Germany did one simple thing (uncharacteristically) which is removing all the bureaucracy here. Just go ahead and do it. It's fine.
Cost in the article is cited at 550 euro. I just browsed amazon.de and you can buy complete plug and play kits here in Germany for as little as 239 euro. Most kits are priced between 300-350 euro. I did not see a many kits over 500.
I pay about 70 euro per month for electricity. If it saves 10% per month on my bill (7 euro), this would earn itself back within 3 years. At 5% it's 6 years. Not bad for something that costs next to nothing and is pretty much plug and play. You are not going to get very rich from this obviously. But it's kind of cool. Too bad my balcony faces east and is mostly covered by the shadow of other buildings. I can barely grow plants there.
Not a bad legacy for Robert Habeck (along with the wind reforms), the leader we needed but didn't deserve [1][2]. Interestingly he's recently dropped out of politics and taken a teaching role at UC Berkeley.
Nuclear has no relevance in Germany, never really had. The plants barely added any value to the market. When Habeck became Minister, most Nuclear plants were already gone, and the last remaining were phasing out, lacking nuclear fuel and permits. Habeck even gave a permit for the last plants to run some more months, squeezing out even the last parts of fuel as much as they could, just so they could serve as an additional supply in a problematic winter, which turned out to be unnecessary in the end.
Right at this moment Germany's electricity mix has 364gCO2eq/kWh carbon intensity, France is at 21. That is because 37% of Germany's production comes from gas and coal.
Even from an environmental standpoint, France is doing much better than Germany and that is thanks to nuclear.
Also, by closing operating power plants, Germany weakened European energy production at the time when we geopolitically need it the most.
Still not Habecks legacy. This was decided under Merkel.
Besides, CO2eq are often wrongly measured with nuclear energy, ignoring building emissions and effect on the water temperature in rivers (every summer more and more plants need to shut down because of this), etc. Even if this would be done right, there are again and again longer periods where Germany exports energy to France because their reactors are often in maintenance. In the end I would say it is always a bad idea to rely on only one technology to a large degree. Only a well done mix makes you resiliant.
I agree on this point, me not being anti-Nuclear doesn't mean I am anti-wind or solar. Every country has different circumstances, I live in a landlocked country with mild mountains, temperate climate and modest rivers. In our case nuclear energy seems like the most reliable and scalable option. For countries with huge coastline off-shore wind absolutely makes sense, simialrly with solar.
> Besides, CO2eq are often wrongly measured with nuclear energy, ignoring building emissions.
I think this point is overestimated. Based on a brief search, studies show nuclear carbon intensity around 6-12g, and the building emissions just around 13% of total lifetime emissions [1].
> there are again and again longer periods where Germany exports energy to France because their reactors are often in maintenance.
Valid point but the 2022 French nuclear "disaster" hasn't repeated at that scale so far. In recent years France is a net exporter to Germany. I can imagine that as with many problems in renewables having technical solutions the water temperature problem is also solvable technically.
How strong correlation is there with energy exports from Germany and the status of France nuclear reactors? From a casual look, exports seems to be correlated with weather and access to excess energy, rather than demand from neighboring countries. I would like to see some support that "Germany exports energy to France because their reactors are often in maintenance", rather than Germany export energy to France because windy/sunny weather is producing excess energy.
Looking at Denmark, their export and imports have little correlation to neighboring countries demand or supply. They will try exporting if the wind farms produce excess energy, and they will try importing energy when demand exceed supply. Neighboring countries demand will mostly only have impact on export price.
> Also, by closing operating power plants, Germany weakened European energy production at the time when we geopolitically need it the most.
Ironically that was France which needed to shut down a lot of its nuclear reactors in 2022 and 2023 due to repairs. So according to your own logic France "weakened European energy production at the time when we geopolitically need it the most."
Here in Switzerland the reason given for the "energy crisis" was also mostly France as Switzerland usually imports a lot of energy from France.
The current state wrt to nuclear in Germany reflects a decades long consensus in Germany that spans the majority of the population, scientists, intellectuals, politicians and even energy companies.
Any opposition you do hear on this from within Germany is usually opportunistic. People are against the Greens so they just take the opposite position on their policy. A good example of this is Markus Söder (CSU) who flip flopped on this multiple times.
Realistically speaking there is no serious politician or party with a pro-nuclear position in Germany that has a plausible plan for leveraging nuclear power at meaningful scale in an economical way. Any such plan would realistically invite massive opposition because nobody wants nuclear facilities in their vicinity.
russians paid good money for this consensus! Best Chancellor money could buy. It was so successful Germany became a proxy paying French NGOs to torpedo French Nuclear program!
Edit: Actually should be plural - Chancellors. Merkel, big cog in NordStreams, went on some podcast last week to blame Poland for the war in Ukraine. See if only Poles didnt object so much she would placate putin with even more money.
The anti-nuclear movement in Germany started in the 70s. The last nuclear power plant was built decades ago. In my opinion the decision to not invest into nuclear and scale it up further made the end of nuclear power inevitable.
Recent governments merely organized a shutdown that was effectively decided in the last century at the end of the cold war. The importance of Merkel, Fukushima etc. in these discussions are completely overrated imo.
As an aside Germany got fuel for nuclear reactors from Russia.
Well most of them were, but not all. Notably the last three nuclear power plants in Germany were shutdown on 15. April 2023, while the last coalition was in power. At that time there was a big discussion whether the shutdown could be postponed due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a measure to curb rising electricity costs in Germany, but ultimately it was decided to go through with the shutdown. It was a largely symbolic move, but carried a lot of emotional weight since it put last nail in the coffin for nuclear energy in Germany. Hence people now blaming the Ampel government (and Habeck in particular) even though it wasn’t their decision to shut down power plants in the first place (with people of the party who made the decision openly criticizing them as well). Just to add a bit of context as German…
The plan to shut down nuclear power plants was done under the premise of a stable supply of Russian gas. This supply abruptly stopped, but instead of using the remaining nuclear power plants to mitigate the supply shock (at that time nuclear power was even classified as sustainable by the EU btw.), he even accelerated the shutdown and sold it as inevitable. In my opinion this was the worst political decision of German politics since WW2, unless he wanted to hurt German industry on purpose, which is not even unthinkable.
Those 3 plants had been running on "deferred maintenance" as the plant shutdown was planned years ago. Keeping the plants open will have resulted in a ton of money to maintain the safety of the plants going forwards.
This was one of the biggest factors in the shutdown. Even if the plants stayed open, multiple reactors needed maintenance (and thus shutdown of those rectors).
Remember, they kept the open even longer then the planned shutdown (what was already extended before).
And the issue with the prices was not nuclear. By the time those plants shutdown, market prices already stabilized to pre-war levels. I remember this clearly as my renewal of my electricity contract came up, and ironically, my electrical price was even 2 cent/kwh lower then my 2021 contract.
The biggest issue for the German industry was not nuclear energie, it was the gas. And not because of power generation but because gas is used in several chemical reactions, with basf moving their production to the US. And thus more costs because supply chain changes. The LNG that we import is more expensive then the ultra cheap Russian gas we got.
