8 ms·

Solar biggest source of electricity in Germany in June 2019

51 points by bjoko 7y ago

onetimemanytime 7y ago
....brought to you by taxes /subsidies: "Taxes and fees now amount to 52 percent of the monthly power bill for retail consumers....The renewable energy levy alone adds 18 euros to the average monthly bill." https://www.dw.com/en/german-electricity-price-is-half-taxes-and-fees/a-17849142-0 https://www.dw.com/en/german-electricity-price-is-half-taxes...
- rndgermandude 7y ago
  So? We heavily subsidize every energy source here in Germany, having done that since forever. Coal subsidies, nuclear subsidies (incl massive hidden, defacto ones), now renewables. If there were no subsidies the price would be in the same ballpark anyway, except the state would have no influence over where that money gets spent. The "renewables levy" isn't meant to be permanent high at the same level. It is meant to be seed money for research and initial construction to get the ball rolling. Startup money basically. It works by guaranteeing companies a minimum price for renewable power to reduce their investment risk.
  - mqus 7y ago
    but the green energy subsidy (EEG) fee is ridiculously distributed. Anyone in the industry who really needs a lot of electricity doesn't have to pay it at all while it makes up 20-25% of the price for citizens. I can see that they don't want to scare off these companies but the way it works now is not good.
- gameswithgo 7y ago
  fossil fuels are also heavily subsidized
- imtringued 7y ago
  That's how it should be. The fact that the voters overwhelmingly voted for the green party during the EU vote despite the high electricity costs shows that supporting renewables is a priority for German citizens.
  - onetimemanytime 7y ago
    >>The fact that the voters overwhelmingly voted for the green party during the EU vote despite the high electricity costs shows that supporting renewables is a priority for German citizens. Germans and voting...not a good argument, I'll leave it at that.
    - dang 7y ago
      Please do not post nationalistic swipes to Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Faark 7y ago
Seems like installations doubled in 2018 compared to the last few years [0]. That surprised me a bit, since, while there still are gov incentives, they only seem to go down after the big push ended around 2012. So that bump is likely caused by falling cost. That's great to see. [0] https://energy-charts.de/power_inst.htm?year=all&period=annual&type=inc_dec https://energy-charts.de/power_inst.htm?year=all&period=annu...
ChuckNorris89 7y ago
My friends in Germany still have the most expensive electricity in all of Europe, including Scandinavia. They should have stayed on nuclear until renewable would be cheaper since the households are the ones feeling the pinch while big corps negociate lower fees or import cheaper electricity from France that's big on nuclear. It's cool to be ECO and all but that's just taking the piss on the middle class and my priority is putting food on the table for my family not footing the bill for political-corporate ECO circle jerk.
- sebow 7y ago
  Recently visited germany,many people are ridiculously negative on nuclear for no actual reason besides "chernobyl" and the dumb preconception that it is not green energy. As you said, it hurts the middle-class and below the most, as coal and other fossil-based methods are banned/cracked down. Sad how this transition towards green energy is not done responsible and for the most part to gain political power.
- lqet 7y ago
  Household of 3 people in one of the most expensive cities in Germany here, with multiple Raspberry Pis, a laptop and a small server running 24/7. We are not actively doing anything to save energy. We pay between 20 and 30 EUR per month for electricity. The average net income per household in Germany is 3314 EUR per month [0], so this is less than 1% of the average household income. I would not call that expensive. Regardless of the cost, it will especially not prevent you from putting food on the table of your family, because if you have problems to do that, social security will pay the bill for you. [0] https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/datenreport-2018/private-haushalte-einkommen-konsum-wohnen/278177/nettoeinkommen-privater-haushalte https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/datenreport-2018/private-hau...
  - cmenge 7y ago
    This is hard to believe. I'm paying more than that for a household of 1. For 3 ppl, the typical comparison platforms quote EUR 900 p.a. as the cheapest option (3,500kWh estimate). At EUR 360,- a year, you'd get a mere 1000kWh which hardly supplies a fridge, lighting and cooking every now and then. The average price in Germany is close to 30ct per kWh, plus some kind of fixed base fee...
pl-94 7y ago
