Reading a Monkey Decision Through Neurons

 What makes this experiment so important is that it provides a tool that directly links neuron activity to action. Perhaps we can now see something other than noise.

We have been piecing together the physical aspects of the brain for decades now with decent success. Yet it has also been unsatisfactory in just the way that tearing apart a computer is without hearing about software. We are now looking at the software make a decision.

This is the real beginning for understanding the workings of the brain. Let us apply this tool to the human brain as quickly as possible. The monkey brain is hardly less complex so no advantage exists whatsoever starting there and the human brain already knows how to report.

Scientists Read Monkeys' Minds, See What They're Planning to Do Before They Do it

By Clay DillowPosted 07.23.2012 at 1:30 pm

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-07/scientists-read-monkeys-minds-see-what-theyre-planning-do-they-do-it

How To Construct a 'Circle-Out' Experiment (BYO Monkey) MORAN/PEARCE via WUSTL

Neurologists working with monkeys at Washington University in St. Louis to decode brain activity have stumbled upon a rather surprising result. While working to demonstrate that multiple parameters can be seen in the firing rate of a single neuron (and that certain parameters are embedded in neurons only if they are needed to solve the immediate task), they also found that they could read their monkeys’ minds.

This isn’t exactly ESP, but it is really interesting. The researchers came to find out that by analyzing the activity of large populations of neurons, they could discover what actions the monkeys were planning before they made a single motor movement. By monitoring neural activity, the researchers could essentially see what the monkey was thinking about doing next.

This discovery occurred largely because the two monkeys involved in the experiment had already demonstrated very different cognitive styles. One is a bit hyperactive, eager to begin and complete each task even before being given the signal to begin. The other is more methodical, waiting for the entire breadth of the task to be revealed before making a motion.

The tasks involved were so-called “center-out tasks” in which a monkey or some other subject must place a hand at the center of a field (a tabletop or some surface) and then move it from this center location to another location placed in the area around the center. To plan this movement, the brain needs to know simply where its hand is located (at the center), where the target locations is (somewhere on the surface away from center), and the velocity vector the hand will follow (what path the hand will take to move from starting place to target). These can all be measured in the neural activity of the brain.

When the path between center and target locations is unimpeded, this is relatively straightforward in terms of neural activity. But when the the researchers introduced obstacles that would pop up between the center and the target like whack-a-moles, the neural activity of the two monkeys began to show interesting differences.

The impatient monkey (known as subject H) couldn’t wait to reach for the target and planned to reach directly for it, so when the obstacle popped up his directional vector shortened and then rotated to find a way around the obstacle. Methodical monkey (subject G), however, would wait for the obstacle to present itself before moving, and only then begin to plan its directional vector to go around the obstacle and reach the target. In cases where the target was unimpeded, it paid to jump the gun. But when an obstacle was presented, Methodical Monkey reached the target faster.

In other words, the two monkeys showed completely different strategies for reaching the target--strategies that the researchers could see unfolding in the neural activities of their brains beforehand. They could see what the monkeys were planning before they did it--which is pretty amazing from a neuroscience standpoint.

The study was published in the July 19 advance online edition of Science

Time Gap Between Climate Change and CO2 Shrinks

This possibly resolves a past problem in which the linkage had the rise in the CO2 occur some several hundred years after the ice loss. The time gap made little sense as the biological response is always far quicker than that. It is still realistically a case of a warming atmosphere forcing the rest though, rather than the rest changing the temperature.

Of course in a warming climate a whole range of factors are changing, but few so much as the general biological profile itself on land and on sea. Yet it clearly lags but is actively changing. That is happening today.

Meanwhile the writers adhere to the Milankowitch cycle theory to explain climatic change in the core record. While I accept that this is enough to likely explain the gentle rises and fall of the climate, it fails to explain the deeper changes that are been observed. I also am skeptical regarding the apparent correlation ginned up to support the position. I have the distinct impression that it would simply disappear if our data became better.

Rise in temperatures and CO2 follow each other closely in climate change

by Staff Writers

Copenhagen, Denmark (SPX) Jul 26, 2012

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Rise_in_temperatures_and_CO2_follow_each_other_closely_in_climate_change_999.html

The greatest climate change the world has seen in the last 100,000 years was the transition from the ice age to the warm interglacial period. New research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen indicates that, contrary to previous opinion, the rise in temperature and the rise in the atmospheric CO2 follow each other closely in terms of time. The results have been published in the scientific journal, Climate of the Past.

