Overcast Germany World’s Leading Solar Power Generator
New data shows that Germany has become the world’s leader for generating solar power, despite the fact that two-thirds of the country’s annual daylight hours are spent with heavy cloud cover.
Germany produces 55 per cent of the world’s photovoltaic (PV) energy, using solar panels along the country. So far, solar power generates just 3% of Germany’s total energy, but the government hopes to raise that to 27% by 2020.
A law was passed in Germany in 2000 that offers huge incentives for companies to invest in solar power. The law, known as EEG, planned 100,000 PV panels across the country. The figure, however, currently stands at 300,000 panels.
You should probably at least try and inform yourself before you comment.
Germany's economy slowed down for a lot of reasons, and has been slowing since the 90s. It's interesting you mentioned the five-year mark. When did the Euro come in? Europe's richest economies -- and Germany still is its biggest -- are holding up the poor EU states, which is the real reason (among others) for the slow economy. Also, they're in the middle of integrating a country of East Germans. Sure the wall came down 20 years ago, but East Germany still has a HUGE unemployment rate simply because western firms still aren't investing there.
To say that solar power is dragging down the economy here is ridiculous. It is an industry that is creating huge amounts of jobs in a country plagued by high unemployment figures. All new houses have solar panels on them unless the homeowner specifies otherwise (at least in the state I live in).
I just don't understand why you insist on stating your opinion like it's fact.
I wasnt trying to and didnt mean to imply that this was the only reason for low growth rates.
However I'm going to have to disagree on the Euro, the Euro has been set by germany from day one, which is why RoI and Italy have had such problems with it.
"It is an industry that is creating huge amounts of jobs in a country plagued by high unemployment figures."
But if the jobs are unsustainable, IE cant survive without government aid, they really arent helping.
"I just don't understand why you insist on stating your opinion like it's fact."
I try not to have opinions, opinions can be wrong, I prefer to have facts, that way the facts were right, you just had the wrong ones :P
Having actually looked into the issue a bit myself. I might tell you a few interesting facts about our friend, the sun.
clean, renewable, sustainable, portable, and storable. 1 single min of the suns energy hitting the earth is greater than the worlds energy needs for one year. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/ )
There is huge potential with solar, but the problem is with the collection method to achieve maximum efficiency.
It's unfortunate that without gov backed incentives nearly every last drop of cheap foriegn oil would be burned up before serious investments would pour into other energy sources such as solar.
The same things applies to fusion power, limitless potential. But you don't hear about any businesses investing in it.
But that's the nature of the business animal. Potential and long term investment doesn't seem to translate well into short sighted quarterly profit reports while there is plenty of cheap polluting fossil fuels left to go around.
Not to mention very few restrictions have been put in place to limit by product pollution. Oil and pollution are cheap! So why switch! It's easy money as is.
But considering what potential is gained by this energy source, any support is greatly beneficial to mankind as a whole.
But the oil industry would prob disagree as does the republican party.
somewhere, i thought it was on here, that some company is working on a new solar panel that is a lot more effective, and will lower the cost per watt drastically.
Not exactly, its even less efficient than current solar, about a third as efficent, but at about 100th of the cost, so in cost per watt, 33x as efficient.
"But the oil industry would prob disagree as does the republican party."
The oil industry knows and accepts oil is going to run out, they have plans for the future.
"1 single min of the suns energy hitting the earth is greater than the worlds energy needs for one year."
Very true, but we need to grow food, warm the planet, have light to see by ect. Thanks for the link though, I've been looking for it for ages.
"The same things applies to fusion power, limitless potential. But you don't hear about any businesses investing in it."
Thats because it didnt work, no other scientists could duplicate the results, however nuclear has come a long way recently with breeder reactors.
"But that's the nature of the business animal. Potential and long term investment doesn't seem to translate well into short sighted quarterly profit reports while there is plenty of cheap polluting fossil fuels left to go around. "
Unfortunate but true, but I cant afford to fund limitless research with no known payoff, so I'm not going to complain when no one else will.
I do think it would be a lot more beneficial is the gates foundation and co donated there $80 billion + to solar research rather than whatever crap its spent on now.
