Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[sendler2112]

I had wondered about the durability of wind turbines. This study shows that there will be large reductions in capacity factor in only 10 years if you don't take the maximum effort to repair them. Which the UK is not doing very well compared to Denmark for example.
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https://stopthesethings.files.wordpress ... -12-12.pdf
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And offshore winfarms start with a much higher capacity factor but fall to below onshore values in just 8 years losing half of their capacity in that time. Due to a much harsher operating environment and greater difficulty of maintenance?
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It would be interesting to see how much ongoing expense Denmark wind farm operators are spending on upkeep as a percentage of the original capital cost.
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I wonder what declining output with age for the turbines in a brutally snowy climate like mine would look like where the best wind is also in areas like the Tug Hill Plateu at the end of Lake Ontario which is pummeled by 150-200 inches of wet lake effect snow every winter. Probably close to the degradation rates of off shore wind.
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Wind energy is not renewable. It is rebuildable. As long as we have the affordable liquid fossil fuel for the gigantic machines that are required to manufacture, install and repair the towering mega turbines.
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[sendler2112]

I will have to check these community solar projects out. It seems like a loop hole for an investment group to make money by milking the very generous incentives that are forced on the utility company that requires them to make "the meter run backwards" for residents with rooftop solar. What these companies do is build a comercial grid scale solar farm. And then rather than selling the energy to the grid at the commercial supply rate, which is 1/3 the final house metered rate due to line charges and taxes, as it should, they have been somehow allowed to 'Put household names" on portions of the output to make those meters get billed as if the were running backwards. But the home owners don't buy and own their portion of the solar farm. They rent it under contract. And are only paid 10% of the electrical savings for the privilage of using their name and address. So the solar company can pocket money at twice the rate for selling to the grid at the expense of the utlity company.
Apparently Renovus allows you to buy. I will have to check the price. If it is $3/ Watt then that is on par with what a contractor would charge you to install a complete grid tie system on your own roof. Though you can buy the parts for $1.60/ Watt. And get back 55% from state and national rebates.
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http://renovussolar.com/community-solar/
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Trusolar is rent only and pays only 10% of your electrc bill the first year and 5% per year after that. While they nearly triple the amount that they would otherwise get paid for their solar production from $0.04 to effectively $0.11/ kWh.
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https://trusolar.com/faq-1/
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[Hillhater]

Germany.... More wind farm issues

...
31 October 2017
Wind power is the most important component of Germany’s green energy transition. The end of subsides for older turbines, however, threatens countless wind farms. By 2023, more than a quarter of Germany’s onshore wind farms may be gone.
Several thousand wind turbines in Germany are likely to be closed down in the next decade because they will no longer receive any subsidies. “If electricity prices do not rise over the next decade, only a few plants will survive on the market without subsidies,” says an analysis by the Berlin-based consulting firm Energy Brainpool. This assessment is shared by most professionals. “In any case, by 2020, the shutdown of existing facilities is to be expected to a greater or lesser extent,” an article by several economists of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig concludes.
The sticking point is the electricity price of 2021, which nobody knows today. Older wind turbines who have been running for 20 years or more will lose their subsidies under the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), but not their operating permit. They could go on generating power, if they would be profitable. Like all older technology, after 20 years of wear and tear, wind turbines are prone to repairs and are more maintenance-intensive than new products. Operating costs are higher too. The current electricity price of around three cents per kilowatt hour would not be enough to keep wind farms running – with perhaps a few exceptions in particularly good locations.
By 2021 alone, 5,700 wind turbines with a capacity of 4,500 megawatts will be closed down. In the following years, 2,000 to 3,000 megawatts each will be decommissioned. The German Wind Energy Association estimates that by 2023 around 14,000 megawatts of installed capacity will be gone. That would be more than a quarter of the currently installed onshore wind power capacity which would be eliminated.......

https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/heute/au ... n-100.html

[TheBeastie]

