We periodically go back and forth on energy here at BMG. Our most recent foray, started by esteemed BMG-er johnt001 was a great time for all. That post has some good (mostly civil) conversation and some good technical information.
Now, on the heels of that discussion, more ammunition for the pro-solar forces:
Germany Solar feeds nearly 50% of demand.
I don’t know about yours, but my gob, it is smacked. According to the link, German solar fed 22 Gigawatts per hour of electricity to one of the leading industrial nations on the planet, during the peak solar hours on two consecutive days. Wow.
Now, the days in question were Friday and Saturday, decidedly not peak industrial times, so this is not 50% of all demand… let’s be clear, but it remains a staggering feat and a clear indication that solar can work. I’m not well versed on German infrastructure, but I’m given to understand they’re moving full speed ahead on a smart grid that is much more forgiving in the face of the fluctuations and inconsistencies of Solar. Can you imagine what they’ll do with such a grid in place?
What now Solar haters!?!?! =-)
.. but I’ve long known about the German’s relatively prolific adoption of solar for a while when I was briefed by panel manufacturer’s about where their primary markets were (this was probably 7 or so years ago). From what they were saying, the primary reason it was working so well in Germany had to do not with infrastructure, but the way the set up the incentives. Government got involved.
I’m sure that is right. Germany subsidized the bejesus out of solar, and got a lot of solar adoption.
At present, they are fighting about whether to cut the subsidy, which is expensive. The problem is, now they have a cottage industry that would fail if they cut the subsidy, so there is pressure to maintain it, and so it is a political issue.
So it sounds like they have started up a lot of solar power as an energy source, but that they have not created a self-sustaining industry. I’m not sure if the latter was even a goal, or if they were just looking for carbon reduction.
I wanted 5 kW worth of panels, and the German ones would do that and fit on my roof. I would have been happy to buy domestic panels (at a slightly lower cost), but I’d have to accept less output.
It’s not just a “cottage industry.”
… wasn’t (isn’t) just subsidization – there were building codes involved and the way their energy market regulations work as well.
There is, apparently, some dispute over A) the expense of the subsidy and 2) who it is who is unwilling to pay it, and why. It looks, from this remove, like typical business posturing over paying for things. Not at all outside the norm, if you ask me… Then there are the carbon burners who lose out on 22 Gigawatts of rents on any given day… They don’t like the subsidy at all. But overall, it doesn’t seem to be something the average German gets his leiderhosen in a particular twist about.
But it sounds like it could be a tipping point… Especially if the subsidy is used to implement a smart grid, one that can better handle multiple inputs and energy taps. There is a great deal to be said for our energy grid designed and implemented in the 1940’s (both here and in Germany) not least of which is the surprising resilience it has shown over the many decades of use. But we’ve reached a point where, in input, it’s not much able to scale. We need a smarter grid.
And, as I noted in the title, German engineering, if the US isn’t going to do it, will be the ones to get it done: it is, after all, a question of engineering, not of science. I once had hopes for Japan but they don’t seem to have much will to move away from nuclear, even after Fukushima. Not that I’m particularly down on nuclear. I think that too is a question of engineering.
Think, tho’, on what will happen when the science of it does improve… adoption, smart grid, technology improvements: we’re at the tip of the iceberg with this thing….
That’s fantastic! And thanks for the shout-out – I’m on my way to a DPU hearing on Cape Wind, will comment more later
Many “German” solar panels are partly or largely composed of parts manufactured in Asia and Indonesia, especially China. It sounds like these are mostly PV (Photo-Voltaic) panels. While they may be assembled in Germany, I am under the impression that their key components (such as the PV cells) come from elsewhere.
Chinese PV cells are cheap because the chinese have been heavily subsidizing that industry for a long time. The reluctance to do the same puts German and US manufacturers at a disadvantage (this is what killed Evergreen).
