First, Spain in the only country in the world where electricity production and distribution are conducted by separate entities. By law, ownership by electricity producers, i.e. Iberdrola, etc, is extremely limited. The Spanish electric grid is run by a single corporation which until recently was primarily government owned, REE. This creates much more of a market for electricity than where the grid is controlled by producers. I question whether the EU and US shouldn't follow up on the Spanish example and create a national grid.
Second, where the government has ownership in the grid it has a whole body of policy instruments available to it that aren't otherwise available. This doesn't require government ownership, but one of the things that the Spanish did is set up a schedule of priority for electric production. During December of last year, wind energy was supplying more than half of the country's electricity. Because of the law granting priority to wind energy production, the national grid stopped accepting electric production from fossil fuel based plants because there was an oversupply. It's really quite brilliant, because that solves the problem of back-up generation.
What I would propose is that countries engage in energy planning. Set a baseload limit. For any production that occurs over that limit, charge a surplus. Give wind and renewables first priority, so that most every drop of electricity produced in this way gets used. Now the trick comes when you hit that baseload limit. If you have a progessive rate structure. Something like:
1-30GWh 0.10€/kwh 30-35GWh 0.12€/kwh 35-40GWh 0.14€/kwh
This is just a made up schedule. But, that means that in a given hour where 40 GWh of electricity are consumed, that the first 30 GWh bring in €3 million, the second 30-35GWH €600,000, and the last 5 GWh €700,000.
So €4.3 million. Now let's say that 0.10€/kwh is the point at which firms can produce electricity with a reasonable profit for fossil fuel production. That means that you have €1.3 million in profits that can be redistributed without affecting the ability of fossil fuel based firms to provide back up.
Now let's assume that there are 5 GWh of renewables production. What if we redistribute that €1.3 million surplus to a subsidy for renewables production? That would yield a €0.26 subsidy. You can play with the numbers here. But, it seems to me that this would be a good way to use the market to create incentives to reduce demand. And it would build up the portion of baseload production from renewables. And this sort of thing becomes much easier to do if you have an indepednent national grid like in Spain. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
one of the things that the Spanish did is set up a schedule of priority for electric production. During December of last year, wind energy was supplying more than half of the country's electricity. Because of the law granting priority to wind energy production, the national grid stopped accepting electric production from fossil fuel based plants because there was an oversupply.
Isn't this substantially what feed-in-tariffs do?
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
BTW, Crazy Horse, do you remember the history of the Spanish feed-in law? I seem to recall that there was some weak form in the nineties, which was then reformed with the inspiration (but far from complete copy) of the German feed-in law (also for photovoltaics), but don't remember what that earlier form was. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
The linked article mentions several differences in detail, one I see as significant (again relevant to predicting future income) is degression of the rates: in Germany, a producer gets to sell at the same rate for 20 years, but the rate for new installations is decreased by a fixed percentage; in Spain however, the rate is set each year anew, and affects both new and old installations. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Yes, the Spanish law doesn't give a fixed rate. I've found it virtually impossible to understand.
There is a more recent law passed in 2007, and it's laid out in terms of maximums and minimums. But, I still don't understand it entirely. Part of it is regulated tariff and a premium for the first 15 years. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
It does (or did -- I haven't looked up the latest version), at least fixed on an annual basis. As one of two possible choices for selling the electricity produced. For the other, the spot market version, the premium has a part that is fixed (again for a year), but there is a correction factor taking grid losses into account.
I've found it virtually impossible to understand.
If that helps, I found that amazingly, there are full English translations up on the net.
There is a more recent law passed in 2007
Apparenlty there were almost annual updates, including the one with the big cut in PV. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
First, Spain in the only country in the world where electricity production and distribution are conducted by separate entities.
The Irish Government engineered a split within the former state monopoly supplier/distributor - ESB - into separate Supply and Network operations - apparently at the EU's behest.
Because the producing arm was still mostly a monopoly, it has been forced to divest itself of a lot of its retail customers by selling wholesale to another state company (Bord Gas) which passes on a 10% discount to customers and still makes a tidy profit.
The Government also allowed huge price hikes in the belief that this would encourage new entrants and develop competition in the market. So far we have had the price hikes but little competition...
