One look at the map (and any experience living in Germany) will tell you that solar power can't work in a country that far north...But for those who took Art class instead of math and physics, magical thinking is the general rule...We live in southern Arizona, one of the sunniest places on the planet, and solar power is just barely economical here....
I lived in Arizona for 20 years until 2020. Being an IEEE member the engineers from APS gave me the real costs and problems with large-scale solar power. Needless to say, too much sunshine is just as bad as too little - unless you have billions of dollars in batteries.
Any form of water would be appreciated. However, I'm sure that the military will use the mirrors to form a focused "death ray" to flash fry non-compliant deplorables.
Dear Ingrid ,it's not my snow ,it's owned by the MIGHTY GOV . .Many ,many years ago the snow here used to be green ,but little by little it started to turn pink and now its red . You may call it COMMYSNOW
Middle Georgia here - years ago when my AC gave out, I asked the people if it would be wise to go solar (partially). The man said that it would take cutting down all my trees, that provide lots of shade in summer, and that at my age (I was in my mid-fifties then) it would probably take more than the rest of my life to become profitable. Needless to say the next week a new machine was installed. But recently, with the hurricane, without water for 4 days, and without electricity of course, I wondered if a small installation, if only for the water pump, might be faisible.
Electrolytic hydrogen, maybe. Methane and synthetic oil are harder to make, but perhaps Deutschland can start mining coal again to provide a sink for all that hydrogen.
Natural gas (methane) does not come from dinosaurs. Numerous bodies in our solar system (e.g., Jupiters moons) have entire oceans of methane. It's a naturally occurring organic molecule that doesn't require dead animals.
Even better - all that excess power at noon does nothing whatsoever to help at 7 or midnight or 3 am. So you still have to pay billions more for those awful power plants that work when and how much you need them to. Or you can pay trillions for batteries that wear out in 2 years and made of materials from some of the most polluting mines on the planet. Congrats, greenies!
it's almost like a major point of power generation is to offset the unpleasant effects of the sun setting and to provide things like light even after dark. solar panels, however, generate all of their electricity in the middle of the day when demand is already low, and stop producing at night when you actually want power.
I lived for several years in the fourth world -- when the moon was full and it wasn't rainy season, people stayed up late. When it was pitch dark at night, they went to bed early.
And yes, you could buy kerosene in the nearby towns, but subsistence farmers don't have a lot of cash income and you'd better believe they didn't buy and burn very much.
Oh they already working on that here in Australia nudging and strongarming home owners (by threatening to charge them for feeding back into the grid) to buy expensive battery packs to store the energy. And who is the biggest battery producer in the world? Elon Musk. I always wonder what comes first these days - the demand (as it used to be) for a product or the product first, then followed by massive lobbying and policy making to create the demand.
My pet peeve: why are we making batteries out of expensive, lightweight materials designed for portable devices? For a power plant that's not going anywhere, the size and weight of the battery are unimportant. Only battery lifetime and cost matter.
LFP, batteries with thousands of cycles, less expensive than NMC/NCA and such, less energy and power dense but as weight and volume doesn't matter in fixed installations, they are ideal for storage solutions. Oh, and they don't really burn either.
Why so many people here lump all batteries together?
The hypothetical combined capacity of every battery of every type currently on the planet would power the US grid for about 37 seconds. Batteries are not a viable option. It's magical thinking.
As a large scale energy storage mechanism hydrogen is as much a fantasy as the rest of the green dream. In many ways its the epitomy of green absurdity. Most of the hydrogen in actual use is generated from natural gas. I.e. the stuff you could use more easily, except with a bunch of energy lost in the conversion. All so they can slap a sticker on it and collect a subsidy. Non-fossil generation requires much more energy in than comes out.
The best source of energy storage I can think of is the use of windmills to pump water into water towers. Unless you count dams for storage of hydropower.
They could solve this whole problem by mandating everybody to buy an EV, and keep it constantly plugged in to an automated charger system that would turn on only when the exchange rate approaches zero, and that would disable itself when the exchange rate rises. Of course then they would need to increase solar capacity in order to service all these EVs...
My comment was mostly a joke. Nevertheless, people aren't driving their car 100% of the time in the daytime and so they can be commanded to PLUG IT IN ;)
That was the whole idea with the smart meters, enable the power company to selectively turn off certain things. The classic example is large industrial freezers, you can save a lot of money by turning the compressor on only when the electricity price is favourable or when it's absolutely necessary and the power company loves it because it makes the peak load lower.