I will have to check these community solar projects out. It seems like a loop hole for an investment group to make money by milking the very generous incentives that are forced on the utility company that requires them to make "the meter run backwards" for residents with rooftop solar. What these companies do is build a comercial grid scale solar farm. And then rather than selling the energy to the grid at the commercial supply rate, which is 1/3 the final house metered rate due to line charges and taxes, as it should, they have been somehow allowed to 'Put household names" on portions of the output to make those meters get billed as if the were running backwards. But the home owners don't buy and own their portion of the solar farm. They rent it under contract. And are only paid 10% of the electrical savings for the privilage of using their name and address. So the solar company can pocket money at twice the rate for selling to the grid at the expense of the utlity company.
Apparently Renovus allows you to buy. I will have to check the price. If it is $3/ Watt then that is on par with what a contractor would charge you to install a complete grid tie system on your own roof. Though you can buy the parts for $1.60/ Watt. And get back 55% from state and national rebates.
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http://renovussolar.com/community-solar/
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Trusolar is rent only and pays only 10% of your electrc bill the first year and 5% per year after that. While they nearly triple the amount that they would otherwise get paid for their solar production from $0.04 to effectively $0.11/ kWh.
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https://trusolar.com/faq-1/
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Yeah, there are some very dodgy things that happen in the Solar industry. Like this video from Bloomberg shows. The thing about Bloomberg is that they are incredibly pro-renewables, I don't know if your seen there little in-between TV show advert thing where they show this hypothetical map of Europe with most countries now doing around 5,000GW of capacity and its ticking higher every second per country, its not meant to be real but something flashy but it shows how committed they are to the idea, probably because they have found a large amount of their website click-throughs are on renewable energy stories which like Bitcoin capture peoples imagination.

But back to solar, when I saw this Bloomberg story on Elon Musks SolarCity VS Buffets conventional energy I couldn't help but see how wicked and selfish it was for Solarcity to load some people with as much as $48,000 worth of debt for a huge solar installation ( https://youtu.be/29pvZrCwxbs?t=45s ) , claiming that it should pay itself off eventually but having no idea or having any guarantee in place that it will. Sure enough, the Nevada public Utilities Commission saw people taking advantage of the electricity grid in a way it wasn't meant to and proposed to change it. Its like people suddenly deciding to drive their cars on the train railroads because it's more convenient for them, but thats not what it was designed for.
https://youtu.be/29pvZrCwxbs?t=3m2s
When people who had forked up a huge amount of money and found out the law could change at any moment so that it would never pay for it self in their lifetime they said they would rather just tear down their solar installation. To me its no different that selling someone bitcoin for $48,000 and claiming in 8 years time it will be worth the same or more so you will get your money back, there's no way you can know that and its basically criminal in my eyes.

That reduction in performance leads the study team to believe that it will be uneconomic to operate windfarms for more than 12 to 15 years — at odds with industry predictions of a 20- to 25-year lifespan.....

Yeah 12-15 years sounds about right to me, I seen this claimed else where as well, the 20year claim makes nice baloney.

[sendler2112]

The easy and fair solution to the rooftop solar net metering issue is for the utility company to reimburse the home owners according to the current 1/4 hour spot rate at the time. Not a 100% give back including all of the line fees and taxes as it was legislated in the beginning. NY state still has this legally imposed on the utilities and it is a big loss for them. This was never sustainable and you can't hate the companies for fighting against this. With a wholesale spot price give back, the home owner can still get something back for their production which will be some of the most valuable electricity pricing of any day. And if they are thrifty and install other timed cooling and storage systems, charge an electric car during the solar peak, ect, they can use more of their own generation before it leaves the house which is their own 100% give back.
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I'm with the utilities on this one. If incentives for rooftop solar are offered, they must come from the public sector. The universal method to get that money would come from a carbon tax. Preferably, right when it leaves the ground. But this is unfortunately impossible to administrate on a world level and is a regressive tax on the lower class. So it will never be. The current debt based-growth based world economy is only kept from collapse by cheap fossil energy so it is a fragile balancing act to tamper with it's price.

[billvon]

The easy and fair solution to the rooftop solar net metering issue is for the utility company to reimburse the home owners according to the current 1/4 hour spot rate at the time.

