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Germany had higher solar production per capita then China, in 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_po

Germany had higher solar production per capita then China, in 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country We will see how the battery costs change over years, currently they are still very expensive for quantities necessary for large grid stabilization in Europe. But they start to make economic sense in regions with lot of sun and high electricity costs. https://www.electrotech-revolution.com/p/harnessing-the-sun-the-solar-battery https://www.electrotech-revolution.com/p/harnessing-the-sun-... In China politicians give the way and whoever is in the way, is removed. It an error of Europe to make itself depend from China. The political system China is the same as in Russia and we can see the result of such dependancy.

Kon5ole 13d ago
>currently they are still very expensive for quantities necessary for large grid stabilization in Europe. They are at about 100 euros per KWh now, which is small potatoes for the hyperscalers building AI-centers for 10s of billions of euros. How about we demand that any data center being built in Europe needs to provide at least 8 hours of battery backup for max power draw? Most of the time that battery backup will not be needed, and can then benefit the grid. Google is building multiple 1GW data centers in europe, 8 GWh of battery backup at each of those would stabilize the grid nicely! >The political system China is the same as in Russia and we can see the result of such dependancy. Here I agree 100%. We are fortunate that Xi seems relatively benign for a despot but we should not count on that fortune lasting indefinitely. It's imperative that we in the west start making our own solar panels and batteries as quickly as possible.
- leonidasrup 12d ago
  You are right about about nuclear weapons, every large nuclear civilian reactor produces multiple bombs worth of plutonium every year, spread within the spend nuclear nuclear fuel. This reactor-grade plutonium has miserable properties for bomb making, but in theory could be used to make a bomb (U.S. experimented with concept and created few bombs from reactor-grade plutonium). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor_grade_plutonium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor_grade_plutonium This also the reason why every civilian nuclear reactor in non-nuclear weapon states is under constant monitoring of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and all spend nuclear fuel is under constant monitoring. Every gram of special nuclear material is accounted. Any irregularities detected by IAEA are then handled by United Nations Security Council, with possible diplomatic sanctions or military actions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAEA_safeguards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAEA_safeguards Outside of few experiments, civilian power reactors are not used for plutonium production for use in weapons, because to get high quality weapon grade plutonium you have to frequently put nuclear fuel into reactor and out of reactor (every few weeks). This increases down-time and makes electric production more expensive. Also civilian nuclear reactor use high temperature and high pressure steam, this makes change of nuclear fuel under power a risky business. Plutonium for weapons is produced in smaller, cheaper production reactors. They run at much lower thermal power and are optimized for frequent cycling of nuclear fuel and easy handling of spend nuclear fuel. Because any spend nuclear fuel could be in theory be used to make a nuclear bomb, U.S. in general doesn't allow countries to develop spend nuclear fuel reprocessing capabilities, or strongly tries to persuaded them not to develop such capabilities. This was a corner stone of U.S. foreign policy for many decades and also the reason why U.S. stopped development of fast-neutron breeder reactors under Carter (they didn't want other countries to pursue this technology). The long-term U.S. policy for decades was to prevent any kind civilian nuclear power production in developing countries, as written in Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978. "The United States shall endeavor to cooperate with other nations, international institutions, and private organizations in establishing programs to assist in the development of non-nuclear energy resources, to cooperate with both developing and industrialized nations in protecting the international environment from contamination arising from both nuclear and non-nuclear energy activities, and shall seek to cooperate with and aid developing countries in meeting their energy needs through the development of such resources and the application of non-nuclear technologies consistent with the economic factors, the material resources of those countries, and environmental protection." Developing countries have been prevented from exploring nuclear power generation but they were free to explore coal power generation. As a side-note: The are many countries that developed nuclear weapons before building nuclear power plants, there are countries (Israel, North Korea) which have nuclear weapons today and didn't deliver a single Joule of electricity from nuclear reactor to the electric grid.
- leonidasrup 12d ago
  With Capex of $125/kWh for BESS, 8 GWh of battery backup would cost about a bilion USD. https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/how-cheap-is-battery-storage/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/how-cheap-is-batter... At this scale there just few projects in the pipeline: https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/bw-ess-breaks-ground-1-gw57-gwh-battery-storage-project-germany.html https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/bw-e... https://reglobal.org/greenvolt-group-secures-financing-for-1-6-gwh-bess-projects-in-poland/ https://reglobal.org/greenvolt-group-secures-financing-for-1... Also 1 GWh of BESS is better used as batteries in 10,000 - 15,000 EVs.
  - Kon5ole 12d ago
    >With Capex of $125/kWh for BESS, 8 GWh of battery backup would cost about a bilion USD. [..] At this scale there just few projects in the pipeline Worth noting there is that Google (alone, and they are one of several) are spending around 200 billion on datacenters this year, and that the 125/kWh figure is a year old and calculated from BESS-projects that need to pay for a lot of things the datacenter already pays for. A datacenter already needs infrastructure to handle a 1GW load, which means it can also deliver 1GW back to the grid. Trucks, cranes, housing, roads and everything else that a BESS-project has to finance separately are already paid for by the datacenter itself. So the "extra cost" would likely be close to the raw cost of the actual battery capacity. It's therefore reasonable to assume that Google & co would pay a lot less than a billion for 8 hours of runtime on batteries. And they are already spending so much that even the billion is no problem. For the communities who will give up 10-15% of the nations electricity production per center, it seems like a sensible demand. Google will still grab their cheap electricity but a 8GWh battery would go a very long way to remove the biggest problems with solar and wind, which can then be built out much more aggressively.

