Some background on the publisher,

"UPI was purchased in 2000 by Sun Myung Moon's global media conglomerate News World Communications, which also owns the Washington Times and newspapers in South Korea, Japan, and South America, becoming an addition to the Unification Church media portfolio. After 57 years with UPI, its best-known reporter Helen Thomas resigned her position as UPI's chief White House correspondent in May 2000, the day after it was acquired by News World.[3] Since the resignation of Thomas, UPI for the first time does not have a reporter in the White House press corps.[4]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Press_International

For those who are wondering about the "science" in this story, or even just the total absence of discussion about how to balance what's being carried by moderating nuclear and fossil fuel-generated power with the fluctuations in renewables so as to keep the grid stable, the source is UPI. UPI has the name of an old and reputable mainstream wire service that was long akin to the AP, but that's the trick. It's not the UPI you remember from your youth. It's owned by the Unification Church media wing (News World Communications), as bad and far-right as Fox, which also includes the Washington Times and a major Spanish-language paper. News World got started before Fox, but has been outpositioned by Fox (maybe because media isn't Sun Myung Moon's core business) and is probably operating with subsidies from other Moon revenues.

In any event, it's another of those situations that makes one wonder how it got on Common Dreams. Maybe they'll take it down.

The problem is, as several posters have said, one of balancing supply and demand. The oldfashioned way to run a grid is to use big inflexible power stations (nuclear, big coal) to supply the baseload (the power that is required 365/24/3600), somewhat quicker-response options (hydro, gas, maybe oil, small coal) for "intermediate" loads which come and go on a fairly long timescale and immediate-response options (hydro, gas turbines) for "peaking" load.

Introducing significant quantities of power from variable renewables (wind, solar) necessitates changes to the way that a grid is stacked up. Because these sources are variable, they depend - even more than nuclear and big coal - on being partnered by other sources which are capable of quick response (dispatchable). This is especially the case if the utility persists in hanging on to the coal and nuclear.

Storage has been suggested by several commenters as a way to "even out" the supply from variable renewables. It is indeed. But there are other things which should be done first. Make sure that your power plants are geographically well-dispersed - so that a drop in solar intensity in one area is counteracted by a rise in another area. Get the ratio of wind to solar optimised for the country concerned - in the right mix, the two together are less variable than either on its own. Make sure that you have enough dispatchables on your grid to balance the non-dispatchables - that will mean biogas and hydro in most locations seeking a 100% renewables system. Increase interconnections with neighbouring jurisdictions - by exporting wind-genertated surpluses to Norway and Sweden, and purchasing hydro-generated electricity from those countries to make up shortfalls at other times, Denmark maintains grid stability with a high proportion of wind. Use modern load-shifting technology - there are some uses of electricity which can be shifted in time so that they do not coincide with the peaks in demand or the troughs in supply (this requires smart grid technology, or at least something on the way there, and usually some sort of variable pricing arrangement). After you've done all those, you can look at storage - whether that's pumped storage or vanadium redox flow cells or other types of battery technology or compressed air or flywheels or whatever.

What I don't understand is why they are getting so worried at quite a small penetration of solar pv into the grid. If my latest figures are up to date, it currently accounts for about 2% in Germany. Doubling that to 4% isn't going to make a big difference to grid stability. There is time to adapt.

But one thing that would really help would be to rapidly phase out the big inflexible conventional power stations - not just nuclear but also coal. Doing so will necessitate investment in replacements - wind, solar and biomass (and, in the case of Germany, probably imports of hydro from the Alpine nations to the south). And it will necessitate serious upgrading of the grid. But none of these ideas is new in Germany - indeed, you can find most of them advocated in Environment Ministry reports.

the sun's power is always diminished when reflected by a moon...

I have noticed some comments about the difficulty of taking coal and nuclear power stations off line and then back up again.

