Why (baseload) generators are terrified of solar

[kristopher]

64. Like I said, another version will be coming within a few minutes.

You just said that post 13 was your source and now you are completely contradicting that.

But as risky as it is I'll take you at your word for a moment. I've been to that site also and when I looked about a dozen random days I usually saw the effect of solar in the afternoon. The peaks tended to be between 9-11AM and declined afterwards. The 2008 pages, on the other hand, tended to show the classic humpback through midday.

You are completely wrong about this being either a fabrication or an exaggeration. Have you considered that you really just don't understand what you are looking at? (You've as much as admitted that.) Perhaps your "error" is in thinking that the exemplar in the OP is required to be duplicated every day for the effect to be significant. A close reading of the article should have made you aware of the circumstances.

The second graph shows a brief leap to €65/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 per cent, a situation that utilities in Germany and elsewhere in Europe were 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 €5/MWh fall in average wholesale prices would translate into a one-third slump in earnings from the generation division.

Are you saying the Deutsche Bank analyst is lying also?