Well yes, I put a ~ 5 % figure on German pv in my original post, so we agree, but that is all rather off the point. Never mind.

So you accuse others of smoke and mirrors, but the number you were using was one you'd just made up?

Great.

http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/veroeffentlichungen-pdf-dateien-en/studien-und-konzeptpapiere/recent-facts-about-photovoltaics-in-germany.pdf

page 5

But, crucially, fulhamish's was right. It may not have been supported by a specific article, but did have the foundations of a good understanding of energy production. MoW, by contrast, was supported by a headline or badly written article, but was utterly wrong, demonstrating no understanding of energy production.

I find page 29 of Jamie's document very telling. In 2013 energy produced from German coal fired stations increased by 8TWhs, whilst energy from solar increased by 1.8TWhs.

Green revolution it is not.

Sure. The article was wrong. Fulham was being unnecessarily churlish. We can move on.

We could, but I was sort of hoping it would evolve into a debate on energy that didn't just revolve around whether climate change was real or not.

Debate about what specifically?

A debate on energy?

I thought that the strategy that some European nations were trying was pushing green for the long term while keeping nuclear on the short time until green tech was ready and affordable. Then, once green energy was further developed, they found that they still had no way of storing electricity, so wind & solar are still on the hobby/propaganda list. They can be used to handle the peak "floating" load but not the base load since they are not dependable minute to minute or hour to hour.

That's why coal is up again.

Is that basically correct?

I think that the current thought is that the limiting factor is storing electricity. Leyden jars and car batteries aside, there is no way to economically store electricity. Excess power isn't stored; it just heats up the transmission lines. There's your real cause of global warming :)

There has been some research on using solar to heat salt crystals that change phase from solid to liquid during the day, and then heat is siphoned off overnight, turning them back to solid. The heat would be used to create steam to turn turbines, just like coal does. That tech had lots of issues in the 70's, but there has been some promising research lately with alternate materials, mainly hampered by a lack of money from this last recession scaring away investors. Barring a major breakthrough in superconductors or fusion, that's the most promising way forward.

It does require large solar farms filled with rotating mirrors.

I'm so glad someone brought up nuclear energy. I really can't imagine anything dumbest than supporting any other alternative to make the power grid 'greener'. Germany was really short sighted for decommissioning its nuclear power plants by pressure of the environmentalists. It's energy bill could be much greener in the future.

If it beats pumping water up a mountain I like it. European energy policy is nothing if not divided. Germany is dropping nuclear like a hot potato, and building big shiny new coal plants to make up for it. The UK is bungling its way to a nuclear future for the long term, France wants to get rid of nuclear but can't, and the likes of Norway is impressively green which it has achieved on the back of selling oil for other people to burn.

It's a bloody mess.

Having lived near 3 nuke plants, they aren't financially viable in a competitive market. I do not get why people are so bullish about nuclear power. Repairs are extremely expensive and aging equipment always needs these repairs. The fracking bonanza has also decreased energy prices so nuke plants can't compete. Fracking is more competitive because they're quick start up and quick stop, so they respond better to changes in the market. My hometown is going to be screwed because of its dependence on nuclear energy for jobs.

Also good luck cleaning your water supply when your country is filled with nuke plants leaking contaminants on a constant basis. But hey at least your fossil fuel usage is down. Win.

Of course you can't compete with fossil fuel when the market doesn't price in the climate damage being done. People are bullish because oil and coal are simply not sustainable.

And I'm not sure to which kind of nuclear you're talking about when talking about contaminants. We live in a post-Chernobyl world.

I recently heard a really interesting talk on phytoplankton potential in a high CO2 world. ''Give me a tanker of iron in the southern oceans and I will give you the next ice age'' or something like that. Plus using the currents as a harvesting mechanism. OK I know that it is a grandiose scheme, but as we all appear to agree, the time now is for big sky thinking.

If we are compelled only to think on a small scale in the UK at least, for goodness sake let’s take away the solar pv subsidy and put the money instead into insulation and solar hot water heating. Nowhere nearly as sexy but a scale of magnitude more CO2 minimising for our buck.

At theodosieus on the storage of energy - what is practical today, albeit a little expensive, is combined renewable and fossil plants. For example, pv during the day and shale gas at night. Not quite as expensive as at first glance because the grid connection, one of the major expenses, is shared.
Moreover, hydrogen production from pv is certainly feasible, even with current technology, given suitable sites. Indeed, if some middle-eastern countries where the oil is running out (e.g., Algeria), would do well to consider it.