And THAT is a issue for the German industry. And even more so with the US pushing to be the sole EU supplier for LNG (aka to replace Russia and use their leverage on the EU).
Anyway, a lot of your opinion is based upon the wrong conclusion.
On top of that, NL govt is investing 10B EUR to prepare the construction of several new nuclear power plants, less than 300km from one of the abandoned German ones (Emsland).
In conclusion the nuclear exits of BE and DE are some of the most stupid and hypocritical decisions in EU energy policy. Both countries will continue to depend on nuclear energy (from FR and NL). The only difference is that it is now produced <200km outside of their borders, in neighbouring countries.
Nuclear is the answer to no problem we face currently. It’s expensive, slow to build new plants (decades).
It’s also not flexible in the way it’s useable.
Solar + battery storage on the other hand is super fast and easy to build, costs virtually nothing and leaves no toxic waste which can’t be recycled.
Nuclear fuel is also mostly only available from Russia, which no one wants as a trade partner.
> Keeping the plants open will have resulted in a ton of money to maintain the safety of the plants going forwards.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/iaea-data-animation-nuc... stated LCOE "associated with the long-term operation of a nuclear power plant generally falls in the range US$ 30-40 per MWh, for typical refurbishment costs for Light Water Reactors and a lifetime extension of 20 years".
That is not the issue. Let me give you a example. Belgium decided to extend the life on several nuclear reactors, that originally had plans for decommissioning.
So they started to do actual deep maintenance for the extended life. Then they ran into issues of cracks in the concrete, issues with cracks in metal storage tanks, and a whole lot of other issues.
Reactors down for a long periode for the repairs, AND a ton of extra costs. These costs of those repairs, i can not find them no matter where i look. Its interesting how hidden those are.
For the 2025 extension, the initial estimated 1.5 billion for the life extension. And still the whole issue about the reactors issues their full fix cost price is unknown. In other words, they did a patch job and for the next extension, they need to do a major maintenance / repair.
The extension of the German reactors was estimated at 3B+ if i remember correctly. And that does not include if any issues are found.
That is the problem... This type of deferred maintenance start to stack up over time, when you have a phase out time for reactors. So issues becomes a big black money hole when you already committed to the extension.
> the worst political decision of German politics since WW2
Except the shutdown had no negative effect. There was no supply shock and prices keep trending down since (Though that of course doesn't mean because of). Let's keep it real. I can probably name worse German political decisions from this week.
* Didn't the diversion of natural gas to electricity generation end some German industrial production completely?
* Are there not large electricity subsidies in place via subsidies for US imported LNG?
* Isn't the alternate reality where there is a surplus of electricity in German due to nuclear power a better world where Germany has more opportunity? (the AI datacentre boom is built on excess electricity, isn't it?)
* I would have dig deeper on that, but regarding the timeframe when the shutdown occurred, there wasn't a big effect on gas prices. That happened before due to the war with Ukraine and the reliance on Russian gas in general. [1] The idea once was to use cheap gas from Russia and at the same time build out renewables. The latter didn't happen, resulting in the mess Germany is right now.
* There were multiple tax reductions and I think some are in the talks now. Those were independent (and before) the nuclear shutdown.
* Probably. Nuclear should have been shutdown after gas, coal etc. I am with you on that. But the ship had already sailed long ago, before the last three plants were shut down.
Fair enough on the immediate consequences.. but shutting down these plants was a long term decision, so the long term consequences are still consequences. It is certainly true that no one predicted a Russian invasion of Ukraine when Fukushima happened but Germany's over-reliance on Russian gas was well understood at the time. Which I raise only to point out that the bad things that did happen were foreseeable, the German energy system was subject to systemic risks and those risks were made worse by these choices.
It seems like the statement "No negative effect" is probably not well supported by subsequent events.
> This supply abruptly stopped, but instead of using the remaining nuclear power plants to mitigate the supply shock
There was nothing to mitigate. The nuclear plants deliver electricity, which was never a problem in Germany.
> he even accelerated the shutdown and sold it as inevitable.
That's a lie. They even prolonged the usage for some months to appease the fearmongers. But without fuel, there was a limit on how they could run anyway.
> unless he wanted to hurt German industry on purpose, which is not even unthinkable.
> The fearmongers are the Greens who believe that nuclear reactors will generate 3 headed fish.
Nobody believes that, WTF?
> In the meantime, we increased energy production through coal
Partly true, but not really. Coal is also used for other energy-forms than just electricity. Nuclear Plants cannot cover those areas. In the grand scale, it might have been better to first reduce coal-usage and transition to purely electric usage, while phasing out of nuclear slowly and use the save money for building up on renewables.
But that was never an option with all the sabotages from the fossil anyway. Nuclear in Germany was never a real option, it always has been fossil vs electric, with nuclear being a minor source for electricity, weaponized by the fossil lobby against the renewables.
Why do you think Germans voted against nuclear? It was because of fear of events like Chernobyl/Fukishima etc. Then 2022 was the final blow, with documents saying that nuclear reactors didn't produce much energy and needed maintenance anyways. Kind of like getting rid of working trains to ride bikes instead. Why not. It's healthier :)
In the meantime, the world laughs at us. Literally the whole world.
You keep on mentioning the lobby of fossils, which obviously had an impact.
However, with Merkel the change was happening. At exactly the speed it was needed: 5% every couple of years, or so.
Now the only lobby I see is the one of fear that there is no tomorrow. While the countries just next to us, without even bothering China all the time, don't give 2 cents about it.
They keep on buying gas, uranium and fossils.
We on the other hand can finally build 800W solar panels on the balconies without bureaucracy. Thank God.
EDIT: with Merkel, we reached an increase of 5% per year for energy generated with renewables. Which is and was really good.
Grid power and LNG use wasn't very fungible. e.g., if you have a gas furnace, electricity costs being low doesn't help you unless you replace the gas furnace with electric. In the short term, very expensive.
Same goes for alot of industry, there also were industrial processes that BASF et al. were running that just required LNG as a reagant.
I would say the main political crisis of the moment isn't one about being right but about consistent plans. The plan for a Green economy is pretty clear since more than a decade and revolves around Smart Grids. Without these no decentralized energy, no storage etc. Indeed that's something that was done right and proofs actual long-term plans are worth it.
The irony is, at this point even many environmentalists don't oppose Nuclear anymore. But there's still the lack of a coherent plan. Where should the fuel come from? How is EOL of a power plant handled? How is it paid? The answers changed a lot in the last decades.
Apart from this the last 5 years were a PR disaster for the Greens. Protesters (Last Generation) have been connected to them although the LG is even protesting against the Greens. When there were these massive floods the Greens actually lost votes instead of gaining those.
Well, I like the guy but compare the electricity prices in Germany to other European states, and also to China and the US. It’s about $0.15 kWh in the US vs $0.40 kWh in Germany. I personally think this is absolutely insane, but I don’t blame Habeck but the poor renewables transition execution in Germany. It is currently a failure in terms of electricity consumer prices.
Edit: I just rechecked China and wow! $0.08 per kWh. Can anyone confirm?
> Edit: I just rechecked China and wow! $0.08 per kWh. Can anyone confirm?
