Solar Power and Batteries Have Been Keeping Europe's Grid Stable (euronews.com) 147
AleRunner writes: "Solar has been doing the 'heavy lifting' to help Europe meet its energy needs amid a string of blistering heatwaves," Euronews tells us. Meanwhile, as Europe's energy demands rise with the heat, jellyfish have been causing shutdowns and reduced power output at multiple reactors at French nuclear plants, as we already discussed. Euronews reports: A new analysis from energy think-tank Ember found that solar output in European countries rose by up to 17 percent on heatwave days in June and July. Researchers say that this helped power the grid as electricity demand increased by as much as a quarter on hot days. Heatwaves often trigger a spike in electricity consumption due to the sudden need for cooling, mainly from energy-intensive air conditioning (A/C) units.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that space cooling, which is mostly A/C units and fans, consumed around seven percent of the world's electricity in 2022. Even in countries where A/C ownership is low, countries experience energy demand spikes when scorching temperatures hit. During the early summer heatwaves of 2025, France, for example, recorded an evening electricity peak that was 25 percent above the off-season average due to air conditioning.
Ember's analysis found that during the late-June heatwave this summer, daily electricity demand rose byup to 28 percent in Italy, 23 percent in Hungary, 14 percent in France and 13 percent in Spain compared with pre-heatwave days. It says as heatwave-driven demand increased, solar was the only major power source to perform "better than usual." Compared with other days in June and July, average daily solar generation during the heatwaves was 17 percent higher in France and Hungary, five percent higher in Spain and the same in Italy.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that space cooling, which is mostly A/C units and fans, consumed around seven percent of the world's electricity in 2022. Even in countries where A/C ownership is low, countries experience energy demand spikes when scorching temperatures hit. During the early summer heatwaves of 2025, France, for example, recorded an evening electricity peak that was 25 percent above the off-season average due to air conditioning.
Ember's analysis found that during the late-June heatwave this summer, daily electricity demand rose byup to 28 percent in Italy, 23 percent in Hungary, 14 percent in France and 13 percent in Spain compared with pre-heatwave days. It says as heatwave-driven demand increased, solar was the only major power source to perform "better than usual." Compared with other days in June and July, average daily solar generation during the heatwaves was 17 percent higher in France and Hungary, five percent higher in Spain and the same in Italy.
We're doing okay against the best effort of some (Score:2)
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I bet there is even a market for "a clean coal powered home generator." Add a drawing of Trump doing a thumbs up and a wink for extra effect... and extra cash. Paint it gold so that everyone can see you have one...
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You should reflect on which political group pushed for many many years the solar panels advocated in the article against many, if not all political, opponents who denied $/kwh from PV was a matter of scale and investment and praised fossil or nuclear...
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Oops.
I realize I misunderstood your point, 'malding' was beyond my english level. Apologies.
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Ok, I am balding, but I'm not THAT mad!
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Perhaps you need to find a different game?
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You should reflect on TikTok politicians like Rob Jetten, pushing private solar panel investments and extensive heatpumps onto the population and then letting the energy companies charge the population whenever they feed back electricity into the net.
The people who were willing to do something for the environment were all conned into make large investments without any returns in the foreseeable future.
TikTok politicians like Rob Jetten only talk about the environment whenever they think it will win them ove
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P.s. I literaly translated some of
Re: We're doing okay against the best effort of so (Score:3)
Your shit of mouse better not be the fluorescent kind. Jetten is IMO on the right track, though I wish there were more room for community initiatives where a larger battery unit evens out pushing to the grid, similar to how Ecopower in Belgium is a coop that puts up wind plants.
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Fingers crossed for no more blackouts (Score:2)
That blackout from last year in Spain and Portugal was embarrassing and destructive to the lives of those who experienced it.
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embarrassing, yes. "destructive to the lives" ... you should stop munching on so much yellow press. yes, there were 7 deaths indirectly linked ... that's just a little over the daily average of fatalities from traffic accidents.
other than that it was one day and a night of pure chaos but people got around it quite well, even fun at times. i lived through it and besides the initial confusion and some traffic jam it wasn't a bad experience, on the contrary, some important stuff to be learned about community,
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A good test (Score:5, Interesting)
Once production is local via wind, solar etc Europe doesn't need to worry - from a strictly energy security perspective - if the orange baboon bombs some oil country.
While renewable power is proving itself in practice Trump wants to reshire manufacturing...EXCEPT for energy production it seems as he's reducing clean energy projects.