Expand that to "charge for power at that rate" and you've got real time pricing, which is one of the keys to adapting to increasing levels of intermittent generation. We are in an experimental program like that now and rates range from 8 cents/kwhr (midnight during winter) to $1.40 (7pm in July when it's 96 out.) That both accurately values the power and provides the right incentives for generation and conservation.

[sendler2112]

Expand that to "charge for power at that rate" and you've got real time pricing, which is one of the keys to adapting to increasing levels of intermittent generation. We are in an experimental program like that now and rates range from 8 cents/kwhr (midnight during winter) to $1.40 (7pm in July when it's 96 out.) That both accurately values the power and provides the right incentives for generation and conservation.

Perfect solution to encourage advanced conservation and time shifting techniques for cooling/ heating and ev charging/ V2G. This is what must happen everywhere to be fair to everybody and move forward. I wonder how much a smart meter costs? How old are all of the meters we have now? It's time for some new ones.

[sendler2112]

PS. In this case of true real time pricing it is entirely feasible to have customers have more generation than they consume and end up not paying anything for their electric bill and actually get a big check in the mail from the utility at the end of the year.

[billvon]

Perfect solution to encourage advanced conservation and time shifting techniques for cooling/ heating and ev charging/ V2G. This is what must happen everywhere to be fair to everybody and move forward. I wonder how much a smart meter costs? How old are all of the meters we have now? It's time for some new ones.

As of December, 47% of US households had smart meters. Average cost for installation is around $200.


https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34012
https://blogs.siemens.com/en/smart-grid ... -cost.html

[Hillhater]

An interesting snippit of Australian Solar tech history..
https://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/p ... nation.pdf

[Hillhater]

Solar farm output characteristics ..
Here is a little more data comparing the output difference( efficiency ?) of different panel configurations...Tracking vs. fixed.
The graphs are output as a % of max rated capacity, on the same day, obviously not all in the same location, but on a good clear day.
The green trace. ( Moree) is the only site usung tracking panels, hence its longer peak output.
All the others are fixed panels, but its odd how 2 of them. (Nyngan .. red), and (Broken hill..blue). Have "clipped" peaks....limited by some other factor, whilst Royalla ( brown trace) exhibits the classic bell curve yuo might expect.
Note. There is a small time shift on these traces due to their distance apart



And incase anyone thought it may be some feature of the % graph coversion, ...this is the same data as power output.

[Hillhater]

...... I wonder how much a smart meter costs? How old are all of the meters we have now? It's time for some new ones.

On the subject of "smart meters" and such,...does anyone know (with certainty !) how the various energy reporting authorities, etc ,know how much "rooftop". Solar power is generated at any point in time or over the course of a day ?
My understanding is that a smart meter does not monitor the solar generation, only any portion that is fed back to the grid, and actual generation from the panels has to be monitored by a separate meter which is not always fitted , and generally not able to communicate externally.
So how do they compile all this "real time" data of rooftop generation. ??

[TheBeastie]

...... I wonder how much a smart meter costs? How old are all of the meters we have now? It's time for some new ones.

On the subject of "smart meters" and such,...does anyone know (with certainty !) how the various energy reporting authorities, etc ,know how much "rooftop". Solar power is generated at any point in time or over the course of a day ?
My understanding is that a smart meter does not monitor the solar generation, only any portion that is fed back to the grid, and actual generation from the panels has to be monitored by a separate meter which is not always fitted , and generally not able to communicate externally.
So how do they compile all this "real time" data of rooftop generation. ??

Yeah I have wondered about this too. I assume its measured this way so that it looks good as possible. But yeah every time I see those solar generation stats on electricitymap I wonder how much of that power is being consumed by the actual house before it gets on the grid.

I was just looking at electrictymap for South Australia today and I think this is the best day I have ever seen.
It was 3am and they were generating 70% of their electricity via the wind-turbines, using 73% installed capacity. Of course, it comes in the coolest day of the week, so it has come when the demand for electricity is not needed as no one's going to need to turn on their aircons.
The other thing to note as you have pointed out is you see them continue the gas burning generation with the gas bump along with the wind kicking in as well, as this is the only way to have a smooth generation on the grid. The problem is that you undermine having any truly clean generation like we have seen with France vs Germany with France being mostly nuclear and emitting 10times less co2 than Germany at times.
Despite Germany's massive windfarm setup France kicks there arse in terms of total co2 emissions.

