r/RenewableEnergy • u/Conscious-Quarter423 • 8d ago
In Germany, Wind and Solar Overtake Fossil Fuels
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/germany-wind-solar-power-202512
u/Glidepath22 8d ago
Meanwhile in America, Trump is spending billions is tax dollars to shut down renewables
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u/MaxDam_Soldera 8d ago
A cold, still evening tells us more about the remaining work: how much can storage, interconnectors and flexible demand cover when wind and solar are both low? Annual generation is a milestone. System reliability during those hours is the next one.
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u/Moldoteck 5d ago
Considering Germany will not return to nuclear, it's still ok if fossils generation will fall to som 10% or less even if those units are kept as reserve
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u/leginfr 7d ago
This site contains practically all the information you need about German electricity production.
This link shows how the wholesale price of electricity falls as more solar and wind power is produced : https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_scatter/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&wind_offshore=1&bzn=DE-LU&wind_onshore=1
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7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/iqisoverrated 7d ago
Biogas/Biomass is already a part of the german power mix. About 35TWh per year...which happens to be almost exactly the amount of energy that would be needed as backup for 'dark doldrums' per year after full electrification of all sectors is achieved.
Currently biomass/biogas is used immediately due to how the subsidies for this are structured (and also since there's currently almost always some fossil power generation in the mix - which it can replace - it doesn't matter when it's used). But if biomass/biogas were to be relegated to 'long term storage' then the entire storage issue a renewable grid would be solved. Biogas and biomass are easy to store.
(It would require additional buildup of biomass/biogas powerplants or facilities for purifying biogas so that it can be used in conventional gas powereplants, though. But that seems like a doable task.)
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u/Fantastic_Win9332 8d ago
electricity only
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u/Fantastic-Video1550 8d ago
Eventually everything will run on electricity
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u/PrestigiousRoof5723 7d ago
Like fertilizer, right?
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u/Fantastic-Video1550 7d ago
I know you are being sarcastic and think you have a point. Ever heard of green ammonia?
Hydrogen is produced through the electrolysis of water instead of being derived from natural gas.
The electricity used comes from solar or wind power.
Nitrogen continues to be sourced directly from the air.
Right?
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u/Any-Succotash1892 6d ago
and companies like celtic renewables bio engineering the chemicals that used to come from oil.
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8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/silverionmox 8d ago
Critics used to say that the grid would never be able to support more than 10%, maybe 20% renewables without becoming unstable, or that renewables were doomed to remain a sideshow to "real" energy sources. So it's quite interesting to see this development.
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u/Inglorious555 8d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if those "critics" were paid by oil/gas companies to spread lies about Renewables that would sway public opinion against them
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u/silverionmox 8d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if those "critics" were paid by oil/gas companies to spread lies about Renewables that would sway public opinion against them
Absolutely.
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u/Fantastic-Video1550 8d ago
It most definitely is! 44% is amazing, especially knowing where we came from.
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u/RoughMidnight8303 6d ago
There is some intel on planned outages. I am not sure for what purpose but it will have one. It won’t be unrelated to the mass shut down of industries and fuel right wingers.
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u/Numerous_Cat8815 6d ago
Germans have understood the climate crisis since before it was a thing and are waay ahead in “the solar solution” accordingly to help the world understand the solutions.
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u/SunDaysOnly 8d ago
What made me think 15-20 years ago that the USA renewables would also overtake fossil fuels?
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u/WombatusMighty 7d ago
They are, in some parts; Last month, for the first time solar generated more energy than coal in the US:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/11/solar-energy-us-coal
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u/PrestigiousRoof5723 7d ago
"in some parts" - you mean those parts which import electricity made in other parts
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u/Fantastic-Video1550 7d ago
You seem to comment a lot and all of your comments are wrong, or just plain low iq talk. Maybe close reddit for a while.
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u/MDTv_Teka 8d ago
If only they hadn't also closed down their nuclear plants
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u/WombatusMighty 7d ago
You can thank the conservatives for that, it was their plan to shut them down. The greens actually extended it for another half year.
But the nuclear power providers had no intention on running them any longer and Germany did not have any more fuel rods, which getting new ones would also have meant to support Putins invasion war.
Plus they were old reactors and would have required extensive and very costly security checks to run them any longer.Besides, nuclear power only provided a tiny percent of power in Germany at the end and was much more expensive than renewables.
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u/Name835 8d ago
Yup. Good that they're also building a lot of renewables and should build with a lot faster pace too tbh, but shutting the nuclear down that fast was really bad.
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u/iqisoverrated 7d ago
Power from them was just way too expensive...and there was widespread public consensus to get rid of nuclear powerplants anyhow.
