6 ms·

This seems highly doubtful. If solar saves money, why does Germany (with a lot of solar) have higher rather than lower energy prices?

by cubefox 5mo ago

Tade0 5mo ago
Partly because they still use coal, which is heavily taxed under the emissions trading scheme and partly because of the way electricity auctions work in most of Europe, namely every participant sells at the price offered by the highest bidder. Spain opted out of this system and is now enjoying cheap wholesale electricity, which is fueling an industrial revival.
- cubefox 5mo ago
  > Partly because they still use coal, which is heavily taxed under the emissions trading scheme ... and solar is heavily subsidized, which could outweigh this effect. So this doesn't explain the high energy prices. > partly because of the way electricity auctions work in most of Europe, namely every participant sells at the price offered by the highest bidder. This doesn't explain why Germany has so high electricity prices.
  - ben_w 5mo ago
    > This doesn't explain why Germany has so high electricity prices. It's the main thing which does. Say you have two energy sources, Alice Electric can deliver at €0.03/kWh but only up to 10% of your demand, while Bob Energy can deliver 200% of your demand but all units will cost €0.5/kWh. The net result of the electricity auction, as described, is that the consumers pay Alice and Bob €0.5/kWh each, which gives Alice a €0.47/kWh profit margin and therefore lot of money to expand operations if she wants to, but until she can actually supply 100% of demand, it's priced by what Bob charges.
    - cubefox 5mo ago
      This doesn't explain why energy costs are higher in Germany. You have to replace the words "Alice" and "Bob" with something that is relevant to the topic at hand.
      - ben_w 5mo ago
        Bob is the marginal generator: the most expensive power plant that still has to run to satisfy demand in a given hour (or whatever the auction period is, I assume it's per hour). Bob is not one single concrete thing, it's the abstract concept, anthropomorphised. Germany's energy is expensive because the marginal generator is so expensive.
        cubefox 5mo ago
        The marginal generator is likely so expensive because solar was used to replace cost effective nuclear and coal plants.
        ben_w 5mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity#/media/File:20201019_Levelized_Cost_of_Energy_(LCOE,_Lazard)_-_renewable_energy.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity#...
        cubefox 5mo ago
        That's nonsense. Solar during overcast days is extremely and at night infinitely expensive by itself. You can't just take some average, you have to take expensive gas or battery backups into account when comparing to a stable energy source like nuclear or coal which doesn't need these backups.
        ben_w 5mo ago
        > That's nonsense. It's one of the industry standard metrics. > Solar during overcast days is extremely and at night infinitely expensive by itself. 1. Note pink line's name: https://assets.bbhub.io/image/v1/resize?width=auto&type=webp&url=https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/44/LCOE-11.png https://assets.bbhub.io/image/v1/resize?width=auto&type=webp... (from article: https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/battery-storage-costs-hit-record-lows-as-costs-of-other-clean-power-technologies-increased-bloombergnef/ https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/battery-storage...) 2. Literally everybody knows this. 2006 wants their memes back. Why do people bring this up without realising that demand is lower at night, with shops and factories being closed etc.? Even the duck curve thing is solved with just 1-2 hours of storage. A quick DDG search says that other nearby countries with higher % of specifically solar (e.g. Luxembourg, Hungary, Netherlands), have lower consumer electricity prices than Germany, ergo solar itself isn't what's causing the high consumer prices in Germany. And it's not like batteries are even expensive any more, at least not when bought in bulk. > You can't just take some average, Sure you can. Consider a consumer with a constant demand (to make the maths easier, still works if not): Option 1: use only the thing which works 24/7, but costs €1/kWh Option 2: use the thing which works 50% of the time and while working costs €0.05/kWh, and the rest of the time go back to option 1. Option 1 costs €24/day Option 2 costs (50% * €1/kWh * 24h) + (50% * €0.05/kWh * 24h) = €12.6/day, or €0.525/kWh. (PV is of course weirder than that, because it's shaped more like "Over the next 35 years it will emit X joules for your initial investment of Y money", so you're pre-paying for something, and also it's immune to any inflation, and there's a long side-discussion about financing here I'll skip as you seem to be refusing to accept even the fundamentals). > stable energy source like nuclear or coal which doesn't need these backups. They absolutely do need backups, their downtime is higher than you may expect. This is, in fact, why even coal rich countries don't only use coal. Why nuclear-happy France doesn't only use nuclear. Etc. Dismissing the cost benefits of renewables "because they need some kind of backup" is like dismissing the travel benefits of planes because the airspace around them gets closed every night, or like refusing to use a bike ever because sometimes you need to buy a new fridge and that won't fit on a bike trailer. Or dismissing oil because of the two stupid wars currently going on, and how much they impact oil.