There is a ceiling for how much solar you can build, it is literally the total electrical demand possible during the hours that the sun shines. At night, no matter how many panels you build, they will not produce, and if you overbuild, those panels will all compete for the same demand pie
But this opens up uncomfortable discussions such as "baseload" and "backup" and "wait, if I have 200GW of solar installed I also need to have 200 GW of something else installed because it doesn't work half the day and building more makes the problem worse?"
"a blind system totally oblivious to market incentives". The left basic issue: they think (Yeah, think is doing a lot of work there) in terms of goals and not system so screw things up every time. Screw-ups that we always pay for.
it's a recurrent error in left-leaning thought. they also deny that the welfare state constitutes a pull-factor in terms of mass migration, for example; or that increasing unemployment benefits contributes to labour shortages.
every one of these anti-market systems is designed to benefit insiders at the expense of taxpayers. The migrants, poor, whoever are just the storyline.
yeah, left thinking is all about the "shoulds" without any further thinking about why thinks are the way they are or what the downstream effects would be of changing things: "We shouldn't be the kind of people who ... punish the homeless, exclude the needy, execute murderers ... we shouldn't ... pollute the Earth for energy, kill animals for food, deny help to the poor ... we shouldn't notice that ... men are not women, some people are stupid, politics is complicated...."
The left has to deny reality to maintain their world view. Probably a major reason for the tsunami of mental illness society has been afflicted by in recent years. Has to be very wearing on a person’s psyche to be constantly insisting that 2+2 equals 5
Not even goals, really. Rather a vague, completely superficial idea of utopia and maintaining social status among their echo chamber. Any inconvenient facts are ignored and most certainly unspoken.
Heh, not even participating, just lip service is enough - preferable even. How many give themselves awards for literal nothings like "raising awareness".
While a stereotype, I've noticed that lefties get uncomfortable being responsible for implementation and execution (of plans, not people, suspect they'd like the latter). They order to be in review committees, teach, write papers etc.
when my little boy was 2, he would play with a train set, crash the trains, and say 'uh-oh'. i would help him reconstruct the wooden track setup so that the crashes were avoidable, but he would change it back and purposely crash the trains.
i learned a lot about human nature that day. much of it translates to living in a society without a clear and present danger.
The nominalist thought exemplified in Green thinking always tends towards the assumption that the world will obligingly conform to your unchecked Wünschträume.
"He wants to have the experience of stopping CO2 emissions, and that is not even nearly the same thing."
This is why ordinary middle-class people and the idiot spawn of the wealthy love demonstrations so much. They drive to them; they buy mountains of oaktag and sharpie pens with which to create lots of trash/I mean protest signs; but they don't stop pouring nasty dyes down the drain from their painted nails and spray-in rainbow hair or abandon the operators of smelters far far away who produce all their nose-rings and studs.
Burning more coal should reduce the excess solar production if the lignite can produce dense enough haze.
If the above fails there is always cloud-seeding and chemtrails as a fallback.
Russian natural gas (why does nobody call it methane?) will not be readily accessible any time soon, so local resources are key. Encourage the Greens, government, and bureaucracy to keep up the good work.
The gas that comes right out of the earth has other hydrocarbons in it. It needs to be refined to get pipeline-quality gas which is almost exclusively CH4.
But on a similar note: my pet peeve is the term "fossil fuel" which is totally inaccurate. 'Hydrocarbons' is the technically correct term for this class of chemicals.
Statistician William Briggs give a talk last year for the Broken Science Initiative. Part of the talk, which is surprisingly funny and worthwhile viewing, describes how the current climate panic is based on stacked models, essentially a house of cards. https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/46331/
Well I, for one, am delighted that Germany is as mad as the UK when it comes to power, electricity, climate and so on. I suggest burning unicorn poo when the sun goes down, sprinkling glow worms on dull days. Of course, there are wind turbines slicing up sea birds - they are also pointless when the wind don't blow. Luckily, we can use candles or similar and maybe just not bother with hot water, hot food, hot homes. After all, the planet is depending on us European Idiots to save it. And think how pleased with ourselves and how morally superior we can assume we are when those fools in China and India are bathing in hot baths in warm hots whilst eating hot chicken.
The funniest part is the UK system is near identical to the one listed above but at its peak wind floods to over 70% of uk generation capacity to then fall to zero but hey let's pay full price for it as we shut our last coal powerplant pushing up the of wind discrepancy and hence destroying all power affordablity
Very good, but unfortunately German green energy policies are just a tiny part of the problem. Greens now say that we must spend $6-8 trillion per year globally to avert climate catastrophe:
I read now and then of a breakthrough in solar panel and battery efficiencies. With continuing technological advancements, there will soon come a time when it might make economic sense for some (or all) to install solar facilities. In the meantime, billions of dollars/euros worth of obsolete junk paid for with subsidies and tax credits will still be bolted onto roofs or occupying hundreds of thousands of acres/hectares. This includes windmills, which really stand little chance of improving in any significant way. As far as I know, "recycling" any of this crap is pretty much out of the question. What it means to be "green".