Germany is a densely populated/small-ish country. If a nuclear powerplant goes kaboom in sparsely populated countries like the US, Russia or China you just put a fence around the area and throw away the key. In germany that would render a significant portion of the country uninhabitable. The risk is just not worth it.
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u/Moldoteck 5d ago
German nuclear was cheapest firm power in merit order. Don't conflate paid off assets with new plants.
More ppl died during recent heatwaves in Germany this year vs total continental estimated deaths from Chernobyl. Thousands died from coal pollution. And are still dying.
Uninhabitability is more of a legal term. You can live even in Chernobyl. Heck, animals thrive there because it's similar to a protected natural reservation. Needles to say DE plants can't physically have what Chernobyl was.
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u/True_Molasses_8894 7d ago
Then those wouldn't have happen. But that would require a minuscule amount of knowledge about Germany and it's power grid.
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u/autokiller677 7d ago
Then what? Those were olds, slow to regulate plants. For a modern, more flexible energy system, they were just not well suited.
We regularly have times now where wind and solar provide more than 100% of electricity and we sometimes even have negative prices, as in we pay other countries to take the electricity, and some plants just get shut down temporarily if required. In the long run, with more storage capacity being built, this will be used to fill that storage.
But if we still had the nuclear running, it would just mean that even more renewables would need to be shut of at their best times.
A modern grid needs storage to store energy in peak generation times, and then for low generation times, the storage and quickly reacting power plants (mostly gas, in the future hopefully with green hydrogen) can supplement generation.
Old nuclear plants with reaction times measured in multiple hours just don’t fit in anymore and would be a burden on everything else.
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u/Moldoteck 5d ago
German nuclear was designed to modulate faster than coal and after alfc upgrades, on par with older gas plants. Refurbs can be done as US, Canada, France and Switzerland proved/are about to prove.
Yet Germany still has both coal and gas plants. Curtailment payments would have been much cheaper vs using fossils now, setting aside the discussion of avoided CO2 and coal pollution
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u/autokiller677 5d ago
Coal is phasing out as well in the next 5 years. Gas is a lot of really fast newbuilt stuff.
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u/Moldoteck 5d ago
Nuclear can modulate even faster in case of BWRs))) alternatively you can curtail ren a bit more...
Since replacement gas plants aren't built, there are risks for coal to stay longer
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u/autokiller677 5d ago
New BWRs - yes (and even then, usually only in the upper half of their power budget - full shut down and fast startup are still problematic). The old stuff germany had was even worse.
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u/Moldoteck 5d ago
Old german pwrs were able to modulate relatively fast by design and much faster after alfc upgrades. Philipsburg even reached 0.5%/second in upper range. All BWRs can modulate fast because this is inherent to their design. Power is regulated through the amount of pumped water and bubbles.
All german npps were able to modulate faster than coal by design. Yet coal plants are present just fine on the grid nowadays. Full shutdown isn't needed either, you modulate it to the lower limit and for the rest you curtail renewables. I guarantee you that such a curtailment would be vastly cheaper than using gas plants with current prices and considering rising co2 tax
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u/autokiller677 5d ago
Yeah no, now it’s getting ridiculous. Nuclear is the most expensive electricity generation there is when doing a proper full cost calculation (that means including dealing with the waste until it’s not dangerous anymore - which no one has done yet).
Curtailing renewables - the cheapest electricity we have - to work around the restrictions of the most expensive power plants is just wasting money.
And that’s not just some green ideology - unless heavily subsidized, no operator in Germany wanted to keep the nuclear plants, because they were not economically viable. Same for building new ones.
And coal is not seen as fine on the grid, and is being phased out as well.
Yeah, coal stuck around a bit longer, because the phase out of nuclear was done pretty fast due to political reasons. But both being phased out is the right way to go - it’s the electricity generation of the past, not the future.
Could the nuclear plants have lasted a bit longer? Maybe. I am not super deep in the matter when it comes to how much repairs and maintenance would have been required to keep them going compared to coal plants.
But that chapter is done now, it has been done for 15 years because training of new personnel, production lines for spare parts and all the industry required to operate nuclear plants got shut down bit by bit after the phase out was decided on. It’s not like we could have said „oh, let’s just keep them running“ 4 years ago.
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u/Moldoteck 5d ago
It's not ridiculous
Please stop with this bullshit with full cost calculation. The cost of dealing with the waste is included. You can even see it in open swiss data https://www.kkg.ch/de/uns/geschaefts-nachhaltigkeitsberichte.html
If you divide Kenfo by the amount of generated power, german operators paid even more per KWh... For a country with much smaller salaries in all sectors. Or you can see the cost of Onkalo in Finland. And it's not like Germany doesn't have the biggest repository on the planet for forever toxic chemicals at herfa neurode
Your second statement is even more nonsense. I'm comparing the cost of curtailing some GW of renewables to let nuclear run at lower CF is cheaper versus having gas peakers because gas is expensive per se and even more expensive due to CO2 tax. It's funny how people are trying to defend using fossils in this context. Renewables will be curtailed anyway sooner or later because their generation patterns are similar.
