For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

Do you have any idea how enormous the electricity consumption of our industry is where 24/7 production just is going on and on? Take a look here: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

If I eyeball the electricity consumption correctly, the lowest consumption was like 50 GW at 3 am in the morning and the highest was 60GW (+20%) at 1pm.

Our freakin grid is NOT capable of managing an additional load for EVs as of today or any time soon. We cannot produce enough electricity to move gasoline driven cars to EV because we right now barely manage to keep or industry alive and geothermal heatpumps and whatnot will strain it further. So regarding 1) its BULLSH*T its a massive problem.

2) Where do you live that you believe Germany can store electricity in hydro? Why do you believe there is demand shaping when we literally need a constantly high load (see 1)???

3) Yes, I understand. Easy peasy. If i get a battery for my solar panels, the investment costs are effectively above 30cents/kWh which is bogus. Yes, you can just turn off that aluminium smelter or chemical plant running a continuous process.

You clearly have never been close to an industry complex, worked in anything remotely related to “Germany’s industrial backbone”. It’s ideological wishful thinking.

Come on, you can make silicon monocrystalline products without pollution with appropriate controls, it's no different from the computer chip production process. See CHIPS act?

China doesn't have a big natural gas / crude oil sector trying to block development of alternatives to their products, that's the difference.

> The economics of renewables are hard to beat until night falls and the wind stops blowing, at which point the cost jumps to $infinity/MWh

I can understand why you might think that. But there is one place on the planet that's done the renewable transition now. And it proves you wrong.

Let me introduce the state of South Australia. It's an advanced OECD economy, situated at the base end of Australia so far from anywhere it has only 1 transmission line connecting to a neighbouring state, and it's renowned for going down. Unusually for Australia, South Australia also has no coal or gas, and is famous for wild storms taking down kilometres of it's 100kv power lines.

It's currently running at 80% renewables:

https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-hits-stunning-ne...

No, the power does no go off at night.

The transition was expensive. SA already had the most expensive electricity in Australia, and during the transition prices did go up for years. But at 80% the transition is almost over (although they need to build more storage), and the price of electricity in SA has been dropping. In fact it's dropped below the pre-transition price, so it's often below the rest of Australia's coal fired generation:

https://www.aemc.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-11/sa_fact_...

With that example to follow, the rest of the Australian states are gritting their teeth and following South Australia's lead. Teeth gritting is required because we are predicting a 50% jump in electricity prices, during the transition. It's already starting to bite: https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/power-bills-to-rise-by-... . But that price hike only lasted 5 years in SA, and the light at the end of the tunnel is lower prices than we have now.

Another recent example is Myanmar. Started off as civil disobedience and protests but the military shot them up and it's now a civil war. Certainly the population would be better off had it not initially been a one-sided fight?

People who protest the war in Russia get arrested not shot because that's all it takes to suppress them. This is an argument against your point, not for it. Nor does it mean that Russia wouldn't apply harder measures elsewhere, if they thought it necessary.

Russians aren't referred to as orcs, only their soldiers.

With no behind-the-meter solar, the peak for T&D is during midday.

With behind-the-meter solar, this peak is capped, and if the local solar is allowed to power the rest of the distribution nod with net metering, then that means less transmission too.

T&D must be sized for the peak, so lots of residential solar means a lower peak and lower T&D costs.

Of course, this goes agains the utility narrative, because they can't admit that or else their regulators might have to allow such residential net metering. Instead, utilities try to frame the argument that solar customers are taking away from their neighbors or somehow not paying their fair share.

But when evaluated as a whole system, using massive distributed solar along with utility scale is far cheaper than building it all utility scale due to the T&D savings.