… manufacturing in Germany before they tried to replicate their operations at Devens and before they ultimately put their manufacturing in China. As I recall, China’s heavy subsidies were relatively recent and prompted the move to China (2009 or so?).
It was their semiconductor fabrication costs that killed them. It isn’t just Evergreen, the US is in trouble.
China has been pushing those down, and neither Germany nor the US is doing much to stay competitive. It seems that the current government approach is to threaten tariffs and such. I don’t think that approach will do much to solve the problem.
An interesting sidenote came up during a discussion on the US decision to seek tariffs on Chinese solar panel imports during a discussion on Tom Ashbrook’s `On Point’ on WBUR.
Namely, why not take advantage of the Chinese subsidies in order to broaden US solar infrastructure build out.
In other words, rather than fight China on prices at the bottom line with a tariff approach designed to protect US manufacturers — why not take all the panels and or components they can send us and support the installation on individual homes across the nation.
If China is going to make panels cheap — seize that as an opportunity to develop the US solar array.
The goal should be to get panels on as many roofs with optimal exposure to the sun as possible.
What is the prevailing economic imperative in your mind? Increase US deployment of renewable energy resources, or bring along a fledgling manufacturing sector competing with cheaper markets overseas?
If we want to do big corporation subsidies, direct them at the energy grid where the upgrade to `smart grid’ capabilities is universally acknowledged.
Support for home owner investment and installation of solar panels will help individuals and small businesses.
Maybe that’s the problem?
.
Seriously. The rationale for tariffs is that this will be a huge industry and that the country that develops the technology will reap the jobs and other benefits. Think automobile manufacture.
The argument for subsidies is that a period of predictable subsidies will enable R&D that will lead to cheaper, more efficient solar. This is already beginning to happen and there is a ways to go. But meanwhile the high price of solar discourages investment.
So if we swallow the bait, cheap imports, we lose a great prize. But a tariff is an inferior remedy that at best cedes the rest of the world to the Chinese. Better to be globally competitive by matching the Chinese subsidies. The worst that happens is that more solar displaces more fossil and we get to keep the polar bears.
1. They didn’t try to do it all in a year [see: Spain, Portugal, Italy]. They ramped up over the span of 5-10 years or so. This helped. It’s still a massive undertaking, to be sure.
2. They reduced all the soft costs. Permitting fees, complexities, and turn-around time were all slashed. By making that part of the process really easy, it lowered the installation cost significantly.
3. Economies of scale. Installers were buying PV by the shipping container full, thereby reducing their costs.
Germany has the solar insolation of Alaska. They don’t have a lot of sun. Still, they believed in building distributed, no carbon, fuel-free, non-radioactive power generation. They put their head down, made it a priority, and got it done.
Lots of folks point out that France built a bunch of nuclear power and that France exports some of that electricity to France. It’s true. France makes more electricity at 2am than they know what to do with, so they sell it to adjacent nations at low low prices.
Germany, on the other hand, exports electricity to France at mid-day, when electricity prices are higher. And, exports minus imports, Germany is a net exporter to France, not the other way around.
So before anybody pulls the France card, I urge you to do some research. France is a net importer of German electricity, not the other way around.
and
I would like to see some numbers on that. You imply either that (a) solar is less expensive than nuclear or (b) France has excess demand during the day.
… what does (a) have to do with it? Energy exports can be about capacity or price – and capacity relative to demand alone can necessitate imports regardless of relative costs.
Cites are great, but do you have some reason to find (b) implausible?
I’m not rebutting anything. But I’d be very interested to find some cross-border market figures…MW/h bought and sold, strike price, etc.
but I don’t post to BMG from work.
Check out
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article3444009.ece
which is a newspaper with 1.5M+ circulation.
As for the actual market figures — you could put together MWh per year [NOT MW/h, which is pretty meaningless outside of a theoretical physics course] using EU or national energy reports, but you won’t get detailed price — those are PPAs [power purchasing agreements] which, in general, aren’t made public. If you doubt that daytime electricity is worth more than nighttime electricity, then you would seem to know far less about this industry than you project.
