Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumRenewable Windfall as Germany's Green Energy Meets 90 Percent of Demand
Sunday's milestone was made possible because of a people-powered "energy revolution."
Germany, the fourth-largest economy in the world and a leader in renewable energy, produced so much energy this weekend from its solar, wind, hydro, and biomass plants that power prices went into negative territory for several hours. Consumers were being paid to use energy.
According to Quartz, around 1 pm on Sunday, May 8a particularly "sunny and windy day"the plants supplied a combined 55 gigawatts, or 87 percent, of the 63 gigawatts being consumed.
"The power system adapted to this quite nicely," Christoph Podewil, of the German clean energy think tank Agora Energiewende, told the publication. "This day shows again that a system with large amounts of renewable energy works fine."
According to Agora, the average renewable mix in 2015 was 33 percent.
"This is big," wrote Jeremy Deaton, a journalist with Climate Nexus. "Sundays spike in renewable output shows that wind and solar can keep pace with the demands of an economic powerhouse. Whats more, the growth of clean energy has tracked the growth of Germanys economy."
cont'd
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/11/renewable-windfall-germanys-green-energy-meets-90-percent-demand
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)The energy-output of a solar-park or a wind-park depends massively on the weather.
90% energy from renewable sources is a best-case-scenario.
What about worst-case-scenarios? What if it's a cloudy day without wind?
nationalize the fed
(2,169 posts)make gas with excess power
use gas when the wind/sun isn't around
Common in Europe- they call it Power to Gas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas
Sure you can build battery parks with acres and acres of batteries that leak and will one day die and need replacement
The house that provides its own energy
Swissinfo.ch Mar 28, 2016
Construction is nearly complete on an innovative, multi-family house in canton Zurich that can collect and store enough solar power to fulfil the energy needs of its tenants.
The project has been aptly named The House of the Future, and it is claimed to be the worlds first energy self-sufficient apartment block. The dwelling is being built in Brütten, and by springtime it will be ready to house nine families...snip
...The engineering company behind the project estimates that only one hour of sunlight will be sufficient to power the entire building for 24 hours.
To ensure that surplus energy is available during bad weather days, a power-to-gas plant, which converts solar energy into hydrogen, has been integrated into the house. When insufficient energy is produced from sunlight alone, a fuel cell will use the hydrogen to generate the needed electricity.
Read More: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/multimedia/sustainable-living_the-house-that-provides-its-own-energy/41918896
Power-to-Gas Enables Massive Energy Storage
http://breakingenergy.com/2014/12/02/power-to-gas-enables-massive-energy-storage/
Clinton and Obama prefer fracking
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)You not only need to store the energy from renewable sources. You also have to redesign the electric grids from centralized to decentralized production.
GreenPartyVoter
(72,377 posts)DetlefK
(16,423 posts)People are all for building new wind-parks and solar-parks. Because watching them makes you feel good.
People are all against building new long-range transmission lines. Because they look ugly and industrial and are a plague on the landscape.
Reason number two:
We don't know yet whether we can phase out nuclear completely. Maybe we will never find a fool-proof way to balance all the unpredictable fluctuations of renewable sources. Maybe we will always need nuclear power plants for a voltage base-line. This remains to be seen.
cprise
(8,445 posts)Cloud cover, wind, etc.
There is plenty of temporal slack in which non-renewable generators can scale back or upward.
The real point here is that temporary negative pricing acts as a market incentive to "make hay while the sun shines"... Shift power usage to hours when its most plentiful and beneficial to do so. If you do, you will be rewarded. Inventors are also scrambling to build scalable storage systems, for reasons that should be obvious.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)THAT'S the problem with wind. Every turbine creates a different amount of electric current, depending on EXACTLY where it stands.
"Shift power usage to hours where it's most plentiful."
Oh, okay. So we are scheduling workers' shifts around weather now. Just 3 days in advance. (How many hours per week would that be? How much would those people get paid?)
And we are scheduling production-time in factories not around demand and profit, but around whether or not the sun shines.