Says this New Scientist article. Thanks to this Tweet by Martin Varsafsky for the link.
This would not have been possible if German rate payers had not created the world mass market for solar in the last decade. That strategy of aggressive deployment has driven down prices so massively that from now on, the world market can really explode in the next decade. We are still in the very beginning of that development.
And every watt generated by solar helps replace fossil fuel.
And this article wants to explain why.
One important factor seems to be that Google gets some tax advantages from these investments.
The article doesn’t mention two other important factors.
For one, Google needs a lot of electricity for its own business. Getting that from renewable sources gives them security on their costs for decades. With no fuel prices to begin with, those costs are locked in. They won’t change with possible increases in the costs of fossil fuels.
And the other factor is that this creates a lot of good will. Large majorities everywhere favor the use of renewable energy. That means Google does what the costumers want, which is always a good idea.
Except when they actually are, like graffiti artist David Choe who got paid $200 million for painting a couple of walls. No need for copyright for that to work out.
Thanks to this Tweet by Martin Varsavsky for the link.
Kyocera that energy storage for solar can never work.
So they are bringing a 7.1 kWh battery system for residential solar systems on the market and plan to sell 10,000 units this year, starting with the Japanese market this summer.
I might be interested in buying that. The accident last year has shown the value of having an independent reliable source of electricity.
Thanks to this Tweet by energynet.de for the link.
This Facebook page collects people who “like the sun”. I just participated. Thanks to this Tweet by 100% Erneuerbar for the link.
The goal of that new page is to show that more people like the sun than Philip Rösler, who is the German Minister of Economy and a member of the German anti-solar coalition. Fortunately his party is at about 2% in the polls, so I hope he will be out of office after the next election.
Was just released, available here. Thanks to this Tweet by Jun Nabara for the link.
I learned that in 2011, Italy beat Germany in new installations, with 9 to 7.5 GW. Looks like a soccer World Cup final.
China is already in third place, with 2 GW installed.
World wide new installations were at 27.7 GW (up from 16.6 in 2010). As a result, world wide total installed capacity reached over 67.4 GW, with a total production of about 80 TWh. Still not much considering that world wide consumption is about 20.000 TWh, but it is starting to register. And growing at a rate of close to 70%.
The EU share of new installations is down to 75% (from 80% in 2010). The EU share in installed capacity is at 75% (up from 74% in 2010).
One obvious conclusion from this market data is that it doesn’t matter ever so much if the United States starts imposing anti-dumping duties on Chinese solar panels. There is not ever so much flowing in that direction in the first place. On the other hand, if the EU would start to implement this kind of measure, that would have a much larger impact.
One of the talking points of the anti-solar forces is that Germany gets “only 3%” from solar investing all those feed-in tariffs. That can be found for example in the latest anti-solar SPIEGEL article I blogged about here.
One counter to that is to point out that “only 3%” doesn’t sound like much, until you find out that this amounts to more than 18 TWh, which is enough to power many nations many times over. I did as much in a post discussing Mark Lynas’ position here.
However, actually, that “3%” figure is rather misleading in the first place. There are a couple of facts that need to be known when discussing solar’s market share.
For one, looking at a recent paper from Fraunhofer (at page 13) one sees that solar easily covers up to 20 percent of demand, and does so exactly at the time slots of peak demands. In other words, while solar might contribute “only” 18 TWh a year right now, those come exactly when needed most.
While it is true that there is no photovoltaic solar generation at night, that doesn’t matter much, since there would not be any demand for it in the first place.
That Fraunhofer paper also explains (page 12) that 98% of solar electricity is consumed so near at the source that there is no need for feeding it into the high voltage far distance grid, which saves a lot of transmission costs.
The clueless and harmful Spiegel article was not completely without merit, since it produced this excellent response by Craig Morris. I highly recommend reading that. It points out these highly relevant facts:
But to fully understand what we are talking about, we need to focus on some figures – not the retail power rate or the feed-in tariffs for PV, but installed PV capacity in relation to peak power demand. At the end of 2011, Germany had installed some 25,000 megawatts of photovoltaics, 15,000 of it installed in 2010 and 2011 alone. The country has peak power demand around the end of November at 80,000 megawatts, a figure that falls towards 60,000 megawatts in the summer and may even drop close to 50,000 on summer weekends and holidays.
No one in their right mind would argue that we can continue to install 7,500 megawatts a year given those figures for peak power demand. Think about it: 20 years of that level (solar panels currently have 25-year warranties) would lead to 150,000 megawatts of installed capacity – nearly 3 times greater than peak demand in the summer. Even if that 150,000 megawatts of solar only generally peaked at 100,000 megawatts of actual production in real-world circumstances, we would be throwing away a lot of power, and all of our other power generators – including wind turbines – would not be useful.
At summer peak power demand of 60 GW, the already installed 25 GW of solar is rather more than 3%. And if installations should proceed at the same speed for only a couple of years more, there will soon be no demand left to take up all that solar electricity.
The problem, in other words, is not that solar capacity in Germany is still too small after all those investments. The problem is that there will soon be not enough demand to take up all the supply.
That of course calls for more storage solutions, a topic I have discussed frequently here. My favorite idea is having some silicon production facilities ready on standby to kick in with extra production whenever demand is insufficient.
That way, the solar panels already installed would sort of breed their offspring, lowering panel prices even more in the process.
James Montgomery writes at Renewable Energy World about solar photovoltaic installation records in Asia.
China has added 1.7 GW in the fourth quarter alone, and Asian markets add up to 6 GW for the whole year, which is 165% more than 2010. That’s not bad as a growth rate.
China has over 20 GW of projects in the pipeline. It has increased its capacity by a factor of 5 (500% growth) in 2011.
China may very well surpass Germany in new installations this year, which would be excellent news. It is just about time that some other important countries start catching up.
Another article by Montgomery gives estimates for 2012 and beyond which are also very interesting. It expects a doubling of world wide installations to over 50 GW by as soon as 2014 from the 25 GW installed in 2011.
This article at Renewable Energy World discusses the plans of the American Department of Defense for renewable energy.
It claims that spending has increased to $1.2 billion by 2009 and is projected to reach over $10 billion annually by 2030. The DoD is the biggest single consumer of energy in the United States. That gives their decisions on which energy they want some influence on the market.
While $1.2 billion is not bad, last year’s investments world wide in renewable energy were $260 billion. That would leave the DoD number way below one percent of the world total market.
If they start understanding that global warming is a much greater threat to the security of the United States than any possible military attack by any other nation, they might start shifting their budgets accordingly. The DoD 2011 budget is estimated as $738.7 billion. Using half of that for countering the most important threat would instantly more than double current world investment in renewable energy.
Anyway, having the American military understand that it is cheaper and safer to get energy at the source directly from solar panels in Afghanistan than driving fuel trucks through hostile territory will be a welcome boost for the market. Every bit of help is welcome.
Built on water by choice.