wind power???

[buickanddeere]

I haven't read through all nine pages but if your utity doesn't offer a workable "net metering" rate. Your wind turbine and solar isn't going to pay by using a battery bank.
Our government brags much about green energy but the utility does not allow any more FIT or net metering connections , at least in my area.
Best I can do is shave daytime peak rates to zero with a 5KW solar system and grid tie invertor to offset the 4-5KW daytime load of the AC system and pool pump etc.
A wind turbine connected to the same grid tie would shave off some evening, night, morning and winter demand.
There are times however in spring and fall the utility would be getting 2-4KW of free power.
I have thought of a 48VDC 1KW solar system to power a 1KW 48V DC electric heating element. Place din an electric "per-heater" prior to my regular electric water heater. For 6-8 months of the year the ore heater should supply 120-140F water into the main water heater.
A 22 foot dia turbine in 23mph wind will make shaft HP of approx 14KW.
Electricity Generation Using Small Wind Turbines at Your Home or Farm

 

[buickanddeere]

Dmccarty hit the nail on the head.

It's about government empires built by burocrates who crave power and security. Like the safety nazis they wrap them selves of the banner saying" it's good for the environment , the plant, your county , you and your children. How dare you question our green energy plan.
As indicated beware of installed capacity vs actual production.
The green weenies fail to mention the fossil capacity costs to be on standby.
Then again liberal arts majors may mean well and want to have nice feelings. However they have no grasp of the laws of physics.

 

[OldMcDonald]

Germany deciding to stop nuclear power was a knee jerk reaction Fukushima (sp?) and at the time had wide public support. I have no figures, but a lot of people on this side of the Atlantic, not just the EU, are against nuclear power. Chernobyl, problems in Britain's nuclear plants, and scares in other countries have made people aware of the consequences of nuclear accidents.

I do not have the details to hand of the current situation, and you probably do not want them, but farms in England still had restrictions on their sheep in 2012 and in Norway last year due to the Chernobyl explosion in 1986. That was a long time ago - several generations of sheep.

Having said that, Dmmcarty could well be right about the EU limiting the heat of ovens, nothing surprises me about what they legislate for - except huge numbers of EU households do not have electric ovens because they are not connected to electricity. It is not traditional to roast things anyway, and some that are connected do not have ovens. We have 3-phase power here, and yet there was no oven in the otherwise very modernised house when we bought in 2003.

 

[buickanddeere]

Electric stoves seem to appear mostly in North America where power used to be cheap.

 

[doxford jim]

Electric stoves seem to appear mostly in North America where power used to be cheap.

Yes, the UK and Europe use gas (natural gas) for the stoves and in outlying areas a lot of people had wood fired/coal fired ranges in the kitchens.

 

[OldMcDonald]

Sorry Jim, but many places in the UK do not have gas, and bottled is not too popular, so electric is the choice for those who do not want solid fuel. No oven in the house is the norm here. A separate outside domed bread oven (often in its own built on room, or as in my house a combined bread oven/smoke room) is fairly common, but as I already posted, roasting food does not fit many cultures. Roast suckling pig is popular in parts of Portugal for special occasions, and, given the size is bigger than most domestic ovens, they use the bread ovens for that. It must be a very skilled job getting the temperature right in those things.

 

[dave1949]

The rural area of Germany we lived in didn't have natural gas and propane use was fairly limited too. Electric ovens and cooktops were the norm in that area.

I think our friends did more meat grilling over a wood fire than roasting in the oven. They loved to grill. Small "grill houses" with a roofed and weather sheltered grilling attached area like a covered patio were not uncommon.

Around the early 2000's they put in a line of wind turbines not far away. Last year another line of turbines were installed on the hilltops near the village we lived in. I haven't been back for a visit since those recent turbines were built but my friend says they are pretty close. We used to go walking over those hills from Niederhambach to Leisel and there was good beer at each end.

 

[dave1949]

This another take on the German energy sector issue. The coal-nuclear situation is discussed earlier in the article.

Germany: Rising Renewables, and Falling Electricity Prices | Climate Denial Crock of the Week

It’s hardly a surprise for the threatened coal industry to claim “many large industrial corporations are migrating out of [Germany].” But for The Economist to make a similar claim, also without a single example, is unusual: Germany’s top energy economist sees no sign of industrial flight, nor has a request for examples elicited any. Yet the canard persists. Perhaps such confusion is due to U.S. expansion of gas-intensive chemical giants like BASF, which naturally pivot toward fourfold-cheaper U.S. natural gas because it’s both a fuel and a feedstock; BASF in Germany also makes 70 percent of its electricity internally from natural gas. But as Craig Morris of Renewables International notes, chemical firms’ U.S. expansions are driven by U.S. gas prices, not German electricity prices. Giant German firms enjoy Germany’s low and falling wholesale electricity prices, getting the benefit of renewables’ near-zero operating cost but exempted from paying for them, as I’ll describe below.

The truth about German industrial electricity prices (such as the wholesale spot and futures market quotations) is easily determined from official statistics, which are far more transparent and thorough than America’s. Even as GE’s Chairman griped that a German steel mill pays four times the typical U.S. industrial power price (perhaps reflecting a confusion between U.S. and Euro cents), the average German wholesale price for June 2013—essentially the price such big industries pay—fell to a record low of 2.8 Euro cents or 3.7 U.S. cents per kWh, well below his 5-cent U.S. benchmark. To be sure, the average retail kWh bought by the entire German industrial sector, much of it small and midsized, cost 8.6 U.S. cents for energy plus 8.0 for taxes, vs. 6.5 cents in the largely tax-free U.S., so smaller firms’ total tariff, typical in Europe, is about twice the U.S. level. But renewables don’t account for that gap; German industry is thriving anyhow because it’s efficient; and U.S. electricity prices rose 4.8 during 2007–12 and 44 percent during 1995–2012—faster than the German increases of 3.7 and 16 percent.

Thus Germany is building the renewable foundation for declining long-term electricity prices. Sure enough, German wholesale power prices have fallen about 30 percent in the past two years to near eight-year lows, putting utilities that underinvested in renewables under severe profit pressure. This success in using modern renewables to reduce and stabilize electric generating costs is sometimes misdescribed as a failure because it creates losers—those who bet against it—as well as the winners who bet on its success.

 

[OldMcDonald]

dmccarty, Thought you might be interested in a follow up to your post #90. As of today the EU bans the manufacture and import of vacs over 1600W. That has led to a huge upsurge in sales of more powerful vacs in the last few weeks - some retailers reporting over 40% increase. Apparently there is no move yet on kettles and hairdryers. The whole idea (according to those who thought it up) is that smaller machines will use less power.

There may be hope though. A new German political party of the Euro-sceptic kind won seats in yesterday's elections in the State of Saxony with about 10% of the vote. Euro-sceptic parties also did well in EU elections in May. I am pleased to say I voted against Britain joining the mess 40 years ago - the only chance we ever had to stay out.