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I noticed Getup! has been picked up in pumping out renewable energy propaganda on Facebook etc, even when I been listening to ABC news radio lately they been quoting the data/claims made by Getup! about how amazing renewable energy is on our billion dollar ABC broadcaster as official data. And of course, they just repeat it every hour on the ABC news radio station.
As usual, this stuff is very wide to its interpretation, deliberately designed to be as manipulative as possible. As according to Elecitrcitymap its 430MW of solar capacity in South Australia vs Germany's 40,700MW which is about 100times more. I used to get people on Facebook sharing these memes so much a few years ago it was annoying. Maybe the price of electricity has drilled some reality into some folks.
https://www.facebook.com/GetUpAustralia ... =3&theater


And while SA may want to celebrate such claims it still doesn't stop the fact they hit $10,000MW/h at the very same time they were enjoying their solar energy. You can see the orange colored solar generation sitting above their light blue wind generation, the rest being gas and coal. The total price for the hot weekend being around $400million dollars, they could have built at least 1 generation unit for coal for the price.

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I haven't seen many articles about it but apparently, there is talk or a plan to build a NSW to SA interstate grid connector electricity tower line.
This way instead of those frequent times when South Australia imports about 30% of their electricity from Victorian grid coal they can now pull another 30% for NSW for a total of 60% of all their energy from interstate coal and still claim they are 70% renewables.
Back in the day people used to complain and hate huge electricity towers but every wind farm etc needs them, and they have upgraded the two links from Victoria to South Australia to carry more power.
https://www.transgrid.com.au/news-views ... -grid.aspx

[Hillhater]

?
My understanding is that a smart meter does not monitor the solar generation, only any portion that is fed back to the grid, and actual generation from the panels has to be monitored by a separate meter which is not always fitted , and generally not able to communicate externally.
So how do they compile all this "real time" data of rooftop generation. ??

Yeah I have wondered about this too. I assume its measured this way so that it looks good as possible. .......

?? Which way are you suggesting it is measured ?
I do not believe that rooftop solar generation is known to any degree of accuracy other than to each individual owner.

[TheBeastie]

?
My understanding is that a smart meter does not monitor the solar generation, only any portion that is fed back to the grid, and actual generation from the panels has to be monitored by a separate meter which is not always fitted , and generally not able to communicate externally.
So how do they compile all this "real time" data of rooftop generation. ??

Yeah I have wondered about this too. I assume its measured this way so that it looks good as possible. .......

?? Which way are you suggesting it is measured ?
I do not believe that rooftop solar generation is known to any degree of accuracy other than to each individual owner.

I am pretty sure the standard with home solar generation is to measure at the generation source and whether the individual house consumes ALL that solar power or not doesn't matter, its reported as if its going to the grid at 100%.
For example in South Australia where the official solar farms are tiny so it's almost all home rooftop solar generation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_pow ... _Australia ) with a total of 430MW,
SA can have days of 40-degrees-centigrade heat but the solar panels total reported grid generation is around max 430MW even if the next few days is 22c, so always the same total generation no matter what, its pretty dubious to believe that no one in their house is using that solar power to run their aircons in 40c+ heat and is instead electing to export 100% all their power to the grid and maybe even buy it back at a higher price, these solar panels aren't even wired to work that way.

