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Germany's Solar Boom Eases Power Costs as Gas Price Jumps
- toomuchtodo 8mo agohttps://archive.today/O4JPX https://archive.today/O4JPX
- alpineman 8mo agoBeautiful. How could someone be against renewable energy? It's incredible, and we should be investing a lot more into it.
- AlexandrB 8mo agoHow indeed. Yet Germany got rid of its nuclear energy capacity a few years ago.
- wongarsu 8mo agoSigned into law in 2002, with the last reactor going offline in 2023. Depending on how you count we got rid of it a quarter-century ago. Not the best decision, and a major reason why Germany uses so much coal and gas today. But outside some special circumstances nuclear isn't cost competitive with other renewables anymore, so for future plans it doesn't really matter
- _aavaa_ 8mo agoGermany uses less coal and gas today then in the past and it has been a straight decline both before and after the nuclear phase out [0]. They are currently committed to phasing it out by 2038. We can argue that it may have gotten faster if nuclear was still there but that’s a counter factual that would have to be proved. [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...
- WarmWash 8mo agoChernobyl is almost conspiracy worthy with how much money it ultimately directed to Russian oil and gas coffers.
- toomuchtodo 8mo ago~58.5% of Germany electricity came from renewables in 2025, the last of the fossil generation will be pushed out with more renewables and batteries. They deploy ~2GW/month of solar PV. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/12mo/monthly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/12mo/monthly As other comments mentioned, in a more perfect world, they would've run those nuclear generators longer to avoid emissions. Alas, we live in an imperfect world. Keeping grinding towards net zero.
- sidpatil 8mo agoIs nuclear energy considered renewable?
- leonidasrup 8mo ago[dead]
- triceratops 8mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46292341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46292341
- leonidasrup 8mo ago[dead]
- PurpleRamen 8mo agoIf your paycheck depends on fossils, then you will wholeheartedly sabotage renewables as much as you can.
- sgbeal 8mo agoi call BS: in Germany we're paying more than twice per kw than we were 3.5 years ago (it literally doubled in late 2022, from some 22c to 40-odd cents), and it just went up again in February 2026. Lots and lots of talk about lower energy prices, but _nobody_ "on the ground" is seeing it. (Edit: unless, perhaps, they're installing their own solar arrays, which many single-family and duplex homes do, but not the apartment buildings most of us live in.)
- wongarsu 8mo agoSolar on the balcony railing is very popular right now, mostly amongst apartment renters
- sgbeal 8mo ago> Solar on the balcony railing is very popular right now, mostly amongst apartment renters i have yet to see a single solar panel on an apartment building in Brandenburg, Germany, whereas a large portion (perhaps even a majority) of single-family and duplex units here have them. Perhaps they're more common in the richer parts of the country where a profit can be more readily turned, but not up here.
- Suckseh 8mo ago[dead]
- nixass 8mo ago> Perhaps they're more common in the richer parts of the country where a profit can be more readily turned, but not up here. These cost about 300-400 euros in local Aldi or Lidl (yes they sell them occasionally) with inverter, ready to plug-in (800W limit). At these prices they're accessible to everyone
- sgbeal 8mo ago> At these prices they're accessible to everyone It's inaccurate to assume that "300-400" is readily within anyone's reach. 300-400 is virtually a king's ransom for some of us.
- qalmakka 8mo agoIt's a paramount imperative for Europe to wean itself from fossil fuels, regardless of environmental arguments (which are extremely relevant still). Getting a safe, unfettered provider of fossil fuels is getting a basically unsolvable problem. China is trying to build as much solar and nuclear capacity as humanly possible; we should do the same too. We've been having these energy shocks since the Yom Kippur war basically, it's like a broken cycle of instability and crisis we can't leave behind. There's no shale to be found in Europe, we just have wind, sun and nuclear to save our backs. And maybe geothermal pretty soon?
- WarmWash 8mo agoI don't understand leadership thinking. Surely spending €250B on a continental scale renewable energy project would have a relatively short payoff time (on country scale) given the instability of relying on foreign energy sources. I mean how long does oil have to sit above $100/barrel before it costs everyone that much anyway?
- pjc50 8mo ago> spending €250B on a continental scale renewable energy project Let me stop you there: the EU budget for 2026 was €193B. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/budget/www/index-en.htm https://eur-lex.europa.eu/budget/www/index-en.htm Basically Europe doesn't have political leadership, nor does the EU itself have a budget larger than the member states like the US Federal budget. In return, the EU, primarily Germany, has imposed "fiscal discipline" which prevents running a short term large deficit in order to make this kind of capital investment. Also, two hundred billion Euro is a lot of money for anyone who isn't an AI startup.
- seydor 8mo agoThe EU is not funding projects directly, it's setting the rules. Individual governments pay the bill
- thibaut_barrere 8mo ago
- nixass 8mo agoI love how these articles pop up only after we exited couple of months long depressing, cloudy, rainy and snowy season into full blast sunshine for last two weeks or so.
- lostlogin 8mo agoSeasons do change, yes.
- nixass 8mo agoCorrect, and the author of that piece should be aware of that fact
- belorn 8mo agoYes, this is why you get on average single digit output from solar in Sweden during the worst winter months while consumption doubles. The math comes down that on average, the expected amount of solar that can be used for consumption is around 25% for an 100% capacity installation. The period with highest production is the period of lowest consumption. Average grid prices also follow this trend, with the highest point being winter and the lowest point being summer. Germany has slightly better numbers from being a bit more south, and they also primarily use gas for heating rather than electricity, which reduces seasons effects on consumption.
- pseudohadamard 8mo agoThe period with highest production is the period of lowest consumption. Not in Australia it isn't.
