Posted on 07/04/2012 11:54:13 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Solar subsidies cost German consumers billions of dollars a year and are widely regarded as inefficient. Even environmentalists are concerned that Berlin's focus on solar comes at the detriment of other renewables. But the solar industry has a powerful lobby, and politicians have proven powerless to resist.
Essentially, every solar array must be backed up with a conventional power plant as a reserve, creating an expensive double infrastructure.
Nearly 50 percent of all green energy subsides go to solar power, which yields only 20 percent of the energy generated by subsidized technology.
Other green energy technologies have the opposite economics. For the same amount of money, wind power produces about five times more energy than solar power. Hydropower generates six times more, and even biomass power plants are three times as effective as solar power.
Germany's new environment minister Peter Altmaier had only been in office a week before he traveled to Bonn for an urgent appointment. Important representatives from the German renewable energy industry were expecting him, including Frank Asbeck, CEO of the Bonn based Solarworld AG. And they were not to be put off. They wanted to know from Altmaier, who assumed his office in May, what was going to happen with solar industry subsidies.
The results of those closed-door negotiations will soon be passed on to the general public via their electricity bills, which are once again about to go up -- even though Germans already pay the second highest energy prices in Europe. Next year, a three-person family will likely have to pay up to an additional €175 ($220) to finance the construction of renewable energy infrastructure. Erdmann's calculations show the EEG contribution jumping to "over 10 cents per kilowatt hour," or nearly three times what the chancellor pledged.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
That's means 10 cents/kw hour added to the normal cost of a kwh.
I live is a town that has thousands of acres of solar panels. The solar companies pay our town (pop. 15,000) millions in rent each year. They are also good neighbors who contribute $10s of thousands to our charities.
They all got tax breaks to build here and California pays them through the nose for the electricity.
My town gets 90% of its power from Hoover Dam and the other 10% from a natural gas generating plant also in the city limits. Cost/kwh average 8.2 cents. Germany would add 10cents/kwh on top of that.
The bottom line is if this stuff was the savior for us all, We’d have solar panels on the roof and a wind turbine in the backyard.
Problem is that it’s BS.
That’s why NO one owns it.
Yeah, the only place they make any economic sense is for a cabin so remote that the costs of stringing wires outweigh the costs of the panels. Even then, you'll need a generator at night.
Maybe Spain, Greece, and North Africa, but Germany - SPARE ME. They don’t get no sunshine there, to speak of. If they REALLY want to get their solar panels to work well, they need to buy a BOATLOAD of high power flood lights, and keep the panels lit up during the 88% of the time when the sun isn’t shining on them - then they have their green energy.
Of course the spotlights would be expense and would shadow the sun, if left in place, but no technology is perfect, don’t you know.
“For the same amount of money, wind power produces about five times more energy than solar power. “
Sorry, but I DON’T BUY THIS. It is BULL. What’s going on here is a classic case of leaving your wife for the next pretty girl, and the next, and the next - in search of that perfect mate. Solar was JUST FINE until it got implemented. Do people REALLY THINK a bunch of windmills will take care of base load. At least solar tend to produce power during the day and when it’s hot (i.e., when there is higher demand), but wind is ANYBODY’S GUESS.
...and does anyone really think Germany will be happy with 100,000 windmills?
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