Germany produces the power of 20 "nuke plants" through SOLAR GRIDS

[Niri Te]

Germany has already started shutting down Nuclear power plants, WITHOUT suffering available power losses, CHECK THIS OUT.

Germany Reaches Solar Power Generation Record | CleanTechies Blog - CleanTechies.com

All the other Nations need to do is COPY what Germany, a country that does not have the "Solar Friendly" weather that where I live in the desert Southwest of the United States has, is doing.

Niri Te

[Niri Te]

Could some of our German members comment, and give updates on this great news??
Niri Te

[iron_jones]

Sehr gut.

Leave it to the Germans.

[txen]

I don't know about Texas, but here in the deserts of Southern California there are something like 20 large projects under way and about 70 if you include those in the planning stages. Don't know the totals, but I know of individual projects in the 100 to 400 MW range.

You don't have to wait for the govt or the power companies. Put solar on your roof and do it yourself. In the last five years or so the cost of solar panels has dropped by about a factor of five.

[Niri Te]

Ateyo and I are both talking on the net with our own computers from a house that is 100 percent Solar powered. even though there are power lines 500 feet from the house. Yes, you are right, DON'T wait for the Government or industry to get their acts together, DO IT YOURSELF !!! We have not paid a power bill in 19 years.
Niri Te

Originally Posted by txen

I don't know about Texas, but here in the deserts of Southern California there are something like 20 large projects under way and about 70 if you include those in the planning stages. Don't know the totals, but I know of individual projects in the 100 to 400 MW range.

You don't have to wait for the govt or the power companies. Put solar on your roof and do it yourself. In the last five years or so the cost of solar panels has dropped by about a factor of five.

[Isard]

The only problem being that the sun doesn't always shine.


Keep the nuke plants for days its shady, and sell the excess energy to neighbors imo.

[Niri Te]

The thing IS, ma tsmuk, that Germany is generating the same power that 20 nuke plants generate even WITH their far from optimal weather. This is REAL WORLD power generation. They have already shut down power plants, and have NOT suffered loss in available power. No ma 'elan, this system WORKS, and in countries like the United States, and Australia, when we don't have sun, we have wind. Ateyo and I just got off our roof, where we are going to mount some more panels. It was a nice "calm" day with only the "gentle"
(20 to 25 MPH) Far West Texas winds out of the South West, As soon as we get the two Wind generators that we built for a total of 400 dollars, our power generation capacity will DOUBLE, and we already power the house just fine right now.
Now if WE can do this with our limited budget, a power Company or Government, would have no problem in generating enough clean safe energy to keep John Q Public powered up.
Niri Te

Originally Posted by Isard

The only problem being that the sun doesn't always shine.


Keep the nuke plants for days its shady, and sell the excess energy to neighbors imo.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Niri Te

Ateyo and I are both talking on the net with our own computers from a house that is 100 percent Solar powered. even though there are power lines 500 feet from the house. Yes, you are right, DON'T wait for the Government or industry to get their acts together, DO IT YOURSELF !!! We have not paid a power bill in 19 years.
Niri Te

Most of us do not live in the desert.

Originally Posted by Niri Te

Now if WE can do this with our limited budget, a power Company or Government, would have no problem in generating enough clean safe energy to keep John Q Public powered up.
Niri Te

Because complexities of scale aren't a thing, right?

Also, it'd probably be a lot easier for governments to provide safe and cheap and, dare I say, clean power if mentioning the word "nuclear" didn't immediately trigger headless-chicken syndrome, despite the fact that a nuclear plant is so locked down that freakin' bananas can set off alarms. (Which is, incidentally, a few orders of magnitude more locked down than any coal or gas power plant.) It's also radically cheaper and more reliable than every other option.

[Human No More]

Depends on whether people can afford that energy. We could generate a country's energy from hamster wheels; it would just be prohibitively expensive.

[Niri Te]

I don't know if the people around the Fukashima Nuke Plant would agree with the statement that you made below, my friend. I used to be on the same of the nuclear power fence as you Clarke, mostly because it didn't seem like there was a cleaner, safer alternative that could generate the kind of power that Nuclear power does, just look at some of my older posts. Now that I have seen that the Germans are DOING just that with their solar system, even WITH their less than optimal weather, I am beginning to think that we may just have a better way.
You are a rational person, with an engineering mind, plus you are closer to Germany than I am, and might have access to more data from their system, so based on THEIR real world facts and data, what do you think? I really DO pay attention to what you say.
Niri Te

Originally Posted by Clarke

Also, it'd probably be a lot easier for governments to provide safe and cheap and, dare I say, clean power if mentioning the word "nuclear" didn't immediately trigger headless-chicken syndrome, despite the fact that a nuclear plant is so locked down that freakin' bananas can set off alarms. (Which is, incidentally, a few orders of magnitude more locked down than any coal or gas power plant.) It's also radically cheaper and more reliable than every other option.

