Talk:Solar power in Germany

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External links

The Reuters and Washington Post links represent different writers' approaches to essentially the same subject--i.e., a follow-up on implementation of the EEG law. This article certainly doesn't need both. However, neither of these links seems very good for the EL section, for a couple of reasons: The article's main need is for content, and the few facts that have value to the article should be extracted from the news sources and written into the article. Those facts should be referenced, but links to news stories are often ephemeral, so that you may need more stable sources to support the facts that you add to the article. (A news publisher might archive its story to a different URL, which leaves a dead link here, and the archive--if located & linked--may or may not be available to all readers.) WP:EL provides more background on all this. --My 2¢ worth. <Rich Janis 08:44, 30 July 2007 (UTC)>[reply]

Commentary/criticisms?...

I'm curious as to why so much money has been invested to install solar panels in a country like Germany which is rather mediocre when it comes to the quantity and intensity of sun. I would think this scale of investment would make a lot more sense in say the Middle East or North Africa, or even in Greece or Italy or Spain.

It seems quite a lot of money has been invested and a massive number of panels installed, but it's still only meeting about 3% of Germany's energy needs, and it looks like it hasn't done very much to reduce the need for installed power from other sources.

Of course if I were to start writing about this in the article itself that would be original research, but I imagine other such commentary must exist, and probably quite some Germans are unhappy that so much money has been spent on something which has borne so little fruit...So it'd be nice to see public reaction/reception discussed more. I imagine most of this is in German though, and I don't speak much German... -Helvetica (talk) 07:25, 5 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Update - found this article: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/solar-subsidy-sinkhole-re-evaluating-germany-s-blind-faith-in-the-sun-a-809439-2.html -Helvetica (talk) 07:38, 5 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not a very well written article. Basically it says why use solar power - it is too expensive. What it ignores is that as solar power gets cheaper, it becomes the cheapest of all energy. It only becomes cheaper if it is used. That is why it is being developed in Germany, because of the foresight of German politicians. What Germany has proven is that solar works even in a country with not very much sun. That is something that has been very valuable, in itself. Is a feed-in tariff sustainable if everyone installs solar? Yes, but the FIT drops to the retail cost of electricity. Presumably before that happens the learning curve reduces the cost of solar to below grid parity, almost a given. If not, the increased cost of fossil generation still brings the cost below grid parity, just a few years later. See this curve: [1] Solar and wind are also very much complementary - there is not much wind in the summer and not much solar in the winter. A combination makes it a lot easier to meet all of the demand. Apteva (talk) 02:47, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be tempted to claim the article has heavy solar industry bias, there is a lot of critisism around the world on German PV feed-in tariff system, of course the topic is hot and controversial.--91.152.67.177 (talk) 15:49, 26 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Impact of PV on spot market prices

An article from March of 2012 shows, graphically, how the increase in installed PV has drastically reduced the wholesale cost of electricity in the Gemran spot market (http://www.renewablesinternational.net/the-afternoon-dip/150/537/33320/). I'm struggling with how to explain this in simplified encyclopedia language. Any suggestions? Tom Hopper (talk) 06:16, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

solar records in Germany

Hi guys, today(7th of July) Germany sets new record of 23.9 GW. I wanted to change the old record, but have been lost in updating the reference to the record http://cleantechnica.com/2013/07/07/breaking-germany-sets-solar-power-record-again-23-9-gw/.

reference(15th)

Could you help me to resolve the matter. Thank you

How much from renewable sources by 2050?

The lead paragraph says this:

Germany has a goal of producing 35% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and 100% by 2050

Further down the article it says:

The federal government has set a target of 66 GW of installed solar PV capacity by 2030, to be reached with an annual increase of 2.5–3.5 GW, and a goal of 80% of electricity from renewable sources by 2050.

So what is the target for electricity from renewable sources by 2050, 80% or 100%? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.171.3.126 (talk) 16:19, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

According to Renewable Energy Sources Act: "(2) To achieve the purpose set out in subsection (1) above, this Act aims to increase the share of renewable energy sources in electricity supply to at least: 1. 35 percent by no later than 2020; 2. 50 percent by no later than 2030; 3. 65 percent by no later than 2040; and 4. 80 percent by no later than 2050; and to integrate these quantities of electricity in the electricity supply system." – EEG 2012 (German, 2012-08-17), EEG 2012 (English, 2012-01-01); EEG 2014 (German, draft law, 2014-03-04). 84.57.70.124 (talk) 17:24, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect statement about nuclear beeing cheapest in terms of LCOE

Because my change to remove this statement was reverted, let me explain my reasoning. The cited source actually talks about current estimates of cost for nuclear and then goes on to talk about LCOE for gas in the next sentence. It does not explictely state something about the LCOE of nuclear and - while I can see that it can read this way - do not think this is what is meant. First, this would be clearly incorrect. LCOE includes captial cost which is high for nuclear (all studies I have seen estimate a relatively high LCOE for nuclear - e.g. higher than wind power). Second, that specific paragraph in the source talks about replacing old (and paid off) nuclear with new plants (e.g. gas). So talking about operating cost for nuclear (and not LCOE) and LCOE of gas makes more sense in this context. In terms of operating cost nuclear is indeed one of the cheapest energy sources, so this statement would also be true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.32.171.158 (talk) 18:53, 9 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there! Thank you for your feedback. It was me that wrote the original paragraph. I also reverted your removal and actually tried to improve on my wording to be more explicit. Let's compare the article's text with the original source for the "nuclear-LCOE"-statement in question:

Fraunhofer, Electricity production from solar and wind in Germany in 2014, page 7, 2nd bullet-point
The dismantling and alteration of fossil-nuclear power plants (With the phase-out of nuclear energy and the nescessary drop out of brown coal with time, the two cheapest suppliers in the energy mix, according to today's calculations, are leaving the market. Their slow back out with the simultaneous expansion fo RE capacity and stagnationg power consumption reduces the utilization of natural gas plant, leading to higher LCOEs for gas.

Current wording in article's lead section —
These include, adapting the electrical grid, constructing new grid-storage capacity, dismantling and altering fossil and nuclear power plants — the two cheapest sources of electricity by today's LCOE calculations — and to construct a new generation of combined heat and power plants.[7]

I did interpret "according to today's calculations" as "today's LCOE calculations". You're saying that the Fraunhofer institute actually meant to say "by today's operational cost", correct? I don't think this is the case. If you could provide a reliable source that explicitly shows a LCOE for nuclear based on how it's defined by today's standards that is higher than any other source beside lignite, then this could help me understand.

Unfortunately I think the FHI meant to say that "today's" LCOE calculations do not take all cost of nuclear into account (e.g. the cost for long-term storge might be much higher). I also think it's plausible that LOCE for nuclear is low, despite your mentioned high capital cost, as nuclear power plants run for a long time (40 years or more).

Last word: instead of "fossil" the article should better say "brown coal" since natural gas does certainly not belong to the "cheapest energy suppliers". But that's another topic. Pleas let me know what you think! Cheers, -- Rfassbind (talk) 21:14, 9 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Two recent studies about LCOE I have seen include:

http://ec.europa.eu/energy/studies/doc/20141013_subsidies_costs_eu_energy.pdf and http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf Martin.uecker (talk)