So I decided to do some research on this topic with the hope of crushing the little wiggler's puffed out chest. Texas is 2x the size of Germany, and we have a powerful bunch of them big old propellery things (though everytime I see a windfarm it seems a significant of the turbines are shut down for various reasons). I figure we should be able to kick the butts of any bunch of Merkel's little windmills. I just can't quite put the numbers together in a way that makes total sense to me. Now, I'll give the Huns hydro, maybe biomass and probably solar, but we should have the right lands and we sure as heck got the winds. Looks like they got 29 jigawatts to our 18 jigawatts. How the heck can that be? Where have they put those beasts? How many hawks have they chopped up?
I have seen most of the windfarms in the Lone Star state because I wander around quite a bit. Out west of Abilene, up towards the Panhandle, there are a brazilian of those big old tall suckers. How can we not be kicking the snot out of the guys with the pointed helmets? I question the numbers he showed in the article he sent me, and I won't post it here because it would make everyone want to go wash their hands. So jump in here, somebody out there knows a heckuva lot more about this stuff than moi.
And how can they beat the US on solar after we flushed $500M down that toilet called Solyndra?
Ideas, opinions, advice and insults welcomed, as always.
Read the article a few down from this about Germans cutting subsidies. Wind and solar are dead without subsidies.
Chuck, I’m a bit of an electronic pack-rat and I’ve got a yuge stack of links to Free Republic postings/article. I’m sure you can find more than enough in there. I’m not sure how the formatting would end up here in the forum so I’m going to Freep-mail them to you. Have fun!
Don’t forget the geothermal plants in Germany.
https://pangea.stanford.edu/ERE/db/WGC/papers/WGC/2015/01045.pdf
Global Edition
Handelsblatt Germany’s Leading Business and Finance Daily, founded in 1946
Companies & Markets
23 Mar. 2016
Energy Transition
Electricity Prices in Free Fall
By Jürgen Flauger and Franz Hubik
Germany’s electricity market has become collateral damage in the country’s transition to renewable energy. Fast falling prices pose an existential threat for the operators of conventional plants like E.ON and RWE.
Germany has the most expensive electricity probably in the all of the world. My daughter is moving there soon, so I looked it up. You can too.
In fact, it’s so expensive, many Germans now don’t even have power. They can’t afford it. http://notrickszone.com/2015/11/16/socially-explosive-more-than-1-million-german-households-had-power-shut-off-over-past-three-years/#sthash.TUZCtCJo.dpbs
Renewables, due to their sporadic operational history destabilizes the power grid, damaging equipment, causing black outs, etc.http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/germanys-green-energy-destabilizing-electric-grids/
Coal and natural gas power plants can’t turn on a dime when the wind stops powering turbines.
German govt proposes cutting support for onshore wind energy starting 2017:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3430410/posts
All windmill and solar generation is “assumed” to operate at peak efficiency 24-7.
Ask him what he knows about grid management. It is not stable and it is not storable. Germany ‘may’ produce more “renewable” on paper, but it goes to waste when they don’t need it and is not there when they do need it. Their base load is backed by nuclear and coal. They don’t like talking about that fact. No matter how much ‘renewable’ there is, the base load must ALWAYS be ready to produce the same amount and will run idle whether needed or not. Germany imports significant amounts of electricity from neighboring countries. And as with all “renewables” they produce a negligible amount of electricity and would not be missed if all their solar and wind plants went away.
Windmills are a monument to liberal hubris and stupidity. Nothing more.