Germany breaks solar energy record for the amount of solar energy produced by a nation.

[pampango]

According to the Institute of Renewable Energy (IWR), solar plants produced a record breaking 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour at midday on Friday and Saturday.

This amount of electricity is equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity. It provided a third of the countries energy needs during a work day on Friday, and half of its needs on Saturday when offices and factories were closed.

The German government took the decision to move away from nuclear energy shortly after the disaster in Fukushima last year. In all eight nuclear power plants were closed immediately with the remaining nine are all due to be closed by 2022.

Critics of renewable energy have argued that it is not reliable enough and an industrialised nation can never produce enough of it to meet its needs. But Germany has set out to prove that it is possible, and at the moment the country gets 20 percent of its annual overall electricity from renewables, and four percent from the sun alone.

http://www.euronews.com/2012/05/27/germany-breaks-solar-energy-record/

This in a country with 1/4 of our population. Many larger countries can learn something from Germany's example.

[randome]

1. Bomb them. Now. Don't wait.

That's America's solar energy they're using!

[ladjf]

2. This is how intelligent people get things done.nt

[malaise]

3. Yes indeed

Congrats German peeps

[raouldukelives]

4. Thank you Germany!

I wish my country would take the coming famines caused by climate change a tad more seriously. But they don't give a shit about the current ones either.
Sadly the "job creators" and Wall St investment firms who are given powerful voices by the millions of small investors joining hands with them in solidarity use that power to stop efforts to inform people about reality so that we can actually start to combat it. I hope somehow, someway, some powerful sign will bust through and part the fog in their minds which stops them from seeing the results of their folly. Before it's too late that is. Which some people are saying it might already be. Fuck it.

[pampango]

8. Juan Cole: Most irresponsible in carbon crisis - China and the US.

Germany has defied the predictions of those who said that mothballing its nuclear plants would cause it to produce more CO2. Its carbon dioxide production was down 2% in the past year. It replaced 60% of its formerly nuclear-generated electricity production with renewables, and became 5% more efficient in using energy.

Germany’s achievement is owing in part to the influence in the 1990s of the Green Party on energy policy in that country. But soon investing in solar energy will no longer be high-minded, it will just be economic common sense. By 2017, even if you don’t count all the damage hydrocarbons do to the atmosphere, solar power will reach grid parity with them. That is, it will be economically competitive to put in a solar plant instead of a coal one. (In some areas of the US, solar grid parity will be reached in 2014).

The world probably needs to get back to 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if truly radical climate change is to be avoided. But we are going in the wrong direction fast. In April, the Mauna Loy observatory measured CO2 in the atmosphere at about 396 parts per million, the highest recorded since records began being kept. The level was up nearly 3 ppm in a single year, itself an unusual statistic. Before the Industrial Revolution, at the time of the American Revolution, the level was 280 ppm. The Founding Fathers would already not recognize America’s balmy climate if they traveled in time to the present.

There are responsible and irresponsible players in this crisis. The Chinese are the most irresponsible in having the highest level of CO2 emissions, though they are actively trying to bring those down. Arguably the most irresponsible of all is the United States, with the second largest amount of CO2 emissions but doing very little about it (and our big corporations, including Big Media, are trying to exercise on us a Goebbels-like Big Lie that we needn’t do anything).

http://www.juancole.com/2012/05/21355.html

[WillyT]

5. HUGE K & R !!!

[Robb]

6. 4% of Germany's electricity use from the sun. It's a start.

[SidDithers]

7. The biggest problem with Solar is the capacity factor...

At those moments on Friday and Saturday at midday, Germany produced 22 GW per hour. But what about when it's dark?

An update of a post I made last year:

A better measure is the total annual power output, which is the Capacity x capacity factor x total hours in a year, expressed in GWh.


In total, Germany has 25 GW of total solar capacity, but the actual power output in 2011 was 18 TWh. This means that in 2011, their solar plants operated at a capacity factor of only ~ 8% (source wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany )

25 GW x 24hours x 365 days x 8% capacity factor = 18,000 GWh of power output in a year


By comparison, Darlington Nuclear Generating Station outside of Toronto has a capacity of 3.512 GW but in 2011 operated at a capacity factor of 95%. (http://www.opg.com/power/nuclear/) Total power output from Darlington is:

3.512 GW x 24hours x 365 days x 95% capacity factor = 29,229 GW of power output in a year

So, a single reactor complex, with 4 avg sized reactors, produced 62% more power in a 2011 than all of the solar in Germany.

Where did Germany get the other 96 or 97% of it's electricity in 2011?

Sid

[originalpckelly]

9. Solar in space is the way.

We can do it, we just have to continue developing low cost launch solutions, which will make it more feasible from an expense perspective.

[FarCenter]

10. You should calculate energy return on energy input

How much energy is required to build and fuel the launch vehicles and to put a solar energy plant into space, versus,
how much energy do the cells capture, convert, and deliver back to earth.

[originalpckelly]

11. It needs to be a solution like the Pegasus rockets...

Only using giant hydrogen filled balloons. We just have to find a way to keep them from floating off and bursting once the load is separated.

[FarCenter]

13. So using a solution like you propose, how much energy do we get back from the energy input

[NickB79]

14. There are no low-cost launch solutions of this magnitude

Only a space elevator, railgun launcher, or remote-manufacture capability (perhaps from lunar material or a captured asteroid) would suffice to reduce the price far enough.

[madokie]

12. One half of my blood lineage is German

Way to go Germany, you truly are setting an example for the rest of the world in how to get rid of the dangerous nuclear power plants. I salute you


German and Cherokee is something to be very proud of. It was the Cherokee who taught the first settlers how to build a log cabin which was I might add a far superior dwelling than a mud hut. Taught them about Corn also.

http://www.cherokee.org/AboutTheNation/History/Facts/24457/Information.aspx