Good to see a country providing leadership in fighting the global warming crisis. Hopefully the U.S. will step up and do its part once we've removed a crucial roadblock named Bush.
i agree way to go germany... 3% solar power is 3% less oil/coal needed for the countries energy needs. if they get up to 27% by 2020 thats alot less money going out of germany to foreign counties for a dirty fuel that directly contibutes to global warming.
personally i think everycountry should be doing this... but esspecially 3 countries a and in this order, the US, China and india, if all these countries went 25% solar power it would probably reduces global emission by about 15%, and considering we are at rediculas emission rates for CO2 its time to get serious...
the US is the single largest polluter globally, both in total and per capita... and considering there are two counties with populations 4x greater while emitting less pollution, thats pretty sad.
@goge
"The oil industry knows and accepts oil is going to run out, they have plans for the future."
yup use up all the oil use the profits to make alternative energy hard to find by buying out the technology and basically throwing it away, knowing its a threat to ther industries profits, the oil industry is the biggest reason why alternative energy sources aren't everywhere, otherwise they would have been for a long time... for instance the electric car predates the internal combustion car, its purely a better idea, but the auto industry makes up a good chubnk of oil profits and they aim to protect that... even at the cost of our health and environment.
"Very true, but we need to grow food, warm the planet, have light to see by ect."
true but the planet will warm up with or without the solar panels, we will alwasy have light to see with or without the solar panels, food can be grown in or outdoors, its cheaper to grow outdoors plus, its not so easy to duplicate the effect of sunlight on plants... simply solar paneling the roof of every building would decrease emission by a degree most people likely can't fathom, can you imagine not having to pay for electricity for most of the year or atleast have a bill thats been cut in half?
"Thats because it didnt work, no other scientists could duplicate the results, however nuclear has come a long way recently with breeder reactors."
well i;ve not heard of breeder reactors but would you not agree that fusion has a potential far exceeding that of fission... one of the biggest problems we have with fusion is the fuel, we basically have to go to the moon to get it. also i think i remember hearing that fusion is also cleaner than fission.
"Unfortunate but true, but I cant afford to fund limitless research with no known payoff, so I'm not going to complain when no one else will."
the only way there is no payoff is if it not possible, we know that not to be the case... i imagine the earlier days of fission were much the same, we just don't remember it so well.
"I do think it would be a lot more beneficial is the gates foundation and co donated there $80 billion + to solar research rather than whatever crap its spent on now."
solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, fusion... i'm all for all of these energy source, including the already well established hydro-electric.
persoanlly one day i want to see lightning harness... the problem i see with this is how to make a capacitor strong enough to handle such amount of power so quickly and how to make a batteries biggest enough, powerful enough to store it... infact theres an idea for the gates foundation right there.
With the average person able to negate over 80% of their electricity costs with solar panels (at least in Australia), they are a bloody good idea. The problem is their cost. Invest in then to a mass production type volume and costs come down. Right now it costs about 8-10 years worth of power to set up your house. So the payoff is long in the future and people dont care about the future, only the now.
Cheaper panels, mass produced could massivly reduce the need for fossile fuels, but then that would hurt the energy companies that own all our governments so there wont be any real investment and wont be any real attempts.
"Very true, but we need to grow food, warm the planet..."
Need to warm the planet? What have you been reading that points to benefits of accelerated warming through increased C02 emissions?
A destabilized climate has been shown to have far more dire consequences than benefits.
1. Sea level rising that will displace millions along coastal areas and cities.
2. Strengthened hurricanes, storms, tornadoes, flooding, droughts, and etc. Lets not forget increased insurance rates for coverage from these strengthened elements.
3. Ocean acidification due to decreased PH levels of the oceans being unable to keep pace with absorption of C02 produced since the industrialized 1800's. In turn causing mass extinction of coral reefs world wide.
4. Methane release from melting permafrost peat bogs. Western Siberia is the world's largest peat bog, and the melting of its permafrost is likely to lead to the release, over decades, of large quantities of methane, an extremely effective greenhouse gas, creating an additional source of greenhouse gas emissions.
5. Shutdown of thermohaline circulation. Big one... The last time this natural cycle was interrupted due to natural global warming over millions of years it triggered a tipping point to reversing the warming trend... rapid cooling. An ice age was born.
5. Retreat of sea Ice. The sea absorbs heat from the sun, while the ice largely reflects the sun rays back to space. Thus, retreating sea ice will allow the sun to warm the now exposed sea water, contributing to further warming. Starting a trend that will be increasingly difficult to get out of.