And yes, solar IS less expensive than nuclear. Both total cost of ownership AND, more importantly, O&M. You see, nuclear reactors require fuel, maintenance, inspections, and staff. PV requires no cost for fuel, very little maintenance, almost no inspections, and extremely low staff. Once you’ve got the capital plant in place, PV is far less than nuclear per MWh generated. As for the total cost of ownership, it turns out that PV is, in fact, cheaper than nuclear.
And yes, France’s demand during M-F daytime exceeds its nuclear capacity for both summer and winter. I’d bet spring and fall too, but I don’t have numbers handy.
I have been involved in a large-scale commercial PV development project in MA, and it is a very difficult endeavor despite a robust state subsidy.
Just because there is a solar resource indicated on the map doesn’t mean much in New England at all. Other factors mostly kill PV’s economic viability, especially zoning regulations and the cost of land (driven by best and highest use.)
Another major factor is terrain and ground cover (trees, leaves, snow, dust, etc.) In New England it’s bad news, and makes most of the geography impossible for large scale PV.
We can fill in wherever we can, but I would forget about PV contributing much of New England’s power needs. That applies to most US states that have terrain. FL and the deserts in CA, where there is space to absorb the low-density output of PV, go for it.
Let’s look at Pittsfield MA:
* Berkshire Community College: 392 kW system from 1,868 panels, supplying 25% of their electricity
* WMECO has a 1.8 MW ground-mounted 6,500 panel system
* Pittsfield Water & Sewer has a 1.57 MW ground-mounted system
So, just keep spouting off claims which directly contradict actual investments. Green communities must allow large mounted solar in at least some locations as-of-right, and I don’t know of a single zoning regulation which restricts PV on residential (thought historic districts may). The cost of land? There’s plenty of land which is relatively flat, tree free, and low cost — even in New England. Start with contaminated land, awkward dimensional land, buffer land, land with difficult road access, etc. Then, look to the roofs. How much flat roof space in 10,000+ sq ft increments is in New England? Answer: plenty. While slightly more expensive than ground mounted, it has no best and highest use. Nobody wants to hang out on the roof of a strip mall, office park, or government building.
…that roof mounted solar is normally cheaper than ground mounted solar. The roof is already there, adding solar to it is lower in cost that building a new structure for the solar power system.
Even with large federal and state subsidies, PV is at a tremendous disadvantage to conventional power generation on cost, density, efficiency, and reliability.
Rather than subsidize the manufacture of PV, the US should be funding basic research. Photovoltaic technology has not had its Moore’s Law breakthrough, and that is what is needed — an order of magnitude improvement.
Until that happens, PV will be economically infeasible and relegated to the periphery of the energy industry no matter how much it is subsidized.
You’ve really got your head buried in the sand.
Trees? Not a problem – see chain saws. Installing home solar panels might involve knocking down a tree or two, but a home solar power system gives the equivalent carbon reduction of almost an acre of trees.
Leaves? How many leaves end up on your roof in the fall? At my house, it’s zero – the wind takes care of that.
Snow? Solar panels shed the snow very effectively – if even one corner of a single panel is exposed to the sun, it begins to produce power, causing it to warm up, and also warming every other panel on the string. Typically panels are snow free within a few hours the morning after a storm.
Dust? Rain and snow cleans the panels very effectively, and if you get a film of pollen like what we’re experiencing lately, you just rinse them off with the garden hose.
As far as cost is concerned, what is the cost of losing coastal areas to higher sea levels? I was at the DPU hearing on Cape Wind last night – several people from Cape Cod said $1 a month would be too much money for retired folks on the Cape to bear on their electric bills. But how much would it cost if they lose their home to rising sea levels?
We put in residential and industrial scale solar power facilities every day where I work – the cost/benefit analysis works for our customers, they know a good return on investment when they see it. I’ll trust them to know that they’re doing the right thing – your misguided notions aren’t worth the space they’re taking up between your ears.
