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That's a terrible argument on the face of it. "They can't make any energy, but also they make so much energy they can't use it all". I actually live in Denmark

That's a terrible argument on the face of it. "They can't make any energy, but also they make so much energy they can't use it all". I actually live in Denmark, and we can produce solar energy just fine. My dad installed rooftop solar 10 years ago, and that thing has 90% of his electricity usage since then. It's still producing at around 85% capacity too.

littlestymaar 6mo ago
> that thing has 90% of his electricity usage How is that supposed to work with cloudy days with barely 7 hours of daylight in winter?
- detourdog 6mo ago
  In New England it works fine and we project 3 hours of production during the winter months. Not sure what Denmark’s latitude is, but 7 hours of production is not needed.
  - littlestymaar 6mo ago
    New England is Spain in terms of latitude. Americans tend to forget how far north Europe is compared to the US.
    - t-writescode 6mo ago
      Great Britain, even more North, has viable solar on its Southern edge.
      - littlestymaar 6mo ago
        As a complementary source of energy, yes, especially in summer (because the flip side of being north is that your summer days last longer). But in winter, you'll have something like 2-5% load factor on your solar panels…
    - 2000UltraDeluxe 6mo ago
      We have solar in Finland as well, like everyone else. Yes, it's useless in winter. Yes, the expansion has slowed down, because there is no storage and limited export options. The Nordic power market is a mess, and it's not because solar doesn't work in winter but because the grid needs massive investments on all levels and nobody wants to be left holding the bill for it. Electrification? Sure, I'll buy an EV when the _local_ grid operator makes sure my lights don't flicker when the neighbor uses an angle grinder. The last update was that they plan to replace the old transformer station from the 60's "when it breaks". Local generation? Can't get rid of the excess generation if I wanted to. Is Denmark's power grid expansion still geared at selling Swedish electricity to the Germans? Sweden? No internal transfer capacity so their consumers have constant high prices while power is exported cheaply. Norway? Geo-blocked by Sweden.
      - leonidasrup 6mo ago
        Solar power in Finland is really not important. Data from 2025. Nuclear 32 TWh, Wind 22 TWh, Hydro 12 TWh, Solar 1 TWh. https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/finland https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/finland
        2000UltraDeluxe 6mo ago
        Indeed, and large parts of the reason has nothing to do with geography. The same applies to Denmark and the rest of the Nordics. Obviously solar will be decreasingly useful as you get further to the pole, but the Nordics aren't worse off than Alaska or Canada in that regard, and both do solar to some extent AFAIK.
        leonidasrup 6mo ago
        It has lot to do with geographic latitude and weather patterns. The amount of electric output per amount solar installed strongly affects the profitability of solar installation (if you don't count of government subsidies). You get the following output on average each year Denmark 1000 kWh/kWp South Germany 1200 kWh/kWp South Spain 1700 kWh/kWp Egypt up to 2000 kWh/kWp
- t-writescode 6mo ago
  Solar has always been a part of a wholistic strategy. We’ve known this ever since the sun went down at night and we had to compensate for it.
  - logifail 6mo ago