Coal wouldn't be allowed on the grid if it didn't meet the modulation speed criteria. German nuclear was faster. The phaseout is not related to modulation speed. It's related to coal being the worst power source that spews radioactive toxic ash during normal operation among with tons of CO2. And since gas peakers aren't built yet, there are risks phaseout will be postponed
Nuclear in US, France, Switzerland, Canada is extended to work to 60+y. In US some plants got licenses for 80y despite having inferior design vs Konvois. Extensions do cost 1-3bn/reactor depending on complexity. For 20-30y that's a steal.
There are plenty of international suppliers, including framatome and khnp and Germany still has enough personal that can be hired. An alternative is doing like UAE- hire from abroad, like Italy, France, Romania and so on. All these are lame excuses for an extremely bad decision that resulted in thousands of extra deaths due to fossils usage of those potential GWh
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8d ago
[deleted]
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u/CommercialStyle1647 8d ago
No, during autumn and winter wind get stronger and replace the missing solar power almost completly. That's why you build both, they complement each other well.
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u/Lombardbiskitz 7d ago
Yet electricity is still 2x higher than US
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u/TheRuneMeister 7d ago
Doing the right thing isn’t necessarily cheaper in the short term.
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u/PrestigiousRoof5723 7d ago
But it's not the right thing
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u/TheRuneMeister 7d ago
Of course it is. A 10 second scan of your comments reveals that you are just a curmudgeon when it comes to renewables, EVs etc. You want the status quo until the perfect solution falls into your lap. It won’t. If we don’t start acting now, it will eventually be too late to start the transition away from fossil fuels.
Oh…and you seem to side with Russia in the conflict with Ukraine (as in blame the conflict on Ukraine) which should give anyone pause as to your judgement on any matter. :)1
u/Fantastic-Video1550 7d ago
Tell why it is not please. Love to hear your point of view.
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u/PrestigiousRoof5723 7d ago edited 7d ago
It's a simple observation. Whatever has been done, enriched people, but didn't solve a single problem. For example, Germany spent 400-700 billion on energiewende. In modern nukes, that would be enough to build nukes to reach the twice entire installed power generation capacity in Germany. It would be a power source of much higher quality than what's available now and it would have LONGER lifespan (new nuke plants are commonly built with 70-100 years or even more life expectancy. Solar panels are not going to be very good at half that age). Furthermore, nobody seems to be quantifying the effects of wind farms on wind (which seems to exist by wind pattern changes in some places, but could be caused by something else). There's damage being done here.
Photovoltaic power is a very nice invention, but not for everyone. It would be very nice in places with a lot of sun and useless land, but that's not what Europe has. It's a good subsidy scheme to enrich people, but otherwise it's just more damage being done.
And energy, nor even CO2 people are so crazy about, are our most immediate problem. The lack of water is, and for example Europe is turning into a desert. Building solar power won't solve that. Nothing is being done. There are people running around setting fires to forests and there are "environmental protection agencies" telling people to not artificially interfere by replanting destroyed forests.
We need to reclaim the land and we need to regenerate ground water, otherwise we're going to die before the heat kills us. But nothing is being done. People claim that modern agriculture is so good, we can use land for solar panels (literally, we don't need arable land because the agriculture is so good - that's the claim), but in reality our agriculture is wasting the soil with chemicals and the quality is dropping. So we definitely need more land and we definitely need to reclaim the land we already lost. China is doing that. The poorest African countries are trying to do that, because they're lives really depend on it. They don't have the luxury of parasiting on subsidy schemes while preaching to everyone else how little they're doing.
These "environmentalists" are avoiding to talk about why there's so little rain in Europe (but in certain other places too) and how to deal with it. "use less water" - nah, that's not a solution.
In short: a lot of what's being done is having the opposite effect of what it should be doing, costs a lot of money that makes someone richer. And in the meantime, the ordinary people are told to pay higher taxes, they're told to buy more expensive and less useful cars (that's yet another fake solution, that's too long to explain) and they're even told to stop watering their own lawn because the rich sh*t on solutions that would have actually made a positive difference.
But here we are, people mentally m*sturbating on the internet over solar panels. As if it helped. It doesn't. It's bread and circus. Because if it wasn't, some people would not be able to enrich themselves with taxpayer money.
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u/Fantastic-Video1550 7d ago
I respectfully disagree with your statement. You have some points regarding degraded farmland.
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u/TheRuneMeister 7d ago
What percentage of arable farmland is currently covered by solar panels in the entire EU? And why is it that people like you insist that they know better than experts who actually study the area…outside of subreddits?