Last one for now - for those of us in the UK whatever happened to the Severn barrage? I believe current estimates are that it could supply ~ 5 % of UK demand. I wonder how that compares to nuclear power station (s)? I would hazard a guess also that on a long term cost basis it would beat them hands down. We have that long-lasting French scheme on the Rance as a calibrant.

‘’After 40 years, on average, each of the 24 units had run 222,690 hours, with an immersed time of 324,494 hours and the cumulative gross output is about 21,600,000,000 kWh’’

http://www.british-hydro.org/downloads/La%20Rance-BHA-Oct%202009.pdf

Moreover, on power from the oceans whatever happened to Salter's nodding ducks? I know this dates me somewhat, but I seem to remember that Mrs Thatcher likely with her husband Dennis (aka Burmah Oil) originally played a large part in putting the kibosh on that brilliantly innovative scheme.

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/stephen-salter-pioneer-of-wave-power/299034.article
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/eng/meng/waveenergy/resources/files/public/warwick_boar_article_-_january_2009.pdf

Wave power had issues with high mechanical maintence costs, I believe, but I could be wrong. Still, there are a variety of newer wave techs coming out all the time and it could still come back. Tidal power is more promising in the long term, when oil prices are higher.

@fulhamish
That is possible, using solar to create hydrogen which is burned to produce constant power production despite varying solar input. Still, hydrogen was an investigated and failed tech. Until oil prices go up, the economics are not there. Like the salts mentioned earlier, hydrogen is a good way to store power created by green tech, it's just more expensive than oil, coal, etc.

Nuclear is OK, but not great. It always has huge cost overruns when built, covered by the taxpayer. And they are costly to repair, since radiation prematurely ages everything. And then you have a lump of land that can't be used for, essentially, forever.

Not that it is all bad. It's dependable power and cleaner than coal. Coal puts more radiation in the atmosphere than nuclear does, since coal is more radioactive than background radiation and a plant burns tons of it continually.

I'm looking forward to zero emission coal plants. The Chinese are investing heavy into clean coal as well, due to their pollution problem. Seeing what will come from Thorium reactors, if anything, will be fun.

@fulhamish: I'll quote putin here:
"Sure. The article was wrong. Fulham was being unnecessarily churlish. We can move on. "

On nuclear power, I read a fascinating article a while back about that it is NOT viable, simply because the risks of nuclear failure are never accounted for in cost measures. If nuclear plants would be obliged to pay insurance for possible huge problems, the cost for nuclear would skyrocket.

Most plants are private companies, who are able to make good returns because any risks they take will be paid for by the public (in more ways than one). Interesting incentive structure ey?

"We live in a post-Chernobyl world."

That's reassuring. Instead we live in a Fukushima world.

Apparently there are now serious efforts being made to tackle the storage problem, involving battery technology. If that gets off the ground it could seriously improve the viability of solar and other renewables.

For instance: http://rmp.ucsd.edu/strategic-energy/storage/index.html

Oh, and btw:

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/how-much-room-do-we-need-supply-entire-world-solar-electricity

And that was with 2005 technology.

Without wishing to sound 'churlish', those solar panels were placed in the middle of the desert around Algeria (see my previous post). I wonder if the authors factored in power transmission/fuel conversion losses to the rest of the world. I also wonder how big those squares would be in New York or Moscow, for example. I also wonder if cloudy conditions, which reduce efficiency and the diurnal range were taken into account. Please don't misunderstand me, in the right circumstances (e.g., Arizona) pv is fast becoming an economic component of our energy supply infrastructure. I just balk a little at the impression given in your reference of a quick fix to this rather complex problem.

Where does this notion that Algeria's oil is running out come from? Or are certain people allowed to make stuff up? They are discovering oilfields left and right.

@fulhamish: you can wonder about those things, or you can click on the link and read their quite extensive paper. Choice is yours.

@fulhamish

I did a quite detailed report into the Severn barrage for SWEEG a few years back.The startup costs are unbelievably high, and dwarf that of comparable nuclear schemes. When you combine that with the nightmare that is getting the English and Welsh sides to work together, the huge ecological impact, the high carbon cost (both embedded and methane emission increases) and it's a non-starter.

Which is why it's never started

It's not just nuclear with that public liability problem.

Oil rigs, pipelines, etc., at least in my country, have a similar limit to their insurance liability in case of a disaster. They only have to insure up to a certain amount, not a lot, and then the taxpayers foot the bill for the rest. I think that most industrialized countries are like that. It's just not well known.