AFAIK The ESB was also inhibited from developing new production capacity on the grounds that it already had a dominant position in the market - doh - it used to be the only supplier. This means we are almost entirely dependent on new private entrants to add capacity and enable a switch to renewable... notes from no w here
The point of this exercise is to allow for lower prices to industry and higher prices to consumers. Think of it as yet another subsidy. It's all about the "competiveness".
No, but perhaps the first and most radical. This was actually EU policy, but IIRC it was successfully hollowed out recently.
one of the things that the Spanish did is set up a schedule of priority for electric production
That's less a grid owner side decision, more a consequence of Spain's feed-in law. Wind has similar priority in other EU members with high wind penetration, notably Denmark and Germany. The Spanish grid monopoly combined with an actual government energy policy is certainly a better construction than that of Germany, where the big formerly local monopolist producers still own the grid, and renewables producers had to sue them on the basis of the feed-in law if they tried to deny access. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Red Eléctrica was the first company in the world dedicated exclusively to power transmission and the operation of electrical systems. A pioneer in its field, the company occupies a position of leadership today in these activities. When it was created in 1985, it took over the transmission grid and the operation of the Spanish power system, well before the recent world-wide trend towards the segregation of activities, establishing transmission as a separate activity from generation and distribution. This marked a radical change in how the Spanish power sector operated and served as a model for other countries when liberalising their power sectors.
When it was created in 1985, it took over the transmission grid and the operation of the Spanish power system, well before the recent world-wide trend towards the segregation of activities, establishing transmission as a separate activity from generation and distribution. This marked a radical change in how the Spanish power sector operated and served as a model for other countries when liberalising their power sectors.
I understand that there is a push to independent system operators, but in the end the infrastructure is still owned by same companies that produce electricity.
See my response above about the priority for wind energy. It's separate from the issue of subsidies. It is possible to have one but not the other. I honestly don't know the specifics of the law in Germany and Denmark. I only know that the growth of wind energy in Spain was much more impressive, and the period much more compressed.
According to EWEA figures, 1998-2008, wind capacity in Spain grew, on average, 37% annually. In Germany, this figure was 25%. In Denmark, 9%. Virtually no capacity was added in Denmark between 2003-2008. They hit a wall, or rather they ran out of land based sites. Spanish annual growth continues to be in the double digits (in % terms.) And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
The wall was called Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The Don Quixote of the Danish wind industry, as another ETer so aptly put it.
OK, I didn't know that. But you should be aware that it is not the only case: there was separation in California before the great (fake) California Energy Crisis, too. Within the EU, still predating the EU-level deregulation drive, England & Wales had it. Post-deregulation, the most notable separation of generation and grid (at least of those I am aware of) is Italy's.
In Denmark, 9%. Virtually no capacity was added in Denmark between 2003-2008. They hit a wall, or rather they ran out of land based sites.
Nope. There was a government change. And the new government changed rules on purpose. Which was easier, given that unlike Germany and Spain, Denmark had no feed-in law (which obligates distributors to buy the generated wind electricity, in effect giving priority to wind). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
The problem that I see with a feed in tariff is that this does nothing create a disincentive for use during peak periods. So the policy is basically based on expanding supply instead of cutting demand.
The second thing is that wind is never going to be dispatchable in the same way that coal power, for example, is. You can't just flip on a switch at will. Which is why I think that it is important that wind energy be used before that back-up from coal and the like is called in.
Those forms of energy are dispatchable, and by having a rate schedule that increases with increased use you create an incentive for conservation. At the same time, this is dispatchable. And, you can use the premium generated to fund a feed in tariff (subsidy) for renewables. So that kills the back-up argument against wind power, and it creates a clever funding mechanism that encourages conservation. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
No, not when growth goes to zero. Which actually happened twice: first in 2002, then there was a special programme for repowering, which was such a success that it ashamed Rasmussen & co, but it was time-limited.
Notice the growth offshore.