    > strategy Umm, so we still have to build enough traditional (and, ideally, dispatchable) generation capacity to make sure we can cover our electricity needs during those periods in winter where it's very cloudy and it's not windy? eg Jan 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/jan/22/weather-bomb-expected-to-cause-cut-in-uk-energy-prices https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/jan/22/weather-bomb-e... "Cloudy and still weather has caused Great Britain’s renewable energy output to fall to near zero this week" "Britain’s wind power output fell to just above zero on Wednesday, which, combined with the cold, dark weather, caused the market price for electricity to climb to almost £250 per megawatt-hour at auction, or almost seven times the average price before the pandemic" "The sudden drop-off in renewable energy due to dull windless winter weather, known as dunkelflaute in German, has also forced the system operator to pay gas power stations more than £500/MWh to run on Wednesday evening when household demand is expected to reach its peak. The weather conditions – the third dunkelflaute of the winter so far – left Britain’s electricity grid reliant on gas-fired power stations. They accounted for more than 70% of power generation at points on Wednesday."
  - littlestymaar 6mo ago
    True, but then why claim unrealistic figures like op and their "90% of his electricity usage"…
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
- Dylan16807 6mo ago
  Those days add to the 10%. Is that not obvious?
  - littlestymaar 6mo ago
    How do you only consume 10% of your total consumption in 1/3 of the years? Mining bitcoin in summer yo drive total consumption up?
    - Dylan16807 6mo ago
      Are you saying it's cloudy for four months straight? And the panels are still making power during the winter. A detailed chart would be nice but a good starting point to imagine is 60-70 days that average 50% solar power and the rest of the year is full solar power minus a couple particularly bad days. Edit: In winter, in denmark, the amount of sunlight you get per square meter of flat ground is absolutely awful. But the amount of sunlight you can catch on a highly tilted solar panel is still pretty good, about half of the average output. So if you space them properly and overbuild based on the average, the 90% number isn't crazy.
      - littlestymaar 6mo ago
        > Are you saying it's cloudy for four months straight? No. But it's cloudy most of the time for four month straight (in average there's only 200 hours of sun between November and February in Copenhagen. Yes, you read it right, that's not even 2 hours per day in average!). > A detailed chart would be nice but a good starting point to imagine is 60-70 days that average 50% solar power and the rest of the year is full solar power minus a couple particularly bad days That's an insane assumption! An average of 50% solar power during the day is the higher bound of what you can expect in the middle of the Nevada desert! (Because you know, the sun rises and falls during the day, it's never going to give the full power during daytime). And because there's night half of the time in average, even in Nevada you end up with load factors around 25%! (Go check the figures!) In winter in Danemark, the situation is obviously far worse! A 2-5% load factor is to be expected depending on the weather. (Just check the live data: we're in April, it's 11am and solar panels are delivering just 10% of their power right now https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK1/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK1/live/fifteen... ) > the 90% number isn't crazy. If this number doesn't sounds crazy to you, it's just because you're completely off in terms of orders of magnitude involved. 90% is likely achievable in southern US with great effort, lots of storage for night times and significant over-paneling, but it's pure science fiction in Denmark.