Europe must keep diversifying it's energy supply. Russia turning off gas, US messing up oil etc.
I think the lesson is that Europe is on the right track and it needs to accelerate efforts to reach 100% energy self-reliance.
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It will be a better test if they can keep things running in winter.
It's summer, there is lots of sunlight. It's the short winter days with a heavy overcast that are the problem.
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It's summer, there is lots of sunlight. It's the short winter days with a heavy overcast that are the problem.
As Europe adds AC to try to stem the tens of thousands of deaths per heat wave, the demand curve will grow during sunny periods.
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As Europe adds AC to try to stem the tens of thousands of deaths per heat wave, the demand curve will grow during sunny periods.
And surprisingly, this will solve the overcast days problems because the solar power will be distributed enough, high enough capacity and well enough connected that you'll be able to draw enough from it for your normal needs. Which is great.
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Goal post shifting.
The point is about abundant solar during times where it is needed/useful.
Obviously we need power in winter, too. But for farking room lights, not for an AC system. Big difference.
Sure with more heat pumps, we need more electricity ... than we do right now in winter.
But we have it. So: need to fear monger.
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if the orange baboon bombs some oil country.
More like "If any little disruption happens in the Middle East for any petty reason over the next several decades regardless of who the President of the USA is".
But hey, if you want to give Trump the credit for pushing the world away from burning Middle East oil and releasing all that carbon into the atmosphere then go right ahead. I'm sure he'd bask in the attention.
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You can bomb a coal plant too you know. It doesn't matter, you need something to provide for base load, and nuclear doesn't produce as much carbon emissions, so it's a no brainer.
I just learnt that the Netherlands had to fire up a coal plant this summer cause two Belgian reactors are offline. That is in addition to the gas plants they have. Let's hope the new reactors get here quickly...
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Exactly. "Base Load" is a fallacy. Nuclear suffers the exact same problem as wind and solar. In fact, the industry has a term for it - it's called "non-dispatchable".
The term means a power source whose output cannot be synced to a load. If you turn on a light, the power plant needs to supply extra power for that light. And wind, solar and
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Solar and wind are dispatchable. They can reduce their output when there is too much energy available. With solar they just convert less of it to electricity, with wind they feather the blades.
It's not perfect, but we have batteries now anyway. Also spinning mass, which can be retrofitted to old thermal plants.
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Exactly. "Base Load" is a fallacy. Nuclear suffers the exact same problem as wind and solar. In fact, the industry has a term for it - it's called "non-dispatchable". [...] Wind and solar are obvious why,
Uh, no. Wind is highly dispatchable because it's so cheap you can overbuild and then turn off turbines you don't need. You can do this with modern turbines by pitching the blades. Solar is also highly dispatchable because not drawing power from a solar panel doesn't harm it, so again, you can reduce output any time you want.
It's true that solar has the issue that it only works while the sun shines, so it's only suitable for loads which you're going to operate while the sun shines. But Europe could be using
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Dispatchable means, you can decrease - AND - increase at will.
You can not increase wind or solar power at will, unless you previously switched some off, and now bring them back online.
Of course: for a layman, that sounds like the same :P
Hint: it is not.
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Exactly. "Base Load" is a fallacy. Nuclear suffers the exact same problem as wind and solar. In fact, the industry has a term for it - it's called "non-dispatchable".
Beware, however, of the term "dispatchable nuclear power" which is bandied around. This gives the impression that some nuclear plants can match the dispatchability of other much more flexible systems like Wind power. This is deeply misleading firstly because you can mostly only change output a few times a day, secondly because any changes come at high cost to efficiency (though might we worth it even so) and thirdly because the dispatchability varies through the nuclear fuel cycle and by the time the reacto
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This is deeply misleading firstly because you can mostly only change output a few times a day,
The part of the French nuke fleet that is used for load following can do a complete cycle from lowest power to maximum power: two times a day
And I am pretty sure modern Chinese plants are better at that.
In Germany's case cutting old nuclear too quickly and without a backup plan;
No idea what backup plan one needs when the exit is a 30 year long process.
We switched to renewables ... you must be living under a rock.
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In fact, the industry has a term for it - it's called "non-dispatchable".
Depends on the nukes and how you run them.
Germany's where non dispatchable, France's are.
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That is wrong.