In the warmer climate the atmospheric content of CO2 is naturally higher. The gas CO2 (carbon dioxide) is a green-house gas that absorbs heat radiation from the Earth and thus keeps the Earth warm. In the shift between ice ages and interglacial periods the atmospheric content of CO2 helps to intensify the natural climate variations.

It had previously been thought that as the temperature began to rise at the end of the ice age approximately 19,000 years ago, an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere followed with a delay of up to 1,000 years.

"Our analyses of ice cores from the ice sheet in Antarctica shows that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere follows the rise in Antarctic temperatures very closely and is staggered by a few hundred years at most," explains Sune Olander Rasmussen, Associate Professor and centre coordinator at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

Deep-sea's important role

The research, which was carried out in collaboration with researchers from the University of Tasmania in Australia, is based on measurements of ice cores from five boreholes through the ice sheet in Antarctica.

The ice sheet is formed by snow that doesn't melt, but remains year after year and is gradually compressed into kilometers thick ice. During the compression, air is trapped between the snowflakes and as a result the ice contains tiny samples of ancient atmospheres. The composition of the ice also shows what the temperature was when the snow fell, so the ice is an archive of past climate and atmospheric composition.

"The ice cores show a nearly synchronous relationship between the temperature in Antarctica and the atmospheric content of CO2, and this suggests that it is the processes in the deep-sea around Antarctica that play an important role in the CO2 increase," explains Sune Olander Rasmussen.

He explains that one of the theories is that when Antarctica warms up, there will be stronger winds over the Southern Ocean and the winds pump more water up from the deep bottom layers in the ocean where there is a high content of CO2 from all of the small organisms that die and fall down to the sea floor and rot.

When strong winds blow over the Southern Ocean, the ocean circulation brings more of the CO2-rich bottom water up to the surface and a portion of this CO2 is released into the atmosphere. This process links temperature and CO2 together and the new results suggest that the linking is closer and happens faster than previously believed.

Climatic impact

The global temperature changed naturally because of the changing solar radiation caused by variations in the Earth's orbit around the Sun, the Earth's tilt and the orientation of the Earth's axis. These are called the Milankowitch cycles and occur in periods of approximately 100,000, 42,000, and 22,000 years.

These are the cycles that cause the Earth's climate to shift between long ice ages of approximately 100,000 years and warm interglacial periods, typically 10,000 - 15,000 years. The natural warming of the climate was intensified by the increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

"What we are observing in the present day is the mankind has caused the CO2 content in the atmosphere to rise as much in just 150 years as it rose over 8,000 years during the transition from the last ice age to the current interglacial period and that can bring the Earth's climate out of balance," explains Sune Olander Rasmussen.

Adding "That is why it is even more important that we have a good grip on which processes caused the climate of the past to change, because the same processes may operate in addition to the anthropogenic changes we see today. In this way the climate of the past helps us to understand how the various parts of the climate systems interact and what we can expect in the future

Birds Smarter Than Seven Year Old Kids

This starts to provide us benchmarks for both human and animal intelligence that is overdue.  Once a series of testing protocols can be developed, it becomes possible to then test a range of animals in terms of relative intelligence.  Obviously the first test was to determine when human intelligence surged ahead. 

In fact we need to apply this far more broadly to the human population.  We know that education strengthens and enhances human intelligence.  Pretty obviously we need to do much better with a portion of that population who specifically fail to be engaged.  Perhaps having to be compared against animal standards could reinforce the utility of been engaged in the learning process.

In fact, been able to pass the test protocol for the seven year child level is a compelling learning opportunity whose message is plain.

Birds smarter than seven year old kids

http://www.phenomenica.com/2012/07/birds-smarter-than-seven-year-old-kids.html

No matter how bright you think your child is, until the age of seven, children are no brainier than the birds.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge during simple experiments found out that birds did just as well as children up until the age of seven, The Daily Mail reported.

By pitting birds against boys and girls using tests inspired by the Aesop’s fable in which a thirsty crow is able to drink from a pitcher after using pebbles to raise the water level to within its reach.

In two of the three tests the birds, Eurasian jays, did just as well as the seven-year-old children.

After this, the human mind proved superior to the bird brain.

The experiments built on earlier work in which jays quickly learned that adding stones to a cylinder half-filled with water would bring a tasty treat floating on the surface within reach of their beaks.