One another topic AGL is going to upgrade their NSW Bayswater Power Station, apparently because they know or are admitting under pressure that there is no way they can close down Liddel without causing a shortfall in electricity generation to supply NSW
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-28/a ... on/9491800

Because AGL do TV adverts claiming they are ultra pro-renewables, claiming they are getting out of coal period, they needed a way to make this look OK. The way they are doing that is claiming that this upgrade will make the coal power-station ultra efficient and generate more electricity with no increase in emissions.
But this reminds me of Germany vs France on electricitymap. Where you can easily see 5-10 times the amount of CO2 emitted by Germany. If co2 emissions are so important to be stopped then why bother with wind/solar in the first place because France has complete kicked Germany's arse with co2 emissions without even trying, by being Nuclear based.
If the whole goal is just to be half-arsed about emissions then surely just more efficient coal generation would be the goal for the next 30 years until truly next-gen energy sources become viable whatever they may be, like gen 4 nuclear or man-made star energy generation https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilvers ... 207a6c3747

If everyone breathing in the world emits 18 times more co2 annual than Australia's coal emissions then surely there is time to take a more rational slower paced approach to this issue. To me its all about doing it for increasing political power and/or extracting money from dumb people.

[jonescg]

The reason the figure is what it is is because it's including self-consumption. What's left for export after the home has already consumed it's fill is probably quite a small proportion of the total.

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Busy day for exporting renewable energy to Victoria

The Hatched bar underneath the solid generation bar represents demand, and the demand that isn't seen by the NEM - that is, generated energy which is self-consumed or is otherwise invisible to the grid. They get this data from the APVI:
http://pv-map.apvi.org.au/live

[Hillhater]

Thanks for the link Jonescg, .....I think that confirms my suspicions..
They have a "sample" of 6000 data sources (rooftop PV systems) across all Australia , divided into 57 post zones, which they use to "estimate" the total output for all PV systems in each zone, and statewide.
Considering that SA alone must have 100,000+ individual installations , that 6000 is probably less than 1% of installed systems.
But at least we know now that it is not real data, only a "estimate". !
From that APVI page...

....Performance data are sourced at up to 5 minute intervals from more than 6000 PV systems PV systems in 57 regions across Australia. The 57 regions are based on postcodes beginning in the same first two digits (‘2-digit postcode regions’).
The data is kindly contributed by SMA Australia via the SMA Sunny Portal database and sourced from PVOutput.org. The data may not be representative of the average PV system output in all parts of Australia. In particular, in some ‘2-digit postcode regions’ (regions with postcodes beginning in the same first two digits), a small number of systems are contributing data and larger systems may dominate the aggregate.
The data is used to estimate the average PV system performance (output as a percentage of rated capacity) for each 2-digit postcode region, in each 15 minute time interval. The output of all the PV systems in each region is calculated using the installed capacity of PV systems in each 2-digit region, according to the Clean Energy Regulator's RET database*. These regional output estimates are summed to estimate the total generation from distributed PV systems in each State. Contribution to load is then calculated using data from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) for the National Electricity Market and the South West Interconnected System. The APVI Live Map estimates exclude PV systems that are registered generators in the NEM, as these are accounted for in AEMO's generation data.

[Hillhater]

Now we have a mystery of lost GW solar generation....
Wiki records Australia as having a total 7+ GW of solar generation installed..combined utility and rooftop.
Every reporting authority i can find indicates the absolute MAXIMUM rooftop solar peak output at 4.0 GW ..
http://anero.id/energy/rooftop-solar-en ... 18/january
...and the MAXIMUM utility solar output at 300MW ( from an installed base of 440 MW total )
Those are absolute maximum peak values ever recorded over the current summer months !
So that suggests we have only ever achieved 4.3 GW from the 7+ GW installed ?
Where is the remaining 3 GW of capacity ?
Any suggestions ? ...
....is the "estimated " rooftop generation way off ?
....no chance for the error to be in the low utility capacity.
....any other sources for reference of the rooftop solar capacity installled. ?

[wineboyrider]

Now we have a mystery of lost GW solar generation....
Wiki records Australia as having a total 7+ GW of solar generation installed..combined utility and rooftop.
Every reporting authority i can find indicates the absolute MAXIMUM rooftop solar peak output at 4.0 GW ..
http://anero.id/energy/rooftop-solar-en ... 18/january
...and the MAXIMUM utility solar output at 300MW ( from an installed base of 440 MW total )
Those are absolute maximum peak values ever recorded over the current summer months !
So that suggests we have only ever achieved 4.3 GW from the 7+ GW installed ?
Where is the remaining 3 GW of capacity ?
Any suggestions ? ...
....is the "estimated " rooftop generation way off ?
....no chance for the error to be in the low utility capacity.
....any other sources for reference of the rooftop solar capacity installled. ?

