brown coal powered plants fell by four per cent and hard coal dropped by 11 per cent compared with last year.

        • (Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Friday August 15 2014, @09:54PM

          by Blackmoore (57) on Friday August 15 2014, @09:54PM (#81881) Journal

          well actually it oddly in line; use of coal is down, due to both efficiency gains and renewables, but number of coal plants is up.

          They don't have the demand to run the coal plants at full steam. (and let's hope that this is going to deter more coal plants)

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 15 2014, @01:45PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday August 15 2014, @01:45PM (#81721) Journal

    There was a pair of graphs published in 2012 that illustrated the effect [reneweconomy.com.au] that Germany's then installed renewables were having on utilities' pricing curves. Essentially they were erasing the utilities' profit margins for most of the day. It turns out that peak electricity demand and peak solar production coincide nicely, leaving the utilities the unprofitable portion of the demand curve in the middle of the night.

    This is probably why Barclays recently downgraded electric utilities' bonds [barrons.com]. The grid which has always been the source of the utilities' natural monopoly will turn into a giant millstone around their necks. It's very expensive to maintain no matter how few customers continue to rely on it.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 15 2014, @10:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 15 2014, @10:58PM (#81909)

      it might be true that the sun shine everywhere, thus one might think that no grid is required.
      then again maybe we should think of the grid as a teleportation device. it can send from "here" to "there".
      problem with "downgrade" is for companies that didn't split the "generation" (powerplant) part from the "teleportation" (grid) part.
      huge central (one way) fossil fuel plants might be on the way out but i doubt that the grid will ever become obsolete.
      you know .. in the future when energy is near limiteless and free you might want to create a small ice-skate rink in your front yard and then your own PV solar won't be enough but thanks to the grid you can nevertheless delight your kids : D

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 15 2014, @10:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 15 2014, @10:39PM (#81898)

    TEH funny thing is that if you can create all parts needed for a PV solar system WITH PV solar systems then you actually have unlimited energy and thus you can... MAKE COAL!
    or in other words .. you can make carbon-based batteries that generate heat with oxygen in the atmosphere.