The growth off-shore was a 25-year plan meted out nicely year-by-year by the SocDem government of the other Rasmussen in the nineties, with the aim to bring wind above 50% at least. However, in the early 2000s, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that on-shore wind expansion was such a success that quotas for renewables have already been surpassed, so there is no need to continue with his predecessors' off-shore schedule -- and delayed further projects indefinitely while allowing the finishing of the two in-construction farms. Five years later, he was forced to re-think, and the next three projects were allowed to go ahead. The fun thing in all this was that it was all ideological: Denmark has two major semi-monopolist utilities that also own the grid [or at least that was the situation until a few years ago], both of which supported wind; and the gutting of the Danish wind market actually hurt Danish business interests: the wind manufacturers are big industry after all. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Spanish business is very protectionist, but in a much less open way than the French are - this is the reason why Gamesa got the license from Vestas in the first place - because otherwise Vestas couldn't have sold in the Spanish market.
Gamesa is still not that big outside of Spain or out of projects by Iberdrola and other Spanish investors. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
It was not really a surprise to Vestas... Gamesa bought out the license it had from Vestas, so this was done with Vestas' consent, and in the clear knowledge that they'd compete on their own and likely take over a large portion of the Spanish market.
That's interesting, because that's not the impression I got from newsarticles from the time.
Gamesa is still not that big outside of Spain or out of projects by Iberdrola and other Spanish investors.
I definitely get the Iberdrola connection. I ran the numbers from the Spanish wind energy associations wind farm database. I know that there are a number of small development corporations that develop a wind farm that aren't wholly owned by Iberdrola and Iberdrola Renewables. But the relationship (in Spain) seems to be stronger in turns of the % of Gamesa turbines in Iberdrola projects, than in terms of the % of Iberdrola projects as a % of total Gamesa sales. That was something I honed in on while I was writing.
What I'm most interested in is less a matter of the development of wind farm development than the relationship between Gamesa and the Basque regional government. It's that political science thing.
I do appreciate getting some things about the distribution issues cleared up. I know now that I need to go back through what I've written for my paper and change some things. The thesis was basically the importance of the Iberdrola-Gamesa relationship, and the role that the Basque government came in and had in terms of fostering the development of sectoral organizations like the energy cluster (cluster energia) And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
Spain could almost be designated a captive market in wind for its own companies, like India. Within that frame, with strong Iberdrola support, Gamesa became a power. But Gamesa has had very limited success when moving to other markets.
Their entry into the US is particularly telling, as their technology was not up to other European standards. Without the support of Iberdrola in the US, Gamesa would have a very hard time. Despite strong relationships with Pennsylvania unions, and the use of converted factories there, Gamesa has had a very hard time finding equilibrium.
The problem of success stories from captive markets not being able to replicate that in more mature markets is not limited to Spain, though by starting small Acciona is certainly moving forward. Suzlon's very tough and expensive entry into the US is a spectacular example of a company very successful, even controlling, of a particular market, yet having a very rocky entry into a more sophisticated market. Suzlon is not out of the woods yet, and without its purchase of REpower would be even deeper in the hole.
The Basque offshore cluster is but a shadow of the North Sea - Baltic cluster, and will have virtually no influence outside of perhaps small Spanish development. At this stage, there is no technology nor expertise replicable to the wider offshore space, Gamesa's 4.5 MW turbine notwithstanding.
Acciona and Gamesa have had tough times in China as well. This is a symptom of coming from a captive market, where the bar is set lower, but is not recognized until higher standards are needed. Smaller Acciona has the strategic advantage here because being smaller, they are able to adjust quicker with their very capable engineering. (Im writing about the wind division, not the entire company.)
To get a clearer picture of the split between Gamesa and Vestas, and the longer-term results, might well take some more digging. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
i suspect in the coming years REpower will grow some, GE will really begin to capture market share with their new 2.5MW machine, Nordex should increase, and if Fuhrländer can increase production and marketing of the W2E turbine, they could cut into Enercon. But it will be tough, and I wouldn't be surprised if GE focuses elsewhere. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
It is true that electricity sold with a feed-in tariff caps the increase of market prices in peak periods, if that increase would otherwise exceed the feed-in tariff. When makret prices would stay below, of course it does the opposite. Either way, why do you want a disincentive in peak periods?
it is important that wind energy be used before that back-up from coal and the like is called in.
