New directions for solar in Germany

stephendv
stephendv Solar Expert Posts: 1,571 ✭✭
in General Solar Power Topics #1
Germany has been making some truly amazing decisions regarding solar installations, and hopefully we'll be able to make use of some of the new equipment that's coming onto the market there.

Their existing solar capacity met 30% of the entire country's electricity needs one sunny friday and 50% on the next saturday: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/05/germanys-day-in-the-sun-solar-hits-22-gw-mark
The problem they now have is that the grid operators don't have control over this much production so they've instated a new law for all grid tie inverters which requires them to vary their output based on the frequency: http://www.vde.com/en/fnn/pages/50-2-hz.aspx Grid operators can now vary solar output by changing the grid frequency.

The result for the rest of us is that we can pick up grid tie inverters that don't comply with this new law for very good prices on ebay :)
And there's now more of an incentive for battery based inverters to also be able to regulate power based on frequency so that they can AC couple with every German GTI on the market.

They're also adjusting their FIT's to reward self-consumption of generated solar more than grid feeding, this means a lot more battery based systems will be installed and there are already some really interesting lithium ion solutions available, e.g.:
http://www.akasol.com/en/storage-for-renewable-energies/neeoqube.html
http://www.ibc-solar.de/batteriesystem-ibc-solstore+M54a708de802.html (German)

This will hopefully drive more innovation into the stationary battery market and one day penny pinching off-gridders like me will be fighting over second hand lithium ion batts instead of forklifts ;)
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Comments

  • niel
    niel Solar Expert Posts: 10,300 ✭✭✭✭
    #2
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany

    control the solar? i thought the real problem was the in and out availability of solar causing generators to need to be spinning in standby. it would pose a voltage regulation problem with 50% of the power emanating from solar though. this problem would be more pronounced when the loads aren't there as much to consume the excess solar output.
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  • rollandelliott
    rollandelliott Solar Expert Posts: 834 ✭✭
    #3
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany

    I'm not sure this is good. What is better for the environment? Centralized power or a bunch of battery based systems.

    Theoretically you recycle batteries, but I would think in reality there is going to be more batteries disposed of inproperly. ?
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  • Photowhit
    Photowhit Solar Expert Posts: 6,006 ✭✭✭✭✭
    #4
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany

    I'm not overly concerned about battery disposal, They matrials will go up with the oil prices from transportation. so the golf cart battery that currently has a value of $10-15 will just go up. I've heard tales, maybe here?, of people being given forklift batteries and driving them a couple blocks and selling them for scrap.

    I'd be more worried about the smelting and recycling, not producing tons of air and water polution, in 'proper' recycling. though I haven't heard of a bad problem in the last 10 years or so, but I'm afraid to google it...
    Home system 4000 watt (Evergreen) array standing, with 2 Midnite Classic Lites,  Midnite E-panel, Magnum MS4024, Prosine 1800(now backup) and Exeltech 1100(former backup...lol), 660 ah 24v Forklift battery(now 10 years old). Off grid for 20 years (if I include 8 months on a bicycle).
    - Assorted other systems, pieces and to many panels in the closet to not do more projects.
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  • stephendv
    stephendv Solar Expert Posts: 1,571 ✭✭
    #5
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany

    Decentralised power seems like a nice concept to me, you get more efficient power use without so many losses in distribution and you get better redundancy. All those homes suddenly have backup power in the event of a grid failure.

    I wouldn't be worried about recycling of batts in this case because it's Germany. I'll change my tune if the Spanish ever adopt it though ;)
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  • niel
    niel Solar Expert Posts: 10,300 ✭✭✭✭
    #6
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany
    stephendv wrote: »
    Decentralised power seems like a nice concept to me, you get more efficient power use without so many losses in distribution and you get better redundancy. All those homes suddenly have backup power in the event of a grid failure.

    I wouldn't be worried about recycling of batts in this case because it's Germany. I'll change my tune if the Spanish ever adopt it though ;)

    funny you guys say this as i always believed that was a win win to decentralize power. the grid wires are in bad shape and are made to carry ever so much more all of the time and solar would take some of that burden away buying time for utilities to figure it out.
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  • kellylipp
    kellylipp Registered Users Posts: 21 ✭✭
    #7
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany

    Centralized Generation is a different than centralized storage. Certainly generating power in a whole bunch of ways using green sources is perhaps a good idea (economics aside) but how to have power when your generation source is quiet. If only we didn't need lights when it was dark! When we first had electricity we didn't have anything that needed it. We slowly accumulated electricity hungry things as we always had more power than we needed. As we step back and try to run all of these things on electricity that we have to generate and store ourselves we find we have way too much of one and not enough of the other! And just try selling most of us on massive conservation at this point!