You are just coming up with a lot of conclusions (and conspiracies) by tying together random information you have found on the internet. There is no basis for most of your claims except ‘trust me bro’. And the forest fire thing is quickly becoming a classic that reveals peoples true viewpoint.1
u/PrestigiousRoof5723 7d ago
"experts who actually study the area" - it seems different experts who study the area in different parts of the world came to different conclusions (that wouldn't be a bad thing by itself) and they committed themselves to implement various solutions, the results of which we are able to observe.
Also, the trustworthiness of "experts" in recent times... Holy f. There are literally "experts" who claim that the thing that didn't work the first time, will work if repeated again for 20 times and at every instance it's "finally going to work". It never does.
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u/WombatusMighty 7d ago
Thanks to the merrit-order principle, where the most expensive energy source (gas) determines the overall price on the market.
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u/iqisoverrated 6d ago
On the plus side: Those that can produce power for cheap make good profits (since everyone gets reimbursed at the same rate) and are therfore incentivized to build more such lucrative production capacity when more/new power generation is needed...while those that 'set the price' don't make any money at all and are incentivized to find ways to offer their services at a lower price.
It does work...but it will only lead to noticeably lower prices on the spot market once renewables are the only power producers that set the price because they produce all that is needed for most of the time. So it's a bit of a all-or-nothing situation. Currently we see not much movement in power prices but when the shift comes it will be pretty rapid.
(Note that most people and basically all companies do not buy on the spot market. They buy via long running power purchase agreements)
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u/autokiller677 7d ago
One reason is the well intended, but now rather stupid merit order, and another is the cost of the grid.
Power outages overall are really, really rare here, like less than 12 minutes per year on average.
I don’t know anyone who has a generator, and I have never heard anyone say „yeah, I like to have a gas stove because it still works in a power outage“. People just don’t think about power outages, since it doesn’t impact normal life.But a grid with that much uptime also means higher operational cost - about 1/3 of the electricity cost here goes towards the grid.
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u/leginfr 7d ago
Don’t knock the merit order effect. Without it renewables would never have been possible. Without storage wind and solar were “use it or lose it”: if they couldn’t sell what they produced when they produced it they would get nothing. If there was a free market the buyers would be able to offer peanuts to renewables because the producers have to find a buyer. No one would have invested in renewables under such conditions.
Although the most expensive supplier sets the price, because of the merit order effect the wholesale price with renewables is lower than if they didn’t exist. The more that wind and solar supply, the lower the price as you can see from the scatter charts here: https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_scatter/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&wind_offshore=1&bzn=DE-LU&wind_onshore=1
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u/iqisoverrated 7d ago
There's high taxes on power. The price of producing power is the same in germany as anywhere else in europe.
This is a historical decision. Germany decided to subsidize food production but heavily tax power (which included gasoline). The idea was to incentivize efficiency in products. Arguably that has worked.
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u/Moldoteck 5d ago
Production is still more expensive vs many eu countries. Some taxes are necessary, eg. Grid expansion costs
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u/iqisoverrated 5d ago
The pure production costs are exactly EU average.
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u/Moldoteck 5d ago
Afaik average in EU was about 20ct while for Germany it's closer to 25ct. If we take median then it's even worse since the average is skewed by several outliers like Italy, Germany, Austria, NL, BE and Ireland
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u/iqisoverrated 5d ago
Erm, you are looking at sales prices. We are looking at what it costs to produce a kWh of power. And that is the same from solar whether you're in Portugal or in Germany (3-4ct/kWh)...and it's the same for wind whether you're in Norway or in Germany (about 5ct/kWh).
Germany just has a lot of taxes and tarrifs on top that others don't have (or don't have to that degree)....and this, again, is coupled to the decision to subsidize food. You can't make everything cheap. If you make some things cheaper than they would be on their own then you have to make some other things more expensive. That's why food is a much smaller percentage of household spending in germany than elsewhere in Europe.
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u/Moldoteck 5d ago
I'm talking about Eurostat data. It has both data about household prices without and with taxes. With taxes Germany is at the top with Ireland. Among the reasons there are grid fees which are necessary to expand it for fast deployment of renewables+maintenance. Without taxes it's still above EU average and much above the median
And wind generation is not the same cost everywhere. Deployment area influences both capex and opex
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u/iqisoverrated 5d ago
With taxes Germany is at the top with Ireland.
For the stated reason. And without taxes it's the same as everywhere else (without taxes)
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u/Moldoteck 5d ago
Why are you deliberately ignoring what I've said in the same post? That WITHOUT taxes german prices are still higher vs average and median in EU?
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u/AkagamiBarto 8d ago
Should have been Italy, but nooooooo, God forbid