Kon5ole 13d ago

>currently they are still very expensive for quantities necessary for large grid stabilization in Europe. They are at about 100 euros per KWh now, which is small potatoes for the hyperscalers building AI-centers for 10s of billions of euros. How about we demand that any data center being built in Europe needs to provide at least 8 hours of battery backup for max power draw? Most of the time that battery backup will not be needed, and can then benefit the grid. Google is building multiple 1GW data centers in europe, 8 GWh of battery backup at each of those would stabilize the grid nicely! >The political system China is the same as in Russia and we can see the result of such dependancy. Here I agree 100%. We are fortunate that Xi seems relatively benign for a despot but we should not count on that fortune lasting indefinitely. It's imperative that we in the west start making our own solar panels and batteries as quickly as possible.

leonidasrup 12d ago
You are right about about nuclear weapons, every large nuclear civilian reactor produces multiple bombs worth of plutonium every year, spread within the spend nuclear nuclear fuel. This reactor-grade plutonium has miserable properties for bomb making, but in theory could be used to make a bomb (U.S. experimented with concept and created few bombs from reactor-grade plutonium). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor_grade_plutonium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor_grade_plutonium This also the reason why every civilian nuclear reactor in non-nuclear weapon states is under constant monitoring of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and all spend nuclear fuel is under constant monitoring. Every gram of special nuclear material is accounted. Any irregularities detected by IAEA are then handled by United Nations Security Council, with possible diplomatic sanctions or military actions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAEA_safeguards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAEA_safeguards Outside of few experiments, civilian power reactors are not used for plutonium production for use in weapons, because to get high quality weapon grade plutonium you have to frequently put nuclear fuel into reactor and out of reactor (every few weeks). This increases down-time and makes electric production more expensive. Also civilian nuclear reactor use high temperature and high pressure steam, this makes change of nuclear fuel under power a risky business. Plutonium for weapons is produced in smaller, cheaper production reactors. They run at much lower thermal power and are optimized for frequent cycling of nuclear fuel and easy handling of spend nuclear fuel. Because any spend nuclear fuel could be in theory be used to make a nuclear bomb, U.S. in general doesn't allow countries to develop spend nuclear fuel reprocessing capabilities, or strongly tries to persuaded them not to develop such capabilities. This was a corner stone of U.S. foreign policy for many decades and also the reason why U.S. stopped development of fast-neutron breeder reactors under Carter (they didn't want other countries to pursue this technology). The long-term U.S. policy for decades was to prevent any kind civilian nuclear power production in developing countries, as written in Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978. "The United States shall endeavor to cooperate with other nations, international institutions, and private organizations in establishing programs to assist in the development of non-nuclear energy resources, to cooperate with both developing and industrialized nations in protecting the international environment from contamination arising from both nuclear and non-nuclear energy activities, and shall seek to cooperate with and aid developing countries in meeting their energy needs through the development of such resources and the application of non-nuclear technologies consistent with the economic factors, the material resources of those countries, and environmental protection." Developing countries have been prevented from exploring nuclear power generation but they were free to explore coal power generation. As a side-note: The are many countries that developed nuclear weapons before building nuclear power plants, there are countries (Israel, North Korea) which have nuclear weapons today and didn't deliver a single Joule of electricity from nuclear reactor to the electric grid.
leonidasrup 12d ago
With Capex of $125/kWh for BESS, 8 GWh of battery backup would cost about a bilion USD. https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/how-cheap-is-battery-storage/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/how-cheap-is-batter... At this scale there just few projects in the pipeline: https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/bw-ess-breaks-ground-1-gw57-gwh-battery-storage-project-germany.html https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/bw-e... https://reglobal.org/greenvolt-group-secures-financing-for-1-6-gwh-bess-projects-in-poland/ https://reglobal.org/greenvolt-group-secures-financing-for-1... Also 1 GWh of BESS is better used as batteries in 10,000 - 15,000 EVs.
- Kon5ole 12d ago
  >With Capex of $125/kWh for BESS, 8 GWh of battery backup would cost about a bilion USD. [..] At this scale there just few projects in the pipeline Worth noting there is that Google (alone, and they are one of several) are spending around 200 billion on datacenters this year, and that the 125/kWh figure is a year old and calculated from BESS-projects that need to pay for a lot of things the datacenter already pays for. A datacenter already needs infrastructure to handle a 1GW load, which means it can also deliver 1GW back to the grid. Trucks, cranes, housing, roads and everything else that a BESS-project has to finance separately are already paid for by the datacenter itself. So the "extra cost" would likely be close to the raw cost of the actual battery capacity. It's therefore reasonable to assume that Google & co would pay a lot less than a billion for 8 hours of runtime on batteries. And they are already spending so much that even the billion is no problem. For the communities who will give up 10-15% of the nations electricity production per center, it seems like a sensible demand. Google will still grab their cheap electricity but a 8GWh battery would go a very long way to remove the biggest problems with solar and wind, which can then be built out much more aggressively.