My previous article in BWorld on Solar power and supply instability attracted various comments from friends and strangers.
A socialist friend posted my article in his fb page,
because they hate capitalism and fossil fuels. One of his anti-fossil fuel
friends made long comments criticizing my paper. When I came in and asked for
his charts and numbers, at first he sustained his statements but later
chickened out.
Here's the chart and numbers that probably made him realize that
subsidize-renewables lobby is standing on a weak ground.
Germany's installed solar capacity in 2014 was 38,200 MW or 38.2 GW.
Assuming an 18% average capacity factor, it should produce 6.88 GW.
then it should produce around 165 GWH/day on average.
Look at the chart for the past 30 days, actual electricity
production in Germany until early morning today December 28. Those yellow blips producing up to 10 GW and running only for a few hours a day.
Fantastic output? Nope, lousy.
And the German energy consumers pay a lot of subsidies
for solar and wind.
The more useful and reliable renewables for Germany are
hydro and biomass, the bottom 2 in the chart. For the PH, it is big hydro and geothermal.
From what I read once, Poland, France, others want
Germany to be removed even partially
from the European grid. Why? surges from
their wind power. When there is a surge
in wind output as they have high wind installation capacity, Germany cannot absorb
all output, so they export the huge surplus energy to the European grid, and this causes huge instability in their
system, courting possible brownouts due
to high supply relative to demand.
One solution of Germany is to tell some of those wind
farms to stop producing electricity, and still get paid. So Germany's feed in
act or FIT is weird. They even pay for electricity not produced or killed
when there is a surge, whereas here, the FIT
applies only on electricity actually produced by the new renewables.
Lesson: governments should get out intervening too much on energy pricing and giving out subsidies.
I also got a comment from one reader. This was published by BWorld under the Feedback section last week.
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December 17, 2015
Dear Mr. Oplas,
I liked your article in today’s paper about the problems
with solar power.
Ironically the Star published also today an article about
the solar plant at SM North EDSA which you mentioned in your article. It states
in there that the 1.5 MW solar plant will provide enough power to “energize
1000 households” . That is a gross exaggeration! At a capacity factor of 15%
which reflects the Philippine true weather conditions and given an average
power consumption of 2560 Kwh per year for a typical Philippine household this
plant would provide at best power for only 32 households if it could supply
baseload.
In don’t understand the hype and misleading reports about
the benefits of solar. It may be a different story if you have desert climate
conditions like in Southern California or the Middle East where solar under an
all-year-round clear sky can reach capacity factors of 25% and merchant solar
plants can feed their intermittent supply to a large grid. None of these
conditions exist here in the Philippines.
You mentioned in your article the often very short
interruptions which occur within minutes. The industry calls that
“Power-Swings” . The other day a heard a speaker at a congress who reported
that unless one has huge warehouse-like battery storage facility, which can
buffer these power swings, our fairly small capacity grids cannot absorb these
swings and will automatically shut down. Very scary.
As a German Citizen I am of course proud of the
accomplishment we have achieved in terms of RE. In the enclosed presentation
which I gave at a Energy Forum you can see that the total power generated from
RE sources was 152 GWh in 2013. That is double the power output of the entire
Philippine in that same year!
But solar is playing only a limited role in Germany.
Aside from wind it is biomass which is the backbone of German RE sources. A
total of 7.800 small biogas plants all over the country with a total capacity
3800 MW are generating 29 GWh per year while the Philippines power output as a
total is 74 GWh per year. According to a study from the USAid the Philippines
have organic feedstock potential for a total of biomass/biogas output of 4,450
MW! That is the equivalent of 10 coal power plants!
Anyway I believe that the solar industry will soon learn a hard lesson and
will realize that its application on an island nation like the Philippines will
be limited.
Best regards.
Ditmar Gorges
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See also:
Energy 47, Low capacity factor of wind, solar and biomass plants, November 04, 2015
Energy 48, US energy subsidies and global energy consumption, November 06, 2015
Energy 49, Malaysia's and Singapore's bright nights and nat gas power, November 21, 2015
Energy 50, Cheap oil, natural gas and coal prices, December 15, 2015
BWorld 34, Solar power and supply instability, December 24, 2015
Business 360-32, Energy independence in Asia, December 24, 2015
Energy 50, Cheap oil, natural gas and coal prices, December 15, 2015
BWorld 34, Solar power and supply instability, December 24, 2015
Business 360-32, Energy independence in Asia, December 24, 2015
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