Garlef 5mo ago
Er... No? Electricity prices in Germany are lower than last year. https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gaspreis-erneuerbare-energien-ausbau https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gas...
- cubefox 5mo ago
  I mean higher than in other countries with less solar energy, like France, which has mostly nuclear.
  - IAmBroom 5mo ago
    The "saves $" value is based on fossil fuels, not nuclear.
    - cubefox 5mo ago
      "Saving money" in an absolute sense is very different from "saving money compared to fossil fuels". The headline talks about the former.
  - Garlef 5mo ago
    This seems to be a good question for an the LLM of you choice. I've asked one and after some search: Wholesale prices: - Germany ~€0.089/kWh - Factor 2.94 to consumer Price - France ~€0.061/kWh - Factor 2.92 to consumer price - Spain. ~€0.065/kWh - Factor 2.82 to consumer price The reason seems to be that this price is driven by the tech that is used to fill the gaps what demand is high. And coal/gas make this expensive. - Germany needs a lot of coal/gas at some times - France has nuclear so less coal/gas is needed - Spain just has a lot of renewables and needs way less coal/gas to compensate So France is better off because of nuclear... But Spain is doing nearly as well with renewables.
Analemma_ 5mo ago
The price of electricity is set by the marginal cost of the most expensive individual source - if your grid is 80% solar, 20% coal, the price you pay is the price of coal, because the solar providers can increase their prices to just below that of coal. Obviously I'm simplifying somewhat, but that's the general dynamic. This is "by design" in the sense that it offers big subsidies to more solar generation to come online, but you won't see the biggest price cuts until the last expensive sources are pushed off the grid entirely. Because Germany's marginal source is coal, they pay way more than countries whose marginal source is gas or nuclear.
- cubefox 5mo ago
  Germany replaced a lot of its nuclear energy with solar. If this makes energy more expensive, solar is doing the opposite of saving money.
triceratops 5mo ago
Did you consider that Germany has solar because of high energy prices?
- cubefox 5mo ago
  Do you have any evidence that this is true?
  - triceratops 5mo ago
    Logic. If energy is already cheap, building out any new power source is unnecessary. Once you've determined you need new electricity generation, the cheapest source tends to get built. Right now that's solar; that's an objective fact.
    - cubefox 5mo ago
      That's not how it went through. The Green party in Germany heavily pushed against nuclear energy and coal energy and for solar energy. Now nuclear has been phased out and solar is here. Energy prices have gone up. Possibly because solar is extremely expensive during the night or on overcast days, so expensive gas power plants have to be used during that time. The old nuclear and coal plants would have been cheaper than replacing them with solar and gas.
      - triceratops 5mo ago
        > Now nuclear has been phased out You can't really blame solar for phasing out nuclear. That was a political decision. Uranium mostly comes from Russia and China too, so it's not like it was geopolitically "safer" than gas. > The old nuclear and coal plants would have been cheaper than replacing them with solar and gas. Gas's share of electricity generation has not meaningfully changed in Germany since 2015. [1] It's ranged from 80 to 95 TWh. Last year it was 82 TWh. That data also shows coal's share of generation reducing since 2022. If coal is really cheaper than solar and wind, why is Germany using less of it? > Possibly because solar is extremely expensive during the night or on overcast days Today gas power plants cover the shortage. As I've already showed you, Germany isn't using meaningfully more gas than it used to even during nuclear's heyday (which was in 2006, when nuclear generated 167 TWh and 74.6TWh came from gas). Solar and batteries are already cheaper than gas in sunny climes. [2] It's only a matter of time before they're the cheapest source of nighttime power in Germany. You're operating on information from 3 years ago and haven't changed your mind since then. 1. https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?entity=Germany https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?ent... 2. https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/Ember-24-Hour-Solar-Electricity-June-2025-6.pdf https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/Ember-24-Hour-S...

