Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

The long term strategy is H2:

https://h2-global.org/the-h2global-instrument/

And gas plants are what is closed to H2 and can be switched over easiest. But H2 is only viable once renewable production exceeds demands during long stretches of time. Otherwise it is always better to use the energy directly or use short term storage (batteries) which are also growing exponentially: https://battery-charts.de/battery-charts/

Sorry, you are all emotion and provide wrong statements. What I wrote directly contradicted your statements and proved them wrong, but now you say they are missing the point? Reducing fossil fuel consumption by 50% within 10 years is an achievement. There are always things that could be done in a better way. But let's be real here.

And yes Germany imports electricity from France: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...

That is kind of the point of having an integrated grid.

But 19TWh. While producing 470TWh. 4%. That is not ... a lot. And in 2022 Germany exported 5.5TWh and had to restart coal plants when the French nuclear plants were in trouble. So what? That what a grid is for.

> russia had a deal for nato not to get close to its borders

This deal doesn't exist, at least anywhere on paper. There is an obligation related to the reunification of Germany that no NATO troops are stationed on the territory of former East Germany which has been honored by the reunited Germany.

Countries are also not forced into NATO, they ask to join.

> USSR, and Russia asked to get in NATO a few times and got pretty rude responses “no way”.

As far as I have read, Russia wanted to 'skip the queue' ahead of smaller countries. When this special treatment was denied, Russia suddenly didn't want to join anymore.

> A balcony solar panel will yield even less than that because it's not positioned optimally.

Non-optimal positioning is already included in your "Measured (not projected) yield in Germany". Because that is the difference between a projected yield (under optimal conditions) and actual measurements of actual panels, which are practically never optimally placed.

> Then you won't consume all that it produces because you're at work during the day and there are no appliances running except the fridge maybe.

That is relevant for an economic calculation, but it is entirely irrelevant if you want to determine the point after which the panel breaks even regarding the energy used for its production vs. the energy produced by it. In that case, every single kWh counts, whether the owner of the panel economically profits from it or whether he or she just donates it to the grid without compensation.

And clearly, we are discussing the energy break-even here, as indicated by "The usual estimate to produce a PV panel is 600-1000 kWh per 1sqm."

> However from the physics/ecology perspective they make no sense at all and many of the panels installed today will never recoup the electricity used to produce them, making them a net-negative impact for the environment.

As I've demonstrated with concrete calculations, that you seemingly accept as valid as you perform the same calculations with roughly the same numbers, the EROI of solar panels even in Germany over their lifespan is clearly in the positive range. Maybe they "only" recoup 3x or 5x their investment, and not 20x, but they are a net positive regardless. Any number above 1x is.

In addition to this, as I've described in another posting here (https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=45490555) there's the psychological side of things, where cheap and easily profitable balcony panels for everyone are a gateway drug for "normal people" to get actively involved in the field of renewable energy and must not be underestimated in their ability to open the minds of people for other, more efficient actions to get closer to a carbon-neutral energy economy. Since those activities tend to be heavily inhibited by broad refusal that's often not based on factual arguments, but simply on inertia in people's minds ("we've always done it the other way") and a certain lazyness to actively grapple with new technologies and developments, this effect is at least as important as the actual impact on the energy grid. Just like on the stock market, the raw numbers are only half of the story. Psychology is the other half.

Never assume.

These are millions of systems imported from China, they are inefficient (because they are small and often installed in poor conditions), useful life is uncertain, they will have to be disposed of afterwards.

So is this whole chain better than using the grid? I don't know but I can't assume anything just because "it's solar".

> Non-optimal positioning is already included in your "Measured (not projected) yield in Germany". Because that is the difference between a projected yield (under optimal conditions) and actual measurements of actual panels, which are practically never optimally placed.

No, because the figure I have was for normal solar panels, not the balcony ones which are even worse. I haven't seen anyone reporting real yield for balcony panels yet, would be interested to see the numbers.

> That is relevant for an economic calculation, but it is entirely irrelevant if you want to determine the point after which the panel breaks even regarding the energy used for its production vs. the energy produced by it. In that case, every single kWh counts, whether the owner of the panel economically profits from it or whether he or she just donates it to the grid without compensation.

No, because when you get any significant amount of solar installed you start to get negative prices on sunny hours and need to shut them down. If home solar setups won't shutdown then some other panels in the grid would. This is a fundamental tradeoff with solar: it's either too small to make any difference or you never get your projected EROI because you have to shut them down during the very time they produce maximum energy.

> I've demonstrated with concrete calculations, that you seemingly accept as valid as you perform the same calculations with roughly the same numbers, the EROI of solar panels even in Germany over their lifespan is clearly in the positive range. Maybe they "only" recoup 3x or 5x their investment, and not 20x, but they are a net positive regardless. Any number above 1x is

You confuse the "maximum possible outcome" with real life. No one knows if these $300 setups will last 30 years, that was never tested because that requires well 30 years. My estimate is they won't because electronics from the lowest price range very rarely do. Then even if they could last that long, half of them will end up in a dumpster after a few years because people move and can't always take their panels along.

I'm extremely sceptical of all these "concrete calculations", not because they're mathematically incorrect but because they are detached from real life. It's like when they sell you a timeshare cottage on a ski resort and mathematically it's profitable, but in reality it's a huge liability.