[pizzapill]

Germany is replacing nuclear/coal with wind/solar energy:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemix#/media/Datei:Energi...

(grey = wind, red = nuclear, black/brown = coal)

Both nuclear and coal are shrinking since ~ 2000 and both sources of energy have been replaced by renewables since then. Currently ~40% of power produced in Germany comes from renewables. Wind energy has become #1 source of power from 0 twenty years ago.

[tarsinge]

Germany mix is still very dirty compared to some neighbors[0], it’s a fact that they chose politics over CO2 reduction (choosing to close all nuclear power plants overnight as a reaction to fukushima when the renewable capacity was not there and rely on coal until 2038). Wether you are pro nuclear or not it’s an environmental catastrophe.

[0]https://www.electricitymap.org/map

[pizzapill]

> it’s a fact that they chose politics over CO2 reduction

True but the timeline is:

2002 - Ban of construction of new nuclear reactors and limitations on the normal operating life of existing reactors to 32 years. Last shutdown ~ 2021.

2010 - Government wants to increase the limit of some newer reactors to ~2030-2035.

2011 - Fukushima. 77% of Germans are against a increase of the operating life of the remaining reactors, 48% want all turned off immediately. Government (in a election year) goes with the opinion of a vast majority of Germans.

So the current exit was planned since 1990-2000. Municipal power plants have planned for increase in demand and invested billions. The need for renewables increases spending & investment enormously (after our wise government killed of solar in the early aughts and handed technological leadership to China).

With this years election the Green party will probably be the second most powerful party in Germany. A party that was founded with the goal to end German reliance on nuclear power and bombs.

[ekianjo]

Nope Germany is massively relying on nuclear energy produced by its neighbors.

[pizzapill]

2002 was the last year Germany imported more power than it exported:

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/153533/umfrag...

[idownvoted]

Ah Sweet, the old “exportweltmeister” scam never seems to get old.

Germany is exporting so much energy because (and only because) without the base load provided by conventional power plants it’s energy grid routinely is on the brink of collapse, whenever there are weather based shifts in renewable energy production.

This causes the electricity price to routinely go negative because our neighboring countries don’t want to have it either.

What a failure. And what a failure that people still fall for that exportweltmeister lie

[pizzapill]

Do you have a source for your claims? I mean its obvious that renewables are dependent on the weather, but that's no issue since a neighbour can always produce & Germany is building up power storage capacity. Including a fat line to Norway where Germany sends wind power and receives renewables power when there is a need.

Additional the German power grid is super stable, black- or brownouts simply don't happen.

> This causes the electricity price to routinely go negative because our neighboring countries don’t want to have it either.

This has and probably will always happen. For example Aluminum smelters are getting paid to burn electricity almost since the beginning of the industrialization, otherwise this industry wouldn't exist.

> What a failure. And what a failure that people still fall for that exportweltmeister lie

So building up massive renewable capacity while starting to sell more and more of it is a failure to you? Either your expectations are crazy high or very low...

[idownvoted]

> Do you have a source for your claims?

Apparently googling things is extremely hard if the search results confront ones own bias...

Here you go: https://postimg.cc/qttW8tSm

(Even the pro Energiewende org “agora” has a problem hiding the facts in their charts (https://www.agora-energiewende.de/service/agorameter/chart/p...)

[pizzapill]

Yes it is hard, can you provide comparison data from < 2000 and the search words you used? Is the Y axis price or usage?

[labster]

This is why you build continent-sized electric grids. It’s always sunny somewhere.

Making a nation-sized renewable-based electric grid is very hard to stabilize, because you’re not working at the right scale. It’s the same with other large infrastructure like freeways: they’re only worth the investment if you connect vast areas.

[cygx]

There's always something. Did you know that nuclear-power producing France comes close to crashing the grid basically every other winter? See eg https://www.cre.fr/Actualites/RTE-fait-appel-aux-industriels... for the announcement from 2019, but I remember reading articles about this at least as early as 2012.

[tarsinge]

This is because a lot of French households use electrical heating (because it was encouraged by the government to use the huge sovereign electrical capacity), so cold put a huge stress on the grid. This is not related to nuclear power per se.

[cygx]

It's not entirely unrelated: Nuclear plants make bad peakers, and I suspect the older plants probably also aren't too good at load-following. The French also not only get into trouble when demand is high in winter, but also when it's too hot ín the summer because they don't want to boil their rivers...