This seems highly doubtful. If solar saves money, why does Germany (with a lot of solar) have higher rather than lower energy prices?

by cubefox 5mo ago

This seems highly doubtful. If solar saves money, why does Germany (with a lot of solar) have higher rather than lower energy prices?

Tade0 5mo ago

Partly because they still use coal, which is heavily taxed under the emissions trading scheme and partly because of the way electricity auctions work in most of Europe, namely every participant sells at the price offered by the highest bidder. Spain opted out of this system and is now enjoying cheap wholesale electricity, which is fueling an industrial revival.

cubefox 5mo ago
> Partly because they still use coal, which is heavily taxed under the emissions trading scheme ... and solar is heavily subsidized, which could outweigh this effect. So this doesn't explain the high energy prices. > partly because of the way electricity auctions work in most of Europe, namely every participant sells at the price offered by the highest bidder. This doesn't explain why Germany has so high electricity prices.
- ben_w 5mo ago
  > This doesn't explain why Germany has so high electricity prices. It's the main thing which does. Say you have two energy sources, Alice Electric can deliver at €0.03/kWh but only up to 10% of your demand, while Bob Energy can deliver 200% of your demand but all units will cost €0.5/kWh. The net result of the electricity auction, as described, is that the consumers pay Alice and Bob €0.5/kWh each, which gives Alice a €0.47/kWh profit margin and therefore lot of money to expand operations if she wants to, but until she can actually supply 100% of demand, it's priced by what Bob charges.
  - cubefox 5mo ago
    This doesn't explain why energy costs are higher in Germany. You have to replace the words "Alice" and "Bob" with something that is relevant to the topic at hand.
    - ben_w 5mo ago
      Bob is the marginal generator: the most expensive power plant that still has to run to satisfy demand in a given hour (or whatever the auction period is, I assume it's per hour). Bob is not one single concrete thing, it's the abstract concept, anthropomorphised. Germany's energy is expensive because the marginal generator is so expensive.
      - cubefox 5mo ago
        The marginal generator is likely so expensive because solar was used to replace cost effective nuclear and coal plants.
        ben_w 5mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity#/media/File:20201019_Levelized_Cost_of_Energy_(LCOE,_Lazard)_-_renewable_energy.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity#...
        cubefox 5mo ago
        That's nonsense. Solar during overcast days is extremely and at night infinitely expensive by itself. You can't just take some average, you have to take expensive gas or battery backups into account when comparing to a stable energy source like nuclear or coal which doesn't need these backups.
        ben_w 5mo ago
        > That's nonsense. It's one of the industry standard metrics. > Solar during overcast days is extremely and at night infinitely expensive by itself. 1. Note pink line's name: https://assets.bbhub.io/image/v1/resize?width=auto&type=webp&url=https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/44/LCOE-11.png https://assets.bbhub.io/image/v1/resize?width=auto&type=webp... (from article: https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/battery-storage-costs-hit-record-lows-as-costs-of-other-clean-power-technologies-increased-bloombergnef/ https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/battery-storage...) 2. Literally everybody knows this. 2006 wants their memes back. Why do people bring this up without realising that demand is lower at night, with shops and factories being closed etc.? Even the duck curve thing is solved with just 1-2 hours of storage. A quick DDG search says that other nearby countries with higher % of specifically solar (e.g. Luxembourg, Hungary, Netherlands), have lower consumer electricity prices than Germany, ergo solar itself isn't what's causing the high consumer prices in Germany. And it's not like batteries are even expensive any more, at least not when bought in bulk. > You can't just take some average, Sure you can. Consider a consumer with a constant demand (to make the maths easier, still works if not): Option 1: use only the thing which works 24/7, but costs €1/kWh Option 2: use the thing which works 50% of the time and while working costs €0.05/kWh, and the rest of the time go back to option 1. Option 1 costs €24/day Option 2 costs (50% * €1/kWh * 24h) + (50% * €0.05/kWh * 24h) = €12.6/day, or €0.525/kWh. (PV is of course weirder than that, because it's shaped more like "Over the next 35 years it will emit X joules for your initial investment of Y money", so you're pre-paying for something, and also it's immune to any inflation, and there's a long side-discussion about financing here I'll skip as you seem to be refusing to accept even the fundamentals). > stable energy source like nuclear or coal which doesn't need these backups. They absolutely do need backups, their downtime is higher than you may expect. This is, in fact, why even coal rich countries don't only use coal. Why nuclear-happy France doesn't only use nuclear. Etc. Dismissing the cost benefits of renewables "because they need some kind of backup" is like dismissing the travel benefits of planes because the airspace around them gets closed every night, or like refusing to use a bike ever because sometimes you need to buy a new fridge and that won't fit on a bike trailer. Or dismissing oil because of the two stupid wars currently going on, and how much they impact oil.