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Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius). Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

In a second task the jays, colourful members of the crow family and about the same size as jackdaws, realized it was better to use pebbles, which sink, than corks, which float.

When Cambridgeshire children, aged four to ten, were set similar tasks, they did as well as the jays on the first, up to the age of seven.

From the age of eight, the pupils learned more quickly than the birds. The pattern was similar with the second task, except four-year-old children did worse than the jays.

However, a third, more complex, task separated the youngsters from the birds.

It again involved dropping objects into water to raise its level. But this time, a U-shaped tube was used, with the join at its bottom hidden; giving the impression it was two separate tubes.

This appeared to confuse the birds. However, the children did as well as before. The researchers said this shows children are better at putting preconceptions aside.

Lucy Cheke, a PhD student, said: “It is a child’s job to learn about the world. They can’t do that if they’re limited by a preconceived idea about what is or is not possible. For a child, if it works, it works. The birds, however, found it much harder to learn what was happening because they were put off by the fact it shouldn’t be happening.”

Vertical Axis Wind Turbines Get second Look

It appears that vertical blade rotors will get a second look. While they are at it, perhaps it would be useful to consider the three blade configuration. I suspect that would go hugely to ameliorating the pulsing issue while increasing to power output. Even numbers always produces a strong cyclic pulse while odd numbers will partially blend the cycles and smooth out the impact.

I also suspect that these types of blades will turn out to be more bird friendly, but that is just a guess.

The real advantage of course is that the blades never have to reorient, nor need the hardware that makes that possible while producing nothing on its own.

I do not imagine that the tooling will prove any more difficult that has been put in place already. It just takes time and a will. In fact there has little that has been more impressive that the large fabrication tasks that have been taken on during the past decades around the wind turbine industry.

Offshore Use of Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines Gets Closer Look

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120730204607.htm

ScienceDaily (July 30, 2012) — Sandia National Laboratories' wind energy researchers are re-evaluating vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) to help solve some of the problems of generating energy from offshore breezes.

Though VAWTs have been around since the earliest days of wind energy research at Sandia and elsewhere, VAWT architecture could transform offshore wind technology.

The economics of offshore windpower are different from land-based turbines, due to installation and operational challenges. VAWTs offer three big advantages that could reduce the cost of wind energy: a lower turbine center of gravity; reduced machine complexity; and better scalability to very large sizes.

A lower center of gravity means improved stability afloat and lower gravitational fatigue loads.

Additionally, the drivetrain on a VAWT is at or near the surface, potentially making maintenance easier and less time-consuming. Fewer parts, lower fatigue loads and simpler maintenance all lead to reduced maintenance costs.

Elegant in their simplicity

Sandia is conducting the research under a 2011 Department of Energy (DOE) solicitation for advanced rotor technologies for U.S. offshore windpower generation. The five-year, $4.1 million project began in January of this year.

Wind Energy Technologies manager Dave Minster said Sandia's wind energy program is aimed at addressing the national energy challenge of increasing the use of low-carbon power generation.

"VAWTs are elegant in terms of their mechanical simplicity," said Josh Paquette, one of Sandia's two principal investigators on the project. "They have fewer parts because they don't need a control system to point them toward the blowing wind to generate power."

These characteristics fit the design constraints for offshore wind: the high cost of support structures; the need for simple, reliable designs; and economic scales that demand larger machines than current land-based designs.

Large offshore VAWT blades in excess of 300 meters will cost more to produce than blades for onshore wind turbines. But as the machines and their foundations get bigger -- closer to the 10-20 megawatt (MW) scale -- turbines and rotors become a much smaller percentage of the overall system cost for offshore turbines, so other benefits of the VAWT architecture could more than offset the increased rotor cost.

Challenges remain

However, challenges remain before VAWTs can be used for large-scale offshore power generation.

Curved VAWT blades are complex, making manufacture difficult. Producing very long VAWT blades demands innovative engineering solutions. Matt Barone, the project's other principal investigator, said partners Iowa State University and TPI Composites will explore new techniques to enable manufacture of geometrically complex VAWT blade shapes at an unprecedented scale, but at acceptable cost.

VAWT blades must also overcome problems with cyclic loading on the drivetrain. Unlike horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs), which maintain a steady torque if the wind remains steady, VAWTs have two "pulses" of torque and power for each blade, based on whether the blade is in the upwind or downwind position. This "torque ripple" results in unsteady loading, which can lead to drivetrain fatigue. The project will evaluate new rotor designs that smooth out the amplitude of these torque oscillations without significantly increasing rotor cost.

