Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels • Hacker News Board

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#481

Post by Flatterer3544 » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 1:55 PM UTC

Archelaos wrote: post #402

walthamstow wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nuclear technology is a dead end. Renewables and saving energy is the future. Nuclear and fossil are in the same boat. They are both more risky and have huge hidden costs that the general public and future generations will have to bear. The only good reason to go nuclear these days is if you want the bomb, like Iran. Interestingly, it is the same people who supported fossil in the past who are still promoting nuclear…

You should look at what a proper planned all-in nuclear project looks like before commenting..

See Hualong One nuclear project that's operating at ~90% capacity and is ~1/3 of the price of solar, and 2/3 price of wind when comparing the same operation % capacity and taking into consideration the max life length of each technology.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#482

Post by StopDisinfo910 » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 1:56 PM UTC

Archelaos wrote: post #402

walthamstow wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nuclear technology is a dead end. Renewables and saving energy is the future. Nuclear and fossil are in the same boat. They are both more risky and have huge hidden costs that the general public and future generations will have to bear. The only good reason to go nuclear these days is if you want the bomb, like Iran. Interestingly, it is the same people who supported fossil in the past who are still promoting nuclear…

Nuclear and intermitent energy sources have no place in the same sentence.

Germany didn't avoid nuclear by switching to renewables. It does so by burning coal and building gas-fired power plants.

How to manage a grid fully on intermitent power sources is an open question. There is at this point in time no answer to this. At the moment, Germany fires up extremely dirty power generation capacity every time there is a shortage. Meanwhile, all europeans bear the costs of Germany shortsightedness - as usual - since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

With nuclear, it's pretty clear how to run a grid. Heck, France has been doing so for decades. The question is how to build it cheaply at scale but at least we have some good ideas and experience about how to do that.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#483

Post by LunaSea » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 1:57 PM UTC

Archelaos wrote: post #402

walthamstow wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nuclear technology is a dead end. Renewables and saving energy is the future. Nuclear and fossil are in the same boat. They are both more risky and have huge hidden costs that the general public and future generations will have to bear. The only good reason to go nuclear these days is if you want the bomb, like Iran. Interestingly, it is the same people who supported fossil in the past who are still promoting nuclear…

> Nuclear technology is a dead end.

You should look at CO2 / kWh in Germany vs. France

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#484

Post by watwut » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 1:59 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #376

watwut wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.) Russia is already sending drones to border countries. 2.) Russian politicians openly talk about such possibility. 3.) Russian interest in expansion is no secret. War with Russia is a real possibility. Considering NATO is not reliable anymore (due USA being less then reliable partner) , considering China seem to low key support Russia, it is not even crazy from the Russian side.

On drones: there is no evidence of that. The supposed "drone ship" that was siezed by France turned out to be crewed by Chinese and had no drones or weapons on board. A Croatian citizen were arrested regarding the drone near Frankfurt airport. Three Germans were arrested regarding the drones near Oslo. Consider what Russia could possibly have to gain by randomly flying drones near civilian airports... nothing? Consid…

There is evidence of Russian drones entering Polish airspace. That has nothing to do with any ships.

> Consider what NATO have to gain - stirring up anti-Russian sentiment, garnering consent for massive expenditure on an "EU drone wall" and continued money laundering in the Ukraine.

NATO should do more to help Ukraine. They absolutely should.

>Look at this map of NATO's expansion eastward toward Russia,

That is countries deciding to join NATO in the hope it will protect them against Russia. No one forced them into NATO. Russia does not like it only because NATO prevents Russia from expanding. This is such a ridiculous talking point.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#485

Post by watwut » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:01 PM UTC

ReptileMan wrote: post #394

watwut wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.) Russia is already sending drones to border countries. 2.) Russian politicians openly talk about such possibility. 3.) Russian interest in expansion is no secret. War with Russia is a real possibility. Considering NATO is not reliable anymore (due USA being less then reliable partner) , considering China seem to low key support Russia, it is not even crazy from the Russian side.