[Isard]

Didn't have sun or wind today. I wouldn't be posting atm if we ran on solar/wind power.


(We're coal/hydro up here)

[Niri Te]

Well, even when the sun is obscured by a solid overcast, AND there are no winds here, (very rare), we STILL have power in the house, due to our Battery Banks, and the fact that the panels generate power, although reduced. The sun set two hours ago, and even though we DO have a breeze, our wind generators won't be up till next month, yet Ateyo and I each have our computers running, and they will be running perfectly till sometime between 10:30 and 11:00 tonight, for a total of four to four and a half hours, with NO problems. If, like I sometimes do, I wake up at around four in the morning, three hours before sunrise right now, I can fire up my SATCOM, and computer, and run without ANY problems till the Sun comes up, and I go back to bed for a nap till about nine in the morning. It's all in how you size your battery bank.
Niri Te

Originally Posted by Isard

Didn't have sun or wind today. I wouldn't be posting atm if we ran on solar/wind power.(We're coal/hydro up here)

[Niri Te]

AND NOW FOR AN OPPOSING VIEW FROM SPIEGEL MAGAZINE, IN ENGLISH

Who says I'm not "Fair and Balanced"?? Here is an story on the German solar grid, and what it is actually generating, and what it actually costs. Perhaps this is the problem of "Scale" that you were talking about Clarke.

German Solar Subsidies to Remain High with Consumers Paying the Price - SPIEGEL ONLINE

If they are running into all of these problems that were NOT mentioned in the cleantechies (sp?) story that I uploaded this morning, then the BEST way to bring down pollution on a large scale, is for a LOT of regular households like ours, to generate their own power, like we do. That would have it's own list of problems to be overcome, especially in Europe, where apparently there are a LOT of people that do NOT own their own home.
Comments anyone?? Niri Te

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Niri Te

I don't know if the people around the Fukashima Nuke Plant would agree with the statement that you made below, my friend. I used to be on the same of the nuclear power fence as you Clarke, mostly because it didn't seem like there was a cleaner, safer alternative that could generate the kind of power that Nuclear power does, just look at some of my older posts. Now that I have seen that the Germans are DOING just that with their solar system, even WITH their less than optimal weather, I am beginning to think that we may just have a better way.
You are a rational person, with an engineering mind, plus you are closer to Germany than I am, and might have access to more data from their system, so based on THEIR real world facts and data, what do you think? I really DO pay attention to what you say.
Niri Te

The article you linked fails to mention how expensive the plants are, or how much land area they cost. According to this page, that last one is very significant, with all other methods taking hundreds of times the land area of nuclear. To extrapolate further from those numbers, the German plan apparently takes up (292 sq. miles)/(3,200 MW) * 22000MW = 2008 sq. miles, i.e. 1 and 1/3 Rhode Islands. I agree with you as much as anyone about how horrible 2154 Earth is, but I don't think state-sized solar farms are actually that much of an improvement.

Re: safety, that's fairly simple - avoid 50 year old reactor designs, in high-risk earthquake zones. Instead, use modern designs like pebble bed reactors - which have no active safety features whatsoever, because they don't require them.

Originally Posted by Niri Te

If they are running into all of these problems that were NOT mentioned in the cleantechies (sp?) story that I uploaded this morning, then the BEST way to bring down pollution on a large scale, is for a LOT of regular households like ours, to generate their own power, like we do. That would have it's own list of problems to be overcome, especially in Europe, where apparently there are a LOT of people that do NOT own their own home.
Comments anyone?? Niri Te

Weather permitting.

(The fact that people don't own their own homes isn't much of a problem, because if you were mandating it or something, then landowners would have to do it anyway.)

Weather is a big issue. For instance, I used to live in a fairly inland part of Scotland, which is famously overcast and rainy. The wind was also inconsistent, and was mostly concentrated in winter. How do I get consistent power out of that?

[Niri Te]

There is NO WAY that the German Government, or the German people could give up that kind of land, even if it ran the entire country.
Niri Te