As I said two times now, a feed-in law does just that by obligating distributors to buy the wind electricity. That creates a priority, the other producers are forced to throttle production in high wind. That's exactly what happens in Spain and Northern Germany.
a feed in tariff (subsidy)
To expand on why there should be no equation: a feed-in tariff is a guaranteed purchase price. You can at best consider the difference between the tariff and the momentary market price the subsidy. (And it can actually be negative.) But even that is not really a subsidy, because in the end, it is not something paid from a public or private budget, but costs are spread out to customers (or eating away the profits of other producers). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
a feed in tariff (subsidy) To expand on why there should be no equation: a feed-in tariff is a guaranteed purchase price. You can at best consider the difference between the tariff and the momentary market price the subsidy. (And it can actually be negative.) But even that is not really a subsidy, because in the end, it is not something paid from a public or private budget, but costs are spread out to customers (or eating away the profits of other producers).
To expand on why there should be no equation: a feed-in tariff is a guaranteed purchase price. You can at best consider the difference between the tariff and the momentary market price the subsidy. (And it can actually be negative.) But even that is not really a subsidy, because in the end, it is not something paid from a public or private budget, but costs are spread out to customers (or eating away the profits of other producers).
Given that wind power lowers the marginal price when it blows, there is a merit order effect of supporting wind, which reduces prices for all producers at that time and creates savings for consumers. The aggregate value of that merit order effect has been measured in Denmark, Germany and Spain and is now larger than the net subsidy from the feed-in tariff.
In other words, the so-called "subsidy" to wind actually brings prices down for consumers! In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Note that if "imports and exports balance" is key to making even the green argument: Norway has no significant fossil generation and will not build any under any circumstances, so net exports merely displace norwegian investment in carbon neutral power, which is not a gain, since the danish power sector is overall the worst CO2 emitter in europe.
Which is as it should be, given that DK incumbents are largely coal-based. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
The problem that I see with a feed in tariff is that this does nothing create a disincentive for use during peak periods.
Well, if wind is blowing at a peak period, it will alleviate the need for peaker plants to be turned on, thus turning that period into a "non-peak" one (at least in terms of system strain). and if it is not blowing, then the price will go up to very high levels and that creates disincentives for consumption as well as incentives for marginal producers.
The problem is that wholesale price peaks at times of system tension are usually not passed on to consumers, who have no idea they should save. So either you impose fully variable power prices to retail customers, in perfect market-driven fashion, to get consumers to change their behavior at times of high demand and thus high prices, or you find other ways to impose power savings (education, financing of energy saving devices and investments, technical standards for energy consuming goods and services, etc...) In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
I'd accept paying a spot price the day my power outlet carried ticker quotations from various distributors and I could pick and choose between them. Maybe. But mostly, I'd really rather that it was treated as an infrastructure business without all that spot market nonsense.
Which is not to say that you can't make some kind of incentive system for the part of the middle load that follows a reasonably stable pattern across the day.
And/or you could improve building codes and energy standards in consumer products. Eliminating standby power in non-critical products (TVs, private computers, etc.) sounds like a good idea to me.
From what I have heard, this standby in Spain is sometimes not profitable anymore as the lucrative peak opportunities are less and less (and lower (!)), therefore owners of CCPP are actually thinking of shutting down their plants for good!
This brings up a whole new set of challanges...
owners of CCPP are actually thinking of shutting down their plants for good!
You know, I have trouble believing this. I could understand utilities being reluctant to invest in new gas-fired plants as they know the capacity factor will be less than required. But existing plants should used as long as it's cash-flow positive, and I don't see that it's not the case often enough to keep the plants spinning.
Do you have public data on this? Is this just political posturing by the utilities? In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Annual installations peaked in Germany in 2002, in Spain in 2007. The growth curves were similar, that's a phase delay. But what both show is the superiority of feed-in laws over certification systems (as used in Denmark or the UK). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I suspect that the plan is to do the same thing using the shipbuilding cluster with offshore work. Also, the region is at the forefront of marine energy. Portugal had the largest project currently, but there are projects using bouys at Santona. (Sorry it's in Spanish.)
And there's a really cool project using wind pressure from breakwaters.
There's the grand policy here with tariffs and such, and then there's regional industrial policy based around using the local government to facilitate the development of industrial clusters with backward and forward links. The backward links mean that they breath new life into industries that are on the decline. Forward links means that they open the door to other types of new industries. Like the wind energy cluster around Bilbao did for offshore wind and marine energy. There's even some hope that the solar industry will be able to link into the mirror production that's in place to supply the auto industry in the area.
