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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Community
Forum: Chat Room
Thread: Top 10 Countries Using Solar Power |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 7
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
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roundup
Veteran Cruncher Switzerland Joined: Jul 25, 2006 Post Count: 843 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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1. Germany (9,785 MW)
2. Spain (3,386 MW) 3. Japan (2,633 MW) 4. United States (1,650 MW) 5. Italy (1,167 MW) 6. Czech Republic (465 MW) 7. Belgium (363 MW) 8. China (305 MW) 9. France (272 MW) 10. India (120 MW) This is unbelievable. There are so many countries that have much better climate conditions to exploit solar energy than my country - e.g. USA, France, India. And I admire Belgium and Czech Republic for their good position. At the end, this statistic tells us that there is great potential also for smaller countries that are far away from tropical regions to move from fossil energy economy to renewable energy resources. Maybe CEP2 helps a little bit to undertake this important step. |
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SNURK
Veteran Cruncher The Netherlands Joined: Nov 26, 2007 Post Count: 1217 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Thumbs up for Germany
---------------------------------------- for producing (almost) as much solar energy as the rest of the top 10 together.  ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by SNURK at Jul 29, 2010 6:13:13 AM] |
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Hypernova
Master Cruncher Audaces Fortuna Juvat ! Vaud - Switzerland Joined: Dec 16, 2008 Post Count: 1908 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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This is unbelievable. There are so many countries that have much better climate conditions to exploit solar energy than my country - e.g. USA, France, India. As usual follow the money and you will get the answer. The german governement has strongly backed Solar Energy (solar panels, photovoltaic) by buying at very interesting price the kilowatts produced and injected back to the network. This buyback price was pretty generous and no mistery that it has generated a flurry of projects and investments. Solar electricity is still highly uneconomical compared to the average electricity price for thermal, nuclear power. Wind is the only renewable energy form (other than hydro power) approching break even with the largest windmills to date (5MW per unit) but not yet. Switzerland did also try to promote production of solar electrical energy but the budgeted money to subsidize the buyback price was so limited, that the funds were completely depleted in a month by the first projects and so the whole thing became a complete failure. This shows that without a very strong financial incentive to subsidize solar electrical energy price, there is no chance to develop it even if you are baked by the sun 24 hours a day. But other forms of use are possible in sun rich poorer countries, like solar ovens for cooking, heating water, solar panels to power lighting systems in villages and many other indipendent local and distributed applications. The possibilities are infinite.  |
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roundup
Veteran Cruncher Switzerland Joined: Jul 25, 2006 Post Count: 843 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Right, Hypernova.
----------------------------------------New technologies often need a financial entry push in order to become attractive from the economical view. If a government shows political willigness to push renewable energy - that's fine with me and is always better than hearing only the voices of oil lobbyists. The situation in Germany changes now since financial support for solar power investments is being throttled down. So I am sure that other countries will keep up and overtake Germany regarding their development of solar power resources. By the way: Photovoltaic panels are not only expensive compared to other energy sources, they also do not make much sense from the ecological point of view. The production of solar panels still needs not much less energy than this panel will produce during its lifetime in a central european country - but also production methods will improve over time. And sun rich countries like northern Africa can soon become major solar based energy suppliers if political willingness and investment capital move to their side. [Edit 1 times, last edit by roundup at Jul 29, 2010 10:31:51 AM] |
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Hypernova
Master Cruncher Audaces Fortuna Juvat ! Vaud - Switzerland Joined: Dec 16, 2008 Post Count: 1908 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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And sun rich countries like northern Africa can soon become major solar based energy suppliers if political willigness and investment capital moves to their side. Check about this mammoth industrial initiative, the Desertec foundation to create gigantic solar power plants in the saharan desert and transport the electrical energy to Europe through undersea power cables. http://www.desertec.org [Edit 3 times, last edit by Hypernova at Jul 29, 2010 9:58:18 AM] |
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nasher
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Dec 2, 2005 Post Count: 1423 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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definalty something to watch in the next few years to see how these change.
----------------------------------------another thing pointed out by some people commenting on the article. It is only solar power and dose not include things like solar water heaters (those save alot of energy too)  |
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