The issue here is excess power, is it not?
You DO NOT need to power down a plant just because there is 'too much' power in the system.
The ELECTRICAL POWER is not there from coal or nuclear unless you convert to electrical at the source (supply the steam to the vanes of the generator through pipes).
All these plants have ways of NOT converting raw power to electrical WITHOUT powering down (steam ducted away from generators).
They also have ways of shunting the newly converted electrical power (trashing it) before it gets on the grid. It may not be efficent but it's a necessary option because of the need to avoid a total plant shutdown.

We need as much solar power as we can generate until these fossil fuel dinosaurs are merely back up systems and load balancers only.

Here in Oregon we've seen similar articles published regarding the dangers of too much wind power being introduced onto an unstable power grid. And in that instance as well some of us have asked if the coal mining industry was writing a press release.

While I have no facts to share regarding the reliability of the German power grid, I'm sorry to say that this article, posted as it is without any substantive engineering data to back up the absurdist claims of the anonymous UPI reporter, does tend to have me questioning the reliability of the Common Dreams editorial management.

[Aside: My background is as an electrical contractor and ICBO certified electrical inspector. While I'm not a E.E. I have spent a portion of my research time since the 1970s studying electrical systems and I have to suggest that this hysterical article reeks of much of the same dishonesty that we endured as Enron and friends attempted to rape the citizenry of California a decade ago with false claims about "congestion" and system unreliability. The fact that the management of Common Dreams seems to have been snookered by this German story is a cause of disappointment for me.]

Apparently the US is not the only country where corporate profits are paramount. Nor the only one in which the ruling class has the motto regarding disinformation:

"Run it up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes."

solar panel is not an electric generator, the sun is

solar power is an electric appliance, it is successfully used as a water heater in summer time

the overheating condition should be testes prior the installation
edweg

A situation to greatly envy.
Use a smart grid.
Find new uses for excess power, such as charging batteries for electric vehicles.
Stop stuffing the grid with fossil fuel burning power.

Will we see 'battery farmers' gathering the excess power and storing it in batteries that can be swapped into vehicles?

harvey wasserman

this article is absurd on its face. solar produces "too much energy" but this german regime has to prolong reactor operations to keep supplying energy?

It's the Sun that creates too much energy.

Let's destroy it!

Just last night there was an interesting program on the State run German station ARD, on exactly this topic. What was interesting is that the Team that produced the report kept going back to the RWI, which published this type of report for the German Government, trying to find out who funded the report. In the end it came out that a well known lobby Organization known as the IER funded the RWI report. Supposedly the RWI report scientifically proved that alternative sources of energy are going to cause the price of energy to go up and cause problems in the German power grid. The investigative reporters also found another Paper called Strike three put out by IER which details how they are working in other countries in Europe, Denmark, Spain and now Gremany to the same ends. The IRE is a well known group in Washington which is financially supported by oil and coal companies. They have spent large amounts of money for media propaganda and are also lobbying in the Senate, House against President Obama's Plans for Solar and Wind energy. The bottom line of this program was that apparently Alternative Energy sources have become so successful that it is starting to cut into the profits of the major Energy Companies.

I have very much enjoyed reading these well thought out comments not least by Justice Arcs. It is impressive and goes some way to show the improvements possible in this “connected” future when a disparate group with more or less technical expertise can respond to this article with such insight. That the subject of renewable energy is so important to all our futures and that a grasp of the real problems and potential motives of the article are so transparently identified gives me at least hope that despite all the hog-wash and propaganda that is banded about in the corporately controlled media to serve the interests of monopolies, oligarchs, usurers and other elite, the masses will not be fooled all and every time as long as they use their ability to exchange information, developing ideas, and thinking with the best interests of society as a whole in mind.

I too questioned the motives of this article and agree that the renewal of investment into nuclear power plants may have a lot to do with it. Also I thought that the future in Europe looks to me like local, and I mean on the spot, production, consumption and storage, with only excess or peaks in demand being sold or bought to and from the grid. This will take over a large portion of the domestic energy consumed eventually as more technologies come to bear on the challenges of efficiencies. Industrial consumption is where the future demand lies. This means that the mostly privatised distribution grid as well as the newly privatized but highly regulated power suppliers will see their oligopolies diminished unless, as said here, they make serious investments in new technologies and infrastructures in line with the needs for economic, renewable, clean, and non-hazardous power supplies and energy distribution.