Let's not forget that: - CO2 emissions of Germany is still 5 times more than a comparable (similar GDP/flatness/weather) than France for electricity production [1]; - Electricity production is roughly a third of all final energy and CO2 emissions come mainly from coal and fuel [2]. Two threats for which Germany has done very little for now. - Germany is spending around 2 billions of dollars [3] for renewable energies, whereas it would have cost more than 50x less with nuclear, allowing to spend the rest of this investment into building insulation and thermal renewable energies. - PV investments were computed from past market prices, not with the negative price obtained with non controllable source of energy [3]. Germany is only at the beginning of energy subsidies. Investing in photovoltaics is politically efficient, not environmentally efficient. Please let's stop to focus on renewable electricity. Let's start focusing on carbon-less solutions. The hard problem is about coal and fuel. The situation could not be more urgent, since conventional oil has reached its peak. Not removing our dependency on oil is strongly damaging for our economies. Focusing on non controllable sources of energy is just accelerating the damages. Please see https://jancovici.com/en/ https://jancovici.com/en/ for more convincing arguments :) [1] - https://electricitymap.tmrow.co https://electricitymap.tmrow.co [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#Energy_supply,_consumption_and_electricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#Energ... [3] - http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP_Eye_watering_cost_of_renewable_revolution_2301121.html http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP_Eye_watering_cost_of_re... [4] - https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-turn-negative https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-...
- aurelwu 7y ago
  Nuclear is far from being cheap. Take a look at the exploding costs at Flamanville [0], Olkiluoto[1], Hinkley Point C[2]. Those 3 Plants alone already cost more than 1/50 of the 2 trillion which you claim would have been sufficient. Decommissioning of 1990 retired german nuclear powerplant Greifswald is still not even close to being finished. newly installed PV is far cheaper than nuclear and I'll exclude storage/PtX here as usually when nuclear prices are looked at they also ignore decommissioning costs which are probably way higher than future storage technologies will be. [0] http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Weld-repairs-to-delay-Flamanville-EPR-start-up http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Weld-repairs-to-delay... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-olkiluoto/arevas-finland-reactor-to-start-in-2019-after-another-delay-idUSKBN1CE1ND https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-olkiluoto... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...
Proven 7y ago
Shitty article. It doesn't say anything about consumption (instead it talks about generation - useless) and there are no links to source of the stats.
radford-neal 7y ago
This is a meaningless headline, which follows a regrettably common way of producing misleading statements. If you look at the article, you'll find that solar generation accounted for only 19% of the total. It's the "biggest source" only as a result of their choice of how to group the other sources. If they had decided to have a "fossil fuel" category, that would have been the biggest. But they decided to split fossil fuels into brown coal, hard coal, oil, and gas, so it doesn't win. Similarly, if they'd split solar into subcategories according to exactly which technology was used, none of them would have been "biggest". You should similarly ignore misleading statements about "disease X is the biggest killer of Y", and so forth. They're all meaningless when the division into categories is arbitrary.
- aurelwu 7y ago
  "Fossil fuel/non-renewables" would not have been the biggest, as you can see in the chart, "renewables" is bigger. Also they didn't split it into those subcategories so that solar wins, this technology split is a absolute standard way to differentiate between technologies which is always used, and it makes no sense (on that level of detail) to not differentiate between lignite, hard coal, gas and oil which all need different power plants, have different costs, different emission factors etc.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Splitting brown coal and hard coal is not standard and would change the result.
    - aurelwu 7y ago
      It absolutely is standard in germany: German Environment Agency does it this way [0] Fraunhofer Society does it this way [1] German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy does it this way[2] Agora Energywende (important think tank) does it this way [3] AG Energiebilanzen does it this way [4] [0] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/bild/strommix-in-deutschland https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/bild/strommix-in-deutschland [1] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/daten-zu-erneuerbaren-energien/ISE_Stromerzeugung_2018_Halbjahr.pdf#page=9 https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p... [2] https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Downloads/Energiedaten/energiedaten-gesamt-pdf-grafiken.pdf__blob=publicationFile&v=38 https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Downloads/Energiedaten/ener... [3] https://www.agora-energiewende.de/service/agorameter/chart/power_generation/11.07.2019/14.07.2019/ https://www.agora-energiewende.de/service/agorameter/chart/p... [4] https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/ https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/