Yes, it is in the ballpark of $0.08/kWh. It varies a little bit across regions. Also in some places the price is only half during the night. But as you consume more power, you may see the price rise to $0.12/kWh.
In 2024, cost of renewable + storage was 0.52-0.88 CNY/kWh($0.08-$0.12). Advancement in storage is expected to drive that cost down by more than 50%.
The average wholesale price for electricity in 2024 was close to 0.09 €/kwh.
The consumer price is about 0.3 €/kwh currently, depending on the deals you are getting. The difference between wholesale and consumer price is made up of transmission costs, taxes and markups of various middlemen.
Shutting down nuclear power had 0 impact on electricity prices, as wholesale prices are set by the most expensive producer needed to satisfy demand. That is usually a natural gas turbine. All producers get paid the rate that this marginal producer demands.
I got a “expensive” renewable only energy plan and it’s 31,4 cents per kilowatt hour in Germany. Conventional ones should be cheaper. So no idea where you got 40 cents from.
Even if power plants magically worked for free and all schemes for cross-financing renewables were cancelled, German electricity prices would still be $0.19/kWh (€0.16), using the numbers from [1]. The German electricity network is great and very reliable, but also very expensive
It's just absolutely mind-boggling how the "But Nuclear!" refrain persists as a mind worm in this community. Every story on renewables, every single one, has a giant sub thread up near the top of the discussion screaming, again, about the clearly-must-be-important-because-everyone-says-so hypocrisy behind opposition to nuclear power.
It really just doesn't seem in good faith. It's been going on for a decade at least. Every win, every positive story, every bit of evidence that just maybe this part of the climate puzzle is actually being solved[1] gets met not with celebration, but with indignant tut-tutting that it was done with boring stuff and not Nerd Friendly power.
When does it stop?
[1] Doesn't take too much Googling to find coverage claiming that ~90% of new electricity generation capacity globally is renewable. This problem is solved folks. It's time to start looking at the higher hanging fruit.
I guess that depends on who you ask. There definitely is a lot of opposition to the Green Party, but that's hardly directed at Robert Habeck specifically.
Nuclear technology is a dead end. Renewables and saving energy is the future. Nuclear and fossil are in the same boat. They are both more risky and have huge hidden costs that the general public and future generations will have to bear. The only good reason to go nuclear these days is if you want the bomb, like Iran.
Interestingly, it is the same people who supported fossil in the past who are still promoting nuclear today. Those who have always warned against fossil fuels are usually the ones who recommend a complete switch to renewable energies. That should give one pause for thought.
Nuclear and intermitent energy sources have no place in the same sentence.
Germany didn't avoid nuclear by switching to renewables. It does so by burning coal and building gas-fired power plants.
How to manage a grid fully on intermitent power sources is an open question. There is at this point in time no answer to this. At the moment, Germany fires up extremely dirty power generation capacity every time there is a shortage. Meanwhile, all europeans bear the costs of Germany shortsightedness - as usual - since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
With nuclear, it's pretty clear how to run a grid. Heck, France has been doing so for decades. The question is how to build it cheaply at scale but at least we have some good ideas and experience about how to do that.
Funny story I like to tell here when nuclear chat come up: this summer (in France) they had to stop some nuclear plant because of the heat, which was causing the river used to cool the reaction to over heat. Right when people needed plenty of electricity for A/C. At least solar was there and working at it's best when we needed it ^^ (this is just for trolling the "renewable are not there when we need it" discourse ;) )
Anyway, the thing we'll need for better using solar is storage, if we can make some clean ones, it will be a solution for intermittentcy. But not matter what we do, we should target using less energy, because the only clean energy is the one we don't have to produce. I think that's the thing people miss (volontarily I think) when they answer anti nuclear discourse. Insulating homes and and designing cities so that people don't have to use cars, rather than producing more and more nuclear reactors doesn't seem dumb to me, no matter what's your opinion on nuclear itself.
Germany and Belgium’s net electricity imports from France for 2024 are 27 TWh, which dwarf anything imported from Germany to France. [0]
If anything, this only showed that renewables and nuclear actually work very well together and relying on just one of both is shortsightedness and bad planing.
I don't disagree with this point of view. Then the debate remain: should we (France) create more nuclear power plants now, or invest in reducing energy consumption and adding more renewables to the mix.
France was a net exporter of electricity all summer so no idea of what you are talking about. Slowing down some nuclear plants due to this kind of external condition is fully expected. They are not stopped by the way just slowed down. Nuclear is modulable.
People barely use A/C in France by the way.
> Anyway, the thing we'll need for better using solar is storage, if we can make some clean ones, it will be a solution for intermittentcy
Storage is a short term solution. Batteries are ok to manage intra-day variation, two days at most. Long term storage of electricity plainly doesn't exist. Saying some storage solution will somehow at some point solve the issue of intermittency is at best wishful thinking, at worst a dramatic lack of risk management.
Before someone asks how China is doing it, I will answer the question: they are not. Despite China being much larger and thus being able to somehow compensate variation by having more production sites, they are using battery storage for short term variation but have to rely on expensive and polluting small thermal power plants when energy is lacking. It's a stop gap while they build a ton of nuclear power plants.
People do use A/C more and more in France for obvious reasons, even in the northern part (it has been the trend in the south already for a while now).
I'm not sure what I said is incompatible with being a net exporter? There was a lot of sun and heat, they had to shutdown some nuclear power plants, but the overall electricy production was doing fine, because they did not have to shutdown all the plants (but how about in a few years with even hotter weather?) and obviously solar was doing well.
And yes, I agree we don't have good storage yet, but then we can decide to invest in finding solutions or to try to re-learn how to make nuclear power plants in less than 12 years. Personally my intuition is that more distributed / local energy and also which doesn't have to rely on a state monopoly is better and more resilient (ask Ukraine) so I'd put my money on storage.
> And yes, I agree we don't have good storage yet, but then we can decide to invest in finding solutions or to try to re-learn how to make nuclear power plants in less than 12 years.
Things don’t magically stop at some point. Not in 2030, not in 2050, not even when we reach net zero.
The question now is do we think it’s easier to reach and sustain net zero using a grid composed of renewable which we have no idea how to scale, don’t know how to manage and have no good solution for the inter-seasonal variation or using nuclear for which we already know how to do all that and we just need to scale up construction.
Well, personally, I think the rational answer is clearly obvious.
You choose to underline the issues of renewables (which are real) and to ignore the ones of nuclear, some of them I mentioned in my previous message, which indeed makes the choice easy and obvious. Taking into account all the parameters requires more head scratching.
"Several commentators, business leaders and academics have identified that 1970 deal as a significant fork in the road of the Cold War, as it established a mutual basis for economic cooperation between Russia and western Europe."
There are certainly different opinions on that.
Gas imports started long ago and in the cold war that approach was working to some extend.
> Germany didn't avoid nuclear by switching to renewables. It does so by burning coal and building gas-fired power plants.
That statement is plain wrong:
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...
In 2013 about 300TWh of electricity came from fossil fuels, 92TWh from nuclear. In 2024 153TWh from fossil fuels and 0 from nuclear. So fossil fuels declined by 147TWh while nuclear only by 92TWh. Claiming that fossil fuels replaced nuclear is ridiculous, even after repeating it hundreds of times.