Because first-generation VAWT development ended decades ago, updated designs must incorporate decades of research and development already built into current HAWT designs. Reinvigorating VAWT research means figuring out the models that will help speed up turbine design work.

"Underpinning this research effort will be a tool development effort that will synthesize and enhance existing aerodynamic and structural dynamic codes to create a publicly available aeroelastic design tool for VAWTs," Barone said.

Needed: aerodynamic braking brakes, new VAWT brakes won't have actively pitching blades, which have their own reliability and maintenance issues.

VAWT technology: A long history at Sandia

In the 1970s and 1980s, when wind energy research was in its infancy, VAWTs were actively developed as windpower generators. Although strange looking, they had a lot going for them: They were simpler than their horizontal-axis cousins so they tended to be more reliable. For a while, VAWTs held their own against HAWTs. But then wind turbines scaled up.

"HAWTs emerged as the predominant technology for land-based wind over the past 15 years primarily due to advantages in rotor costs at the 1 to 5 megawatt scale," Paquette said.

In the 1980s, research focused more heavily on HAWT turbines, and many VAWT manufacturers left the business, consigning VAWTs to an "also ran" in the wind energy museum.

But the winds of change have blown VAWTs' way once more.

Sandia is mining the richness of its wind energy history. Wind researchers who were among the original wind energy engineers are going through decades of Sandia research and compiling the lessons learned, as well as identifying some of the key unknowns described at the end of VAWT research at Sandia in the 1990s.

The first phase of the program will take place over two years and will involve creating several concept designs, running those designs through modern modeling software and narrowing those design options down to a single, most-workable design. During this phase, Paquette, Barone and their colleagues will look at all types of aeroelastic rotor designs, including HVAWTs and V-shaped VAWTs. But the early favorite rotor type is the Darrieus design.

In phase two researchers will build the chosen design over three years, eventually testing it against the extreme conditions that a turbine must endure in an offshore environment.

In addition to rotor designs, the project will consider different foundation designs: Early candidates are barge designs, tension-leg platforms and spar buoys.

The project partners will work on many elements.

Another partner, the University of Maine, will develop floating VAWT platform dynamics code and subscale prototype wind/wave basin testing. Iowa State University will develop manufacturing techniques for offshore VAWT blades and subscale wind tunnel testing. TPI Composites will design a proof-of-concept subscale blade and develop a commercialization plan. TU-Delft will work on aeroelastic design and optimization tool development and modeling. Texas A&M University will work on aeroelastic design tool development.

"Ultimately it's all about the cost of energy. All these decisions need to lead to a design that's efficient and economically viable," said Paquette.

Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies and economic competitiveness.

Another challenge is brakes. Older VAWT designs didn't have an aerodynamic braking system, and relied solely on a mechanical braking system that is more difficult to maintain and less reliable than the aerodynamic brakes used on HAWTs.

HAWTS use pitchable blades, which stop the turbine within one or two rotations without damage to the turbine and are based on multiple redundant, fail-safe designs. Barone said new VAWT designs will need robust aerodynamic brakes that are reliable and cost-effective, with a secondary mechanical brake much like on modern-day HAWTs. Unlike HAWT

Russian Navy Reports UFO Ocean Traffic

 We pick up a bit more data here from these reports, so they are worth reviewing.

The claim is made that the craft achieve remarkable speeds approaching 400 kps in the submerged state. That is certainly well beyond our capabilities and I think it surpasses the speed of sound in water.

Alternatively, the sensing hardware picked up a false image that produced this apparent speed. Either real or a false image, it would beg explanation.

The second claim is that the level of activity is much higher than anyone guessed. I had already presumed as much and it is nice to see this opinion been shared.

I have little doubt that these craft are designed to spend time underwater in order to enter Gates that access underground habitation that is sealed of from the sea. It is simply the best way for an advanced Space based society to operate on Earth. It is only now that we even have technology that is up to the task of working in this environment.

We can make the reasonable conjecture that the majority of UFO traffic is from Space habitats to underground habitats on Earth. These habitats are way more extensive than we can imagine and likely house a huge population in light of the level of traffic. Importantly little of this UFO traffic has anything to do with us at all.

Russian Navy UFO records state aliens prefer oceans

http://naturalplane.blogspot.ca/2012/07/just-facts-russian-navy-states-aliens.html

The Russian navy has declassified its records of encounters with unidentified objects technologically surpassing anything humanity ever built, reports Svobodnaya Pressa news website.

