What Does Solar Energy Mean To Germany’s Big Utilities?

[ScienceRocks]

What Does Solar Energy Mean To Germany’s Big Utilities?



What Does Solar Energy Mean To Germany's Big Utilities?

Germany’s renewable sector (RE) is flexing its muscles, with solar production up 28% and wind up 19% during the first half of 2014. As a result, the renewable sector accounted for 31% of the nation’s electricity. If this trend continues, this may be the third year in a row that Germany sets a record for energy exports. The increase in renewables has also been accompanied by a decrease in fossil fuel usage. Gas-fired power plant production is down 25%, compared to last year, and hard coal production fell 11%. Only lignite power usage rose. So what does solar energy mean to Germany’s utilities?

In the video Birthing a Solar Age, Jerry Rifkin points out that so much renewable energy was fed into the grid one day last month that the price of electricity fell below zero. He predicted there will be more days like this, and in the future Germany’s utilities will not want to sell electricity, as they lose too much money!

Max Hildebrandt, renewables expert at Germany Trade & Invest, points out that it is important to distinguish between the wholesale spot market price and the consumer market price, and to note that utilities in the EU have seen gradual unbundling into grid-side and generation and supply operations.

“Negative prices on the EPEX spot exchange are a relatively rare but not unusual phenomenon,” he said. “They occur only during short peak periods – usually around noon when solar radiation is highest – and not for entire days. They are merely a signal for the large-scale spot market participants and do not have an immediate effect on the more rigid prices in the consumer market.”

 

[Mr. H.]

US exports help Germany increase coal, pollution - SFGate

LUENEN, Germany (AP) — One of Germany's newest coal-fired power plants rises here from the banks of a 100-year-old canal that once shipped coal mined from the Ruhr Valley to the world.

Now the coal comes the other way.

The 750-megawatt Trianel Kohlekraftwerk Luenen GmbH & Co. power plant relies completely on coal imports, about half from the U.S. Soon, all of Germany's coal-fired power plants will be dependent on imports, with the country expected to halt coal mining in 2018 when government subsidies end.

 

[Mr. H.]

[MENTION=22889]Matthew[/MENTION]

The "trend" has run its course...

 

[DGS49]

(1) Germans are being crushed by sky-high electricity rates

(2) Germany has made a (stupid) policy decision to shut down its nuke power infrastructure, most of which will be replaced by coal-fired plants.

(3) Russia has Germany by the figurative balls, because they rely heavily on Russian natural gas supplies to stay warm in the long, cold, Northern European Winters.

(4) They are not spending billions on renewables because they are trying to save the planet; they are trying to save themselves from their own tremendous vulnerability.

(5) The Germans are doing a tremendous job with wind power, especially, but it cannot replace base-load generation, for which they will continue to burn carbon - mainly coal.