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Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026

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Re: Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026

#171

Post by eigenspace »

hunterpayne wrote: post #138
tfourb wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hungary just instituted quite extreme power savings policies (including stopping all industrial train traffic during the day), because it can't cool its nuclear power plant due to a lack of water in the Danube and 40% of its electricity production went bye bye. Same situation in Romania and France had similar problems a few years ago and will likely have them again this year. "Green" supporters prefer renewable energ…

There is nothing resilient about renewables. Ask Spain about that. They aren't disrupted by one shock event but instead they are disrupted almost daily (and I'm not talking about nighttime). Also, Europe is too far north for Solar PV to make any sense at most of the places that people actually live...like Germany.

Spain's shut down was the same reason Spain has cheap electricity compared to Germany: They've chronically underfunded their grid infrastructure and haven't properly adapted to a renewable grid.

Germany has extremely high renewable penetration, and has one of the most stable grids (if not the most) in the world.

Re: Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026

#172

Post by hunterpayne »

eigenspace wrote: post #148
hunterpayne wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is closing your nuclear plants working out for you? Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet. Germany has one of the dirtiest grids in the world and the dirtiest grid in the developed world. And for reference, a single NPP makes roughly 600 GW hours of power a month. Germany closed down about 15 NPPs which would make several times as much power as the solar PV…

Wow, impressive velocity of bullshit claims, but I guess one has to grade on a curve, this is Hacker News of course. > Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet. Renewables are replacing coal and nuclear simultaneously. Coal usage was consistently dropping before and has continued to consistently drop after the nuclear phase out. I agree if coal was banned before nu…

By 2017, only 3 German NPPs were online. So multiply those NPP numbers by 5x. Also, your claims about the German grid are non-sense. Germany produces several times as much CO2 per watt generated as the US and about 7x more CO2 per watt as France. You seriously don't even know enough to calculate these numbers correctly.

Re: Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026

#173

Post by rsynnott »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #158
f6v wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get completely drenched in sweat if you take the metro or S-bahn even at 30 degrees. There's no AC there. It's just miserable to commute. Also, most buildings don't have shutters and are not designed even for high 20s. Berlin is an absolutely miserable place in this weather if you commute or just trying to sleep at night. Like, you can't efficiently cool the apartment down if it's 20 degrees at night and there's…

I agree, that's a total failure of the Berlin government, they even ordered new U-bahn without A/C. As for S-bahn, most are air conditioned. I take the ring bahn to work and it's ACed. There was one day it didn't cooled down at nice for this year (when day temperature went close to 40 degrees). Other than that, for I sleep with all windows open and I create an airflow with two fans. The apartment gets cooled during n…

> they even ordered new U-bahn without A/C

AC is fairly problematic for narrow underground tunnels. This is one upside of the massive 9m diameter tunnels being used for a lot of new underground lines; way easier to ventilate. But, ah, not something you can really retrofit.

It could be worse, however: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling

Re: Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026

#174

Post by eigenspace »

ffsm8 wrote: post #169
eigenspace wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was not generally true before the system upgrades started. It's been true for a while though. I didn't mean short-term bad timing, I mean it's bad that we're getting hit by increasing droughts in the same decade the train system hit its breaking point and needed fixing.

It's been true for at least 16 years though, admittedly - it's gotten even worse since Corona

Neglect of the rail systems has been true for over 16 years, but there was distinctly less chaos before 2020, because the systems were just left in operation as they rotted.

Post pandemic, it was decided that they had to fix it, at the same time that there's been a sustained surge in ridership. The operations to fix the rail network combined with decay, combined with higher ridership than ever before is what causes the chaos.

Re: Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026

#175

Post by throwaway2037 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #31
Aldipower wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is (should be) cheap to power the AC now.

That reminds me of my friend who wants to fly around the world to see the Great Barrier Reef before it's gone.

There is plenty to see in Indonesia at a fraction of the cost. It is almost always better value for money to scuba dive in developing countries.