We have 3 terms:
base load
load following
load balancing
Base load means: you design a set of plants that run 24/365 at roughly 90% - 95% maximum load. You never increase the load or decrease it, unless one of them fails, and you increase the output of the others. So: you can have the cheapest planst thinkable. With the correct set up, the demand of the grid will never drop below what those plants deliver: that is base load
The base - the lowest point - of your daily load curve.
However around 5 o c
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You can bomb a coal plant too you know.
Coal plant puts out less power than a nuke plant. Coal plant being bombed puts out less harmful material than a nuke plant. The two things are very different and attempting to conflate them is pathetic.
you need something to provide for base load
No, you do not. You need something to follow load. Base load is inferior.
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A coal plant puts out the same amount - or more - of power as a nuke.
You are mixing up "plant" with "reactor".
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So you in a two line post say how great nuclear power is at being invariable, while also complaining about two reactors being offline and having to belch carbon into the air and how you need more reactors, quickly...
One thing that does not ever happen with nuclear power, and you really do not want happening with nuclear power: rushed construction.
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Correct, but damn that picture is changing quickly. The biggest issue are landlocked nations with no access to fossil fuels by pipelines other than those from Russia. Hungary, Austria, Serbia, etc.
Everyone else is getting gas and fossils from (mostly) the US by now, and they're less trustworthy than the Russians, so that is a problem.
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from (mostly) the US by now, and they're less trustworthy than the Russians, so that is a problem.
You mean you can't even rely on them to fuck you over, whilst with the Russians you know that's going to happen?
Well (Score:2)
It's a solid start, but it still leaves plenty of room for improvement in light of advances like sodium batteries for grid storage to always fill up reserves when there's an oversupply. And generating green hydrogen for industrial use off that will become even more important in the decades to come too.
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His Orangeness has helped this cause a lot. Even the most die hard anti-Europeans and anti-environmentalists are having to change their tune, they're having to fall back exclusively on racism as a selling point.
Things are actually going to get even better (Score:5, Interesting)
What we are seeing now is that more and more households with solar are also installing batteries. About 80% of all grid battery storage is now in private households (at least in Germany)... and that's just the part we have data from, many households are probably just to lazy to register their batteries.
Those households then will store their self-harvested energy in the batteries, using it, particulary, when dynamic electricity prices are high, thus lowering the demand at times when supply is low.
Commercial battery storage is mostly held back by the government with their pro-fossil agenda, but we'll likely see more storage at power plants and consumers like office buildings, also stabilizing the grid. In fact there are calls to demand a bit of storage on every big plant, so that they can momentarily (for seconds) feed in more power. This is supposed to emulate the "rotating masses" phenomenon of classical power plants.
Probably the main problem today are right-wing governments (at least in Germany) who, increasingly, want this all to fail, sabotaging it where ever they can.
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And not even bothering to hide it.
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Basically the collapse of our technological civilization at that point.
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A grid is always going to be better and more efficient than individuals managing their own electricity.
Nope.
How should that work?
There is nothing to manage for individuals. It runs on itself. Solar --> battery --> house --> appliance.
Solar dead: grid --> appliance, or grid --> battery --> house --> appliance.
Simple: nothing to manage. Oh, battery about to die and the freezer is on, okay, I do not wash my cloth now - big deal in management skills.
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At the moment Germany has no right wing government.
Perhaps some federal states ... I am to lazy (and to scared) to look that up.
Free money: good or bad? (Score:4, Funny)
Free money falls out of the sky. Should we take it? Today we'll be interviewing Republicans, and learning that the answer is No because asceticism is a fundamental ideal that we should all strive toward. Burn a sacrifice instead!
cooling people vs machines (Score:2)
Wondering (without looking it up) if those numbers for % of energy devoted to cooling includes cooling the machines, like data centers or IT closets, or just cooling people, like AC in homes.
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Interesting question. It seems to be widely inclusive [iea.org]
however data centers seem to be a separate category [iea.org]
Re:pay for the environment (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. Solar panels and batteries are so ridiculously cheap now that people complain they can't install them in their rented flats and all the spoils go to the people who have their own roofs to put them on. We're talking about two to three years until you've made back the cost of your own solar and it's a decade or more of basically free electricity after that. With electric cars making inroads in Europe, there's also no reason to stop: Just keep adding panels and batteries to save more money. The economics are such that if you can, you do, and if you can't, you complain about those who do.
Re: pay for the environment (Score:2)
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If you let out apartments and houses, you're also going to have to make your properties "greener', or you get penalized in some way. For instance in Belgium you can't raise rent with inflation unless your property reaches a certain level of compliance.