You can claim that keeping nuclear could have sped up the transition, but the inflexible nuclear plants could also have prevented people from investing in renewables, since the economics are worse if there is energy that is supplied permanently regardless of the price. Nuclear and renewables don't mix well.
You are entirely missing the point. The issue is what do you do when you have no renewable because it’s the winter and there is no sun and no wind. German answer to that - like it or not - is building gas fired power plants and using coal in the meanwhile. That and buying a ton of nuclear energy from France a fact you are conveniently forgetting.
The ratios you quote are meaningless. The issue is that it can’t scale so as to fully decarbonise the grid. Thankfully the current German government seems to finally have seen the light.
'no sun and no wind' is not actually a thing that happens. What happens is less sun during the day and more or less wind in different places in Europe. This is a problem that can be solved through a combination of excess capacity, long distance transmission of energy, and storage, affordably and with existing technology. It's been obvious for a long time that a fully renewable grid can work, and Europe is rapidly moving towards that. Gas turbines are a reasonable stop-gap which will slowly get pushed out of generation as the proportion of renewables and storage grows.
> It's been obvious for a long time that a fully renewable grid can work
It’s far from obvious to me.
There are literally no exemple of one ever running and some of the technological challenges are still open questions at the moment.
I generally think proponents of renewables are overselling the idea and significantly minimising the challenges they pose at scale. They definitely have a place in the energy mix but I don’t personally believe they are the solution.
Mostly renewable has already been achieved, 100% renewable is on track and economically feasible.
In December 2021, South Australia set a new record for renewable energy generation and resilience, after running entirely on renewable energy for 6.5 consecutive days.
In 2022, it was stated that South Australia could soon be powered by only renewable energy.
70 per cent of South Australia's electricity is generated from renewable sources.
This is projected to be 85 per cent by 2026, with a target of 100 per cent by 2027.
And gas plants are what is closed to H2 and can be switched over easiest. But H2 is only viable once renewable production exceeds demands during long stretches of time. Otherwise it is always better to use the energy directly or use short term storage (batteries) which are also growing exponentially: https://battery-charts.de/battery-charts/
Sorry, you are all emotion and provide wrong statements. What I wrote directly contradicted your statements and proved them wrong, but now you say they are missing the point? Reducing fossil fuel consumption by 50% within 10 years is an achievement. There are always things that could be done in a better way. But let's be real here.
That is kind of the point of having an integrated grid.
But 19TWh. While producing 470TWh. 4%. That is not ... a lot. And in 2022 Germany exported 5.5TWh and had to restart coal plants when the French nuclear plants were in trouble. So what? That what a grid is for.
H2 has been the alleged long term solution for decades while barely progressing at all. Even in aviation where it’s seemingly the only solution we have, it’s stagnating.
If you look at who is pushing H2, you will see that it’s mostly fossil fuel companies who want to prop up gas because as you rightfully pointed out "And gas plants are what is closed to H2 and can be switched over easiest."
> So what? That what a grid is for.
It’s going to be hard to reach net zero while burning coal and if the actual solution is importing nuclear energy from somewhere else while pretending it doesn’t happen, it would be simpler to just straight up go for nuclear.
> Germany didn't avoid nuclear by switching to renewables. It does so by burning coal and building gas-fired power plants.
Germany is constantly reducing gas consumption.[1] From 2000-2024 it reduced electricity generation from coal by 61%.[2]
> How to manage a grid fully on intermitent power sources is an open question. There is at this point in time no answer to this.
Only details are open. (Compared to the open question of long term storage of nuclear wast these are very minor problems.) The general strategy is clear: use constantly available renewables (offshore wind, geothermal), connect distant regions for mutual compensation, energy storage.
Personally I think it neglegible if a very small percentage of fossil technology were held in reserve for emergency power generators.
> At the moment, Germany fires up extremely dirty power generation capacity every time there is a shortage.
We are in a transition period. It is impossible to suddenly move to complete renewables. Responsible for the rather slow progress are not those people who pushed for the switch to renewables a long time ago, but those who wanted to drag it out as long as possible. These advocates of fossil fuels were the same individuals and companies that wished to extend the use of nuclear energy.
> Meanwhile, all europeans bear the costs of Germany shortsightedness - as usual - since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
Since September 2022 Germany imported no gas from Russia.[3] Meanwhile, the nuclear industries of France remains the sole buyer of enriched uranium from Russia in the EU. Admittedly, it has considerably reduced its imports from Russia itself,[4] but is still heavily dependent imports from Russia's sphere of influence (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan).[5] The same applies to the USA.[6]
> With nuclear, it's pretty clear how to run a grid. Heck, France has been doing so for decades. The question is how to build it cheaply at scale but at least we have some good ideas and experience about how to do that.
I do not deny that it is possible to operate a reasonably stable electrical network with dirty energy, apart from the regular shortages in dry summers and during heavy frosts. But Germany is ambitious and is going to show the world that it is possible to do it with clean energy. The nuclear lobbyists fear most that this will be successful. This is the only way to explain why they are attacking Germany so fiercely, even though they could actually sit back and wait to see if it succeeds. They fear for their business.
You should look at what a proper planned all-in nuclear project looks like before commenting..
See Hualong One nuclear project that's operating at ~90% capacity and is ~1/3 of the price of solar, and 2/3 price of wind when comparing the same operation % capacity and taking into consideration the max life length of each technology.
Solar panels and windmills are low density sources - we need a LOT of them to get the job done, and even then you still need base load somehow.
That means a huge amount of extra powerlines and future landfill of defunct panels. Not to mention the very sturdy windmill foundations scattered around the landscape.
Say what you will about nuclear, but all of its negatives are concentrated in a small mass and volume.
The optimal, nom-ideological solution is probably a mix of nuclear, gas, and solar panels.
I find that people with strong, pro fission feelings, but no hard numbers, often preface their opinions on the matter with phrases like 'honestly' or 'objectively' or 'non idealogically'.
Concentration of power production is just one of the problems that renewables / distributed power generation systems solves.
Nuclear and renewables do not like to share a grid. Their attributes do not complement each other at all, despite their differences, because fundamentally both of them are not dispatchable. In practice what happens is either nuclear has enough subsidies to survive or renewables completely wreck the economics of it by supplying way cheaper power most of the time.
Both forms of generation want to be paired with something dispatchable, either gas turbines or energy storage. A mix of renewables and nuclear is a mix that is weaker than the sum of its parts, not stronger.
solar panels actually decrease load on power lines. every house with solar panels on it reduces the amount of power the grid needs to bring to that house
In that case, yes. But for solar farms, it's the opposite.
That's why I think we should end up with:
- gas plants: easy and cheap to spin up, can provide district heating
- nuclear: squeaky clean, issues are concentrated in one spot, district heating
- solar panels: super cheap, decentralized, and there are lots of opportunities like rooftops and carparks where we are wasting sunlight right now
I just re-read Critical Mass by Daniel Suarez (great book if you like hard near-future sci-fi) and that has the idea of solar stations in geostationary orbit and beaming power to where it's needed with a phased-array microwave transmitter on the station, and rectennas where you need them on the ground. We can't do this economically any time soon, but that would be clean, and require no power lines
yes, they are worse for the grid, depending on how you define worse.