Everything happens at the margin. Trees, slope, dust, leaves, snow, etc., all make PV’s less efficient here than in similar solar areas in, say, the Plains states. Somewhat less efficient. That’s all I’m saying. This is from my experience in a 10 MW ground install project here in MA, and the financial challenges it faced.
On the commercial side, all this matters. On the residential/retail side, not so much. I applaud the work you and your company are doing. Excellent business model, I believe.
But it’s all held together with very heavy state and federal subsidies. You may see this a good policy, but I do not. Reasonable people can differ.
But I would never knock your career or business pursuits…if the government offers it, and you can provide a valuable product and service, my hat will always be off to you. Don’t take my comments otherwise.
In Massachusetts it’s about 15 cents. In Kentucky, it’s about 7 cents. This means that your “at the margin” claim is turned on it’s head — the electricity cost avoidance for PV is more than twice as much in MA as it is in KY, which means that even if the panels in MA lose 5% to snow, 5% to dust, and 10% to it being less sunny in MA than KY, you still come out far ahead in MA viz a viz KY. On the commercial side, unsubsidized PV is most efficient in CA, followed by MA, NJ, and the NYC-area, because CA has high prices and good sun, and the others have high prices for electricity and mediocre sun. Arizona has great sun, but cheap electricity rates mean that your cost avoidance is a pittance of your neighbor to the west.
plus 8 cents “delivery.” That’s off my NStar bill.
What cost kwh are you using for PV?
If you had PV on your roof, every kWh produced by the PV reduces your bill by 16 cents — 8 cents juice plus 8 cents delivery.
This is why PV may not be economic for a utility to install but still can be economic for an end-user (residential, commercial, industrial customer) to install. Their avoided cost is far higher!
When you generate your own electricity on your rooftop, you deliver it to yourself as well, via a conduit from the roof to the inverter and then to your service panel. National Grid customers all seem to be in the $.14 to $.15 range for supply and delivery, while NStar is all over the map, I’ve seen their rate as low as NGrid’s, and as high as $.21
and so “delivery” is an issue.
Still, 16 cents seems awfully low for even residential roof top PV. Even with the subsidies. Johnt001’s company does a good job delivering that because of their finance mechanism, but I don’t thing I’ve seen parity between PV and grid energy prices.
He can pre-pay the entire lease up front for a little over $23,000.00 – over its lifetime, the system will produce over 243,000 kWH of power. That works out to $0.03 per kWH, locked in for 20 years, saving him an enormous pile of cash. In addition to that he gets to sell SRECs for the first ten years the system is in operation. At the lowest possible price for SRECs, he stands to make over $35,000 on SRECs alone, never mind the savings on his electric bill.
At the end of the lease term, he can purchase the 20 year olf system for its then-current value, and he’ll likely get another 20 years of clean, free power from it. How’s your roof, bostonshepherd? Want me to come by and do a free assessment on your property?
The rate comes out to $0.094 per kWH on that deal, it was a different arrangement where we pre-sell the SRECs at $125 each that came out to $0.03 per kWH. Under this deal, he still saves over $0.05 per kWH – if we pre-sell his SRECs, he saves over $0.11 per kWH.
So, in short, you don’t really understand this industry very well, but you’re happy to throw up roadblocks to every response you get from the two folks who likely know more about PV than anyone else on BMG (johnt001, who installs ’em, and stomv, who does energy economics for a living).
At some point, it just gets tiring. I don’t give a damn if you’ve seen parity between PV and grid energy prices. I have, and I do this for a living. I’m tired of holding the burden of evidence. Why don’t you do some research and get back to us on the cost for supplies, for install, for interconnection, and for land to install a 2 MW ground mounted system adjacent to a commercial or industrial setup, and go ahead and research the electricity rates that the owner will avoid (hint: don’t forget that you can split net-metering in MA, and that industrial customers have 2-tiered rates).