One look at the map (and any experience living in Germany) will tell you that solar power can't work in a country that far north...But for those who took Art class instead of math and physics, magical thinking is the general rule...We live in southern Arizona, one of the sunniest places on the planet, and solar power is just barely economical here....
I lived in Arizona for 20 years until 2020. Being an IEEE member the engineers from APS gave me the real costs and problems with large-scale solar power. Needless to say, too much sunshine is just as bad as too little - unless you have billions of dollars in batteries.
Kertch ,Giant mirrors could send your extra sunshine to Canada ,in exchange for some snow .
Any form of water would be appreciated. However, I'm sure that the military will use the mirrors to form a focused "death ray" to flash fry non-compliant deplorables.
LOL Joe. I am not sure if anyone wants your snow!
Dear Ingrid ,it's not my snow ,it's owned by the MIGHTY GOV . .Many ,many years ago the snow here used to be green ,but little by little it started to turn pink and now its red . You may call it COMMYSNOW
Middle Georgia here - years ago when my AC gave out, I asked the people if it would be wise to go solar (partially). The man said that it would take cutting down all my trees, that provide lots of shade in summer, and that at my age (I was in my mid-fifties then) it would probably take more than the rest of my life to become profitable. Needless to say the next week a new machine was installed. But recently, with the hurricane, without water for 4 days, and without electricity of course, I wondered if a small installation, if only for the water pump, might be faisible.
If you have propane or natural gas you can get a whole house generator, it would be cheaper.
And the batteries lose a lot of energy due to entropy, so that doesn't work...
Because of abundant natural gas! Thank You dinosaurs!
Electrolytic hydrogen, maybe. Methane and synthetic oil are harder to make, but perhaps Deutschland can start mining coal again to provide a sink for all that hydrogen.
Natural gas (methane) does not come from dinosaurs. Numerous bodies in our solar system (e.g., Jupiters moons) have entire oceans of methane. It's a naturally occurring organic molecule that doesn't require dead animals.
*makes note to send the German government a bill whenever the sun shines here in New Mexico*
Don't forget the crappy weather.
Even better - all that excess power at noon does nothing whatsoever to help at 7 or midnight or 3 am. So you still have to pay billions more for those awful power plants that work when and how much you need them to. Or you can pay trillions for batteries that wear out in 2 years and made of materials from some of the most polluting mines on the planet. Congrats, greenies!
it's almost like a major point of power generation is to offset the unpleasant effects of the sun setting and to provide things like light even after dark. solar panels, however, generate all of their electricity in the middle of the day when demand is already low, and stop producing at night when you actually want power.
Purely due to those horrible colonialists and their racist inability to accept darkness.
We could, of course, go back to using whale oil I guess. It is all natural.
And renewable!
Whale oil? What's that???
I lived for several years in the fourth world -- when the moon was full and it wasn't rainy season, people stayed up late. When it was pitch dark at night, they went to bed early.
And yes, you could buy kerosene in the nearby towns, but subsistence farmers don't have a lot of cash income and you'd better believe they didn't buy and burn very much.
If you want to be perfectly morbid, many Western nations have a huge and growing problem with people being fat.
"Lose weight and Save The Climate - sign up now for your free liposuction procedure today!"
On the other hand, the fatter you are the more natural insulation you have... choices, choices.
Wind turbines may be even worse. At least with solar you know when the sun is going to rise and set.
"We Just Need More Batteries!!!!" lol.
You are correct.
Oh they already working on that here in Australia nudging and strongarming home owners (by threatening to charge them for feeding back into the grid) to buy expensive battery packs to store the energy. And who is the biggest battery producer in the world? Elon Musk. I always wonder what comes first these days - the demand (as it used to be) for a product or the product first, then followed by massive lobbying and policy making to create the demand.
My pet peeve: why are we making batteries out of expensive, lightweight materials designed for portable devices? For a power plant that's not going anywhere, the size and weight of the battery are unimportant. Only battery lifetime and cost matter.
LFP, batteries with thousands of cycles, less expensive than NMC/NCA and such, less energy and power dense but as weight and volume doesn't matter in fixed installations, they are ideal for storage solutions. Oh, and they don't really burn either.
Why so many people here lump all batteries together?
