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In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

e360.yale.edu

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Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#71

Post by testing22321 »

Tepix wrote: post #33
testing22321 wrote: post #4

Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians. Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan. It makes 7.72Mwh per year, worth $1000. Tight valley, tons of snow. We put that on the loan for 8 years, then get $1000 per year free money for 20 years or so. Biggest no brainer of all time. Dad in Victoria Australia just got 1…

450W-500W solar panels are as low as 52€ here in Germany if you buy a couple of them. Batteries are also very affordable and I look forward to them getting a lot cheaper soon, thanks to Sodium-Ion.

The price of panels is falling so fast I don’t think anyone truly understands.

I paid nearly double that for our 450w panels 18 months ago.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#72

Post by csoups14 »

DetectDefect wrote: post #44
adrianN wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panels have warranties of over twenty years now. They pay for themselves much earlier. You probably have to replace the inverter earlier, but that’s not a huge expense. I don’t know anybody who lives in a place where it rains who cleans the panels on their roof.

Oh, okay. Does a warranty cover sweeping snow off your panels and washing them many times throughout the years? I guess if one does not value time, then solar panels could be considered "free" - but this is a bizarre sacrifice.

I got solar panels installed two years ago and I've washed them once. I'm still getting great production. Are you trying to convince yourself that maintaining solar panels is difficult? Because it isn't.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#73

Post by doublerabbit »

mekdoonggi wrote: post #41
doublerabbit wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any energy security for the future for the UK unfortunately. We sold ourselves short during the GW/Blair Neo-labour era. Scotland maybe, they have wind-farms but the UK likes to tax that. We've just started the era of paying for the cost of Brexit. It's hitting hard. My weekly supermarket shop for the basic essentials (cheese, eggs, flour, vegetables) now come to around $60/80 a trip. Parmesan Cheese is a…

Why not? You've got abundant wind and solar. Once installed, even if for some reason you can't get new turbines or panels, you'll still have a decent amount of capacity.

Solar is hit & miss. The only capacity we really have is wind and those are only efficient to those near the sea or in the highlands. England, Scotland, Wales are governed by rain 80% of the year and with the sun we get, household solar rarely breaks even.

Just because we've got, if the government isn't supporting it's pretty much wasted. The renewable farms we do have are mostly funded by private investments firms. Scotland and Wales wants more renewable but the UK government says no.

> End 2024 installed electricity generating capacity was 105 GWe: 35.0 GWe natural gas; 32.8 GWe wind; 18.3 GWe solar; 7.4 GWe biofuels & waste; 5.9 GWe nuclear; 4.8 GWe hydro (including 2.9 GWe pumped storage) and 1.3 GWe oil.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#74

Post by boringg »

DetectDefect wrote: post #59
boringg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not supporting OP because I think hes backwards on the matter. However in Canada the electricity that is being burned isn't coal based - so you need to compare the actual grid not some hypothetical grid.

[flagged]

The vagueness of your statement makes it impossible to discern any actual point outside of some broad anger/frustration packaged as humor.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#75

Post by testing22321 »

boringg wrote: post #48
testing22321 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New panels are much less impacted by shade. Friends out of town just installed the same setup as ours, didn’t want to cut down three monster Doug firs shading their roof in summer. Made 6.9Mwh in 2025, only just less than ours with no shade at all.

I mean physics would dictate that shade impacts performance but if you are able to break the laws of physics I am impressed!

And bifacial panels with higher efficiency were invented to work around that physics.

Real numbers don’t lie.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#76

Post by DetectDefect »

lostlogin wrote: post #54
DetectDefect wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, okay. Does a warranty cover sweeping snow off your panels and washing them many times throughout the years? I guess if one does not value time, then solar panels could be considered "free" - but this is a bizarre sacrifice.

Where are you getting this maintenance schedule from? I haven’t touched ours, they are clean and have been going fine with zero maintenance, though admittedly it’s only been a year.

> I haven’t touched ours, they are clean and have been going fine with zero maintenance, though admittedly it’s only been a year.

> Where are you getting this maintenance schedule from?

The solar panel owner does not know the required maintenance they are now permanently responsible for. Ibid, your honor.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#77

Post by torlok »

altern8 wrote: post #52

Well, OK--but at what cost? Electricity/heating and gasoline in the EU is many times more expensive than in the U.S., and as a result EVERYTHING is more expensive. Mix that with lower buying power and taxes and we spend 2-3 times for stuff. I would think that most people would happily choose lower prices over clean energy and paper straws. Our companies are also less and less competitive because of these initiatives,…

Renewables lead to energy independence and a more distributed energy grid. It's fundamental to security, and can't be so easily measured in terms of money. The EU is increasing its independence from China via initiatives like the Net-Zero Industry Act. And this talk of "politicians being bought by Chinese companies" is laughable in the face of what oil companies are doing, to the benefit of exporters like USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other regimes, and definitively not the EU.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#78

Post by toomuchtodo »

ricardo81 wrote: post #29
testing22321 wrote: post #4

Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians. Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan. It makes 7.72Mwh per year, worth $1000. Tight valley, tons of snow. We put that on the loan for 8 years, then get $1000 per year free money for 20 years or so. Biggest no brainer of all time. Dad in Victoria Australia just got 1…

Canada is blessed with cheap energy, the abundance of hydro surely helps to bridge any intermittency other renewables have. I lived there 10 years back, your energy is less than half the cost of mine in Scotland. In Scotland's case we're part of the UK and the rest of the UK is less blessed with the geography for hydro. The incumbent Scottish government also has an anti stance to nuclear. I hope the incentives for cl…

There is enough wind potential in Europe to power the world [1]. Combined with interconnects to Europe and battery storage, there is no reason power costs can't be driven down. To not do so is a lack of will. Scotland currently generates a surplus of renewables [2], exported. kieranmaine's sibling comment citations dives into the lack of will part.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722022 (citations)

[2] In Scotland, Renewable Power Has Outstripped Demand - https://e360.yale.edu/digest/scotland-renewable-energy-100-p... - January 30th, 2024

(at the rate it takes to deploy transmission, might as well start dropping TBMs in the ground and let them grind towards each other from interconnect landings, potentially faster than the approval grind, complaints from locals about land use and right of ways, etc)

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#79

Post by wussboy »

GuB-42 wrote: post #64
munk-a wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that on-roof-solar helps (as it becomes widespread) mitigate the growing need for additional grid capacity. Canada is a big country and, outside the major cities, upgrading grid capacity is quite expensive per capita. It's a win-win in Canada, investing in self-sufficiency while reducing the maintenance burden of infrastructure.

If there is no in-house storage to match, how does it help the grid? It is still needed for cold winter nights, where demand is high and solar panels produce nothing. Hydro can provide the power, but the grid will be running at full load.

Most houses in Canada are heated with natural gas. I'm not negating your overall comment, but in general, cold nights don't strain the grid because of heating needs.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#80

Post by usrnm »

The article uses the words "more power" and "overtaking fossil fuels", but the graph is actually about electricity generation. They are not the same thing, at least, in my head, because not all energy consumed in Europe comes in the form of electricity. If I heat my home with natural gas and drive an ICE car, this is me using fossil fuels in a way that has nothing to do with electricity and it won't be reflected in that graph. This is an important stepping stone, but it is not "solar and wind overtaking fossil fuels in Europe"
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