I ramble. This is going to be my dissertation. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
I suggest that in that context, you to look at and add the examples in Eastern Germany. Like at the Great Lakes region, flat land and not much off-shore in Brandenburg or Sachsen-Anhalt, but wind installations expanded rapidly, Enercon was first to build a wind turbine factory in the local 'rust belt', and there is in particular a large number of new photovoltaics companies and factories. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
great combo/use of real estate. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
In Ireland solar power workers would go on strike in protest against excessive wind if it meant they hand to work too hard... runs... (ok, racist, classist, post colonial, bourgeois propaganda, but what the hell - we go home on a sunny day (to save the harvest) because the sun shines so rarely) notes from no w here
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
*Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Why? The electricity production potential of the c. 2.5 GW Spain added in 2008 and Germany in 2009 is well in excess of what CSP will be capable of in the foreseeable future, comparable to that of wind at a similar time in market evolution (let's say ten years ago). In 2008, German photovoltaics (about 5.45 GW at the end of that year) fed 4.3 TWh into the grid, wind (23.9 GW end of year) 40.43 TWh. Most of that PV is rooftop installations. Big is not always better, CSP is NOT winning that particular fight. (Which shouldn't be taken as opposition to CSP.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Solar is not green. Doped high-purity silicon wafers do not just magically grow on trees, they are manufactured by chemical industry that leaves a, toxic as all hell, waste stream per megawatt produced that makes nuclear power look like "magical kittens and faries power, INC", a waste stream that has no half life, that just piles up for all eternity. And as if this was not bad enough, even if the producers clean up their act, all forms of solar power inevitably pave over ecosystems with industrial plant. If you put up windmills in a forest, field, or hell, a nature preserve, then the wheel tracks from the construction crew, and the digging for the power line heal over quickly enough, and life goes on, with very little impact on what was there before, apart from the couple of square meters that are the base of the mill. Build a nuke plant, and the number of square meters used for mining, plant ect - is very low per kwh produced. Solar, on a scale that would actually produce significant power, inherently kills landscapes by the dozens and hundreds of square kilometers stone cold dead Nothing grows without light, and solar power takes all of it where it is built.
Zum Beispiel, Weser Stadion (Werder Bremen) (construction nearly finished in photo, one year ago) "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
thomas was likely using silicon technology when he posted his comment, and he had no problem with that, ubiquitous as such technology is. Given the scales of digital and PV technology, recycling and proper disposal can be assumed to be developing. Life cycle energy costs together with disposal costs should make mass-produced PV very bearable.
also, notice the decent angle for winter sun on the stadium. double benefit, as just to the right of the photo is one of Bremen's giant swimming baths, with 4 diving and giant pools, kid's zones, slides and games, etc., you an get tan from both directions. :-)) "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
And cost is not something which can be, or should be, ignored. The projected cost of the solar feed in tariff in germany is high enough that if the same money were allocated to nuclear build, the result would be a fully carbon free grid, which would be rather better outcome than the projected build of solar the cost projections assume (single digit percentage of power from solar..)
And just to demonstrate that my objection to solar is not just nuclear advocacy, - there is also the very simple point that the same amount of money spent on "more wind and pumped storage" would also result in vastly more CO2 displacement per Euro spent. As would wave power. or geothermal. Or ocean thermal inclines. Anything and everything is, and will remain, cheaper than rooftop solar, so all subsidies for it are bad policy. Because the cost of paying people to do rooftop work will never come down. It is possible that sufficiently cheap solar cells will someday make economic sense if you put them up during initial construction, or when a roof needs replacing in any case, but this would make for a really slow build of capacity..
the cost of paying people to do rooftop work will never come down.
It's "economic lunacy" to pay people to do work? Perhaps we should go along with current models of "economic sanity" that are all about treating labour as a cost to be reduced?
Even if the panels were free, and they are not, the labor inherent in redoing the roofing of most buildings, with the inherent disruption to traffic, ect, make them more expensive than any other form of power
[Citation needed]
http://egpreston.com/costofcentralsolar.pdf
cites a cost of installation of 4 dollars/watt, at a capacity factor of 15 %, which is shit compared to.. anything. (the author also makes a fairly compelling case for the economics of rooftop solar with cheap panels in new build. Logic does not hold water for retrofits, as the author costed the labor of a normal roof refit at 0. Which only makes sense if you are looking solely for the diffrence between a solar roof and a regular roof you are putting up in any case)
Most of Canada's population lives to the South of Frankfurt... maybe even Munich. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
So essentially, your figures support the argument that retrofit rooftop PV should be installed as a counter-cyclical policy during a construction slump.
