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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[Sheb]

To be honest, putting solar panels in Germany was dumb. Actually, encouraging home-level PV as a way to produce energy is dumb.

[Pnx]

To be honest, putting solar panels in Germany was dumb. Actually, encouraging home-level PV as a way to produce energy is dumb.

Why's that?

[Owlbread]

Over here we're trying to localise energy provision by concentrating more now on smaller installations that support the communities near them. I think you can get a special grant if you want to put solar panels on your house.

[FearfulJesuit]

Personally, I think decentralized production is the future of electricity. I don't really see why we couldn't have a few dozen square feet of solar cells and maybe a carbon dioxide-to-fossil fuel algae tank in every house.

[Dutchling]

To be honest, putting solar panels in Germany was dumb. Actually, encouraging home-level PV as a way to produce energy is dumb.

Why's that?

Look at the map.
Look at Germany.

Yeah...

[Owlbread]

If I had the money I'd get my own wind turbine. A lot of local farmers do that. The farmer at the end of the driveway was having talks with a group in England about building a sizeable wind farm on the beautiful hillside next to me, and though I feel the crippling influence of "nimby" (Not In My BackYard) it would be worth it, I reckon. Provided we can get some of the electricity from it.

[GlyphGryph]

Remember, it doesn't need to be perfect to be a good idea, it just needs to be better than the alternatives. Even a very low energy output per cell is perfectly fine if you're numbers add up in the end to a benefit over the current method of power generation. It being a better idea elsewhere doesn't mean it was a bad idea in Germany.

The bulk of the US is 50% better (from that map) - that just means Germany would need half again as many panels for the same output.

[Sheb]

It's just very costly to install and maintain, and in densely populated country the gain in transmission efficiency don't make up for it. Also, most houses aren't built with solar panels in mind, so the roof don't face south and the roof slope is all wrong. Also, you can't rotate your panel to maximize yields.

Although I may be influenced by the facts that my region (Wallonia, Belgium) made a real mess of its PV subsidy for homeowners and manage to accrue liabilities of 2,5 billions euros.


P.S. Also, the federation of high-tech industries that also represent PV actually called for the subsidies to be phased out, saying PV don't need them anymore. (They were, we know have a different system I don't claim to understand)

[GlyphGryph]

That sounds not so much like "solar was a bad idea" so much as "we really fuckin' botched up implementing solar".

If you're going to go through the expense of installing solar panels, why would you then proceed to screw them up that badly? If you're roof is sloped wrong, it's not all that much more effort or cost to build a decent goddamn mount for them! Hell, you can even add the ability for them to swivel at that point and get a bit more bang for your back.

It sounds like a it was run pretty terribly.

[10ebbor10]

That sounds not so much like "solar was a bad idea" so much as "we really fuckin' botched up implementing solar".

Yeah, kinda.

Other things that are problematic is the fact that the Belgian energy network, just like any other country, was never designed for decentralized power. Hence why infrastructure costs are spiking, because we need to redesign the infrastructure to keep up with out pitifull solar production. (Which afaik, Is practically useless and probably uses more power to make than it uses).

To be fair, we're making a mess of implementing all other renewables too. (Let's put these turbines right in the middle of world second largest Chemical industry zone, surely nothing will go wrong. Or you know what, Let's put them straight next to houses, nothing will go wrong*)

It's a wonder we don't have geothermal, or we might try dropping our nuclear power plants in it to heat stuff up a bit.

*Really, we please these things so close to habitational area that they could kill people by falling over. (FYI, in case of a catastrophic failure, parts often fly further than 4 km)

Btw, the European solar industry crashed, primarly due to the import of Chinese solar pannels.

((Another note, microwind is practically useless. The turbines break often, produce pitifull energy, and there are some other problems. ))

[Sheb]

Well, I was referring to solar on private houses.

Anyway, putting solar in Germany is a waste of money because other renewable (like wind) are much more efficient under those climes. Also, it's be easier to turn central Spain into a big mirror and pipe thermal solar power from there (You loose something like 1% per 100 miles using high-tensions lines, so that's 10% losses between Madrid and Berlin.)

Of course, the push for PV was as much about creating solar-installer jobs (that cannot go to China) than producing energy. So from that POV it make sense to push a energy source that waste labour.

[10ebbor10]

I believe the primary reason why we're investing in "useless" green power is that we have to reach a certain European goal (20%) by 2020. Sadly, Belgium has almost no efficient renewable opportunities.

((Offshore wind is the only one, and that one's expensive))

[Owlbread]

10ebbor10, do you mean that Belgium is just trying to reach 20% green energy consumption by 2020? Or is your consumption much better than that already?

[10ebbor10]

10ebbor10, do you mean that Belgium is just trying to reach 20% green energy consumption by 2020? Or is your consumption much better than that already?

We, and every other EU country needs to reach 20% green energy by 2020.

We're not there yet.

Have a paper

Note: On a side note, the EU did trigger this PV revolution. Feel free to thank us for that.

Edit: Scratch all that. Turns out the 20% is an EU average. We only need to reach 13%. Still not there yet, but we're above expectations.

[Owlbread]

If we're aiming to get 80% RES by 2020 I think we'll be the most green country in the whole EU. Latvia's going all at it with their 40% goal but we shall leave them in the dust.