Re: Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026

#176

Post by umpalumpaaa »

tfourb wrote: post #97
umpalumpaaa wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and the tax reduction will end in 2028. What I said still stands: German electricity prices for the industry are and will be one of the highest in the world.

The tax reduction will almost certainly be extended and not be allowed to sunset. Industry electricity costs are more or less in line with other highly developed countries around the world and will remain so. Also, many larger industrial companies do not source their electricity from the common grid, but have dedicated power plants and increasingly their own investments in renewable energy production.

No company invests billions into industry projects with that kind of political uncertainty. You can see it in the numbers: BASF stopped basically all investments in Germany. You cannot bet your whole company on a tax cut that was recently introduced and is already scheduled to disappear.

Re: Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026

#177

Post by sajithdilshan »

rsynnott wrote: post #173
sajithdilshan wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, that's a total failure of the Berlin government, they even ordered new U-bahn without A/C. As for S-bahn, most are air conditioned. I take the ring bahn to work and it's ACed. There was one day it didn't cooled down at nice for this year (when day temperature went close to 40 degrees). Other than that, for I sleep with all windows open and I create an airflow with two fans. The apartment gets cooled during n…

> they even ordered new U-bahn without A/C AC is fairly problematic for narrow underground tunnels. This is one upside of the massive 9m diameter tunnels being used for a lot of new underground lines; way easier to ventilate. But, ah, not something you can really retrofit. It could be worse, however: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling

That’s kinda incompetent excuse in my opinion. There are many other ways they can cool down the underground stations and trains. Would be expensive, but doable. However, given the track record of constructions in Berlin it would take like 100 years to do it for all Ubhan lines.

Re: Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026

#178

Post by umpalumpaaa »

Barrin92 wrote: post #144
umpalumpaaa wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if prices were in line with Germanys neighbors, that does not mean a lot. Germanys industry is notoriously energy hungry. Germany is home of the biggest chemical companies in the world and they need easy access to gas, oil, electricity etc. Also the car industry is obviously still big. And so on. Most countries in the world lost their industrial base during the last 20-40 years but Germany kept it for the most p…

>Germany is home of the biggest chemical companies in the world Some of them are worth keeping but also some of them actually should go. Close to where I used to live in Düsseldorf there was a plastic bottle factory that employed 500 some people and it only continued to be open because it was apparently impossible to let anyone go, the entire thing was long uneconomic. Mind you even here in Germany our economy is 70%…

The number of big companies in that energy hungry sector is big compared to other countries. And it’s good that Germany managed to keep this industry going. Also those big companies fuel much of what the Mittelstand does. Please lookup biggest chemical companies in the world and you will see that Germany is well represented. It’s just unnecessary to let that industry “go”. If it dies in Germany and flourishes in let’s say China the climate has not won anything but Germany lost an entire industry. This mix (big industrial companies, lots of smaller mittelstand companies paired with a big services sector) is what makes Germany so uniquely resilient. This is the biggest potential problem for Germany. Reducing resilience, giving up stability

Re: Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026

#179

Post by eigenspace »

hunterpayne wrote: post #172
eigenspace wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, impressive velocity of bullshit claims, but I guess one has to grade on a curve, this is Hacker News of course. > Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet. Renewables are replacing coal and nuclear simultaneously. Coal usage was consistently dropping before and has continued to consistently drop after the nuclear phase out. I agree if coal was banned before nu…

By 2017, only 3 German NPPs were online. So multiply those NPP numbers by 5x. Also, your claims about the German grid are non-sense. Germany produces several times as much CO2 per watt generated as the US and about 7x more CO2 per watt as France. You seriously don't even know enough to calculate these numbers correctly.

By 2017 Germany had 8 NPPs online. German nuclear power generation was never at 5x that level. Back in 2010, it was around 2x that level though.

> Also, your claims about the German grid are non-sense. Germany produces several times as much CO2 per watt generated as the US and about 7x more CO2 per watt as France.

I never said anything about France. It does indeed have way cleaner electricity than Germany. The USA does not have cleaner electricity than Germany anymore though according to the source I linked you. Do you have another source you'd like to share?

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