There is some received wisdom in the progressive mainstream that "solar and batteries" will be able to solve everything soon.
The hypothetical combined capacity of every battery of every type currently on the planet would power the US grid for about 37 seconds. Batteries are not a viable option. It's magical thinking.
How much hydrogen can Deutschland store for its fuel cells? (Or use other energy storage methods.)
As a large scale energy storage mechanism hydrogen is as much a fantasy as the rest of the green dream. In many ways its the epitomy of green absurdity. Most of the hydrogen in actual use is generated from natural gas. I.e. the stuff you could use more easily, except with a bunch of energy lost in the conversion. All so they can slap a sticker on it and collect a subsidy. Non-fossil generation requires much more energy in than comes out.
Enough to power a single 15w lightbulb per household.
The best source of energy storage I can think of is the use of windmills to pump water into water towers. Unless you count dams for storage of hydropower.
'In September alone, Germany paid 2.6 billion Euro to renewables producers for electricity that had a market value of a mere 145 million Euro.'
Ouch.
Proposal: have international alerts when exchange rates approach zero that texts every citizen to PLUG IN YOUR EV NOW!
They could solve this whole problem by mandating everybody to buy an EV, and keep it constantly plugged in to an automated charger system that would turn on only when the exchange rate approaches zero, and that would disable itself when the exchange rate rises. Of course then they would need to increase solar capacity in order to service all these EVs...
Gee, playing Pretend Bureaucrat is fun.
Wait, you are saying that like they can't increase solar capacity... I thought they are the ones making the sun shine and water flow and all that?
lol, like!
The problem is the surge is during day light, when you would be driving your ev. In the north, when you need the energy is for diner, or a cold night.
My comment was mostly a joke. Nevertheless, people aren't driving their car 100% of the time in the daytime and so they can be commanded to PLUG IT IN ;)
That was the whole idea with the smart meters, enable the power company to selectively turn off certain things. The classic example is large industrial freezers, you can save a lot of money by turning the compressor on only when the electricity price is favourable or when it's absolutely necessary and the power company loves it because it makes the peak load lower.
Smart meters are a good idea until it will be used for evil things...
Ah. We don't have those here.
Solar is hilarious, really
The lowest energy density imaginable
It only works when the sun shines
There is a ceiling for how much solar you can build, it is literally the total electrical demand possible during the hours that the sun shines. At night, no matter how many panels you build, they will not produce, and if you overbuild, those panels will all compete for the same demand pie
But this opens up uncomfortable discussions such as "baseload" and "backup" and "wait, if I have 200GW of solar installed I also need to have 200 GW of something else installed because it doesn't work half the day and building more makes the problem worse?"
Its so stupid.
"a blind system totally oblivious to market incentives". The left basic issue: they think (Yeah, think is doing a lot of work there) in terms of goals and not system so screw things up every time. Screw-ups that we always pay for.
it's a recurrent error in left-leaning thought. they also deny that the welfare state constitutes a pull-factor in terms of mass migration, for example; or that increasing unemployment benefits contributes to labour shortages.
every one of these anti-market systems is designed to benefit insiders at the expense of taxpayers. The migrants, poor, whoever are just the storyline.
yeah, left thinking is all about the "shoulds" without any further thinking about why thinks are the way they are or what the downstream effects would be of changing things: "We shouldn't be the kind of people who ... punish the homeless, exclude the needy, execute murderers ... we shouldn't ... pollute the Earth for energy, kill animals for food, deny help to the poor ... we shouldn't notice that ... men are not women, some people are stupid, politics is complicated...."
The left has to deny reality to maintain their world view. Probably a major reason for the tsunami of mental illness society has been afflicted by in recent years. Has to be very wearing on a person’s psyche to be constantly insisting that 2+2 equals 5
> "left-leaning thought"
Assumes facts not in evidence.
The imaginary end justifies any and all means.
Good lord you have just written the entirety of human history in that sentence.
>preening<
**Touches brim of tinfoil topper in salute**
As you ought!
I'm adding that to my favorite quotes list.
<looking for more well-worn aphorisms to decorate with multiple adjectives>
I sent them to your Substack messages. Enjoy.
Not even goals, really. Rather a vague, completely superficial idea of utopia and maintaining social status among their echo chamber. Any inconvenient facts are ignored and most certainly unspoken.
To paraphrase eugyppius: It's not the solution that's important, it's the experience of participating in a solution.
Heh, not even participating, just lip service is enough - preferable even. How many give themselves awards for literal nothings like "raising awareness".
Any inconvenient facts are CENSORED by one method or another.