6. Not to mention water scarcity of populations that depend upon the season cycling of mountain ice to replenish drinkable water supplies. No mountain ice = no drinkable water. Even places like Las Vegas are feeling the effects. (source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/ )
7. Interesting study on economic impact: http://en.wikipedia.org/ The most recent study shows that we can expect climate adaptation to consume as much as 20% of gross domestic product.
No offense, but I think you need to do some pondering with some mainstream info out there regarding global warming. Here's a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/
"Solar power is currently expensive and inefficient."
Please define your criteria for efficiency. As I see it, the energy cost of a solar cell is quickly paid for with use, while the energy cost of coal and oil takes a lot longer. (millennia)
If you are talking about costs, then you are forgetting to include full life cycle costs of fossil fuels. This is the biggest problem with current accounting principles and economic models. You dig something up out of the ground and you have "produced" it out of nothing in accounting terms.
Everyone should be generating their own electricity and enough to power their neighbors too. This is fault tolerance, generate more than needed in case of failure. It takes time to replace broken equipment.
The term "overcast" in weather still allows plenty of light through, it's just scattered instead of direct. Look up thin film solar panels and you will see they are becoming very efficient lately.
We can make solar panels that are transparent and only absorb a small part of the spectrum of electricity, such as ultraviolet, infrared, blue, green, red, etc. Entire windows of buildings can be "tinted" with the ultraviolet and infrared photovoltaic layers to create electricity while passing most of the visible spectrum through the windows. The same can be done on the rooftops and the visible spectrum can be optically enhanced through lenses and fiber optic cable to provide natural light sources within buildings. I own a USF-11 that has three layers for red, blue, and green.
The most productive photovoltaic array in the Western Hemisphere is at the Springerville Generating Station Solar System (SGSSS) in Arizona and has produced 4.4 gigawatt hours so far this year. http://www.greenwatts.com/ There was a plant to be opened in Toledo Ohio in the united states that was to be the first in the world to produce continuous rolls of thin film photovoltaics at a 24/7 rate.
Even though USA is much larger than Germany, Germany wins because of the 3% production while USA is still under 1% photovoltaic.
I've talked with some russian people that work with the oil industry over there, and they've said they estimate they have at least 100 years left of crude oil. Too bad we won't live that long if things stay the way they are now.
@ukcn001XYZ: I think it was quoted on a NASA web page somewhere that only 10 seconds, not a minute, of solar power at 1 kilowatt per square meter would power the earth for a whole year.
@robplatt Here in the states there are some universities claiming 40% conversion efficiency in experimental solar panels. I think my best solar panel is only 11%. Multilayer/multispectral absorption is the key to progress in this field. I'm sure nanotechnology will greatly contribute to solar production progress.
They will make some money and get back up there world, there economy was really suffering. I just hope they do not take the advantage; here they have here, they have bought out our energy supplier “N/Power” and done nothing but rip us all their customers off.
I intend to get solar panels fitted to my house, and possibly even wind turbines If I can swing the planning permission.
"Here in the states there are some universities claiming 40% conversion efficiency in experimental solar panels. I think my best solar panel is only 11%. Multilayer/multispectral absorption is the key to progress in this field. I'm sure nanotechnology will greatly contribute to solar production progress."
That pretty much means current solar is rubbish. I think solar power is very good, but in the next few years its going to produce a lot more energy for the same area, and cost a lot less for the same area.
So any cells bought now, will be obsolete in the next few tears.
"So any cells bought now, will be obsolete in the next few tears."
I know what you mean. It's a combination of collection efficiency/price, I'd like to see that ratio a little higher before I make the jump.
But I hear that some research grant is in the works that claims that with nano technology in the future, solar panels will be printable through special nano type printers. The printers are able to attach "bucky balls" to a transparent surface.
The "bucky balls" are agitated by light and the motion generates electricity.
I imagine the efficiency isn't as high end as a custom made solar panels. But the cost will be greatly reduced by the introduction of this new "our family brand" solar panel.
An initial install of these types of panels would help getting your foot into the door with solar. Once you've generated enough to make the system pay for itself you'd already have the solar collection infrastructure in you home paid for.
You then might be more incline to sell the old panels on ebay and get newer high efficiency models plugged into your home setup.
Eventually stepping up to completely power 100% of your home + some.