    The notion of the grid acting as a common battery is probably the correct avenue as different parts of the grid can generate power when other parts can't. In the case of the United States, we don't have sunlight in one part and darkness in another for a long enough period. If the grid extended around the world we could have solar generated power available to all of us. That isn't going to happen. Extending the grid that far costs way too much never mind the political ramifications. Storage technology or transmission technology, one or the other.

    The good news is it seems that most producers of electricity consuming devices are making them more efficient. Look at Energy Star as an example. However the steps toward high efficiency are too small. For solar/green to really take off we need a household full of stuff (that we need or think we need) to be sufficiently efficient (how about that?) that we can easily generate/store all we need to run them. All of you Off-Grid guys get a tip of the hat: you figured that out a long time. But wouldn't it be nice to have some more "stuff" in your life? Without having to add another panel/battery?

    We need more efficient things that make stuff warm or cold or easy to see (lit). It is these three areas where most of our energy goes. There is only so much conservation that can be done...

    Ah the philosophical ramblings of an out of work former bit head sales guy...

    K
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  • inetdog
    inetdog Solar Expert Posts: 3,123 ✭✭✭✭
    #8
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany
    niel wrote: »
    funny you guys say this as i always believed that was a win win to decentralize power. the grid wires are in bad shape and are made to carry ever so much more all of the time and solar would take some of that burden away buying time for utilities to figure it out.

    Definitely a win-win.
    As long as the distributed sources produce power during the peak consumption times it will decrease the strain on the grid as a whole. But on a substation-outward basis, the variability of local generation like solar will put MORE of a strain on the purely local end of the distribution network, at least in terms of voltage regulation.
    SMA SB 3000, old BP panels.
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  • nsaspook
    nsaspook Solar Expert Posts: 396 ✭✭✭
    #9
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany
    kellylipp wrote: »

    The good news is it seems that most producers of electricity consuming devices are making them more efficient. Look at Energy Star as an example. However the steps toward high efficiency are too small. For solar/green to really take off we need a household full of stuff (that we need or think we need) to be sufficiently efficient (how about that?) that we can easily generate/store all we need to run them. All of you Off-Grid guys get a tip of the hat: you figured that out a long time. But wouldn't it be nice to have some more "stuff" in your life? Without having to add another panel/battery?

    K
    It would be great if gains in efficiency were the answer but it's not that simple.

    One of ironies of supply and demand (or human nature) is that if you make things more efficiency it tends to increase overall usage so overall power use will increase as long as supply is available.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazzoom%E2%80%93Brookes_postulate
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  • niel
    niel Solar Expert Posts: 10,300 ✭✭✭✭
    #10
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany
    inetdog wrote: »
    Definitely a win-win.
    As long as the distributed sources produce power during the peak consumption times it will decrease the strain on the grid as a whole. But on a substation-outward basis, the variability of local generation like solar will put MORE of a strain on the purely local end of the distribution network, at least in terms of voltage regulation.

    that shouldn't be that big of a deal, but utilities are pushing their voltages right to the legal edge with some exceeding the legal max voltage closer in to make up for losses farther out. adding gt to top end voltages that are already present may put the voltage past the legal voltage point, but not by much. in the case of further out and say the voltage sagged to 115vac, this is still acceptable for most appliances and the added voltage from solar in that far end of the grid would probably boost it a volt or so if you are lucky and it's depending on just how much supplemental solar power is out at that far distant point on the grid and how big the loads are. nobody has real good voltage regulation anyway unless you really oversize the wiring in your home to buffer the v drop losses.
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  • inetdog
    inetdog Solar Expert Posts: 3,123 ✭✭✭✭
    #11
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany
    niel wrote: »
    that shouldn't be that big of a deal, but utilities are pushing their voltages right to the legal edge with some exceeding the legal max voltage closer in to make up for losses farther out. adding gt to top end voltages that are already present may put the voltage past the legal voltage point, but not by much. in the case of further out and say the voltage sagged to 115vac, this is still acceptable for most appliances and the added voltage from solar in that far end of the grid would probably boost it a volt or so if you are lucky and it's depending on just how much supplemental solar power is out at that far distant point on the grid and how big the loads are. nobody has real good voltage regulation anyway unless you really oversize the wiring in your home to buffer the v drop losses.
    +1
    There is a qualitative difference in the short-term regulation problem when the PV power on a segment of the network gets bigger than the POCO contribution.
    And if the voltage at the service point is out of limits, there is no amount of oversizing of your house wiring that is going to help you.
    Unless you make it so big that it has negative resistance. :-)
    SMA SB 3000, old BP panels.
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  • Cariboocoot
    Cariboocoot Banned Posts: 17,615 ✭✭✭
    #12
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany

    And if the line Voltage goes too high or low at a home where a GTI is connected, the inverter will drop out because the grid is out of spec. On one home this would be a "solvable problem". Now imagine a block of homes being "Voltage challenged" and each with a GT system. The inverters acting in unwitting concert could push the line Voltage too high in that area due to the lack of "grid inertia" causing them to all shut down. Then the Voltage could sink again, they all come back on ... Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
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  • niel
    niel Solar Expert Posts: 10,300 ✭✭✭✭
    #13
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany
    inetdog wrote: »
    +1
    There is a qualitative difference in the short-term regulation problem when the PV power on a segment of the network gets bigger than the POCO contribution.
    And if the voltage at the service point is out of limits, there is no amount of oversizing of your house wiring that is going to help you.
    Unless you make it so big that it has negative resistance. :-)

    now by out of limits if you mean too low then you are correct, but on a larger scale than what i was referring to as a heavy load of 10a on an ac outlet will drop the voltage at that outlet. it's the same principal though (and isn't that the problem in the first place?) in that the grid lines are undersized and no good? yes, the ups and downs from solar will vary the voltage a bit, but compared to what the real problem is in the first place, (voltage drops) solar is a plus. in other words the bigger problem is the grid and not the solar. fix the lines and drop the voltage from the generator source to the point that solar won't pop it out of bounds at times. solar, or its variations on the voltage, is not the real problem. if the source voltage is able to be lowered to say 122v instead of 126v like i have then the fluxuations from solar won't matter and the fixed grid lines would also allow that solar power to also become useable farther out because the v drops would be fixed from the grid lines that were the problem in dropping the farther out voltages in the first place. they up the voltage instead of fixing the grid itself. the grid, if maintained properly, can take far more variation that the little 1% limitations that have been imposed by utilities from renewable sources.
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  • inetdog
    inetdog Solar Expert Posts: 3,123 ✭✭✭✭
    #14
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany
    niel wrote: »
    ... but compared to what the real problem is in the first place, (voltage drops) solar is a plus. in other words the bigger problem is the grid and not the solar. fix the lines and drop the voltage from the generator source to the point that solar won't pop it out of bounds at times. solar, or its variations on the voltage, is not the real problem.

    Yes, if the problem is lack of capacity in the grid, then adding local PV will help. But your comment about "fix the lines" is a critical one. If the distribution from POCO is high resistance and you drop the POCO output voltage to keep the subscriber voltage with PV from going too high, then the voltage will drop too low if all or a large part of the PV goes away at once.
    That becomes much more of a problem if the RE contribution is high, since the reaction may be to undersize the distribution lines in reliance on RE.
    Definitely not a simple problem, and even worse when you look at control network problems as cited by nsaspook in a separate thread.
    SMA SB 3000, old BP panels.
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  • niel
    niel Solar Expert Posts: 10,300 ✭✭✭✭
    #15
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany

    right, as fixing the voltage close in to keep the voltages acceptable would be detrimental to those farther out. the solar will not bump the voltage very high unless you have a solar farm. the problem isn't the solar as the utility runs the voltage too high close in to try and compensate for the losses farther out due to lines that are not proper. shall we dissolve the idea of adding solar because utilities are too cheap to fix the transmission lines? i know i get charged allot of $ for the transmission of the electric so i don't feel sorry for their voltage problems.
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  • inetdog
    inetdog Solar Expert Posts: 3,123 ✭✭✭✭
    #16
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany
    niel wrote: »
    shall we dissolve the idea of adding solar because utilities are too cheap to fix the transmission lines? i know i get charged allot of $ for the transmission of the electric so i don't feel sorry for their voltage problems.

    I don't feel sorry for them in the least. I just want those who wax enthusiastic (love that phrase) about the future of 90% RE realize that the capital expenses along the way will be much more than just the cost of the RE generation facilities themselves, and somebody will have to pay them.
    In the case of our North America grid intertie structure, the costs in infrastructure will be large and spread over even those areas of the country that do not have much local RE.
    SMA SB 3000, old BP panels.
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  • Cariboocoot
    Cariboocoot Banned Posts: 17,615 ✭✭✭
    #17
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany

    Approximately 125 million homes in the U.S.A.
    Put an average of 5kW GT system on each: 625 million kW of generating power.
    Connect them all to the existing grid infrastructure.
    What happens?