The records dating back to soviet times were compiled by a special navy group collecting reports of unexplained incidents delivered by submarines and military ships. The group was headed by deputy Navy commander Admiral Nikolay Smirnov, and the documents reveal numerous cases of possible UFO encounters, the website says.

Vladimir Azhazha, former navy officer and a famous Russian UFO researcher, says the materials are of great value.

“Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more – with lakes. So UFOs tend to stick to the water,” he said.

On one occasion a nuclear submarine, which was on a combat mission in the Pacific Ocean, detected six unknown objects. After the crew failed to leave behind their pursuers by maneuvering, the captain ordered to surface. The objects followed suit, took to the air, and flew away.

Many mysterious events happened in the region of Bermuda Triangle, recalls retired submarine commander Rear Admiral Yury Beketov. Instruments malfunctioned with no apparent reason or detected strong interference. The former navy officer says this could be deliberate disruption by UFOs.

“On several occasions the instruments gave reading of material objects moving at incredible speed. Calculations showed speeds of about 230 knots, of 400 kph. Speeding so fast is a challenge even on the surface. But water resistance is much higher. It was like the objects defied the laws of physics. There’s only one explanation: the creatures who built them far surpass us in development,” Beketov said.

Navy intelligence veteran, Captain 1st rank Igor Barklay comments:

“Ocean UFOs often show up wherever our or NATO’s fleets concentrate. Near Bahamas, Bermudas, Puerto Rico. They are most often seen in the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, in the southern part of the Bermuda Triangle, and also in the Caribbean Sea.”

Another place where people often report UFO encounters is Russia’s Lake Baikal, the deepest fresh water body in the world. Fishermen tell of powerful lights coming from the deep and objects flying up from the water.

In one case in 1982 a group of military divers training at Baikal spotted a group of humanoid creatures dressed in silvery suits. The encounter happened at a depth of 50 meters, and the divers tried to catch the strangers. Three of the seven men died, while four others were severely injured.

“I think about underwater bases and say: why not? Nothing should be discarded,” says Vladimir Azhazha. “Skepticism is the easiest way: believe nothing, do nothing. People rarely visit great depths. So it’s very important to analyze what they encounter there.”

Meanwhile Russian Navy officials have denied the collection of UFO-related encounters exists. A source in the Navy’s service staff said the story may have its roots in the reports of vessel commanders, which describe locating objects of unclear but Earthly origin. - RT

Antarctic Rift

It is certainly large but significance may be another matter. A mile deep is impressive, yet is only five thousand feet which describes every mountain range anyway. Besides the weight of ice has driven the floor downward. Nothing is said regarding how long the structure may be, nor if there is related volcanism. Both have a huge impact on importance geologically.

Otherwise we are slowly mapping the real surface of the Antarctic and that is interesting anyway.

This is part of a long process that is clearly well underway.

Antarctic: Grand Canyon-sized rift 'speeding ice melt'

By Richard Black

Environment correspondent, BBC

25 July 2012 Last updated at 13:11 ET

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18959399

A rift in the Antarctic rock as deep as the Grand Canyon is increasing ice melt from the continent, researchers say.

A UK team found the Ferrigno rift using ice-penetrating radar, and showed it to be about 1.5km (1 mile) deep.

Antarctica is home to a geological rift system where new crust is being formed, meaning the eastern and western halves of the continent are slowly separating.

The team writes in Nature journal that the canyon is bringing more warm sea water to the ice sheet, hastening melt.

The Ferrigno rift lies close to the Pine Island Glacier where Nasa scientists found a giant crack last year; but the newly discovered feature is not thought to be influencing the "Pig", as it is known.

The rift lies beneath the Ferrigno Ice Stream on a stretch of coast so remote that it has only been visited once previously.

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) project revisited the area two years ago in the person of Aberdeen University glaciologist Robert Bingham.

The plan was to make ground observations that could link to the satellite data showing unexpectedly pronounced ice loss from the area.

The team towed ice-penetrating radar kit behind a snowmobile, traversing a total of about 2,500km (1,500 miles).

"What we found is that lying beneath the ice there is a large valley, parts of which are approximately a mile deeper than the surrounding landscape," said Dr Bingham.

\

"If you stripped away all of the ice here today, you'd see a feature every bit as dramatic as the huge rift valleys you see in Africa and in size as significant as the [US] Grand Canyon.

"This is at odds with the flat ice surface that we were driving across - without these measurements we would never have known it was there."

