Renewables too big to fail in Germany

The German economy continues to roar on after the recent economic crisis. Renewables are one reason.

As the US struggles to reduce unemployment, the unemployment rate in Germany over the past two decades has been relatively stable. In fact, it is hard to find the recent economic crisis in the statistics, and unemployment is now lower in Germany than it was before the economic crisis. As one economic expert recently told the dpa, "It increasingly looks like the German economy will be experiencing another year of invulnerability."

One reason is Germany's success in wind and solar in particular, which has been widely reported (its success in biomass is less known), but a mere indication of the raw figures understates the success. We need to keep in mind that there are roughly 4 times as many Americans as Germans, and Americans consume roughly twice as much electricity per capita as Germans do – so you have to multiply everything by eight to get a clear idea of what's going on.

For instance, Germany installed 7,400 megawatts of photovoltaics last year, but that would be equivalent to around 60,000 megawatts (60 gigawatts) in one year in the US in terms of the impact on the grid.

As you can see from this website, which shows you (in English, and you can browse through the calendar into the past) the current production sorted by conventional/wind/solar across Germany's four transit grid operators (all of which are **private** companies), solar power production now peaks regularly above 10 gigawatts, nearly a sixth percent of consumption, which is generally in the mid-60s during the afternoon.

It is important to point out that photovoltaics is not a factor in offsetting peaks over here anymore; renewables are starting to cut into the base load. And as the recent change in grid-integration requirements for PV arrays shows (Renewables International reported), PV is now too big to fail in Germany.

If you take a look at the official statistics for wind installations, you will see that there has not been a roller coaster ride like in the US, but a point of saturation around 2002 (feed-in tariffs did not change in 2003). The best wind sites have simply all been taken, so we are mainly looking for space at this point. We will probably have around 29,000 gigawatts of wind power installed at the end of this year, theoretically well over 40 percent of peak demand -- in an area almost exactly half the size of Texas, which has some 10,000 MW of wind. So imagine Texas with 58,000 MW in terms of space or 180,000 to 240,000 MW in terms of grid impact.

For biomass, there is a tiny table down at the bottom here. Where's the stop-and-go market? A big table is available here, and if you want it all as an Excel file in English, go here.

All of these figures show the reliability of the German investment environment for renewables. In contrast, the US wind market collapsed by 50 percent last year in terms of growth. And I seriously doubt that anyone has any idea how much solar was actually installed in the US anyway – it's all just rough estimates.

Indeed, the US energy market has no such transparency; there is no website in the US that shows on a day-to-day and hourly basis what PV power is being produced how, like the one above does for Germany. I have also not been able to figure out what peak power consumption is in the US. (A free beer to anyone who can provide a link to those statistics in the comments below.) In Germany, it is around 78 gigawatts, generally in late November (when solar doesn't help much).

While Americans are infatuated with having the switch to renewables not cost much, in Germany it all costs around 3.5 cents per kWh - for roughly the cost of a giant latte from Starbucks per month you can nuke nuclear and go renewable – and, apparently, have an "invulnerable" economy. (Craig Morris)