Off grid?

[Hillhater]

The way APVI "estimate" the output data ,..(basicly multiplying the total installed capacity by a output %).. that should include all off grid capacity as well .

[Cephalotus]

Germany.... More wind farm issues

...
31 October 2017
Wind power is the most important component of Germany’s green energy transition. The end of subsides for older turbines, however, threatens countless wind farms. By 2023, more than a quarter of Germany’s onshore wind farms may be gone.
Several thousand wind turbines in Germany are likely to be closed down in the next decade because they will no longer receive any subsidies. “If electricity prices do not rise over the next decade, only a few plants will survive on the market without subsidies,” says an analysis by the Berlin-based consulting firm Energy Brainpool. This assessment is shared by most professionals. “In any case, by 2020, the shutdown of existing facilities is to be expected to a greater or lesser extent,” an article by several economists of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig concludes.
The sticking point is the electricity price of 2021, which nobody knows today. Older wind turbines who have been running for 20 years or more will lose their subsidies under the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), but not their operating permit. They could go on generating power, if they would be profitable. Like all older technology, after 20 years of wear and tear, wind turbines are prone to repairs and are more maintenance-intensive than new products. Operating costs are higher too. The current electricity price of around three cents per kilowatt hour would not be enough to keep wind farms running – with perhaps a few exceptions in particularly good locations.
By 2021 alone, 5,700 wind turbines with a capacity of 4,500 megawatts will be closed down. In the following years, 2,000 to 3,000 megawatts each will be decommissioned. The German Wind Energy Association estimates that by 2023 around 14,000 megawatts of installed capacity will be gone. That would be more than a quarter of the currently installed onshore wind power capacity which would be eliminated.......

https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/heute/au ... n-100.html

This is a good thing. many of those 20 year old wind power plants are located inaeres where there are not wanted today and are made with old technology, they are more noisy than todays wind power plants and gerante far less energy and the energy the gerenrat fluctuates much more.

The politics is to replace those old wind power plants with much better new ones where this makes sense and remove those that stand in placed we don't want them anymore...

They earned their money for 20 years and many onwners and especialyl land owners have become millionaires from them. Ecological footprint is okay, energy paypack time usually is around 3 months, so if you replace them after 20 years they geereated 80 times more energy than they consumed and the new one will generate much more energy with much fewer and better wind power plants.

https://www.wind-energie.de/sites/defau ... 30-web.pdf

repowering = 50% of (larger) wind power plants, but 300% of generated energy plus much less fluctiation in energy production.

[Cephalotus]

Now we have a mystery of lost GW solar generation....
Wiki records Australia as having a total 7+ GW of solar generation installed..combined utility and rooftop.
Every reporting authority i can find indicates the absolute MAXIMUM rooftop solar peak output at 4.0 GW ..
http://anero.id/energy/rooftop-solar-en ... 18/january
...and the MAXIMUM utility solar output at 300MW ( from an installed base of 440 MW total )
Those are absolute maximum peak values ever recorded over the current summer months !
So that suggests we have only ever achieved 4.3 GW from the 7+ GW installed ?
Where is the remaining 3 GW of capacity ?
Any suggestions ? ...
....is the "estimated " rooftop generation way off ?
....no chance for the error to be in the low utility capacity.
....any other sources for reference of the rooftop solar capacity installled. ?

I thoght you claim to be an expert on RE?

obviously a group of solar power plants will never reach its cumulated peak output for several reasons.

1: In times of high instalaltion rates quotes for max installed capacity is at the end of the year while maximum generation is during summer months which is not at the end at least on the northern hemnisphere (so it's not so valid here)
2. solar panels do not produce their peak output on hot sunny days because of the voltage degradation when hot
3. Not all solar plants are orientated in the same way. if you have solar power plant facing west and a solar power plant facing east you will never see their cumulated maximum rating
4. At least in Germany on most days some parts are always cloudy.
5. If you have a large country the sun will not reach its zenith at the same time on different places.