I suppose you could make a case for doing counter-cyclical nuclear buildouts instead, but I am not convinced that the lead times on nuclear plants make that viable for the initial phases of a recession.
We should build a europe wide HSR net for people and rededicate the regular lines for freight.
And local passengers. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
There is slowness from lower priority related stops, but the latter are not due to the number of passenger trains, but the speed differential -- and that more vs. expresses than stopping trains. In that sense, replacing expresses with high-speed trains on dedicated lines would indeed be the way to go. I note though that due to noise issues, currently ever more countries return to the (IMO bad) idea to put freight trains on the high-speed lines (because those are avoiding lines), and hope that advanced signalling will improve capacity.
Meanwhile, European railfreight is also slow due to a low top speed of trains, inefficient switching when trains are re-arranged, and (considering the distances at which rail is most competitive) above all borders (which are often technological borders). There are improvements in each field, though. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
This makes the average trip shorter, which disadvantages rail over truck given the current underpricing of truck fuel.
He wrote:
The second part of the cost is everything else other than the solar panels. This cost is currently $4/watt in the $7/watt estimates I have been stating in this and other papers in this series.
That's not just installation, but inventers and cables and transport (and possibly Canadian dollars); still, it appears too high. In this comment thread from 2004, you see prices that are a fraction of 1€/Watt-peak. More current figures put the panels at still well over 50% and installation at 15%, which translates to around 0.5€/Wp. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I think there are two separate issues here: The financial and environmental coast benefit of solar on new build rooftops vs. other forms of generation, and the social/environmental benefits of retrofits vs. other forms of stimulus spending. Since the latter target a specific subgroup of building workers - roofing specialist and electricians - there is no reason why a stimulus plan targeted at a range of sectors in recession might not include such subsidised spending as one element in the mix. notes from no w here
Employing these currently unemployed construction workers is, economically speaking, free, inasmuch as it does not displace any other economic activity they might engage in.
Anything and everything is, and will remain, cheaper than rooftop solar, so all subsidies for it are bad policy. Because the cost of paying people to do rooftop work will never come down. It is possible that sufficiently cheap solar cells will someday make economic sense if you put them up during initial construction, or when a roof needs replacing in any case, but this would make for a really slow build of capacity..
and slow is what we have, but it would speed up with incentives, and no costly clean up afterwards. has it occurred to you that panels actually protect the roof? considering the 25+ years life of panels, the work needed to install them is derisory, besides we need to get a lot more creative with roof space anyway, be it for rooftop gardens, shading for leisure, water storage ect, why not suck some sun too?
retrofitting is always more costly than starting from scratch, but the faster and firmer the incentives, the more architecture will take energy on board, and the less we depend on 'big daddy' power plants, and spread the load, the better, no?
the real front line for solar development is on the 3rd world village scale anyway, not europe's cloudy north, but it started with the germans, so there you go.
where europe really needs it is the impoverished south, greece and the southern half of italy are screaming for it.
it's a no-brainer really, everyone likes them, whereas nuclear's biggest (usually not costed) externality may be the degree of brutal social control needed to convince locals that their own people will run these behemoths to the standards of the french!
italians can't even incinerate rubbish, you really want them managing nuclear waste? way to kill the tourist business, with the mob dumping it offshore in the med! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Disruption to traffic? And roofs don't have to be maintained when no PV is installed, no satellite dishes and antennae are put up, nor new roof windows?... Come on, this is hyperbole too much.
The projected cost of the solar feed in tariff in germany
...is something established producers (who stand to lose market share) like to play around with. In particular, they like to forget about subtracting market prices.
if the same money were allocated to nuclear build, the result would be a fully carbon free grid
Because nuclear can replace intermediate power and peaker plants... not.
the same amount of money spent on "more wind and pumped storage" would also result in vastly more CO2 displacement per Euro spent
The economic point of a feed-in law is not to subsidize the cheapest and most CO2-friendly generation. It is to create a large enough separate market for competing producers of new, still expensive technologies to bring prices down by reailising economies of scale and doing research with a significant budget. Which is exactly what's happening.