###

The shape of the rift is shown in a radar cross-section of ice and underlying rock

The Ferrigno rift extends into a seabed trough, called Belgica.

The scientists suggest that during Ice Ages, when sea levels were much lower than at present, the rift would have channelled a major ice stream through the trough.

Now, they suggest, the roles are reversed, with the walls of the Belgica trough channelling relatively warm sea water back to the ice edge.

Penetrating between the Antarctic bedrock and the ice that lies on it and lubricating the join, the water allows ice to flow faster into the sea.

"We know that the ice loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is governed by delivery of warm water, and that the warm water is coming along channels that were previously scoured by glaciers," said Prof David Vaughan of BAS.

"So the geology and the present rate of ice loss are intricately linked, and they feed back - if you have fast-flowing ice, that delivers ice to the edge where it can be impacted by warm water, and warm water makes the ice flow faster," he told BBC News.

Prof Vaughan doubted there would be more such features around the West Antarctic coast, though in the remoter still regions of the east, it was a possibility.

Ice loss from West Antarctica is believed to contribute about 10% to global sea level rise.

But how the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets respond to warmer temperatures is the biggest unknown by far in trying to predict how fast the waters will rise over the coming century and beyond.

A total melt of either sheet would raise sea levels globally by several metres.

East Antarctica, by contrast, is so cold that the ice is projected to remain solid for centuries.

"Since the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report [in 2007], which highlighted uncertainties connected with ice sheets, almost every significant piece of research we've produced has increased the significance of the ocean for West Antarctica and Greenland," said Prof Vaughan.

"There are changes in precipitation now and in future; but the really big, potentially fast, changes are connected to the oceans, and the goal for us is to model that system."

German Solar Sets Record

Whatever one thinks about the economics of solar energy, public policy has caused it to be fully built out to the extent that midday production provided half of Germany's energy needs. Do the same with wind power and you have an integrated system that is flexible and at least half sustainable.

Find some shale gas and we can then see off the coal burners and the balance of the nuclear before we even begin to explore the Rossi reactor and other pending power solutions.

One important strategic result is that Germany is far less vulnerable to fuel supply disruption than it ever was and becoming more so. In an emergency, it can simply shut down or ration industrial demand in order to power housing. The system is certainly that robust.

In the meantime, Russia's strategic leverage with gas supply is been whittled away with a global glut developing for gas.

Germany sets new solar power record, institute says

By Erik Kirschbaum

BERLIN | Sat May 26, 2012 2:02pm EDT

(Reuters) - German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-solar-idUSBRE84P0FI20120526

The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022.

They will be replaced by renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and bio-mass.

Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs.

"Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity," Allnoch told Reuters. "Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over."

The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed.

Government-mandated support for renewables has helped Germany became a world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its overall annual electricity from those sources.

Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone. It aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

SUNSHINE

Some critics say renewable energy is not reliable enough nor is there enough capacity to power major industrial nations. But Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany is eager to demonstrate that is indeed possible.

The jump above the 20 GW level was due to increased capacity this year and bright sunshine nationwide.

The 22 GW per hour figure is up from about 14 GW per hour a year ago. Germany added 7.5 GW of installed power generation capacity in 2012 and 1.8 GW more in the first quarter for a total of 26 GW capacity.

"This shows Germany is capable of meeting a large share of its electricity needs with solar power," Allnoch said. "It also shows Germany can do with fewer coal-burning power plants, gas-burning plants and nuclear plants."

Allnoch said the data is based on information from the European Energy Exchange (EEX), a bourse based in Leipzig.

The incentives through the state-mandated "feed-in-tariff" (FIT) are not without controversy, however. The FIT is the lifeblood for the industry until photovoltaic prices fall further to levels similar for conventional power production.

Utilities and consumer groups have complained the FIT for solar power adds about 2 cents per kilowatt/hour on top of electricity prices in Germany that are already among the highest in the world with consumers paying about 23 cents per kw/h.

German consumers pay about 4 billion euros ($5 billion) per year on top of their electricity bills for solar power, according to a 2012 report by the Environment Ministry.

Critics also complain growing levels of solar power make the national grid more less stable due to fluctuations in output.

Merkel's centre-right government has tried to accelerate cuts in the FIT, which has fallen by between 15 and 30 percent per year, to nearly 40 percent this year to levels below 20 cents per kw/h. But the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, has blocked it.

($1 = 0.7992 euros)