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In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

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Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#91

Post by rsynnott »

DetectDefect wrote: post #76
lostlogin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As above, cleaning solar panels is generally close to pointless.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#92

Post by dalyons »

doublerabbit wrote: post #34
mekdoonggi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that what you're paying for isn't just energy now, but energy security in the future?

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? Few more of these (1) and you should be golden. One years auction will be 12% of all uk demand.

1 https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-uks-record-auction-for-o... )

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#93

Post by lostlogin »

DetectDefect wrote: post #76
lostlogin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are clean, I can see that and could wipe them if I needed to. The power output is the same.

Where are you getting this maintenance schedule of yours from?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#94

Post by dyauspitr »

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…

What is the underlying reason in the US though? You would think if they are artificially inflated prices the market would fix that. What I’ve found is that a large part of the cost is the actual labor for the installation, how are other developed countries getting around this?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#95

Post by tialaramex »

munk-a wrote: post #63
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.

Canada's alternative energy source is very rarely coal (no where near me at least) but a lot of the grid capacity is coming from LNG outside of ON/QC. BC has a bunch of rivers and other water features but has been highly reluctant to build out hydro supply, as an example.

Unlike the UK (which mothballed and eventually tore down its coal power stations) there is still a whole bunch of coal power online in Canada.

Lingan Generating Station would be a typical example. Big thermal power station, built to burn local coal, realistically the transition for them is to non-coal thermal power, burning LNG or Oil, or trees or whatever else can be set on fire. If they burned trash (which isn't really a practical conversion, but it's a hypothetical) we could argue that's renewable because it's not like there won't be trash, but otherwise this is just never going to be a renewable power source.

Canada is a huge place, so I don't doubt that none those coal stations are near you (unless, I suppose, you literally live next to Lingan or a similar plant but just aren't very observant) but most of us aren't self-sufficient and so we do need to pay attention to the consequences far from us.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#96

Post by altern8 »

torlok wrote: post #77
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…

I'm not sure, I'm in Poland and all we had was coal. Now it will take a few decades to have our own source of power again. Maybe 20-30 years..?

What are oil companies doing to drive European companies out of business (not saying they aren't, I just don't know)?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#97

Post by fred_is_fred »

kokey wrote: post #47

Every time, over the years, that there has been some kind of headline saying renewables have overtaken fossil fuels, when you look at it a bit more closely there is always a big 'but'. For example, it was compared to coal (not taking into account electricity from gas), or it was for one day, or it was a percentage of new installations, or it excludes winter, includes nuclear etc. This time, however, it looks like it'…

How much did Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine and nat gas price and supply changes accelerate things?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#98

Post by toomuchtodo »

wussboy wrote: post #79
GuB-42 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Latest Data Shows the Rapid Growth of Heat Pumps in Canada - https://www.theenergymix.com/latest-data-shows-the-rapid-gro... - November 5th, 2025

(still good news, as most of Canada's electric generation is low carbon hydro, and the rest of fossil generation can be pushed out with storage and renewables, although I do not have a link handy by province how much fossil generation needs to be pushed out)

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#99

Post by darkwater »

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.

Lies. I'm using solar panels since 2022, still producing same peak energy and not cleaned them once. Some companies/electricians will try to sell you a cleaning and maintenance service for ~80-100EUR/year here but it's basically throwing money.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#100

Post by altern8 »

p0pularopinion wrote: post #82
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,…

> Electricity/heating and gasoline in the EU is many times more expensive than in the U.S. Maybe because Europe as a whole has little to no signifcant oil reserves ready for extraction? Very much unlike the US. > I would think that most people would happily choose lower prices over clean energy and paper straws. The US does have plenty of cheap energy and yet its industrial output is dwarfed by Chinas, which is incre…

True, there is no oil and we just relied on cheap gas from Russia--which I guess it didn't turn out to be a good strategy after all.

That's interesting about oil companies. Is that who's lobbing to pass laws that just seem (to me) to be written on purpose to make our companies less competitive? How does that work, how do oil companies profit from that?

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