One interpretation is that solar adds variability to the generation side of the equation and managing that variability is currently a question without a clear answer.
Power line capacity is designed around the maximum power that must be delivered. Solar power by itself reduces the mean, and possibly the minimum as well, but never the maximum.
In some places the annual peak demand is for summertime cooling, but in others the annual peak demand is for wintertime heating. It's too strong to say "never [reduce] the maximum" as the parent post did, but there are substantial regions where solar power can't reduce the needed power line capacity.
You do not, ever, need base load power. Base load power is by definition power generation that does not follow the demand curve because it is uneconomical to do so. In this way it is entirely similar to solar and wind in that it cannot, by definition, fill the entire demand for power and it needs to be completemented by dispatchable power sources.
You do need dispatchable power sources (which you can pair with solar/wind/nuclear/...). Recently that has mostly been in the form of gas peaker plants. Today, in most places, the most affordable form of new dispatchable power is batteries paired with excess solar generation.
The real estate costs for solar and wind are not hidden, you pay those costs up front when you install the projects.
You can also decide to look at countries which went 100% renewable and have even better CO2/kWh rating than France (Iceland, Norway, Albania for example).
Yes, situations are different I agree :) my point was just that you can pick and choose what you want to look at. We'll see how things evolve, but it's not very fair to compare the situation of France which did their switch to low carbon energy many years ago, to Germany which is currently doing it. When we have more countries with finished transition to full/mostly renewable, we can compare again.
In the last 90 days France's CO2 footprint is at 78% of Iceland's.
Also, what lessons learned in Iceland, Norway or Albania should we apply in central Europe? We don't have their geothermal and hydro potential (all your examples are not solar+wind but hydro primarily).
> The only good reason to go nuclear these days is if you want the bomb, like Iran.
I‘m sorry but this is just absolute nonsense.
Nuclear energy is the most dense energy type humanity ever produced. To put it in one line with coal and oil is not serious. Not to mention it’s far less hazardous to human health, again compared to fossil fuels. Here is a basic comparison:
> With a complete combustion or fission, approx. 8 kWh of heat can be generated from 1 kg of coal, approx. 12 kWh from 1 kg of mineral oil and around 24,000,000 kWh from 1 kg of uranium-235. Related to one kilogram, uranium-235 contains two to three million times the energy equivalent of oil or coal.
Who really cares about density? The biggest thing that means is that blowing up two or three substations can cripple an entire country’s grid. Distributed energy generation and storage is actually quite strategic for national security.
It’s also massive cherry-picking to just look at refined fuel. For example, H
how many tonnes of ore do you need to mine and process to produce that 1kg of uranium (at least 2.5 tonnes, that is 2500 kg from one random source from a quick google).
But to use your metric, I did work out and find it interesting that the solar panels on my roof, per kg of silicon have produced over 1,400 kWh of electricity (multiply your figures by 0.3 to take into account efficiency from kWh of heat to compare) so far. I estimate almost 28 kg of silicon in my whole array, which has generated over 38 MWh so far, and I expect they will generate at least three times that over their life.
So 4000-5000 kWh(e) per kg of silicon sure comes in a hell of a lot of better than the 2.4 odd for coal or 4 for mineral oil (assuming your figures are correct).
Everyone. If you don’t, then you need to scale. Case in point with renewables. It’s also not cherry-picking, but a well-known fact in physics. Do yourself a favor and look at the source link I posted above.
The thing about blowing up things I will just skip, because it’s not serious. If things go that far, there will be far greater problems than just that. Besides, if that’s your worry why don’t use SMRs then? Russia does.
To your 4000-5000 kWh point, you are not burning silicon here, are you? And a PV is not energy fuel, it’s a device composed of many different materials. I don’t understand your point and I can’t say more than that - my reply to GP was about fossil fuels and nuclear anyway. Not sure why you decided to jump into renewables here.
this website is filled with people who believe that the future source of energy is entirely renewable energy. That is false, as many european countries show.
I live in a part of Canada with mostly nuclear energy and i am thankful that my electricity rates are low. This helps me reduce emissions via heat pumps and EVs. I don't need solar panels and most people do not either.
You are correct, the future is mostly renewable energy where feasible, with a combination of nuclear and hydro.
He has been well received among left-green voters, civil servants and alike. He communicated without the usual empty political phrases, that alone brought him sympathies. He also managed the Ukraine crisis well, for instance, he was involved in quickly finding alternative gas sources after one of the Nord Stream pipelines had been destroyed. I'd say he embodied the values, policies and mannerism of his electorate better than anyone else.
And yet I agree with you. Economically, he disappointed through and through. Same for climate change, which ironically is at the heart of the Green party he belongs to. For example, to more conservative voters, he's will mostly remembered as the politician who wanted to bring a central planning approach into their homes, forcing everyone to install costly heat pumps, with their own money, without much regard to their specific household situation. All to achieve no effective carbon emission reduction.
But to his left-green electorate, he remains sacrosanct, his critics are dismissed, often as far-right.
>he was involved in quickly finding alternative gas sources after one of the Nord Stream pipelines
The very same pipeline he helped to cover that their own ally destroyed
Also what the hell is your argumentation? "Actually the people who voted him, liked him" no shit. The very same people are more in favor of war than the average Nazi back in the 30s
I made no argument, merely tried to explain why he is viewed favourably by some. I could have left out the second and last paragraph, that was more about me showing that I didn’t agree with his performance either.
Sorry but Merkel reached almost 50% of energy production with renewables. Germany was already a leader in 2021-2022 with almost 45-50%.
The idea was to grow "sustainably", and in fact it was functioning.
Even the "original" GEG comes from Merkel who was slowly pushing for a change.
Then somehow someone decided they had to restrict and punish and this was our "undeserved" Habeck and friends.
There was no need at all to disrupt the country into what it has become today.
Literally everyone said that. Only the Scholz/Greens government didn't see that.
EDIT: in fact, if we just reverted the commits to pre-2022 we'd be already in a better situation. No new changes. Just start from what was working. And well, keep the new solar panel stuff for balconies. It seems a nice idea (which a lot of countries are doing anyways, so nothing so innovative here).
What his enemies (CDU/AfD) don't mention is that even they wouldn't have been able to undo the stop.
But being in the opposition must be a fun thing since you can say the most beautiful sounding things and never have to actually deliver anything.
AfD even goes a step beyond raw stupidity because they want to destroy all the wind turbines. So not just stop the ones already delivering energy, but destroy them. They just don't realize that we need every bit of energy we can get. They have some donating friends which are against wind turbines, because of the looks.
It was close to funny how Elon Musk held back his disagreement with the AfD regarding their wish to destroy the wind turbines.
I'd go so far as to say that the only reason why Germany has the political and societal problems it has now are only due to the constrain in energy.
He had a pretty unfortunate card dealt to him with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Germanys dependence on Russian gas, especially in its industry.
