Posted on 08/07/2022 6:40:37 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Munich (Germany) (AFP) – The more the sun shines in the southern German town of Aurach, the more likely it is that Jens Husemann's solar panels will be disconnected from the grid -- an exasperating paradox at a time when Germany is navigating an energy supply crisis.
"It's being switched off every day," Husemann told AFP during a recent sunny spell, saying there had been more than 120 days of forced shutdowns so far this year.
Husemann, who runs an energy conversion business near Munich, also owns a sprawling solar power system on the flat roof of a transport company in Aurach, Bavaria.
Grid operator N-Ergie, which is responsible for harvesting electricity from Husemann's panels, admits the situation is less than ideal.
There were 257 days last year when it had to cut off supply from solar panels on parts of the grid.
"We are currently witnessing -- and this is a good thing -- an unprecedented boom in photovoltaic parks," Rainer Kleedoerfer, head of N-Ergie's development department, told AFP.
But while it takes just a couple of years to commission a solar power plant, updating the necessary infrastructure takes between five and 10 years, he said.
"The number of interventions and the amount of curtailed energy have increased continuously in recent years" as a result, according to N-Ergie spokesman Michael Enderlein.
"The likelihood is that grid bottlenecks will actually increase in the coming years," while resolving them will take several more years, Enderlein said.
According to Carsten Koenig, managing director of the German Solar Industry Association, the problem is not unique to solar power and also affects wind energy.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
I will be the first to agree that it is over-regulated. I will however also stipulate that our history is replete with free marketeers who thought they could do it a lot cheaper only to get locked in regulatory hell and lose their shirts because they cut corners on necessary safety design features.
Hydroelectric dams are great examples of water energy storage. And pumping water uphill is also a very common technology. The combination has been demonstrated, and uses proven technologies.
Indeed it is not - thanks for bringing some actual facts to a typical FR groupthink anti-renewables spewing contest.
Pumped storage is by far the largest-capacity form of grid energy storage available, and, as of 2020, the United States Department of Energy Global Energy Storage Database reports that PSH accounts for around 95% of all active tracked storage installations worldwide, with a total installed throughput capacity of over 181 GW, of which about 29 GW are in the United States, and a total installed storage capacity of over 1.6 TWh, of which about 250 GWh are in the United States.
The biggest limitation is topography - you need two sites with both water and the required height differences to create sufficient head for hydro generation. In other words, a lake at the top and bottom of a hill. And it’s good if the location is close to electrical demand centers, but that’s what transmission lines are for.
Whenever these threads come up on FR you can be assured that 99% of what’s posted will be either personal opinion or factually incorrect. Battery technology is far from the first or chosen means of energy storage for load balancing, and PSH typically achieves overall efficiency of 70-80% ore even higher. Whenever people start to indict wind and solar “because batteries” you know they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Yes, there will be losses, but no more than going from DC to AC.
Also, there are techniques to minimize water evaporation, which are commonly used for water reservoirs.
All they need is a longer drop cord to get the green energy where the sun don’t shine¿
Thanks for the info. I didn’t know the statistics on how widespread it is, just that the technology is in use.
“When the sun switches off the solar panels”
Bad title.
It’s not the sun switching anything... When the infrastructure cannot route the current to the loads, which I find a crock.
Living in Florida, we have some 120 panels on the farm. Have never seen the utility lower or cut off my production, even during peak mid day times. In the end my excess feeds my neighbors loads, my current never has to go back to any substation or distribution point. As long as only 5 to 10% have panels, there won’t be an issue here.
It has crossed my mind that Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was about prodding the Chicoms into delivering more solar panels to our shores and taking the heat off the current reconciliation bill totally funding the 30x30 plan.
https://www.thestreet.com/technology/a-sad-bill-gates-makes-a-huge-announcement
“With an average consumption of around 2,500 kilowatt hours per year in a two-person household, this would have been enough to power around 2.4 million households.”
In Texas, that would be a bill of our $250...so roughly one month of power during the summer for a medium-to-large house.
With China hackers and their backdoors into every tech product now ...
I don’t let my inverters ‘talk to the cloud’, How do we know that some upgrade (hacked most likely) will be embeded in our residential systems, such that a prolonged grid outage (war start) will trigger the inverters to ‘brick’ themselves. iow — code that will destroy the firmware when the time comes.
My take is that if my inverter will operate, with communication path to the cloud OFF, for weeks on end, ITS NOT HACKED. And I leave it that way. Yes, I monitor, but that’s 100% local and never hits the internet.
Going Green required THREE power plants whereas only ONE would do in the good old days.
1. Plant #1 - solar cells or wind turbines
2. Plant #2 - energy storage to store power when sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow
3. Plant #3 - conventional fossil fuel plant to provide power when there isn’t enough storage capacity (backup) or energy storage runs dry
How brilliant is that? Spend three times more capital to get the same net output! But “green” trumps all.
We found a way to automate and supplement generator output with solar. If grid is out and its daytime, we can reduce fuel needs by some 60 to 70% with the proper solar management.
“blah, blah, blah....” = we will buy his energy when we darned well feel like it.
See the contract.
Laws permit this kind of idiocy ‘cause laws are pushed by those who already have had their hands greased. “Green” = corrupt.
“So basically solar panels make electricity when you don’t need it and none when you do.”
and there’s no way to store the unneeded power for later use ...
They’re OK as a booster for daytime a/c loads in places that have hot weather. Not sure beyond that...
We live in Virginia and installed solar panels more than a year ago and are very pleased with them. We did it because I foresee crushing increases in electricity rates as our state has mandated the elimination of all but renewable sources in twenty three years, with aggressive benchmarks in the meantime. Although our utility charges approximately $10 a month for standby capacity, we still pay 90% less per year for electricity than before. In fact, since March, we have paid nothing. Really, there are only four months out of the year when the panels either do not meet our demand or produce a surplus. In February-January they supply only about 60% of our usage. Of course, at night they produce nothing, but the surplus generated during the day which the utility buys back balances that out. FWIW, the panels are made in Singapore, not China, by a Norwegian company, and are warranted to produce 98% of their rated capacity for thirty years.
I never want anything solar.
IF I had solar, I would Never connect to the grid....
The key problem is that the number of sites where pumped storage is practical are limited and rarely near where most needed.
Good grief. I don't understand why you Luddites hate solar so much. My solar runs during the day to power my house and charge the batteries that power the house at night.
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