Also new buildings have to be compliant anyway. So the benefits are trickling down. I do believe that some of these benefits should go to the people renting, not just the proprietor.
But you are right in that poor people don't have the money to spend on these t
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Re: pay for the environment (Score:2)
In Germany, if you have the space/option, anyone can plug in a " balcony power plant" . That is solar panels + batteries, that get connected with a standard power plug into the house grid. The batteries usually have a second converter, with some standard sockets for "off grid usage".
The feed in into the house grid is limited to 800W. The meter has to be changed to disconnect your house from the outer grid, when power fails.
The landlord can not prohibit it.
The only paperwork is informing the grid operator.
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You could also buy a hybrid. My experience is that if you take care to charge your battery, you can save 50% of fuel on longer trips. If you do many small trips, you can mostly drive electrically.
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You mean like how I can have my cell phone battery changed at a mall kiosk while I eat lunch?
Re: pay for the environment (Score:5, Interesting)
They're getting there, it's a matter of getting the scale factors right. They already have for solar, EV is fairly new in comparison.
Over here more and more people are getting home batteries, if you already have solar you'd be a fool not to. Plus you help stabilize the grid, so it's also a matter of civic responsibility. One of the ways they encourage this is by charging for peak power usage: with a battery in place your peak goes down, and your EV car is basically a huge battery 10 times the size of your home battery anyway.
One problem is that EU car manufacturers are still ICE oriented, and so they're lobbying to slow down EV rollout here. Which is why people are starting to buy Chinese cars, they're better quality and they're cheaper.
Another issue is that many Europeans either live in apartment buildings or don't have parking in front of their houses so they can't charge off their home grid. Or if they can, they're limited to something like 6.5 kWh which is a real pain if you have a 100 kW car battery (i.e. 15 hours to charge the car). Changing all that infrastructure to this new reality is a long, expensive journey: communal charging points next the apartment block or in the underground parking, city wide charging point rollouts, updating the local power grid to accommodate speed chargers, etc. Our government recently invested billions in the nuts company that maintains/updates the grids.
Re: pay for the environment (Score:2)
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Another issue is that many Europeans either live in apartment buildings or don't have parking in front of their houses so they can't charge off their home grid. Or if they can, they're limited to something like 6.5 kWh which is a real pain if you have a 100 kW car battery (i.e. 15 hours to charge the car).
Typically, when charging at home, you do not have an empty battery when starting charging. I.e., for short daily commute even 6,5kWh is enough. On longer trips one can charge along the highway with more powerful chargers.
Yep, with an EV just "top it off" each night (Score:2)
Back in 2018 when I got my first Model 3 I used the lowly 120V outlet in my garage for 1.44 kW charging for the first 6 months without any problems. Even if I returned from a weekend trip close it empty it was OK as I'd gain enough extra range each night that I'd be back to full after a few nights.
I then switched to a free-nights electric plan and had a 240V outlet installed for 7.68 kW charging to make sure it would finish toping off the car during the free period.
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Over here more and more people are getting home batteries, if you already have solar you'd be a fool not to.
When we got solar for our house, we thought for awhile about getting batteries and decided it was not worth the cost. They're expensive, and only last 10 to 15 years. We decided instead to draw from the grid during the night, and feed the grid during the day. It has worked out remarkably well.
your EV car is basically a huge battery 10 times the size of your home battery anyway.
I think this is the only battery that makes sense. Instead of having it bolted to your house, you can drive it around. And at night, it can power your house.
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BYD Atto 1 starts at $24k AUD. https://bydautomotive.com.au/a... [bydautomotive.com.au]
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It's ten years to payback where I am.
Where is that?
Also the whole 'pay now save later' only works for people with money in the first place.
Financing is available for solar installations.
Re: pay for the environment (Score:2)
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You own a SUV hence you are not poor. And your latitude is much further to the south than the old Brunswick and get more sunshine hours, too.
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Used SUVs are often very cheap because they start to develop problems, especially the full frame ones which are generally built sloppy AF. And they will keep you poor because they drink fuel.
Re: pay for the environment (Score:2)
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I could as easily be talking about a Rover. Or anything German. They all rot when they age, nobody does planned obsolescence like Germany
Re: pay for the environment (Score:2)
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More proof that you aren't very wise with investments. Thank goodness no successful businesses or homeowners ever use debt to install equipment to increase efficiency and reduce cost, showing an overall return on the investment even with the debt!