littlestymaar 6mo ago

> that thing has 90% of his electricity usage How is that supposed to work with cloudy days with barely 7 hours of daylight in winter?

detourdog 6mo ago
In New England it works fine and we project 3 hours of production during the winter months. Not sure what Denmark’s latitude is, but 7 hours of production is not needed.
- littlestymaar 6mo ago
  New England is Spain in terms of latitude. Americans tend to forget how far north Europe is compared to the US.
  - t-writescode 6mo ago
    Great Britain, even more North, has viable solar on its Southern edge.
    - littlestymaar 6mo ago
      As a complementary source of energy, yes, especially in summer (because the flip side of being north is that your summer days last longer). But in winter, you'll have something like 2-5% load factor on your solar panels…
  - 2000UltraDeluxe 6mo ago
    We have solar in Finland as well, like everyone else. Yes, it's useless in winter. Yes, the expansion has slowed down, because there is no storage and limited export options. The Nordic power market is a mess, and it's not because solar doesn't work in winter but because the grid needs massive investments on all levels and nobody wants to be left holding the bill for it. Electrification? Sure, I'll buy an EV when the _local_ grid operator makes sure my lights don't flicker when the neighbor uses an angle grinder. The last update was that they plan to replace the old transformer station from the 60's "when it breaks". Local generation? Can't get rid of the excess generation if I wanted to. Is Denmark's power grid expansion still geared at selling Swedish electricity to the Germans? Sweden? No internal transfer capacity so their consumers have constant high prices while power is exported cheaply. Norway? Geo-blocked by Sweden.
    - leonidasrup 6mo ago
      Solar power in Finland is really not important. Data from 2025. Nuclear 32 TWh, Wind 22 TWh, Hydro 12 TWh, Solar 1 TWh. https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/finland https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/finland
      - 2000UltraDeluxe 6mo ago
        Indeed, and large parts of the reason has nothing to do with geography. The same applies to Denmark and the rest of the Nordics. Obviously solar will be decreasingly useful as you get further to the pole, but the Nordics aren't worse off than Alaska or Canada in that regard, and both do solar to some extent AFAIK.
        leonidasrup 6mo ago
        It has lot to do with geographic latitude and weather patterns. The amount of electric output per amount solar installed strongly affects the profitability of solar installation (if you don't count of government subsidies). You get the following output on average each year Denmark 1000 kWh/kWp South Germany 1200 kWh/kWp South Spain 1700 kWh/kWp Egypt up to 2000 kWh/kWp
t-writescode 6mo ago
Solar has always been a part of a wholistic strategy. We’ve known this ever since the sun went down at night and we had to compensate for it.
- logifail 6mo ago
  > strategy Umm, so we still have to build enough traditional (and, ideally, dispatchable) generation capacity to make sure we can cover our electricity needs during those periods in winter where it's very cloudy and it's not windy? eg Jan 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/jan/22/weather-bomb-expected-to-cause-cut-in-uk-energy-prices https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/jan/22/weather-bomb-e... "Cloudy and still weather has caused Great Britain’s renewable energy output to fall to near zero this week" "Britain’s wind power output fell to just above zero on Wednesday, which, combined with the cold, dark weather, caused the market price for electricity to climb to almost £250 per megawatt-hour at auction, or almost seven times the average price before the pandemic" "The sudden drop-off in renewable energy due to dull windless winter weather, known as dunkelflaute in German, has also forced the system operator to pay gas power stations more than £500/MWh to run on Wednesday evening when household demand is expected to reach its peak. The weather conditions – the third dunkelflaute of the winter so far – left Britain’s electricity grid reliant on gas-fired power stations. They accounted for more than 70% of power generation at points on Wednesday."
- littlestymaar 6mo ago
  True, but then why claim unrealistic figures like op and their "90% of his electricity usage"…
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
Dylan16807 6mo ago
Those days add to the 10%. Is that not obvious?
- littlestymaar 6mo ago
  How do you only consume 10% of your total consumption in 1/3 of the years? Mining bitcoin in summer yo drive total consumption up?
  - Dylan16807 6mo ago
    Are you saying it's cloudy for four months straight? And the panels are still making power during the winter. A detailed chart would be nice but a good starting point to imagine is 60-70 days that average 50% solar power and the rest of the year is full solar power minus a couple particularly bad days. Edit: In winter, in denmark, the amount of sunlight you get per square meter of flat ground is absolutely awful. But the amount of sunlight you can catch on a highly tilted solar panel is still pretty good, about half of the average output. So if you space them properly and overbuild based on the average, the 90% number isn't crazy.
    - littlestymaar 6mo ago
      > Are you saying it's cloudy for four months straight? No. But it's cloudy most of the time for four month straight (in average there's only 200 hours of sun between November and February in Copenhagen. Yes, you read it right, that's not even 2 hours per day in average!). > A detailed chart would be nice but a good starting point to imagine is 60-70 days that average 50% solar power and the rest of the year is full solar power minus a couple particularly bad days That's an insane assumption! An average of 50% solar power during the day is the higher bound of what you can expect in the middle of the Nevada desert! (Because you know, the sun rises and falls during the day, it's never going to give the full power during daytime). And because there's night half of the time in average, even in Nevada you end up with load factors around 25%! (Go check the figures!) In winter in Danemark, the situation is obviously far worse! A 2-5% load factor is to be expected depending on the weather. (Just check the live data: we're in April, it's 11am and solar panels are delivering just 10% of their power right now https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK1/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK1/live/fifteen... ) > the 90% number isn't crazy. If this number doesn't sounds crazy to you, it's just because you're completely off in terms of orders of magnitude involved. 90% is likely achievable in southern US with great effort, lots of storage for night times and significant over-paneling, but it's pure science fiction in Denmark.