51 points by bjoko 7y ago

....brought to you by taxes /subsidies: "Taxes and fees now amount to 52 percent of the monthly power bill for retail consumers....The renewable energy levy alone adds 18 euros to the average monthly bill." https://www.dw.com/en/german-electricity-price-is-half-taxes-and-fees/a-17849142-0 https://www.dw.com/en/german-electricity-price-is-half-taxes...

rndgermandude 7y ago
So? We heavily subsidize every energy source here in Germany, having done that since forever. Coal subsidies, nuclear subsidies (incl massive hidden, defacto ones), now renewables. If there were no subsidies the price would be in the same ballpark anyway, except the state would have no influence over where that money gets spent. The "renewables levy" isn't meant to be permanent high at the same level. It is meant to be seed money for research and initial construction to get the ball rolling. Startup money basically. It works by guaranteeing companies a minimum price for renewable power to reduce their investment risk.
- mqus 7y ago
  but the green energy subsidy (EEG) fee is ridiculously distributed. Anyone in the industry who really needs a lot of electricity doesn't have to pay it at all while it makes up 20-25% of the price for citizens. I can see that they don't want to scare off these companies but the way it works now is not good.
gameswithgo 7y ago
fossil fuels are also heavily subsidized
imtringued 7y ago
That's how it should be. The fact that the voters overwhelmingly voted for the green party during the EU vote despite the high electricity costs shows that supporting renewables is a priority for German citizens.
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  >>The fact that the voters overwhelmingly voted for the green party during the EU vote despite the high electricity costs shows that supporting renewables is a priority for German citizens. Germans and voting...not a good argument, I'll leave it at that.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please do not post nationalistic swipes to Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Faark 7y ago

Seems like installations doubled in 2018 compared to the last few years [0]. That surprised me a bit, since, while there still are gov incentives, they only seem to go down after the big push ended around 2012. So that bump is likely caused by falling cost. That's great to see. [0] https://energy-charts.de/power_inst.htm?year=all&period=annual&type=inc_dec https://energy-charts.de/power_inst.htm?year=all&period=annu...

ChuckNorris89 7y ago

My friends in Germany still have the most expensive electricity in all of Europe, including Scandinavia. They should have stayed on nuclear until renewable would be cheaper since the households are the ones feeling the pinch while big corps negociate lower fees or import cheaper electricity from France that's big on nuclear. It's cool to be ECO and all but that's just taking the piss on the middle class and my priority is putting food on the table for my family not footing the bill for political-corporate ECO circle jerk.

sebow 7y ago
Recently visited germany,many people are ridiculously negative on nuclear for no actual reason besides "chernobyl" and the dumb preconception that it is not green energy. As you said, it hurts the middle-class and below the most, as coal and other fossil-based methods are banned/cracked down. Sad how this transition towards green energy is not done responsible and for the most part to gain political power.
lqet 7y ago
Household of 3 people in one of the most expensive cities in Germany here, with multiple Raspberry Pis, a laptop and a small server running 24/7. We are not actively doing anything to save energy. We pay between 20 and 30 EUR per month for electricity. The average net income per household in Germany is 3314 EUR per month [0], so this is less than 1% of the average household income. I would not call that expensive. Regardless of the cost, it will especially not prevent you from putting food on the table of your family, because if you have problems to do that, social security will pay the bill for you. [0] https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/datenreport-2018/private-haushalte-einkommen-konsum-wohnen/278177/nettoeinkommen-privater-haushalte https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/datenreport-2018/private-hau...
- cmenge 7y ago
  This is hard to believe. I'm paying more than that for a household of 1. For 3 ppl, the typical comparison platforms quote EUR 900 p.a. as the cheapest option (3,500kWh estimate). At EUR 360,- a year, you'd get a mere 1000kWh which hardly supplies a fridge, lighting and cooking every now and then. The average price in Germany is close to 30ct per kWh, plus some kind of fixed base fee...