>War with Russia is a real possibility No it is not because of 3 reasons: 1. Russia has no resources to wage war on NATO 2. Russia has no resources to wage war on NATO 3. Russia has no resources to wage war on NATO War with russia is mostly hawks' and chicken littles' of the media wet dreams.

That assumes NATO would fight Russia. USA can not be trusted anymore to keep their obligations.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#486

Post by watwut » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:12 PM UTC

akoboldfrying wrote: post #447

watwut wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have normal grid too and also batteries exist. Also, these houses normally exist during the night and during the winter when days are short. Overcast day zapping whole region is made up issue here.

All this really only shows that the single point of failure fails quite regularly, to varying degrees. It reminds us that widespread personal solar panel deployment reduces the total amount of centrally generated energy required, but doesn't even make a dent in the max capacity, which is much more important in terms of deciding infrastructure investment.

You really do not know what single point of failure is ... do you?

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#487

Post by chickenbig » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:13 PM UTC

benjiro wrote: post #420

jansan wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plan to shut down nuclear power plants was done under the premise of a stable supply of Russian gas. This supply abruptly stopped, but instead of using the remaining nuclear power plants to mitigate the supply shock (at that time nuclear power was even classified as sustainable by the EU btw.), he even accelerated the shutdown and sold it as inevitable. In my opinion this was the worst political decision of Germa…

Those 3 plants had been running on "deferred maintenance" as the plant shutdown was planned years ago. Keeping the plants open will have resulted in a ton of money to maintain the safety of the plants going forwards. This was one of the biggest factors in the shutdown. Even if the plants stayed open, multiple reactors needed maintenance (and thus shutdown of those rectors). Remember, they kept the open even longer th…

> Those 3 plants had been running on "deferred maintenance" as the plant shutdown was planned years ago.

They had > 95.4% unit capability factor in 2022 per https://pris.iaea.org/pris/WorldStatistics/ThreeYrsUnitCapab... . It doesn't sound like they were being run into the ground, rather things were operating very efficiently.

> Keeping the plants open will have resulted in a ton of money to maintain the safety of the plants going forwards.

https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/iaea-data-animation-nuc... stated LCOE "associated with the long-term operation of a nuclear power plant generally falls in the range US$ 30-40 per MWh, for typical refurbishment costs for Light Water Reactors and a lifetime extension of 20 years".

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#488

Post by triceratops » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:17 PM UTC

owenversteeg wrote: post #418

There's a funny comment downthread that says "It's like the backyard furnaces during the Great Leap Forward." Everyone replying disagrees, but I think it's a perfect analogy: just like the backyard furnaces, these small-scale installations are inefficient, provide a negligible portion of total energy needs (<1% of total energy needs if everyone in Germany did it, from TFA), look ugly and - this is the most important…

> provide the feeling of doing something about a serious problem without actually doing anything substantial.

You're wrong about this. There are a lot of people who still think solar power is only about environmental virtue-signalling and it can never compete with good old dinosaur juice. If everyone adopts balcony solar, it'll help convince these people they're wrong. At least the ones who are merely misinformed rather than dug into an ideology.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#489

Post by mk89 » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #476

mk89 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nobody believes that, WTF? Why do you think Germans voted against nuclear? It was because of fear of events like Chernobyl/Fukishima etc. Then 2022 was the final blow, with documents saying that nuclear reactors didn't produce much energy and needed maintenance anyways. Kind of like getting rid of working trains to ride bikes instead. Why not. It's healthier :) In the meantime, the world laughs at us. Literally the…

If you really think literally the whole world is laughing at Germany you are living in a fully isolated echo chamber.

Alright probably Brunei doesn't care ;)

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#490

Post by myrmidon » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:19 PM UTC

mk89 wrote: post #419

jillesvangurp wrote: post #246

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…

So all we needed from the Greens was 1 law to simplify the installation of (small) solar panels. We got the full package and started the deindustrializion instead. Seems like a good deal :)

What exactly do you mean by "deindustrialization" here?

What would the opposite have looked like?