I think the move away from nuclear energy in Germany was a mistake, but one which was decided on way before he came into office. Doubling down on nuclear would have cost a fortune (old reactors weren't maintained well enough to run for longer due to phase out decision after Fukushima & not enough new engineers in Germany). He was in a lose lose situation, I think he did pretty well overall, but was blamed for old decisions (Altmaiers abandonment of German solar industry, heating reform by CDU+SPD) and had bad handling of reports on him in the news.
He is on of the few politicians who follow his beliefs about what needs to be done, less so about what is popular. He also made sure Germany had enough gas. He had nothing todo with the pushback of nuclear energy (that was the CDU/Merkel). Nuclear energy is not cheap.
All politicians follow their beliefs. They just become more problematic the more interventionist they are. And Habeck was extremely interventionist. On top of that he used his position of power to go against private citizens under the excuse of free speech. He filed 805 criminal complaints, in some situations just for being called an idiot online.
Nuclear energy pushback in DE was a result of the fear caused by Chernobyl in 1986. Refreshed by the Fukushima incident. The CDU was not brave enough to go against that fear. And Habeck just continued that approach even in difficult moments for the German industry. Nuclear is not cheap, but it’s stable, predictable, does not generate CO2 and if well planned, also provides self-reliance for the country using it.
>All politicians follow their beliefs
No they don't they, a lot them will do whatever is needed (change their minds at will) to stay in power.
If you ever listened to Habeck, there are simple rational arguments why it did not makes sense to continue running the nuclear plants for longer. There was anyway no easy affordable way to just let them run for many years (contracts).
At the end nuclear was only contributing 1.5% to the overall energy production.
And just to be explicit, because I see people lie about this very often: this decision was made by the conservative party (CDU) while the Greens were not part of the government.
Incorrect. The decision was made by the SPD (leftist)+ Green coalition government in 2000, and was a condition by the Greens to enter the coalition (and then was adopted by an SPD chancellor who later took a job with Gazprom).
When the conservatives got back into power a decade later, they started to roll back the nuclear exit. But during the panic after the Japan tsunami this policy became unpopular so the conservatives reversed course and stuck with the disastrous Green policy.
But make no mistake, if the Greens did not make it into government, the Atomausstieg would never have happened.
Subjects to read for details:
* “Atomkonsens” 2000 and
“Novellierung des Atomgesetzes” 2002, Kabinett Schröder,
* “Laufzeitverlängerung deutscher Kernkraftwerke”, 2010, Kabinett Merkel II
* “13. Gesetz zur Änderung des Atomgesetzes“ 2011 post-Fukushima, taking back the 2010 extensions
It was agreed upon under completely different circumstances, namely a stable supply of Russian gas. I cannot believe that people do not get this into their head.
And after a decade of planning the shutdown, stopping contracts, deferring unneeded maintenance, ... you can't just say "actually, never mind, keep them running". The plant operators themselves said it wasn't really possible or only at extreme costs.
And the politicians loudly screaming about it are mostly from parties that are responsible for the "we'll have russian gas, it's fine" policy, and didn't use the decade+ of being in power beforehand to do anything about extending nuclear, but rather often also strongly insisted the shutdown had to be done. Right until the point they weren't in power anymore and they started to blame the Greens for the consequences of their own policies.
That none of the energy companies went "oh, yes, totally, give us a few billions of the special budgets for dealing with the consequences of the war and we'll happily keep them running" should tell you something about the viability of that.
That post is some dangerous half-knowledge and simplifications stated as fact.
Yes, Habeck is an interventionist, but his biggest interventions were a direct response to... you know, the war in Ukraine. What did anyone expect? When Putin turned off the gas, was Habeck supposed to just let the free market sort it out while factories shut down and people froze? Those price caps and the Uniper buyout weren't pre-planned. I'm sure he would have preferred to have never been in that situation in the first place.
And the reactor shutdown argument never gets old, does it? The decision to ditch nuclear power was made in 2011 by Angela Merkel. Habeck was just the guy who had to turn off the lights at a party that ended a decade earlier. Remember all those predictions of nationwide blackouts in April 23? Funny how the lights are still on.
The claim about coal usage was true for about five minutes in the winter of 22. It was a temporary panic move to save gas, and since then, coal consumption has dropped to a historic low. It's also funny how renewables—the actual backbone of our energy system, which were on the rise long before Habeck, are framed as a "gamble." The upsides and downsides are very well understood by now. There was never any gambling involved but I guess let's just frame a strategic, well understood, decade long move to renewables as a snap decision gamble.
Look, no one's saying his term was perfect. And yes, the man has charisma, which is apparently a bad thing now?
But calling his term a "disaster" while ignoring the reality of the crises he faced—coming out of COVID, the energy war, is just strange.
> "That post is some dangerous half-knowledge and simplifications stated as fact."
That's... putting it mildly. To call a spade a spade: The post you replied to consists of nothing more than anti-Green crankery. The kind of tedious, intellectually dishonest click-bait crap you see disseminated in the Springer-Presse, e. g. ze WELT-Plus-Commentariat, or media of even less repute.
There was no strong push way from nuclear energy, just a continuation of Germany's general nuclear energy path.
Studies also showed that this had no negative effect on electricity prices.
Core voters of the green party are mostly highly educated people[1].
There are not many more women than men in their voters[2].
I hear the first time about public employmemt, and haven't seen any statistics about that.
Regarding energy he certainly didn't gamble on energy.
He gave everything for a transition away from gas and coal and invested in renewable storage systems (short and long term storage) backed by scientific institutions continuously evaluating, planning and simulating the transition of Germanys energy system including related sectors until 2045/2050 [3].
Thanks to storage a renewable energy system can be reliable while highly dynamic.
He reduced the time needed to create wind turbines massively as well.
He also prevented a complete crash of the economy and infrastructure caused by the dependency on gas of Putin which greens have not been a fan of, because of ecological issues as well as the danger of Putin which only the greens recognized before Putin started the war on Ukraine.
Rising debt to invest into the future and infrastructure was then plan of the greens, but they got blocked (and medially attacked for it - claiming it was not needed) by the current government which then realized this plan (at least from a high level perspective) with the help of the greens in the opposition, because a simple majority isn't enough for increasing debt.
I am not aware of active acceleration of a decline of the industry beyond the decline which was already in the system for years and the situation we were in due to COVID and the war.
> dependency on gas of Putin which greens have not been a fan of, because of ecological issues as well as the danger of Putin which only the greens recognized before Putin started the war on Ukraine.
Thats a lot of historical revision if you blame a dude who was minister for 3.5 years about decisions made 20-30 years ago. Same for your last paragraph. Nothing even close to that happened in the years he governed. Maybe you should start showing recipes because it looks like your grievances are personal in nature and everything but factual.
It's fine to have those grievances if you can articulate them factual. Hell they are even fine if you can't. The only thing I am saying is that you don't need to make stuff up just to give those grievances weight or convey others to your sentiment...
This is a bit strong, given that you still need to register with the Marktstammdatenregister and get a permit from your landlord (relevant bc homeownership rate < 50%).
I think the high electricity cost has as much to do with the relative success of this than the reduced friction.