pl-94 7y ago

Let's not forget that: - CO2 emissions of Germany is still 5 times more than a comparable (similar GDP/flatness/weather) than France for electricity production [1]; - Electricity production is roughly a third of all final energy and CO2 emissions come mainly from coal and fuel [2]. Two threats for which Germany has done very little for now. - Germany is spending around 2 billions of dollars [3] for renewable energies, whereas it would have cost more than 50x less with nuclear, allowing to spend the rest of this investment into building insulation and thermal renewable energies. - PV investments were computed from past market prices, not with the negative price obtained with non controllable source of energy [3]. Germany is only at the beginning of energy subsidies. Investing in photovoltaics is politically efficient, not environmentally efficient. Please let's stop to focus on renewable electricity. Let's start focusing on carbon-less solutions. The hard problem is about coal and fuel. The situation could not be more urgent, since conventional oil has reached its peak. Not removing our dependency on oil is strongly damaging for our economies. Focusing on non controllable sources of energy is just accelerating the damages. Please see https://jancovici.com/en/ https://jancovici.com/en/ for more convincing arguments :) [1] - https://electricitymap.tmrow.co https://electricitymap.tmrow.co [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#Energy_supply,_consumption_and_electricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#Energ... [3] - http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP_Eye_watering_cost_of_renewable_revolution_2301121.html http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP_Eye_watering_cost_of_re... [4] - https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-turn-negative https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-...

aurelwu 7y ago
Nuclear is far from being cheap. Take a look at the exploding costs at Flamanville [0], Olkiluoto[1], Hinkley Point C[2]. Those 3 Plants alone already cost more than 1/50 of the 2 trillion which you claim would have been sufficient. Decommissioning of 1990 retired german nuclear powerplant Greifswald is still not even close to being finished. newly installed PV is far cheaper than nuclear and I'll exclude storage/PtX here as usually when nuclear prices are looked at they also ignore decommissioning costs which are probably way higher than future storage technologies will be. [0] http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Weld-repairs-to-delay-Flamanville-EPR-start-up http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Weld-repairs-to-delay... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-olkiluoto/arevas-finland-reactor-to-start-in-2019-after-another-delay-idUSKBN1CE1ND https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-olkiluoto... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...

Proven 7y ago

Shitty article. It doesn't say anything about consumption (instead it talks about generation - useless) and there are no links to source of the stats.

radford-neal 7y ago

This is a meaningless headline, which follows a regrettably common way of producing misleading statements. If you look at the article, you'll find that solar generation accounted for only 19% of the total. It's the "biggest source" only as a result of their choice of how to group the other sources. If they had decided to have a "fossil fuel" category, that would have been the biggest. But they decided to split fossil fuels into brown coal, hard coal, oil, and gas, so it doesn't win. Similarly, if they'd split solar into subcategories according to exactly which technology was used, none of them would have been "biggest". You should similarly ignore misleading statements about "disease X is the biggest killer of Y", and so forth. They're all meaningless when the division into categories is arbitrary.

aurelwu 7y ago
"Fossil fuel/non-renewables" would not have been the biggest, as you can see in the chart, "renewables" is bigger. Also they didn't split it into those subcategories so that solar wins, this technology split is a absolute standard way to differentiate between technologies which is always used, and it makes no sense (on that level of detail) to not differentiate between lignite, hard coal, gas and oil which all need different power plants, have different costs, different emission factors etc.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Splitting brown coal and hard coal is not standard and would change the result.
  - aurelwu 7y ago
    It absolutely is standard in germany: German Environment Agency does it this way [0] Fraunhofer Society does it this way [1] German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy does it this way[2] Agora Energywende (important think tank) does it this way [3] AG Energiebilanzen does it this way [4] [0] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/bild/strommix-in-deutschland https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/bild/strommix-in-deutschland [1] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/daten-zu-erneuerbaren-energien/ISE_Stromerzeugung_2018_Halbjahr.pdf#page=9 https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p... [2] https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Downloads/Energiedaten/energiedaten-gesamt-pdf-grafiken.pdf__blob=publicationFile&v=38 https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Downloads/Energiedaten/ener... [3] https://www.agora-energiewende.de/service/agorameter/chart/power_generation/11.07.2019/14.07.2019/ https://www.agora-energiewende.de/service/agorameter/chart/p... [4] https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/ https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/