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In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

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Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#61

Post by lostlogin »

DetectDefect wrote: post #44
adrianN wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panels have warranties of over twenty years now. They pay for themselves much earlier. You probably have to replace the inverter earlier, but that’s not a huge expense. I don’t know anybody who lives in a place where it rains who cleans the panels on their roof.

Oh, okay. Does a warranty cover sweeping snow off your panels and washing them many times throughout the years? I guess if one does not value time, then solar panels could be considered "free" - but this is a bizarre sacrifice.

Why do you think that level of maintenance is needed?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#62

Post by PunchyHamster »

testing22321 wrote: post #4

Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians. Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan. It makes 7.72Mwh per year, worth $1000. Tight valley, tons of snow. We put that on the loan for 8 years, then get $1000 per year free money for 20 years or so. Biggest no brainer of all time. Dad in Victoria Australia just got 1…

We have similar problem with prices being high despise renewable energy being cheap ;/

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#63

Post by munk-a »

boringg wrote: post #50
microtonal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missing from your calculus are the healthcare costs of every person in a country breathing in fumes from electricity plants that burn coal and fumes from cars that burn gasoline. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266675922... (And a gazillion other studies.)

Not supporting OP because I think hes backwards on the matter. However in Canada the electricity that is being burned isn't coal based - so you need to compare the actual grid not some hypothetical grid.

Canada's alternative energy source is very rarely coal (no where near me at least) but a lot of the grid capacity is coming from LNG outside of ON/QC. BC has a bunch of rivers and other water features but has been highly reluctant to build out hydro supply, as an example.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#64

Post by GuB-42 »

munk-a wrote: post #8
testing22321 wrote: post #4

Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians. Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan. It makes 7.72Mwh per year, worth $1000. Tight valley, tons of snow. We put that on the loan for 8 years, then get $1000 per year free money for 20 years or so. Biggest no brainer of all time. Dad in Victoria Australia just got 1…

And that on-roof-solar helps (as it becomes widespread) mitigate the growing need for additional grid capacity. Canada is a big country and, outside the major cities, upgrading grid capacity is quite expensive per capita. It's a win-win in Canada, investing in self-sufficiency while reducing the maintenance burden of infrastructure.

If there is no in-house storage to match, how does it help the grid? It is still needed for cold winter nights, where demand is high and solar panels produce nothing. Hydro can provide the power, but the grid will be running at full load.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#65

Post by DetectDefect »

nehal3m wrote: post #58
DetectDefect wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Strange that in your comment history you're all about the democratization of technology, but you seem to be against solar of all things? Talk about decentralized power!

The only thing strange is trolling comment history instead of rebutting the argument made on its own merit.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#66

Post by WarmWash »

mschuster91 wrote: post #3
mekdoonggi wrote: post #2

Curious if this will eventually change China's calculus with regards to Russia. If Europe is a big customer for Chinese exports, and Russia is antagonizing, it seems like China would have an incentive to put pressure on Russia. It already seems like Russia is positioned to be completely subservient to China in the future.

> If Europe is a big customer for Chinese exports, and Russia is antagonizing, it seems like China would have an incentive to put pressure on Russia. China wants Russia to at least keep the Ukraine war going, if not eventually win the darn thing. Russia winning (or getting away with an armistice that lets them keep Crimea and Donbas) means a precedence China has for a land-grab of its own - obviously Taiwan, but othe…

Donbas is mostly wheat fields, Taiwan is mostly SOTA semiconductor fabs that currently are the sole pillar holding up the AI (and compute in general) zeitgeist.

The global response would not be the same, even remotely. And what would China get from it? A tiny island of rubble and an ego boost, while losing enormous global favor? The cost of that island may well be a few trillion for China, just so they can say they defeated the nationalists.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#67

Post by boringg »

microtonal wrote: post #55
boringg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not supporting OP because I think hes backwards on the matter. However in Canada the electricity that is being burned isn't coal based - so you need to compare the actual grid not some hypothetical grid.

That's a fair point, though I think OP's recommendation to switch to solar is also to people outside Canada and most of the world is still burning fossil fuels to generate electricity.

OP probably shouldn't have been replying to a Canada based question.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#68

Post by rsynnott »

raincole wrote: post #10
mekdoonggi wrote: post #2

Curious if this will eventually change China's calculus with regards to Russia. If Europe is a big customer for Chinese exports, and Russia is antagonizing, it seems like China would have an incentive to put pressure on Russia. It already seems like Russia is positioned to be completely subservient to China in the future.

If Europe were a big customer for Russia energy, it seems like Russia would have an incentive to not antagonize it. Oh, see how well it went.

China is usually seen (I think broadly correctly) as more of a rational actor than Russia. Russia is much more run for the benefit of a weird dictator than run as a country.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#69

Post by [deleted] »

microtonal wrote: post #53
DetectDefect wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

One should definitely think about the children when choosing coal/gasoline vs. full electric. In fact we did and we have an electric car, replaced our gas cooking top by induction, and our gas-based heating by a heat pump. Last time I boarded an airplane was in 2019 I think.

[deleted]

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#70

Post by p0pularopinion »

coredev_ wrote: post #42
nxm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day, the retail cost of electricity in many EU member countries can be two to three times the cost of electricity in the US. Ultimately that’s what matters to consumers and businesses. Also, Trump called out the idiotic decisions by greenies such as shutting down nuclear power plants and make long your industries less competitive as a result.

If this is true, it has nothing to do with solar or wind but rather strange decisions in the past in some countries that they (and their neighbors) pay for now (looking at you Germany).

Nuclear does not cause prices to be lower. Putting that aside, political discourse here in Germany was "interesting" to say the least.

The shift to renewables started off pretty well in the early 2010s before it came to a grinding halt thanks to some wierd debates around the topic. For the past few years, buildout of solar has been remarkably fast, especially considering the slow pace of other projects. In 2025, 16.4 GW of solar power went live.

The biggest issue that drives prices here is the grid. New high voltages transmission lines have faced intense local oppsition, so transmision between North and South is limited, which is problematic given the focus of the north on (offshore) wind and the south on solar PV. Since Germany is a single electricity price zone, the low to negative electricity prices from wind turbines do not reflect the reality of grid capabilities, resulting in significant redispatch costs.

The solution would be obvious. Split Germany into n electicity price zones (with n>1). However, there is a lot of political opposition, specifically from the conservative CDU/CSU against this.

So yeah, Germany is struggling with relatively expensive electrcity prices, complaining about it, but refusing to implement a borderline free solution for it.

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