If the overall cost with debt service is less than what you are paying now over time, it's still a good investment.
All we see from you are excuses that don't hold a drop of water. If you don't like solar panels, just say that.
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So your two complains seem to be:
1. you don't have investment capital in order to improve your own situation
2. you are impatient, even when the math maths.
Yeah, not sure financial planning is for you.
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This also debunks the myth that renewables will destabilize the grid and cause blackouts. In fact, the opposite it true.
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Yeah, the great thing about every true renewable system (excluding biomass here) is that they can stop sending power to the grid almost instantly without any penalty or damage. That's not true of any thermal plant, let alone nuclear and even most of the gas plants being built now don't have that flexibility. Your wind turbine's inverter's synthetic inertia is limited by the amount of wind power available, but within that if you stop drawing, the turbine just speeds up a tiny bit whilst the blades get feathe
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We're talking about two to three years
more around 8 years where i live. it depends on many factors: price of energy, installation costs, tariffs and whatnot, state deductions and regulations (in spain you can not sell surplus energy, only get it deducted from your bill (at a quite low rate)).
then again paying off is just one of the considerations. i'm expecting huge disruptions in the energy market almost everywhere and a huge spike in inflation any time now. so i just got my roof plastered and am now energy self-sufficient, next is trading my
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people complain they can't install them in their rented flats and all the spoils go to the people who have their own roofs to put them on
For what it is worth, Germany has pioneered what's referred to "balcony solar [google.com]": a modest set of solar panels, plus an inverter with good safety architecture, which plugs directly into a wall outlet and backfeeds the premises. These get their name from the notion that you can drape the panels over a balcony rail, plug in, and start making power. The systems are modest: a few kW max, but that can make a dent in the energy budget of most flats. Some systems can also pair with modest-sized batteries (oversiz
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For what it is worth, Germany has pioneered what's referred to "balcony solar":
No. China pioneered what's now referred to by white people as "balcony solar". But in fact that isn't really the whole story either. They are just microinverters. These were created for solar farms to make expansion and maintenance easier, and wiring cheaper. Instead of running DC back to a large inverter they use a small one which only one or two panels connect to. They often output 3 phase, in fact I have such a microinverter sitting around, but obviously it's not hard to make 2 phase inverters for reside
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Nope. Solar panels and batteries are so ridiculously cheap now that people complain they can't install them in their rented flats and all the spoils go to the people who have their own roofs to put them on. We're talking about two to three years until you've made back the cost of your own solar and it's a decade or more of basically free electricity after that. With electric cars making inroads in Europe, there's also no reason to stop: Just keep adding panels and batteries to save more money. The economics are such that if you can, you do, and if you can't, you complain about those who do.
Imagine electricity were sticks of DDR5. When the market is flooded with them memory prices fall like a rock. When there is insufficient supply prices skyrocket. This is how everyone should be thinking about solar as a market not whatever unsustainable arrangement they currently enjoy with their utility. Contrary to popular belief the power utility is not your free personal infinite battery. The entire challenge is not generating some quantity of energy it is supplying energy when and where it is neede
Re: pay for the environment (Score:2)
"When you withdraw from the grid you should expect energy to cost you commensurately more due to reduced volume / ROI."
I expect it to get cheaper as I'm not paying for someone's profit or salaries after the equipment.
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We're talking about two to three years until you've made back the cost of your own solar and it's a decade or more of basically free electricity after that.
That is highly location dependent and situation dependent. In some countries where they are abandoning net-metering it's already borderline impossible to make it work financially at all, much less in 2-3 years. E.g. in The Netherlands people are just finding now that starting next year without a battery they stand to make virtually nothing from solar panels. With a high level of storage and a high level of self use you'll be lucky to pay your system back in a decade, at which point you'll be buying a new ba
Re:pay for the environment (Score:5, Interesting)
No they're not. The solar panels and inverters are lasting longer than expected. Mine are still chugging along happily after 12 years, in fact I've only heard sporadic stories of failing inverters. Most of my friends just installed the panels and forgot about them. When I get a battery installed I'll need a new inverter, and I was surprised to learn they're only half the price by now, so the economics are getting even better.
We're also being charged for actual peak usage so not having solar+battery increases utility bills, the fact that you can't earn much by pushing back power onto the grid (what is it again, 6 cents/kWh?, I forget) is not that problematic once you learn to use your solar correctly: use power when your panels are producing or when your battery is charged.
Some people here are disconnecting from the grid entirely. They install lots of solar and a battery, and go and charge the car at work and connect it to the home grid when needed.