On the technical side you are also limited to 800W max and if you want a battery things get complicated quickly. I will still get one probably but it is far from no bureaucracy at all and plug and play - at least not when you want a battery.
Marktstammdatenregister is online and very easy to do, Allowance from landlord is more of a formality now as they can't really deny it. Of course some try but the law is pretty clear here.
A big factor in the quick return (and maybe one reason for its popularity) is that Germany has some of the most expensive electricity in the world. The ROI doesn't look as attractive in France, the US or Norway.
> A big factor in the quick return (and maybe one reason for its popularity) is that Germany has some of the most expensive electricity in the world.
Part of that is because our method of pricing is different than it is in the rest of the world.
It doesn't matter if you got a 3x50A or 3x200A three phase service, only during construction (because a 3x200A uplink will obviously be a decent bit pricier), the monthly fee is the same and very low (I think ~15€ a month). All other costs are rolled into the per-kWh price, making it appear much more expensive than in other countries. On top of that we have a ridiculous tax load because large industry is exempt from a lot of things and consumers gotta pick up the slack.
In contrast, Italians for example pay fees based on capacity which means a home there will usually have 3x10A uplink, something greatly troubling EV adoption and moving off of natural gas [1].
Additionally, Germany is one pricing zone whereas ENTSO-E, the European Commission and the Northern German population would rather like to have two or three pricing zones, given that there is a serious lack of North->South transmission capacity, but our "beloved" Bavarian prime minister Söder plus his green counterpart in BaWü Kretschmann both try to prevent that as much as possible because it would send prices in the south skyrocketing [2].
Yep in a lot of ways it's a failure of the electricity market.
It's absolutely bonkers how much I pay for electricity while I sit in the shadow of a giant onshore wind farm in Brandenburg. Transmission losses are nothing at this distance and the turbines cover the towns needs many times over.
But because of the lack of regional and dynamic pricing (and tax burden) we pay ridiculous rates.
I think if folks could financially benefit from renewable projects in their neighborhoods, suddenly citizens opposition would fall apart.
Maybe balcony solar is just a tax minimization play, in that the energy you get from panels isn't burdened by excessive network charges, consumer taxes etc.
> I think if folks could financially benefit from renewable projects in their neighborhoods, suddenly citizens opposition would fall apart.
That's actually happening already in some places - in Thüringen, nearby residents of a windmill get a share of the income [1], and the local municipality also gets a sizable amount... in small Mühlenfließ (Brandenburg) with less than 1000 souls living there, the 16 windmills provide 200.000€ a year in taxes, 10% of the municipal budget [2].
Unfortunately, you need politicians with a backbone to present such plans to their voters, and in rural areas many simply are afraid of far-right terrorism up to and including death threats [3], on top of "alternative" media and even supposedly democratic politicians riling people up against renewable power sources.
More and more "Energiegenossenschaften" are also founded, I think. At least here in the South-West near Freiburg it feels like every second larger village or community has its own Energiegenossenschaft. They are working on getting solar on every roof, pushing water and wind turbine projects forward and are really working on making the switch to renewables happen. I'm looking to get into some of them to fund the cause. :-)
Norway: yes, they are doing fine (80% EV, btw, so it seems you can actually use EVs in colder weather... I think the nordics are actually way ahead of the rest of Europe when it comes to sustainable energy creation, with norway getting about 90% last year from Hydro - super impressive. https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Norway
France: I think they might turn around, because their low prices are tied to massive subsidies (that are scheduled to end in part end of 2025). And, France has the weather and sun to be even more successfull. That would however mean a decentralization of the power grid and probably storage solutions (batteries, hydro or h2), something thats complicated and not sexy to sell to the public - one of the reasons Germany is so far behind. Our grid is stuck in the past and enough company lobby politicians to keep it that way.
US: it is probably less of a pricing issue and more a topic of resiliance and stabilizing the power grid. It looks like rolling blackouts in the US get more, especially during the summer months (where solar could directly be used for the AC). https://urbanclimate.gatech.edu/current-projects/blackout-tr...
I think it would especially make sense to run your AC on if you have a flexible plan - i remember so many stories of people suddenly having to pay thousands during peak times in summer.
California, Texas and most of the rust belt does have enough solar to easily get by, especially if you add a battery backup.
Norway gets most of its wealth from fossil fuel. While it's not Saudi Arabia nor Venezuela, and they invested in long term sustainability, it's not fair to everyone else to say that they are at 80%EV because they are forward thinkers, but because they have the money to do that.
It took forward thinking to dump their wealth into a sovereign wealth fund.
Australia started at a similar point with mineral wealth in the 90s and decided tax cuts for the middle class were a better idea (under Howard/Costello).
Yes, like any other argument about Norway, the situation must and shall be considered to be that they are smart and progressive and forward thinking, rather than rich. It's "not" that they have money to burn to do the new fancy thing. It must be forward-thinking policies!
There's a small amount of truth, I'll admit. I guess you can say that Norway's policies are easily a lot smarter than Saudi Arabia's policies. But what is always done is comparing Norway's policies to, say, Spain or France and declare Norway a progressive forward-thinking nation with great and working policies. In reality the opposite is true because France and Spain can't just fix big problems by showering them in money.
Yes, but you have to somehow insinuate that this is a bad thing without ever clearly stating a thesis of why it's a bad thing.
Otherwise people might think investing in green energy, EVs and heat pumps is a good idea with good return on investment and positive externalities and should be done by any competent government.
Any competent government with infinite money they can just dig out of the ground, and dump into the sky via its customers, a small, mostly-homogenous law-abiding population and military cover, at least until recently, mostly provided by the US taxpayer.
While we're on the topic, Finland gets around half of its energy from nuclear. It doesn't have the luxury of fjords for hydro like Norway and Sweden, or easily tapped geothermal like Iceland.
You can see a nice live graph here. Wind isn't blowing at the moment, so the fossil fuel co-generation plants had to kick in.
I mean, in Germany, issue number 1 is the grid, especially in Bavaria. Politicians were just asleep or did not care.
For example, there is a super interesting agri PV installation in the Hallertau, where they grow most of the hops for beer. The farmer built and payed it himself and its a commercial trial instead of a public testrun.
He lost about 20 percent of the hop compared to the non-pv areas; however, the money from the solar panels easily covered that and made a profit. In addition, he used about 30 to 40 percent less water with no impact on the quality of the hop, which is one of the biggest issues in that area, as it runs out of water in summer.
The Hallertau would be ideal for generating large quantities of power; however, due to not having a modern power grid, he is unable deliver more power to the grid.
(article in German here: https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/pilotprojekt-hat-erfolg...)
you would think that this is a simpel fix, and it would be in the political interest to decentralzie the powergrid and create local storage solution (or at least in the local power companies interest), but it seems like nothing is moving forward for about a decade now.
Personally, i think agri pv has a huge potential as enables the farmers to have additional income while keeping the field open for farming. Its also an easier sell than wind or hydro (especially because you have the farmers on your side, and with them their lobby), but it needs grid upgrades and storage capacities. It baffles my mind that our politicans are willing to throw millions at nuclear, but everything besides that needs to have a strict business plan or it is not even tried.
