Why power generators are terrified of solar--electricity dramatically cheaper in SOLAR Germany

[yurbud]

This is a pretty good indication of how our energy debate in America is driven by oil, gas, and coal public relations bullshit not reality.

While our government has been licking around the edges of alternative energy and politely nodding when oil company execs tell us it's not cost competitive yet, Germany has jumped into it in a big way.

The result?

The peak price of electricity over the course of a day dropped 40%, and 25% of their gas generators may be closed.

Why are we still talking about deep water drilling and pipelines for tar sand and shale oil, which are a half step above turning coal into gasoline? Because only big money can drill oil or turn asphalt into usable fuel, so they can control the supply and therefore price. Once PV's are in place, it's a hell of a lot harder to explain price fluctuations when the ''fuel,'' the sun rays, are constant.

Obama is doing more on this than past presidents, but we need to catch up to Germany, and the sooner we do, the less of a stranglehold big oil will have on our economy and foreign policy, and the harder it will be for power companies to blackmail us for billions and even turn out the lights as they did here in California at the beginning of the Bush administration.

We need to demand that our government get out in front, not just in research and demonstration projects, but in getting these kinds of power plants online and displacing fossil fuel NOW.

Tell the White House and your corrupt Congress critters to build it fast and build it NOW.

The first graph illustrates what a typical day on the electricity market in Germany looked like in March four years ago; the second illustrates what is happening now, with 25GW of solar PV installed across the country. Essentially, it means that solar PV is not just licking the cream off the profits of the fossil fuel generators — as happens in Australia with a more modest rollout of PV — it is in fact eating their entire cake.





Deutsche Bank solar analyst Vishal Shah noted in a report last month that EPEX data was showing solar PV was cutting peak electricity prices by up to 40%, a situation that utilities in Germany and elsewhere in Europe were finding intolerable. “With Germany adopting a drastic cut, we expect major utilities in other European countries to push for similar cuts as well,” Shah noted.

Analysts elsewhere said one quarter of Germany’s gas-fired capacity may be closed, because of the impact of surging solar and wind capacity. Enel, the biggest utility in Italy, which had the most solar PV installed in 2011, highlighted its exposure to reduced peaking prices when it said that a €5/MWh fall in average wholesale prices would translate into a one-third slump in earnings from the generation division.

SOURCE

[villager]

1. thanks for posting, Yurbud!

Same reason insurance companies are terrified of a public option!

[yurbud]

2. real competition will kill the goose that laid the CO2 egg

[bemildred]

3. Same reason Fedex hates the Post Office. nt

[yurbud]

4. sadly, Fedex carries their packages now

[EC]

5. We'll still need those other products

so they shouldn't hyperventalate about it. Oil for plastics - natural gas for homes and maybe cars - coal - I don't know, make diamonds...I seem to rememeber a faux diamond that is made by speeding up the process with coal?

[yurbud]

6. we will need less if we get big oil and coal off the neck of alternative energy

[freshwest]

7. I'll take that freedom and liberty as opposed to the faux version being sold by the Koches.

[yurbud]

9. to them, freedom is a lump of coal in our stocking--that we pay them for.

[Uncle Joe]

8. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, yurbud.

[yurbud]

10. Yurwelcome.

[Uncle Joe]

11. You should trademark that word.

[yurbud]

13. yeah, somebody stole ''yurbud'' and used it for earbud headphones

[Uncle Joe]

14. I was just thinking

yurwelcome is a natural with yurbud, those two words go together like peas and carrots.

[yurbud]

15. Now I'm going to spend the rest of the day thinking about what ELSE could go with it...

yurmama
yurass
yurup...

[Uncle Joe]

16. I believe you're on to making a good brand for yourself here.

I thought about spelling this as "yu're" and "yurself" but it doesn't works as well with my handle.

[yurbud]

17. yurjo? sounds like yugoslavian coffee

[kristopher]

12. Excellent information, thank you.

Bookmarked for reference.

[TheKentuckian]

18. We can't do that well, everyone knows Germany is where tan lovers go to bronze

and they have sooooooo much more land in sunny areas to build arrays all over the place.

Also, everyone knows solar is worthless during the day when demand is the greatest and prices highest!

[yurbud]

19. yep. Wind doesn't work on high demand days either--that's why they turned it off during rolling

blackouts in California.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

20. Not only that--in this country it's

the publicly owned power companies that have the lowest rates.

During the whole Enron "rolling blackout" incident, Los Angeles sailed through without any problems. It has a publicly owned power system that doesn't have to answer to shareholders' demands for higher profits.

I spent seven years in an otherwise conservative town in Oregon, but my electric bill was always 1/3 to 1/2 of what my friends in Portland paid for a comparably sized dwelling--and I had electric heat. The reason for the difference? The town had a municipal power company.

[yurbud]

21. I lived in the public power area of LA but taught in the private Edison area during rolling blackout

I never had a problem at home, but my students ended up finishing a final all huddled over one emergency light because Edison turned off the schools power.

The good side of that was the school district figured out they need to make they own and now get half of their electricity from their own solar panels.