In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels • Hacker News Board

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#241

Post by youngtaff » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

SamPatt wrote: post #229

embedding-shape wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Definitely a great deal if you own a home, if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however. What kind of selfish point of view is this? Don't you want people to use energy sources that are better for our entire world, even if it costs you like $10 more in taxes per year? Seems like a no brainer deal if you like "the outside" and you want it to still be there. I'm a…

>I'm a renter, been all my life, I'd be happy to pay more in taxes if it means more solar panels for everyone except me. That's because you're rich like most people on HN. Environmental protection is a luxury good. This has been proven time and time again. A great reason to prioritize growth and wealth creation. Poor countries don't make those tradeoffs, they're worried about survival not what percentage of their ene…

> A great reason to prioritize growth and wealth creation. Poor countries don't make those tradeoffs, they're worried about survival not what percentage of their energy usage is renewable.

Tell that to places like Pakistan where solar is allowing people to have cheaper electricity without connecting to the grid

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#242

Post by RationPhantoms » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

kokey wrote: post #47

Every time, over the years, that there has been some kind of headline saying renewables have overtaken fossil fuels, when you look at it a bit more closely there is always a big 'but'. For example, it was compared to coal (not taking into account electricity from gas), or it was for one day, or it was a percentage of new installations, or it excludes winter, includes nuclear etc. This time, however, it looks like it'…

In my opinion, the "but" is still the "hellbrise" considerations brought up in the Decouple podcast. Renewable energy is fantastic but, at grid scale, has to be coupled with sufficient storage: https://www.decouple.media/p/hellbrise

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#243

Post by philipkglass » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

SamPatt wrote: post #229

embedding-shape wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Definitely a great deal if you own a home, if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however. What kind of selfish point of view is this? Don't you want people to use energy sources that are better for our entire world, even if it costs you like $10 more in taxes per year? Seems like a no brainer deal if you like "the outside" and you want it to still be there. I'm a…

>I'm a renter, been all my life, I'd be happy to pay more in taxes if it means more solar panels for everyone except me. That's because you're rich like most people on HN. Environmental protection is a luxury good. This has been proven time and time again. A great reason to prioritize growth and wealth creation. Poor countries don't make those tradeoffs, they're worried about survival not what percentage of their ene…

Solar hardware is so affordable now that it's booming even in poorer countries. The most remarkable recent example is Pakistan, which has seen explosive growth of rooftop solar power, most of it receiving no government subsidies:

Pakistan has imported almost 45 gigawatts worth of solar panels over the last five or six years, which is equal to the total capacity of its electricity grid. Almost 34 gigawatts have come in only in the last couple of years.

It’s a very bottom-up revolution. This is not government deciding this is the route to take. And it’s not being driven by climate concerns, it’s all about the economics. Renewables are out-competing the traditional sources of energy.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/pakistan-solar-boom

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#244

Post by ricardo81 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

patapong wrote: post #228

ricardo81 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been a long standing problem. Ideas crop up like generating hydrogen with the curtailed energy or maybe at least in Winter, use it for heat generation. The problem would seem to be the capex and the inverse of intermittency being the problem for them in utilising that energy, i.e. waiting for curtailment. At least with available hydro you can pump water back up hill using a reliable and cheap tech.

I find it fascinating that we have not identified a use for almost free intermittent electricity. You'd think there would be plenty of things to do, but it seems like with the capex investment things like smelting etc need to always be running. Maybe electric car charging can come to the rescue? But even there people need their cars charged usually at certain fixed moments.

Agree. It seems to be a fairly unique problem that intermittent energy sources introduce.

Charging batteries definitely seems like part of the solution and electricity tariffs that adapt to wholesale costs on a shorter time basis help incentivise it. There are times over weekends/holidays where the wholesale price enters negative territory, essentially paying you to charge your battery.

Electrolysing hydrogen to burn is inefficient vs that kind of thing but at least acts as a battery itself, though there's costs/problems in storing it.

And the general problem of how long do you need to store energy vs what the weather forecast may be.

