German Solar Installations Coming In at $2.24 per Watt Installed, US at $4.44

[kristopher]

The fruits of yet another effort by Republican Obstructionists working on behalf of corporate interests.

German Solar Installations Coming In at $2.24 per Watt Installed, US at $4.44
What steps can the U.S. take to keep up with the Johanneses?
ERIC WESOFF: JUNE 19, 2012

...According to the BSW, average German system prices in the second quarter of 2012 were estimated at EUR1.776 per watt peak, or $2.24 per watt peak at current exchange rates. Since Germany is dominated by rooftop systems (72 percent of installations in 2011), this is an impressively low number. Assuming a module price of around $0.90 per watt peak, this implies an average balance of system cost of $1.34 per watt peak.

This is one of the reasons why, as Mehta puts it, the German downstream market is still alive and well. While only 650 megawatts were installed in January and February (typical for Germany), preliminary results from the BSW indicated deployment of 1.15 gigawatts in March, largely due to pull-in effects of an expected April feed-in tariff cut, which was subsequently delayed. Second-quarter installation run-rates are proceeding at a healthy clip, in large part due to the deployment of “grandfathered” ground-mounted projects under the pre-April 1 feed-in tariff regime.

GTM Research is currently estimating 2012 installations in Germany to come in at around 6.5 gigawatts, compared to 7.5 gigawatts in 2011.



On the other hand -- as just detailed in GTM Research's U.S. Solar Market Insight -- the U.S. average system price was $4.44 per watt in the first quarter of 2011...

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/German-Solar-Installations-Coming-in-at-2.24-Per-Watt-Installed-U.S-at-4/

See also:

NREL says 80% of US electricity can be renewable by 2050 with current technology
US National Renewable Energy Lab says 80% of US electricity can be renewable by 2050, even with current technology.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112718362

Original study with great interactive features here:
http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/

[NNadir]

1. Wow. No wonder the German solar industry is such an abysmal failure.

I mean, after more than a decade of mindless cheering by the wishful thinkers who are trying to screw future generations with a faith based "solar will save us" meme in Germany - and of course elsewhere - the entire German solar industry was able to produce just 11.1 billion kwh of electricity, which in average continuous power terms, is the equivalent of a 1200 MWe coal plant, except unlike the solar "plant" the coal plant didn't require 100's of billions of Euros to build, and of course, the coal plant doesn't need redundant gas plants to back it up.

It's easy to see why Germany has the highest electricity prices in Europe, except for Denmark.

European electricity prices

I mean, what we have is the gasbags, um, I mean liars, I mean, um, the solar industry still representing their products in peak watts, when there isn't a single solar panel in the entire nation of Germany that produces that much power even at noon on a cloudless summer day. The capacity utilization is more like 10%, meaning that $2.24/"watt" this is the equivalent of having to pay $224 to light an ordinary light bulb for an hour a day when the sun is shining.

Thanks for a tip on why Q Cells went bankrupt in Germany. Der Speigel: Bankruptcies Have German Solar on the Ropes, Twilight of an Industry

An industry that produces nothing but wishful thinking is bound to fail, and predictably, in this case, it did.

[kristopher]

2. (ROFLMAO) Renewables Make German Power Market Design Defunct, Utility Says

How to say goodbye nuclear and fossil fuels.

Renewables Make German Power Market Design Defunct, Utility Says
By Rachel Morison, Bloomberg
June 26, 2012

LONDON -- Electricity generation from renewable energy in Germany is reducing power prices and has left the country with a market whose design no longer works, according to Stadtwerke Leipzig GmbH.

Renewable generation, such as wind and solar, receives support from the German government in the form of a feed-in tariff, or FIT. Because there are no costs associated with the wind and sunshine, renewables have a generating margin of zero, as well as legally mandated priority access to the grid. As a result, fossil fuel-fired plants are generating for fewer hours and selling their power at cheaper prices, making them less profitable.

“As long as renewables have zero margin costs, the market design we have doesn’t work,” Jens Teresniak, team manager for business development and market analysis at Stadtwerke Leipzig, said in an interview in Leipzig on June 21. “Capacity markets could be a solution.”

So-called capacity markets allow utilities to fix prices for guaranteed backup power supply in advance, boosting margins for gas and coal electricity plants as renewables output rises. German policy makers are considering how to ensure there are enough round-the-clock plants to keep the lights on when nuclear reactors are phased out and renewables output falls short.

Merit Order

Increasing supply of renewable energy is one of the main reasons electricity prices in Germany have declined, Teresniak said....

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/06/renewables-make-german-power-market-design-defunct-utility-says?cmpid=SolarNL-Thursday-June28-2012

[NNadir]

4. Despite the horseshit from the expensive and failed renewable energy industry...

...the figures for electricity prices are somewhat more indicative of reality than more wishful thinking and horseshit from the same delusional set.

Once again, for the benefit of simpletons, the data for electricity prices in all European countries is published by the EU Energy Portal:

EU Energy Portal

Being scientifically illiterate, and not caring for who among the poor are screwed to satisfy the unethical and delusional fantasies of the bourgeois delusional flakes who fully represent the "renewables will save us" mentality, it is probably useless to discuss real numbers with this set.

Nevertheless here are electricity prices in Europe given from the simply read link above:

Germany € 0.2781

Denmark € 0.3078

France € 0.1478


If there is a dumb anti-nuke who would like to look at the table above and list countries that have higher electricity prices than Denmark and Germany, it would be mildly interesting to hear these delusional rantings, maybe, but really who cares what these people think?

Predictably, the anti-nukes have a hard time with the simple inequality 0.3078 > 0.1478 and 0.2781 > 0.1478.

These are the sort of liars who wiggle and moan to claim that <em>nuclear</em> energy - the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy, is too expensive, while their continual rape of the world's government budgets is not.


I already know how the purveyors of superstition, fear and ignorance replace valuable nuclear infrastructure with short lived unreliable trash. One element of this mechanism is to not give a fuck about poor people, for whom electricity prices actually matter.

Have a nice evening.

[kristopher]

5. Poor little feller just ain't got a clue.

France is your case that nuclear helps the poor? France with its aging nuclear fleet that is too expensive to replace? France with its nuclear power corporations that are, in many important ways, stronger than any democratic institution in the country?


Nuclear power's latest attempt to drum up a new bandwagon has been a grand failure for precisely one reason, the exorbitant cost of building nuclear plants; and yet here you are claiming it is a solution for the world's poor?
See: http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=solar+in+the+developing+world&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

[kristopher]

3. No snappy comeback? nt