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Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

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Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#421

Germany did one simple thing (uncharacteristically) which is removing all the bureaucracy here. Just go ahead and do it. It's fine. Cost in the article is cited at 550 euro. I just browsed amazon.de and you can buy complete plug and play kits here in Germany for as little as 239 euro. Most kits are priced between 300-350 euro. I did not see a many kits over 500. I pay about 70 euro per month for electricity. If it sa…

Not a bad legacy for Robert Habeck (along with the wind reforms), the leader we needed but didn't deserve [1][2]. Interestingly he's recently dropped out of politics and taken a teaching role at UC Berkeley. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxwVR5JF8Ok 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxnnVPO9GFU

The leader we didn't deserve?

Sorry but Merkel reached almost 50% of energy production with renewables. Germany was already a leader in 2021-2022 with almost 45-50%.

The idea was to grow "sustainably", and in fact it was functioning.

Even the "original" GEG comes from Merkel who was slowly pushing for a change.

Then somehow someone decided they had to restrict and punish and this was our "undeserved" Habeck and friends.

There was no need at all to disrupt the country into what it has become today.

Literally everyone said that. Only the Scholz/Greens government didn't see that.

EDIT: in fact, if we just reverted the commits to pre-2022 we'd be already in a better situation. No new changes. Just start from what was working. And well, keep the new solar panel stuff for balconies. It seems a nice idea (which a lot of countries are doing anyways, so nothing so innovative here).

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a bad legacy for Robert Habeck (along with the wind reforms), the leader we needed but didn't deserve [1][2]. Interestingly he's recently dropped out of politics and taken a teaching role at UC Berkeley. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxwVR5JF8Ok 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxnnVPO9GFU

I'm not German nor do I live there, but I would have thought the legacy of Habeck would be more negative due to his opposition to nuclear.

I guess that depends on who you ask. There definitely is a lot of opposition to the Green Party, but that's hardly directed at Robert Habeck specifically.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#424
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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He is on of the few politicians who follow his beliefs about what needs to be done, less so about what is popular. He also made sure Germany had enough gas. He had nothing todo with the pushback of nuclear energy (that was the CDU/Merkel). Nuclear energy is not cheap.

All politicians follow their beliefs. They just become more problematic the more interventionist they are. And Habeck was extremely interventionist. On top of that he used his position of power to go against private citizens under the excuse of free speech. He filed 805 criminal complaints, in some situations just for being called an idiot online.

Nuclear energy pushback in DE was a result of the fear caused by Chernobyl in 1986. Refreshed by the Fukushima incident. The CDU was not brave enough to go against that fear. And Habeck just continued that approach even in difficult moments for the German industry. Nuclear is not cheap, but it’s stable, predictable, does not generate CO2 and if well planned, also provides self-reliance for the country using it.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#425
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Mind sharing that documentation or spelling out what you mean by that or are you not going to consider different views on that anyways?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry5-cWq1Lr4

https://youtu.be/-XItDbFSYBE

But to be fair ... it's a general problem with Die Grünen.

https://youtu.be/DbzRY9VF2zE?t=724

Reality is just a nuisance.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#426

Some people laugh at the 800W output. However, in Indonesia, roughly half of the 300 million people live in homes with an electricity capacity of 900W or less. Wish these kind of panels were available at that price here. We have pretty much 12 hours of sunlight every single day but household solar panel is discouraged by the state owned utilities.

The awesome part is you can circumvent the 800W. First you can legally install 2000W solar panels, making 800W output much more likely. The 800W is only how much you can feed back into the grid. Second you can install one or more batteries and feed devices from them, further increasing the usable energy.

Can we generate 2 kw, charge batteries and ensure only 800 is fed back at any time?

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#427
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This supply abruptly stopped, but instead of using the remaining nuclear power plants to mitigate the supply shock There was nothing to mitigate. The nuclear plants deliver electricity, which was never a problem in Germany. > he even accelerated the shutdown and sold it as inevitable. That's a lie. They even prolonged the usage for some months to appease the fearmongers. But without fuel, there was a limit on how t…

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> The fearmongers are the Greens who believe that nuclear reactors will generate 3 headed fish.

Nobody believes that, WTF?

> In the meantime, we increased energy production through coal

Partly true, but not really. Coal is also used for other energy-forms than just electricity. Nuclear Plants cannot cover those areas. In the grand scale, it might have been better to first reduce coal-usage and transition to purely electric usage, while phasing out of nuclear slowly and use the save money for building up on renewables.

But that was never an option with all the sabotages from the fossil anyway. Nuclear in Germany was never a real option, it always has been fossil vs electric, with nuclear being a minor source for electricity, weaponized by the fossil lobby against the renewables.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The awesome part is you can circumvent the 800W. First you can legally install 2000W solar panels, making 800W output much more likely. The 800W is only how much you can feed back into the grid. Second you can install one or more batteries and feed devices from them, further increasing the usable energy.

Can we generate 2 kw, charge batteries and ensure only 800 is fed back at any time?

yes

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#429

This is the next step to people realising that building the walls of buildings from PV panels makes sense.

And it can look good and match whitewashed or earthy buildings https://solarix-solar.com/en/solar-panels-on-the-facade

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#430
post #2

I'm in Germany and keep seeing these, I always wonder what a 400w poorly oriented panel getting like 3 hours of sun a day is good for. If they weren't basically free thanks to tax reduction and other tricks I assume no one would get them

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