Garlef 5mo ago

Er... No? Electricity prices in Germany are lower than last year. https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gaspreis-erneuerbare-energien-ausbau https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gas...

cubefox 5mo ago
I mean higher than in other countries with less solar energy, like France, which has mostly nuclear.
- IAmBroom 5mo ago
  The "saves $" value is based on fossil fuels, not nuclear.
  - cubefox 5mo ago
    "Saving money" in an absolute sense is very different from "saving money compared to fossil fuels". The headline talks about the former.
- Garlef 5mo ago
  This seems to be a good question for an the LLM of you choice. I've asked one and after some search: Wholesale prices: - Germany ~€0.089/kWh - Factor 2.94 to consumer Price - France ~€0.061/kWh - Factor 2.92 to consumer price - Spain. ~€0.065/kWh - Factor 2.82 to consumer price The reason seems to be that this price is driven by the tech that is used to fill the gaps what demand is high. And coal/gas make this expensive. - Germany needs a lot of coal/gas at some times - France has nuclear so less coal/gas is needed - Spain just has a lot of renewables and needs way less coal/gas to compensate So France is better off because of nuclear... But Spain is doing nearly as well with renewables.

Analemma_ 5mo ago

The price of electricity is set by the marginal cost of the most expensive individual source - if your grid is 80% solar, 20% coal, the price you pay is the price of coal, because the solar providers can increase their prices to just below that of coal. Obviously I'm simplifying somewhat, but that's the general dynamic. This is "by design" in the sense that it offers big subsidies to more solar generation to come online, but you won't see the biggest price cuts until the last expensive sources are pushed off the grid entirely. Because Germany's marginal source is coal, they pay way more than countries whose marginal source is gas or nuclear.

cubefox 5mo ago
Germany replaced a lot of its nuclear energy with solar. If this makes energy more expensive, solar is doing the opposite of saving money.

triceratops 5mo ago

Did you consider that Germany has solar because of high energy prices?

cubefox 5mo ago
Do you have any evidence that this is true?
- triceratops 5mo ago
  Logic. If energy is already cheap, building out any new power source is unnecessary. Once you've determined you need new electricity generation, the cheapest source tends to get built. Right now that's solar; that's an objective fact.
  - cubefox 5mo ago
    That's not how it went through. The Green party in Germany heavily pushed against nuclear energy and coal energy and for solar energy. Now nuclear has been phased out and solar is here. Energy prices have gone up. Possibly because solar is extremely expensive during the night or on overcast days, so expensive gas power plants have to be used during that time. The old nuclear and coal plants would have been cheaper than replacing them with solar and gas.
    - triceratops 5mo ago
      > Now nuclear has been phased out You can't really blame solar for phasing out nuclear. That was a political decision. Uranium mostly comes from Russia and China too, so it's not like it was geopolitically "safer" than gas. > The old nuclear and coal plants would have been cheaper than replacing them with solar and gas. Gas's share of electricity generation has not meaningfully changed in Germany since 2015. [1] It's ranged from 80 to 95 TWh. Last year it was 82 TWh. That data also shows coal's share of generation reducing since 2022. If coal is really cheaper than solar and wind, why is Germany using less of it? > Possibly because solar is extremely expensive during the night or on overcast days Today gas power plants cover the shortage. As I've already showed you, Germany isn't using meaningfully more gas than it used to even during nuclear's heyday (which was in 2006, when nuclear generated 167 TWh and 74.6TWh came from gas). Solar and batteries are already cheaper than gas in sunny climes. [2] It's only a matter of time before they're the cheapest source of nighttime power in Germany. You're operating on information from 3 years ago and haven't changed your mind since then. 1. https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?entity=Germany https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?ent... 2. https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/Ember-24-Hour-Solar-Electricity-June-2025-6.pdf https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/Ember-24-Hour-S...