Investing in solar has been just about the best investment I ever made from an economic point of view. My overall usage is about 0, so I just pay for using the grid. The fact that you're also helping society is a nice bonus though.
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Sustained! My ca2008 SunPower (RIP) still works at full capability (or at least not noticeable degradation). The inverters though, are dying (only last 8-10 years due to design issue in voltage sensing circuits, not even power parts, sic!). There are non-replaceable as the SP used non-standard grounding polarity.
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My net metering agreement says you're full of shit.
3 years to go until my solar has paid for itself and I'll still have 14 years on the system warranty.
Re: pay for the environment (Score:2)
This really depends on where you are... From what I can tell it's not universal even in the EU?
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Agreed. And I never said otherwise.
GP claimed that solar generators are being CHARGED for sending power to the grid. This is obviously bullshit where even shitty net metering that pays you wholesale exists.
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Agreed. And I never said otherwise.
GP claimed that solar generators are being CHARGED for sending power to the grid. This is obviously bullshit where even shitty net metering that pays you wholesale exists.
I do actually have a friend that sometimes pays to feed the grid. However he does that because he gets hourly variable rate (I think every 15 minutes predicted in advance - there's an API somewhere that he can see the pricing on) and so when demand is high he gets such good rates that, with some hacking the timing of his power sending he paid back his installation in two years. I was a bit surprised about this existing, but I guess there are some benefits of market deregulation.
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Nobody cares about feeding in anymore. The numbers work without selling a single kWh. The panels and batteries are that cheap. When you plan your solar installation, you make sure that you can use most of the electricity you produce, and the ROI is the money you don't pay for electricity from the grid. Typical inverters support "zero feed-in" out of the box, where they adjust their output to not exceed your electricity consumption. The panel output feeds your house, the surplus charges the battery, and if o
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Nobody cares about feeding in anymore.
If you can get variable pricing, there have been moments, especially around failures of large nuclear plants when the prices in some area have gone really worthwhile. All you do is refuse to feed the grid below a certain level based on the expected highest price in the day, but if there's a sudden peak (I think they get predictions some hour(s?) in advance) then you sell into it. Tesla powerwalls were somehow doing this automatically for their customers.
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So you don't understand the concept of "ROI".
You see, when you make an investment, it costs you more up front. However, you are expecting a return on that, and it takes time. I.e. if you pay $10k to install solar panels, you probably have calculated that they will save you that $10k in energy costs over the lifetime of the install, plus some.
That's why it works. Because people can be smarter than "what is the instant payoff?!" and actually make multi-year financial plans.
HTH
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Plus coal is expensive. It makes no sense other than as an expensive political gimmick.
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expensive political gimmick.
Or as a financial reward. There are people willing to buy large amounts of memecoins to ensure that their investments continue to pay off.
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extremely cheap and very very cheap can be relative if you account for consumption. us' average consumption per citizen is 3-4 times higher than world average, double that of europe or china, so any raise in costs hit americans 3-4 fold.
Re:Woke BS for the masses (Score:5, Insightful)
In many countries, coal plants have been running at full capacity this year to keep up with the energy demand while solar panel owners are treated like unwanted scum.
Name some.
In countries like Holland, they charge you for delivering energy back to the net during sunny hours as a new business model.
And fake TikTok politicians like Rob Jetten, who is pushing for this green energy transition, isn't even bothered by this.
News like this isn't underpinned by any evidence, just only wishful thinking from some EU bureaucrats.
I'm not going to take anyone seriously who claims to know EU politics and throws around the word "woke".
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Well the OP may come across as a moron for using the word "woke" but he's 100% factually correct. The news was running only yesterday that Netherlands coal energy generation has hit 2024 *full year* levels... and the year's only half through which puts it on track for the highest amount of coal fired generation since the Ukrainian war caused a gas crisis. https://nltimes.nl/2026/08/17/... [nltimes.nl] The reasons aren't too dissimilar either. Gas prices are still all over the place, coal is firing at alarming rates thr
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is well understood solar makes demand more difficult to predict
Hi, welcome to the 21st century. As you move here from the 1990s, you will find that we have lots more of these things called "computers" - you probably have already heard of them in your time, but, judging from your comments you likely didn't use them much - congratulations on finding Slashdot so quickly.
What we do with these computers is a thing called "Weather forecasting" and what that means is that there are now excellent models allowing us to pretty accurately predict solar output more than a day in a