What the utility fears

BB.

Re: What the utility fears

And it appears that "Green Energy" may be about hit some rough spots in both Germany and Spain:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/07/13/germans-re-thinking-turn-to-green-energy/

...While Germans gleefully embraced the “Nuclear Power? No Thanks!” movement and global greens pointed to Germany as the future of the Green Economy, the sheen is starting to come off the German revolution. The last few months have been a slaughter for the German solar energy. Amid talk of a trade war with China over cheap imported solar panels, the giant German engineering firm Siemens shuttered its solar division after hemorrhaging more than a billion dollars in just two years.

Now Forbes reports that the rest of the German solar industry isn’t following far behind: two of the country’s biggest solar firms, Conenergy and Gehrlicher Solar, both filed for insolvency last week. Another engineering titan, Bosch, has also decided to get out of the solar market.

Meanwhile, the country’s other major green energy project—off-shore windfarms in the Baltic and North Sea—is also threatening to turn into a boondoggle. The massive projects off the northern coast of Germany are supposed to supply 9% of the country’s energy needs by 2023 and were a cornerstone of the government’s plan to abandon nuclear power. Yet engineering challenges, uncertainty around future energy prices and NIMBYs who object to overhead high-tension wires passing through their neighborhoods all threaten to make the project a dangerous white elephant. According to the Economist...

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/07/15/spain-cuts-green-energy-losses/

Spain is the latest European country to regret its foray into green energy production. On Friday the Spanish government announced some contentious reforms to its regime of green energy subsidies, which were among the most generous in Europe.

Those subsidies (in the form of guaranteed above-market rates for producers) have been wildly successful at encouraging solar and wind farm construction. They have utterly failed, though, to help build profitable industries. Now the Spanish central government is dealing with a residual tariff deficit of €4.5 billion for this year alone. That’s the difference between the amount Spanish consumers pay for electricity and the cost of producing it.

Not surprisingly, industry groups are outraged over the move, which will cost solar and wind companies €2.7 billion per year in subsidies and hike consumer rates by 3.2 percent. From the Wall Street Journal...

-Bill

Cariboocoot

Re: What the utility fears

On this sort of scale solar is not ready for prime time. It's those two old familiar problems: efficiency of panels and storage. So even when you have a whole nation determined to make the switch it still doesn't work.

It is a bit odd that the companies are going broke while government is throwing money at them, though. Must be a lot of 'bad' accounting going on.

YehoshuaAgapao

Re: What the utility fears

Would look profitable with SRP EZ-3 but not SRP TOU. EZ-3 has 3 on-peak hours per day, 3-6PM. TOU has 7 or 8, 1-8PM in summer, 5-9 AM & PM in winter. I already got the batteries so I load shave regardless, but only in summer. It isn't worth cycling the batteries over the winter price differences (I'm on TOU because EZ-3's on-peak is mostly during solar production hours; TOU has 1.5 non-solar on-peak hours and another 1.5 hours where solar production is less than subpanel load).

May-Jun, Sep-Oct
Basic: 10.44 first 700; 11.12 701-2000; 12.18 2001+
EZ-3: 8.06 off-peak, 29.56 on-peak
TOU: 6.92 off-peak, 18.94 on-peak

Jul-Aug
Basic: 11.04 first 700; 11.65 701-2000; 12.7 2001+
EZ-3: 8.23 off-peak, 34.86 on-peak
TOU: 7.04 off-peak, 21.09 on-peak

Nov-Apr
Basic: 8.03
EZ-3: 7.5 off-peak, 12.3 on-peak
TOU: 6.86 off-peak, 10.12 on-peak

There is a flat approximately 3c / KWh added for 'purchased power and fuel surcharge' and 'environmental programs'