While a stereotype, I've noticed that lefties get uncomfortable being responsible for implementation and execution (of plans, not people, suspect they'd like the latter). They order to be in review committees, teach, write papers etc.
I suspect this is because anyone who can actually “do” rather than just plan, are well aware that it is idiocy and hence are not leftists.
See this a lot with architects vs building practicalities.
they aren't screw ups when the people who are meant to benefit, benefit at taxpayer expense. The "unintended" consequences were the actual plan.
when my little boy was 2, he would play with a train set, crash the trains, and say 'uh-oh'. i would help him reconstruct the wooden track setup so that the crashes were avoidable, but he would change it back and purposely crash the trains.
i learned a lot about human nature that day. much of it translates to living in a society without a clear and present danger.
Yes. This is why so many people in the West cosplay stupid ideas. Lack of danger and consequence.
There’s going to be plenty of danger, RSN.
Stupid ideas used to be subject to evolution but they no longer are sadly
Zero cost money did a lot of the damage
The nominalist thought exemplified in Green thinking always tends towards the assumption that the world will obligingly conform to your unchecked Wünschträume.
“In September alone, Germany paid 2.6 billion Euro to renewables producers for electricity that had a market value of a mere 145 million Euro.”
😳 - Whaaaat?
Leftist math!
"He wants to have the experience of stopping CO2 emissions, and that is not even nearly the same thing."
This is why ordinary middle-class people and the idiot spawn of the wealthy love demonstrations so much. They drive to them; they buy mountains of oaktag and sharpie pens with which to create lots of trash/I mean protest signs; but they don't stop pouring nasty dyes down the drain from their painted nails and spray-in rainbow hair or abandon the operators of smelters far far away who produce all their nose-rings and studs.
Might I propose a modest solution?
Burning more coal should reduce the excess solar production if the lignite can produce dense enough haze.
If the above fails there is always cloud-seeding and chemtrails as a fallback.
Russian natural gas (why does nobody call it methane?) will not be readily accessible any time soon, so local resources are key. Encourage the Greens, government, and bureaucracy to keep up the good work.
"why does nobody call it methane?"
The gas that comes right out of the earth has other hydrocarbons in it. It needs to be refined to get pipeline-quality gas which is almost exclusively CH4.
But on a similar note: my pet peeve is the term "fossil fuel" which is totally inaccurate. 'Hydrocarbons' is the technically correct term for this class of chemicals.
Fossil fuel is a propaganda term
Statistician William Briggs give a talk last year for the Broken Science Initiative. Part of the talk, which is surprisingly funny and worthwhile viewing, describes how the current climate panic is based on stacked models, essentially a house of cards. https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/46331/
Well I, for one, am delighted that Germany is as mad as the UK when it comes to power, electricity, climate and so on. I suggest burning unicorn poo when the sun goes down, sprinkling glow worms on dull days. Of course, there are wind turbines slicing up sea birds - they are also pointless when the wind don't blow. Luckily, we can use candles or similar and maybe just not bother with hot water, hot food, hot homes. After all, the planet is depending on us European Idiots to save it. And think how pleased with ourselves and how morally superior we can assume we are when those fools in China and India are bathing in hot baths in warm hots whilst eating hot chicken.
Kali (demon)'s gonna get you!
The funniest part is the UK system is near identical to the one listed above but at its peak wind floods to over 70% of uk generation capacity to then fall to zero but hey let's pay full price for it as we shut our last coal powerplant pushing up the of wind discrepancy and hence destroying all power affordablity
LOL, love.
China only builds 7 coal burning plants a WEEK. We're just rubes, believing this crap.
Very good, but unfortunately German green energy policies are just a tiny part of the problem. Greens now say that we must spend $6-8 trillion per year globally to avert climate catastrophe:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/now-greens-want-to-spend-6-8-trillion
There are already so many reasons not to rely on solar energy that I'm impressed Germany came up with a new one.
The crooks behind these schemes just LOVE the stupidity of the dumb politicians signing us up to their fraud.
I read now and then of a breakthrough in solar panel and battery efficiencies. With continuing technological advancements, there will soon come a time when it might make economic sense for some (or all) to install solar facilities. In the meantime, billions of dollars/euros worth of obsolete junk paid for with subsidies and tax credits will still be bolted onto roofs or occupying hundreds of thousands of acres/hectares. This includes windmills, which really stand little chance of improving in any significant way. As far as I know, "recycling" any of this crap is pretty much out of the question. What it means to be "green".
This seems like the perennial flying car company.
The solar panels will last 30-35 years at best. Then they are producing at less than 33% efficiency and are good for nothing but scrap.