    (BTW, U.S. electrical production is about 4,000 TW hours per year.)

    How well I remember that 7,000 Volt line that ran down our street and fed all the transformers. A quarter of a mile of spliced wire because the company was too cheap to replace the whole thing. Every time it broke, it got spliced. And the more it got spliced the more it broke.
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  • inetdog
    inetdog Solar Expert Posts: 3,123 ✭✭✭✭
    #18
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany
    Cariboocoot wrote: »
    Approximately 125 million homes in the U.S.A.
    Put an average of 5kW GT system on each: 625 million kW of generating power.
    Connect them all to the existing grid infrastructure.
    What happens?

    (BTW, U.S. electrical production is about 4,000 TW hours per year.)

    How well I remember that 7,000 Volt line that ran down our street and fed all the transformers. A quarter of a mile of spliced wire because the company was too cheap to replace the whole thing. Every time it broke, it got spliced. And the more it got spliced the more it broke.

    For the dimensionally challenged who can't keep track of powers of 10, here are some directly comparable numbers. (From Wikipedia, but I checked the references. :-))

    625 million Kw is 625 Gigawatts.
    As of 2010, total generating capacity used (not theoretical and standing by) was about 1000 Gigawatts. That would be 33% solar if added, 62% if used as a replacement (during peak solar hours.)

    The total energy production at a conservative 3 solar hours per day would give 685 TWH compared to 4000 TWH from all sources in 2010. That would be 14% from solar.
    Once again, we see that if we want to reach 50% of total energy instead of just 50% of peak production, we will have to do something serious in the way of storage.
    SMA SB 3000, old BP panels.
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  • Cariboocoot
    Cariboocoot Banned Posts: 17,615 ✭✭✭
    #19
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany

    I forgot to mention that Germany's usage is closer to Canada's, about 1/7 that of the U.S.
    As such solar can become a larger portion of their power production much more easily, thus the effects (good and bad) should show up there sooner than they would in the U.S.A. However they do not have the geographical challenge we have here, and those oh-so-many miles of transmission lines are part of the problem.
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  • inetdog
    inetdog Solar Expert Posts: 3,123 ✭✭✭✭
    #20
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany
    Cariboocoot wrote: »
    I forgot to mention that Germany's usage is closer to Canada's, about 1/7 that of the U.S.
    As such solar can become a larger portion of their power production much more easily, thus the effects (good and bad) should show up there sooner than they would in the U.S.A. However they do not have the geographical challenge we have here, and those oh-so-many miles of transmission lines are part of the problem.

    Do they have regional power authorities or private companies, or is the whole distribution network under one management? With independent producers?
    SMA SB 3000, old BP panels.
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  • Cariboocoot
    Cariboocoot Banned Posts: 17,615 ✭✭✭
    #21
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany
    inetdog wrote: »
    Do they have regional power authorities or private companies, or is the whole distribution network under one management? With independent producers?

    I'm not sure. It can't possibly be as big a mish-mash as the U.S. has got with three distinct regions and innumerable public and private companies feeding it with 48 contiguous states, each of which has its own rules. :roll:

    Right now Germany relies on Nuclear for roughly 23% of their power. They want to replace all of that with solar (which is <5% now). Switching that much from 'stable' generation to 'unstable' generation is surely going to have a noticeable effect.

    And darn it I know a guy who could weigh in to this discussion intelligently and well-informed but he won't because doing so is his profession. He once described the N.A. grid as "extension cords plugged in to cube taps; it all works until everyone switches on the lights at the same time". This is exactly Niel's complaint, and well-founded it is.
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  • niel
    niel Solar Expert Posts: 10,300 ✭✭✭✭
    #22
    Re: New directions for solar in Germany

    inetdog,
    you're right as there isn't going to be a cure all here or any free lunches for any cure implemented, even for renewables, but renewables is not the real problem either as i stated.

    coot,
    you are right that there is a point of diminishing returns for renewables as it isn't feasible for 90% or even 80%, 70%, etc to be from renewables unless it would be a consistent source like hydro and many rightly object to some of the environmental impacts from using dams. how about a large paddle wheel and use smaller generators?

    i like your description of the grid system as i've never quite heard it described that way, but as you say, it's accurate.
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