Anything and everything is, and will remain, cheaper than rooftop solar
I wouldn't be so sure. Prices are coming down -- and so are feed-in tariffs due to degression. (Even if the current government leaves the current degression rate alone, the rate for 2015 installments will be half of the 2008 rate.) The industry even claims that the open market price level could be reached by 2013, which I doubt strongly, but still inmature technologies like HDR geothermal or wave power should be overtaken by then. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Checking, I find the trick was to compare with retail (end-user) price, not the production price of other generators. Not entirely honest, as this comparison is applicable only for off-grid users who have some application that would use all the generated electricity, and the PV price they indicate seems to be the upper bound formed by the feed-in rate rather than the (possibly much lower) production price per kWh.
At any rate, prices are going down.
Depends where. In China, certainly. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
But siting is less of an issue, as noted above, as there are large areas that can be converted (roofs, parking lots, etc). I agree that greenfield large scale PV plants can easily become a blight on the landscape and will not go that far in Europe.
As for wind, most installation is in fields where the impact is minimal. Hilltop assembly does require some road construction, but it can usually be done to minimize impact. I don't think that's a very strong negative for wind. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Yes, many big PV plants in Spain, when flying over them they look like lakes!!!
CSP has the advantage that with molten salt and buffers you could/can actually produce 24/7...
Yes, many big PV plants in Spain
I haven't seen numbers for the distribution in Spain, but in Germany, the overwhelming majority of PV intsallations is rooftop, not free-field.
SP has the advantage that with molten salt and buffers you could/can actually produce 24/7...
That's indeed a big advantage. But, CSP is more limited geographically, and it remains to be seen whether and when it can be rolled out big-time (with multi-GW installations annually). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
A short Google search turned up this, it's illustrated. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
No, that's the case of most European countries, by EU regulation - haven't you heard of "unbundling"? I've railed against it enough. Even France has the RTE which, while formally owned by EDF is functionally and practically totally independent.
This creates much more of a market for electricity than where the grid is controlled by producers.
And why would we want a market for electricity, again?
one of the things that the Spanish did is set up a schedule of priority for electric production.
That's one of the traditional features of FITs (feed-in tariffs) - beside the fixed price, their main characteristic is priority dispatch, ie the guarantee that renewable energy production is taken in priority to other producers. It eliminates volume risk (ie the risk that your production is not taken up and not sold). Again, not a particularly Spanish characteristic.
During December of last year, wind energy was supplying more than half of the country's electricity. Because of the law granting priority to wind energy production, the national grid stopped accepting electric production from fossil fuel based plants because there was an oversupply. It's really quite brilliant, because that solves the problem of back-up generation.
One has nothing to do with the other. Priority dispatch is relevant when a lot of wind is blowing; back-up generation is relevant when no wind is blowing. Priority dispatch does absolutely nothing to ensure that there is enough capacity in the system (one could even argue that it works against it, by ensuring that gas-fired plants run less of the time and are less profitable, thus will get built less, even though they are needed for their capacity, if not quite for their production)
Now the trick comes when you hit that baseload limit. If you have a progessive rate structure. Something like: 1-30GWh 0.10€/kwh 30-35GWh 0.12€/kwh 35-40GWh 0.14€/kwh This is just a made up schedule. But, that means that in a given hour where 40 GWh of electricity are consumed, that the first 30 GWh bring in €3 million, the second 30-35GWH €600,000, and the last 5 GWh €700,000.
This REALLY won't work. The problem is that demand is not constant, and supplying the last bit of demand is all the harder the higher that demand is (the production unit that is turned on to satisfy the last kWh of demand at times of very high demand is only used at that moment in the whole year: if you want that unit to be built, it needs to be profitable; to be profitable while producing only a small number of kWh in the year requires such kWh to be very, very expensive, thus price peaks.
Again, if you want a heavily regulated system, a monopoly works best. If you want a market solution, use capacity payments. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
The Dutch distribution network is, I believe, still in semi-public hands, through Tennet.
Also you might want to read Jerome's diary Even CATO libertarians say energy deregulation does not work.
http://www.ree.es/ingles/operacion/curvas_demanda.asp
I wish they had this for all markets...
