Yowiehunters Forum

..article I found on the net..an eye opener!!

Giles Parkinson of RenewEconomy writes:
RENEWABLE ENERGY, SOLAR ENERGY PROJECTS, SOLAR PV
Here is a pair of graphs that demonstrate most vividly the merit order effect and the impact that solar is having on electricity prices in Germany; and why utilities there and elsewhere are desperate to try to rein in the growth of solar PV in Europe. It may ...also explain why Australian generators are fighting so hard against the extension of feed-in tariffs in this country.

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.

Both graphs were published last week on the website Renewables International, and were sourced from EPEX, the European power price exchange. The first graph, from 2008, shows peaking power prices rising to about E60/MWh and staying there for most of the day, with some visible peaks around noon and the early evening -- the size of which would depend on the temperature and the usage.

The second graph shows a brief leap to E65/MWh around 9am, before the impact of solar PV takes hold -- erasing the midday peak entirely and leaving only a smaller one in the evening. The huge bite out of day-prices is also a bite out of fossil fuel generators’ earnings and profits. Note that the average peak price in the second graph is barely higher than the baseload price.

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 Europewere 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 E5/MWh fall in average wholesale prices would translate into a one-third slump in earnings from the generation division.

Imagine how that graph might look in Australia with a similar deployment of solar in a country that actually has some sun. Wind has already helped reduce wholesale prices in South Australia, although it has left daytime peaks more or less untouched. Solar would have an altogether different impact.

The NSW government -- which owns the state’s generators, if not their output -- doesn’t want to find out, and has abolished the feed-in tariff, on the basis that it costs too much. But here’s another interesting graph.

Components of average retail bill 2011-2012

It comes from the Australian Energy Market Commission’s report on its "Power of Choice Review", looking at range of demand management and energy-efficiency opportunities, that was released on Friday. It suggests pretty clearly that the cost of green energy incentives -- the renewable energy target, feed-in tariffs, and demand management and energy efficiency schemes -- in Australia is minimal. They total just 6% of the cost.

The average power bill is dominated by transmission, distribution, wholesale and retail costs. This is what the AEMC report is trying to address -- what measures can be introduced that can help consumers protect themselves against rising electricity costs? -- and it canvasses a whole range smart grid and smart appliance opportunities that could be introduced.

It’s not quite clear how easily that can be introduced. Most utility, generation and retail businesses are geared towards simply selling more electrons, or building more poles and wires. The AEMC report says some $11 billion of current $45 billion spend on network upgrades could possibly be avoided, but it is not yet ready to offer solutions. Notably, it says it has to try and unravel how to apportion costs and benefits among consumers, generators, retailers and network providers. IPART tried to do the same thing in its review of solar feed in tariffs and declared it to be too hard.

And just letting the forces of the market work is not necessarily an answer either. Competition in the retail market hasn’t achieved much because, as the AEMC pointed out in a previous report, "the increase in retail competition has served to increase costs" and increased retail margins are expected to contribute more to rising energy costs than green energy schemes.

While the AEMC report is at least a step in the right direction, there is a big question remaining over whether the energy industry is moving fast enough. It’s not simply a matter of changing the rules and the incentives, it is also a question of culture.

..Website with graphs

http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/03/27/why ... -of-solar/

The "minor" problem the sales graph doesnt show(And Crikey would never talk about) is the massive costs/problems and subsidies required..
It would bankrupt us even faster if we went down the failed German experiment.
I also note that after spending zillions on solar panel research the one mighty CSIRO was forced to trial Israeli solar technology in Newcastle.
Its a solar/steam generator which sounds interesting.

COPENHAGEN – One of the world’s biggest green-energy public-policy experiments is coming to a bitter end in Germany, with important lessons for policymakers elsewhere.

Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out generous subsidies – totaling more than $130 billion, according to research from Germany’s Ruhr University – to citizens to invest in solar energy. But now the German government is vowing to cut the subsidies sooner than planned, and to phase out support over the next five years. What went wrong?
There is a fundamental problem with subsidizing inefficient green technology: it is affordable only if it is done in tiny, tokenistic amounts. Using the government’s generous subsidies, Germans installed 7.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic (PV) capacity last year, more than double what the government had deemed “acceptable.” It is estimated that this increase alone will lead to a $260 hike in the average consumer’s annual power bill.
According to Der Spiegel, even members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s staff are now describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rösler, Germany’s minister of economics and technology, has called the spiraling solar subsidies a “threat to the economy.”
Germany’s enthusiasm for solar power is understandable. We could satisfy all of the world’s energy needs for an entire year if we could capture just one hour of the sun’s energy. Even with the inefficiency of current PV technology, we could meet the entire globe’s energy demand with solar panels by covering 250,000 square kilometers (155,342 square miles), about 2.6% of the Sahara Desert.
Unfortunately, Germany – like most of the world – is not as sunny as the Sahara. And, while sunlight is free, panels and installation are not. Solar power is at least four times more costly than energy produced by fossil fuels. It also has the distinct disadvantage of not working at night, when much electricity is consumed.
In the words of the German Association of Physicists, “solar energy cannot replace any additional power plants.” On short, overcast winter days, Germany’s 1.1 million solar-power systems can generate no electricity at all. The country is then forced to import considerable amounts of electricity from nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic. When the sun failed to shine last winter, one emergency back-up plan powered up an Austrian oil-fired plant to fill the supply gap.
Indeed, despite the massive investment, solar power accounts for only about 0.3% of Germany’s total energy. This is one of the key reasons why Germans now pay the second-highest price for electricity in the developed world (exceeded only by Denmark, which aims to be the “world wind-energy champion”). Germans pay three times more than their American counterparts.
Moreover, this sizeable investment does remarkably little to counter global warming. Even with unrealistically generous assumptions, the unimpressive net effect is that solar power reduces Germany’s CO2 emissions by roughly eight million metric tons – or about 1% – for the next 20 years. When the effects are calculated in a standard climate model, the result is a reduction in average temperature of 0.00005oC (one twenty-thousandth of a degree Celsius, or one ten-thousandth of a degree Fahrenheit). To put it another way: by the end of the century, Germany’s $130 billion solar panel subsidies will have postponed temperature increases by 23 hours.
Using solar, Germany is paying about $1,000 per ton of CO2 reduced. The current CO2 price in Europe is $8. Germany could have cut 131 times as much CO2 for the same price. Instead, the Germans are wasting more than 99 cents of every euro that they plow into solar panels.
CommentsIt gets worse: because Germany is part of the European Union Emissions Trading System, the actual effect of extra solar panels in Germany leads to no CO2 reductions, because total emissions are already capped. Instead, the Germans simply allow other parts of the EU to emit more CO2. Germany’s solar panels have only made it cheaper for Portugal or Greece to use coal.
Defenders of Germany’s solar subsidies also claim that they have helped to create “green jobs”. But each job created by green-energy policies costs an average of $175,000 – considerably more than job creation elsewhere in the economy, such as infrastructure or health care. And many “green jobs” are being exported to China, meaning that Europeans subsidize Chinese jobs, with no CO2 reductions.
Germany’s experiment with subsidizing inefficient solar technology has failed. What governments should do instead is to focus first on increasing research and development to make green-energy technology cheaper and more competitive. Production should be ramped up later.
In the meantime, Germans have paid about $130 billion for a climate-change policy that has no impact on global warming. They have subsidized Chinese jobs and other European countries’ reliance on dirty energy sources. And they have needlessly burdened their economy. As even many German officials would probably attest, governments elsewhere cannot afford to repeat the same mistake.


http://www.project-syndicate.org/commen ... e-daydream