One major projects concept of solar that presents an alternative to nuclear is known as “Desertec” the idea which is now progressed to international project development level with the interest of some states, major financial and engineering backers is, in short, to use various solar energy source power generating systems in very large scale installations, some with thermal intermediary mediums like salt or oil to facilitate thermal storage, other systems as direct photovoltaic, all located in vast desert expanses which presently constitute unused real estate in North Africa and feeding that power through a specially build high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission network to the European grid. To read more about what is certainly an abundant if not limitless supply of energy see:
http://www.desertec.org/index.html

There are plenty good ideas out there. It is just a shame we are lumbered with the slaves of oligarchs like the sociopaths Sarkozy or Merkel who pretend to be leaders but just pander to the European bureaucracy which has no future vision further than the accumulation of power in the hallways of Brussels and the controlled diminution of democracy in the NWO.

Fascinating! I especially want to thank expat57 for giving us the first definitely German viewpoint, and for the info that a "state-run" media station did an expose on the fossil fuel interests behind this propaganda (surprise, surprise!)
Imagine it--a public media outfit that actually works in the public interest! I guess we had that in the US once but it was a very long time ago.
My husband just showed me a quotation from Herman Scheer in which he explained that the FIT ISN'T a big expense to the German government because it obviated the need to build expensive nuclear power plants, and after 7 years the power companies only have to pay the owners of solar panels the going rate.
Seems to me that if this article has been exposed as utter propaganda, Common Dreams needs to post a retraction--they could invite one of the more knowledgable commenters here to write it, or maybe ask the ARD team if any of them have the command of English to write a summary of their findings.

Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."

The U.S. should have such problems: An excess of solar power.

Well, I don't think it was a coincidence that the UPI article appeared 10 days after the following:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/12/business/la-fi-utility-tariff-20101012

I haven't been able to locate any article covering the same topic as the UPI article except ones that are obviously based on the UPI article. So I do think there are spin doctors at work on this issue.

However, there is a certain amount of "truthiness". Most of the technical discussion that has appeared so far refer to the bulk power grid. However, long before the power appears on the bulk power grid, distribution systems are likely to be in trouble, unless redesigned for bi-directional flow,which most currently are not. Most distribution systems, at least in the US, are radial, uni-directional, tree and branch style architecture, and aren't grid-like at all.

For example, the fusing system (including reclosers and switches) are designed for one way flow. It's not the devices themselves, but how the system is designed. The system is designed such that in the event of a fault (overload), the closest upstream fuse/recloser, etc. will trip. This insures that if a fault occurs at the end of the line, it won't take the entire circuit out all the way back to the substation. So each device is set to trip at higher fault currents than the one before, looking from someone's house towards the substation.

There are other issues, such as voltage regulation, and balancing load on 3-phase lines. These are not insurmountable problems, but one that could require some money and effort to fix. It's not likely to be a problem with a small number of distributed generation sources, but most likely will be a problem if there are a large number of sources.

Also, my understanding is that German distribution systems tend to be more underground than is typical in the US, so they would likely have less problems, if they are designed like underground systems here, which tend to be looped (and hence bi-directional).

If you want more technical information, see for example http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/294/ or google "distributed generation issues".

Forgot to add, distributed solar generation would not result in any of the technical problems discussed before, until the power output of the entire substation area exceed the input. The power fluctuations due to weather conditions changing would appear to the bulk power grid like an outage, repair of an outage, or normal daily load swings, which are routinely handled.

Any problems would be localized, temporarily solved by simply requiring the last unit connected before problems began to stop feeding power into the system until a long term solution is developed, and should not raise the spectre of vast blackouts.