To add to this, I know person a farmer who wanted to use part of his farmland for solar panels. The project failed. Reasons: lack of power grid connection, no one wanted to takeover the costs for added capacity; and local resistance from residents. „I want to see the nature in front of my home“ is all what’s needed to fail consent.
i don't understand those nimbys. With solar, its crazy! The soil will regenerate and you'll probably get more nature than before, especially if the farmers use sheep to mow it. That's why we can't have nice things.
To be honest, I do understand some people preferring pastures in front of their home. But we can't have nice things if individuals are capable of blocking projects for that. Personal preferences should not be a valid reason to block projects. Unmitigated negative externalities are reasonable objections, but even then, you have people "finding" this one protected snail type living there and - boom - project can't be realized due to environmental protection laws. There needs to be a re-balance of the commons, but try getting that through legislation.
FWIW, that "blackout tracker" link is garbage. First, because it's five years old: if the data showed that growth someone would have updated it.
But also because it's wrong! There's one outlier bad data point, in 2020, and they draw a line straight through it. Take that one year out and it looks awfully flat to me.
And it barely works out in Germany. I did the math for my small city flat with a small south facing balcony and got a realistic payback period of 6 years.
The issue is not solar per se, but that tiny installations are not very efficient. It'd make much more sense to bolster funding for building sized installations.
The other aspect of this is the reduction of demand on the grid - which potentially reduces infrastructure costs ( or reduces the rise ) and hence shows up in a reduction in electricity prices ( if not absolute, against where they would be ).
Balcony solar is likely to make this worse, given Germany has low/zero electricity market prices when the sun shines.
Balcony solar production means Germans don't buy solar from their utility when utility costs are low, and they do want to buy some when utility costs are high.
Unsurprisingly, fixed contract prices are bound to be an average of electricity price at different times. With balcony solar, the times where it costs the least will be weighted less in the average, so contract price is bound to go up.
Germany needs more battery storage, full stop. It is rapidly declining in cost, it is fast to deploy, and it will soak up excess low carbon energy (both domestic and imported from interconnectors) versus curtailment as more generation comes online.
> Germany’s solar industry calls for 100 GWh 2030 grid battery target
Yup. Flexibility should be the thing that’s subsidized. However, I would advise against "balcony" battery subsidies, and I assume balcony solar is an electoral strategy more than an energy strategy.
> By the end of the first half of 2025, Germany’s official registry of energy installations recorded nearly two million battery storage systems in operation. This figure, now unofficially but safely surpassed into July , includes a gross power capacity of 14.535 gigawatts (GW) and a usable storage capacity of nearly 22.1 gigawatt-hours (GWh).
> Photovoltaic home storage systems constitute the majority of these installations, with 1.967 million small battery storage units (up to 20 kilowatts) accounting for 11.5 GW of gross power and almost 18.3 GWh of usable capacity.
> Small photovoltaic home storage units made up the bulk of new additions, with 251,948 systems providing 1.34 GW and almost 2.7 GWh. In the medium segment, 2,418 new systems added 117.7 MW of power and 160 MWh of capacity.
> The expansion of battery storage is driven by increasing demand, highlighted by 389 hours of negative wholesale electricity prices in the first half of the year. Germany has also significantly expanded its solar power generation, with approximately 107.4 GW of photovoltaic capacity installed and over 7 GW added in the first six months of 2025.
The future of electrification is distributed, broadly speaking. Distributed assets can be orchestrated to optimize for both cost and grid stability ("VPP" aka virtual power plants). Get generation and storage as close to the load as you can.
I pay 13 cents a kWh here in Canada. I got a 7.8kw system on the roof, payback will be 6-7 years, then I get $1000 of free electricity a year for the life of the system.
I’m in a tight valley where it snows a ton
Also got an interest free loan from the gov to cover the outlay.
That is definitely a factor. But depending on your energy usage and how smart your home appliances are, you can save a lot more than 10%. I.e. if you run all your washing and most of the heating of the water tank during your own generation times you can potentially save quite a lot more than 10%.
Electricity costs 24c per kwh in France and I just checked and can get it for 23c. So it's not true any more. Once you factor in that one is financed by the state and the other is not, it was likely never true. Germany's expensive electricity is a myth.
This is not necessarily a disadvantage. If you have a contract with pricing based on the 15-minute intervals of the day-ahead market ("dynamischer Stromtarif"), then the electricity price spikes in the morning and evening. Typically with such a contract, you also get this higher price for injecting power back into the grid. And the price will almost always be lower than a traditional contract outside of these spikes.
A vertically oriented panel is also ideal for this scenario, because the sun will be low above the horizon when the panel is producing power in the morning.
edit: after looking into a bit more, it seems in Germany you may not actually get dynamic feed-in pricing. Too bad. I assumed that this was the case, because it works like that here in Belgium.
It's relative to my cited bill of about 70 euro, obviously.
7/30 ~= 22 cents. Or about half a kwh per day here in Germany. Per day. I think that should be feasible with a well positioned panel. You might do better on sunny days. But if you balance that against all the lesser days, I don't think it's a strange average. All back of the envelope of course. If you get six sun hours on your 800w setup, you get almost 5 kwh. That's sort of the upper range probably. Maybe on really well positioned panels you might get 10 sun hours in the summer months. Or 8 kwh. I think few people would get that.
But an average 0.5kwh per day is fairly modest and adds up to about 7 euro per month. Probably too conservative but that was on purpose. I think the official figures project higher yields.
Since setups are capped at 800w, the percentage depends on your monthly usage. Easier to work in absolute numbers. I think most people could shave between 7 and 20 euros per month off their bills depending on how much sun they manage to get on their panels.
"SUNNIVA 920 W Balcony Power Station BIFAZIAL Full Black Complete Socket TSUN 800 W Inverter, PV Solar System, 2 x 460 W Glass/Glass Solar Modules, Includes 5 m Cable, Bluetooth WiFi, Complete Set"
Literally the first result that comes back for "balcony solar panel kit". 239 Euros with 4.2 star rating and > 200 purchase in the last month.
I can't vouch for this brand or kit but that's what comes up on top on amazon.de. Looks like some Chinese manufacturer, as you would expect. Plenty of pretty positive reviews in German with a few deployment photos. There are indeed a lot of solar panel related products on Amazon. It seems to be a popular product category.
You might get different results from outside Germany.
These are millions of systems imported from China, they are inefficient (because they are small and often installed in poor conditions), useful life is uncertain, they will have to be disposed of afterwards.
So is this whole chain better than using the grid? I don't know but I can't assume anything just because "it's solar".
Cost in the article is cited at 550 euro. I just browsed amazon.de and you can buy complete plug and play kits here in Germany for as little as 239 euro. Most kits are priced between 300-350 euro. I did not see a many kits over 500.
I pay about 70 euro per month for electricity. If it saves 10% per month on my bill (7 euro), this would earn itself back within 3 years. At 5% it's 6 years. Not bad for something that costs next to nothing and is pretty much plug and play. You are not going to get very rich from this obviously. But it's kind of cool. Too bad my balcony faces east and is mostly covered by the shadow of other buildings. I can barely grow plants there.