Solar eating fossil fuels' cake in Germany

Why is Georgia Power still peddling misinformation about solar power instead of moving ahead with it? What's happening in Germany could be a clue.

Giles Parkinson wrote for Crikey.com 28 March 2012 (it's tomorrow in Australia), Why power generators are terrified of solar,

The first graph illustrates what a typical day on the electricity market in Germany looked like in March four years ago; the second illustrates what is happening now, with 25GW of solar PV installed across the country. Essentially, it means that solar PV is not just licking the cream off the profits of the fossil fuel generators — as happens in Australia with a more modest rollout of PV — it is in fact eating their entire cake.

So solar is taking the profits out of coal and natural gas. So sad!

Deutsche Bank solar analyst Vishal Shah noted in a report last month that EPEX data was showing solar PV was cutting peak electricity prices by up to 40%, a situation that utilities in Germany and elsewhere in Europe were finding intolerable. “With Germany adopting a drastic cut, we expect major utilities in other European countries to push for similar cuts as well,” Shah noted.

Analysts elsewhere said one quarter of Germany's gas-fired capacity may be closed, because of the impact of surging solar and wind capacity. Enel, the biggest utility in Italy, which had the most solar PV installed in 2011, highlighted its exposure to reduced peaking prices when it said that a €5/MWh fall in average wholesale prices would translate into a one-third slump in earnings from the generation division.

You know, if the utilities got out in front and generated energy from solar and wind themselves, they wouldn't be having this problem.

Here in Georgia, even Georgia Power could get going and do that, instead of fighting this:

The arrival of solar PV, and the achievement of parity against retail prices, means that consumers do now have a choice. As Jeff Bye, the head of solar at CBD Energy told RenewEconomy last week, he is fielding dozen of calls each week from consumers asking how they can install solar and be taken off the grid.

“People are annoyed by their growing bills — even if they reduce their usage, the bills are still going up,” he says.

Bye is advising his customers to stay connected to the grid, but to use it simply as a back-up, a sort of battery of last resort. This can be done, he says, by using a 3-5kW system on the roof, battery storage and a power router — which can set excess PV power to go into the battery instead of the grid, and can source energy from the grid to top up the batteries when they get low.

That's exactly what this installation is on my farm workshop roof. (To which we have since added another 14 KW on the roof.)

It's also what Dr. Sidney Smith just installed in Richmond Hill last month.

On a larger scale, the City of Sydney is planning on achieving its own independence for the 300MW of capacity used within its boundaries through a network of cogeneration and tri-generation installations, backed up with distributed energy such as solar PV and battery storage.

This is what Austin and Austin Energy have already started doing with a 30 MW plant. and what Dr. Sidney Smith wants to enable in Georgia.

Is Georgia Power a utility working for the good of Georgians, or solely a corporation making money for its executives and shareholders? And why should Georgia Power have veto power over our democracy? Let's see Georgia Power help us get going with solar and wind in Georgia!

-jsq