It seems like it's not a solved problem and it'd be exciting to move towards a point where it is. Hard to believe in the 50's they thought nuclear would solve everything and would be "too cheap to meter"

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#245

Post by boringg » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

testing22321 wrote: post #193

boringg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? No Canada isn't cheap solar power -- last I checked rooftop ballasted solar is a 12-14 year payback on avoided costs. Inverter will go beforehand and that excludes any op costs. 8k$ free loan doesn't really provide as much value as you would think. FWIW - I am all for solar but selling rooftop solar in canada as cheap and no-brainer is false. 3-4 year payback would be a no brainer. 8-13 year payback with an inv…

You know, when I was researching my system and if it would be worthwhile there were literally dozens and dozens of people who were adamant it couldn’t work here. Too much snow, too tight a valley, electricity already kinda cheap. I went ahead anyway because I’m a “I’d rather have hard numbers than speculation“ person, and it was literally $0 of my money. Here we are 18 months later. I have all the hard data, numbers…

Talking about hard numbers without a real "hard number" in your comment. 0$ upfront - how much did you pay for the system / what is the size of the system / whats your azimuth and what are you paying for electricity currently. Its super easy to run the math on this stuff - not rocket science - theres even a free to use API that generates your monthly production estimates.

I run energy modeling - I ran the numbers last month with the new programs and newest panel prices. 12-14 years without any op costs and a 3% per year escalator on electricity. You can get it down to 8 years if you have a great spot without having to put on ballasts but it isn't braindead yes for everyone (especially if they have to watch their money).

Current price: 7.6 kW AC; Installed: 26,155.65 - 5,000 Grant = 21,155.65$. << Hard numbers.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#246

Post by owenversteeg » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

kokey wrote: post #47

Every time, over the years, that there has been some kind of headline saying renewables have overtaken fossil fuels, when you look at it a bit more closely there is always a big 'but'. For example, it was compared to coal (not taking into account electricity from gas), or it was for one day, or it was a percentage of new installations, or it excludes winter, includes nuclear etc. This time, however, it looks like it'…

The only asterisk this time is that this is electricity, not energy. Still impressive, but electricity is only 22% of total energy use, so they are at about 12% of the total for the EU and 7.8% for Europe.

For that, you want this graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

Fun to play around with, you can also change the selection to view the world, US, China, individual EU countries etc.

You can see that this the gain in renewables in the EU has been mainly at the expense of coal (down >50% as a share of total energy use in 10 years), gas (down 4%), and nuclear (down 20%.) Oil use as a share of the total is up by 5%.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#247

Post by when_creaks » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:45 PM UTC

Encouraging. However, it isn't clear from the article at first glance (or the deeper analysis being referenced) how electricity consumption by power source is changing.

In other words, as an example, a 10% increase in solar power generation does not necessarily mean that there was a 10% increase in electricity consumption where that electricity was generated via solar.

i.e. It is entirely possible for a growing solar fleet to generate more power during the middle of the day than previously, and simultaneously for not all of that increased power to be used / usable.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#248

Post by eigenspace » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:45 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #140

Now we just need to figure out scalable storage. Ideally something like the sand batteries that you can scale with construction equipment rather than just adding more rows of tiny lithium batteries

The answer is likely going to have to be hydrogen, but there's a pretty difficult catch with hydrogen: it makes zero sense to invest in any hydrogen electricity storage infrastructure until the grid is already like 80+% renewable.

There's simply no sense in turning electricity into hydrogen so that it could be used in 6 months (losing 50+% of the energy along the way as heat!) when you could just sell that electricity right now, or stick it in a battery so you can use it 6 hours from now.

There will be an economic case for hydrogen energy storage in Europe in 10 years, but unfortunately the technology is basically sitting at a standstill right now with no attention and no investment because it's not needed yet.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#249

Post by boringg » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

aclatuts wrote: post #85

boringg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? No Canada isn't cheap solar power -- last I checked rooftop ballasted solar is a 12-14 year payback on avoided costs. Inverter will go beforehand and that excludes any op costs. 8k$ free loan doesn't really provide as much value as you would think. FWIW - I am all for solar but selling rooftop solar in canada as cheap and no-brainer is false. 3-4 year payback would be a no brainer. 8-13 year payback with an inv…

Anything under $2.25/watt would put it within under a 4 year payback period, Alberta has good rates for solar. Rooftop solar doesn't have operating costs that I can think of unless you want to clean them and clear snow which is optional. And inverters usually have a 20-25 year warranty.

Inverters are 5-10 year warranty.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#250

Post by youngtaff » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

kokey wrote: post #47

Every time, over the years, that there has been some kind of headline saying renewables have overtaken fossil fuels, when you look at it a bit more closely there is always a big 'but'. For example, it was compared to coal (not taking into account electricity from gas), or it was for one day, or it was a percentage of new installations, or it excludes winter, includes nuclear etc. This time, however, it looks like it'…

If you take a look at the All Time view on https://grid.iamkate.com you'll see wind overtook gas a few years ago in the UK