Finally: Not reaching the peak power is a GOOD thing because if you have let#s say 2.000 hours of "full production" only reaching 65% of the peak power mains much less fluctuation in production, the amount of energy is the same.

Obviously a West + and East facing solar plant together have a more balanced output than two south facing power plants.

You can watch the live data for Germany over here:

https://www.sma.de/unternehmen/pv-leist ... hland.html

Have a look at May 27th 2017. This was the day with the highest PV power production in 2017. Peak power reached 29,7GW out of around 40GW totally installed. Most likely a sunny and rather cold or windy day.
I assume Australia is hotter and distributed over a larger area, so 4,3GW out of 7GWp sounds quite okay to me.

[Cephalotus]

One thing I wanted to do was go over all of Germany's renewable generation that I started in this post with their wind https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewt ... 0#p1358107
Germany wind capacity 49.6GW (49,600MW)
Generated 2017: 103.65TWh
There are 1,000,000MWh in 1TWh.
103.65TWh = (103,650,000MWh / 8765.5hours_in_a_year_average) = 11,824MW average power generation (11.8GW)
So ( 11,824MW / 49,600MW ) x 100 = 23.8% capacity factor

Solar
Germany Solar capacity: 40.7GW (40,700MW)
Generated 2017: 38.39TWh
(38,390,000MWh / 8765.5hours_in_a_year_average) = 4,379MW average power generation (4.37GW)
So ( 4,379MW / 40,700MW ) x 100 = 10.7% capacity factor for solar.
If you went into a restaurant and asked for a steak dinner that was 10% of its advertised size, you wouldn't buy it.

What's the capacity factor of your electric bike? Better than 2%? Would you say your electric bike is worthless shit, too, being idle most of the time?

What's the capacity factor of your bathroom or the capacity factor of your washing machine? Why do you own those?

Don't try to fool people if you can not find better arguments.

[Cephalotus]

I
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Is this real degradation or comparing old and small wind power plants with new large ones?

[Hillhater]

I thoght you claim to be an expert on RE?

obviously a group of solar power plants will never reach its cumulated peak output for several reasons.

1: In times of high instalaltion rates quotes for max installed capacity is at the end of the year while maximum generation is during summer months which is not at the end at least on the northern hemnisphere (so it's not so valid here)
2. solar panels do not produce their peak output on hot sunny days because of the voltage degradation when hot
3. Not all solar plants are orientated in the same way. if you have solar power plant facing west and a solar power plant facing east you will never see their cumulated maximum rating
4. At least in Germany on most days some parts are always cloudy.
5. If you have a large country the sun will not reach its zenith at the same time on different places....

No, i have never claimed to be an expert on solar or any power generation.
1). The 7+ GW was installed capacity at the end of 2017.
The 4.3 GW. Peak output were rare isolated events during Jan /Feb 2018..... our peak summer months.
2). Yes, and i believe that can be as much as 10% loss
3) Understood, but not all will be configured like that, and we are missing 40% !
4). Yes, the weather is probably the most relavent. Unlikey Australia will have 100% clear sky over the entire country.
So i am thinking that could be 10-20% loss.
5). Peak sun time should not be a factor in the calculation. The system takes localised sample output maximums, processes them into the total installed capacity in that post area, then combines them nationally on a common time base i believe.
These together with factors like actual panel calibration, cleanliness, decreasing output with panel age, wiring and inverter efficiency losses,...etc all add up to a major discrepancy between quoted installed capacity and actual maximum ouput capacity.......by about 40% on a National scale !
Even without the "weather" variable, an individual local installation likely wont get much more than 80% od its "nameplate" installed capacity at best !

https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/5-r ... -expected/

However, i have a suspicion that commercial solar farms are "underrated" on output relative to the actual panel capacity installed, thus disguising most of these efficiency losses, and enabling them to easily achieve the 100% output levels recorded as i posted above