- looperhacks 8mo agoDon't worry, our minister for economic affairs and energy will make sure that we will stop this solar madness and return to good old clean and green gas /s (she worked and lobbied for the gas sector before joining the current government)
- storus 8mo agoAren't power prices determined by the most expensive power source (i.e. gas) regardless of the prices of all other power sources? Otherwise nuclear/hydroelectric would be sold for pennies, no?
- pjc50 8mo agoGenerally, yes. There's a simple reason why: it stops producers trying to "holdout" in order to drive prices up. Various countries are thinking of changing this to modified auction systems in order to deal with greater and greater disparities between prices.
- wat10000 8mo agoIt's not a constant, because you don't always need the most expensive sources. If you have a sunny afternoon where there's enough solar power to cover demand without gas plants, then you don't have to pay gas rates for that time.
- mono442 8mo agoThat's true and on top of that the EU heavily taxes CO2 emissions which makes the problem even worse. If not for the EU ETS, they could just go back to burning coal for electricity which is cheap and abundant everywhere.
- saltybytes 8mo agoThat's right! It's called "merit order" [0]. Best scenario would be to either decouple the gas price from the price of electricity or get rid of the merit order system altogether. The gas price jacks up the price of kWh by so much that alternative energy providers (wind, hydro, solar,...) are making fortunes! The EU is not interested to change that although Spain and Portugal swolled the penalty for suspending the merit order system. Something I find to be long overdue in other EU countries as well since the elevated price for electricity drives inflation. A lot. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit_order [1] https://www.eurelectric.org/in-detail/electricity_prices_explained/ https://www.eurelectric.org/in-detail/electricity_prices_exp...
- partiallypro 8mo agoNow just imagine if they hadn't killed their nuclear power plants.
- Mashimo 8mo agoNow just imagine if they hadn't fucked up Asse II.
- triceratops 8mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46292341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46292341
- partiallypro 8mo agoand yet the point is still correct
- triceratops 8mo agoBut how long are you going to go on about it? It's done.
- partiallypro 8mo agoConsidering the German economy has been faltering, energy prices have soared, they buy nuclear power from a neighbor, and their shortsightedness emboldened a regional enemy (Russia)... probably until I'm dead. Maybe it will help stop other countries from making the same mistake if people don't let everyone forget.
- triceratops 8mo ago> Maybe it will help stop other countries from making the same mistake Of buying gas from Russia? Don't worry everyone's going solar now. It's cheaper than gas and nuclear.
- frm88 8mo ago
- jmyeet 8mo agoLet me explain why fossil fuels are so politcally sticky in general. If you build oil wells that produce say 1Mbpd (million barrels per day) in oil then, depending on what area of the world you're in, the production declines. In the Permian Basin (fracking in the US), that decline rate is 15-20%. So, in a year you need to build 150-200kbpd of new wells just to maintain your current production. So why does this make fossil sticks politically sticky? Jobs. If you build a wind or solar farm it requires almost no maintenance and has no decline. Windmills need some maintenance. Power lines need some maintenance. Solar panels need to be cleaned. The last one can mostly be automated. But all of this requires a whole lot less work than drilling a bunch of new wells. And why is nuclear so politically problematic? Because of failure modes. And it's super-expensive. HNers like to wave away the worst disasters and pretend with basically no evidence that Chernobyl or Fukushima can't happen again. Fewer than 700 nuclear power plants have ever been built. Not one has been built without government subsidies. Nuclear defenders will focus on operationg costs and brush over capital costs for this reason. As a reminder, Chernobyl's absolute exclusion zone 40 years later is still 1000 square miles and Fukushima's clean up is likely to take a century and the cost will likely exceed $1 trillion. For one incident. I'm sorry but nuclear is not going anywhere. The future is solar.
- LargoLasskhyfv 8mo agoThere is another model to consider, both cost- and operations-wise, when you zoom out. Submarines and Carriers of the US Navy, managed "Hyman Rickover style". They may have had mishaps, but not nuclear related. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover ) Problematic was the handling of their nuclear waste, but that got privatized at least partially, so don't do that. Let it stay military, administered and operated in the same successful "Rickover style". Maybe have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Grid_Corporation_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Grid_Corporation_of_Chin... , too. Also standardize on only a few, small modular models, and fuels. Not making every single one a special snowflake, needing its own special fuel. Their more compact size would also eliminate the bottleneck of forging the containment vessel, enabling shipyards to join in, for example. That's another https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale to consider. Since being military, and well managed, they could also burn higher enriched fuel, utilising more of the precious stuff, instead of turning about 97.5% to 99% into waste. If this is deemed essential for the functioning of a nation, why privatize that? Why not make it military?
- 3012846 8mo agoTrump already talks about the war being done and phones with Putin. Why? Do they discuss that the stupid Europeans are now under the LNG thumb of the US and Putin can have Ukraine and Trump can have Greenland? Any solar energy is welcome, but energy prices are ruining households anyway. Especially those that were told by the government 30 years ago that natural gas is the future. The EU cannot leave energy policy to Trump and Putin and hope for the best. Gas is not only needed for heating. It is needed for producing fertilizer. The whole policy of letting Russia hoard its resources and be the last country with the highly valuable raw material for the chemical industry is insane. Especially for those countries that fear Russia.
- tdrz 8mo agoWe absolutely need more investment in renewables and proven nuclear. But it is not only about this, more high-voltage inter-connections are needed. My understanding is that there is an EU initiative on this, just can't find the source right now. Regarding nuclear, how much money did the ITER member states dump into something that is always 10 years away? That money could go into solar/batteries or fusion.