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by Kon5ole 928 days ago
Solar with battery storage seems to have passed nuclear on price 4 years ago, when it was 2-3x more expensive than it is today and perhaps 10x more expensive than it will be before a new nuclear plant can be finished.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/07/01/new-sola...

If that's true (and I see no reason to doubt it) Germany will make the cheapest energy in the EU by a country mile in just a few years. Unfortunately, they are bound by treaties to cover the cost of nuclear in other countries, so it won't help them as much as it could.

The main problem for solar+storage is that centralized, government-controlled energy production is a huge cash cow for the state. In the EU, the price of electricity gives the governments extra income both when they sell electricity and when they tax the consumption. They can basically drain money from the population at will.

I see this declaration as a step to keep things that way, it just makes no sense otherwise.
2 comments
pfdietz 928 days ago
I was told at one point that storage in Germany is inhibited because an entity wanting to operate grid-connected storage had to pay tax on the energy used to charge the storage (and then the output would be taxed again by whoever ultimately consumed it.)
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rich_sasha 928 days ago
How long do the batteries last? What happens after a week or cloudy winter weather?

Battery storage typically seems to smooth out production over about 24hrs, not multiple days and certainly not seasons.

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pfdietz 928 days ago
Dunkelflauten (and seasonal leveling) are covered by use of an e-fuel like hydrogen.

You can see this effect in action at the optimization/simulation site https://model.energy/ Go there, solve for Germany (2011 weather data, 2030 cost assumptions), then disable hydrogen and try again. The optimum cost nearly doubles.

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ZeroGravitas 928 days ago
Interestingly, this simulation also suggests a 95% cost increase if Germany tried to do it without e-fuel/power-to-X (which it estimates would need to cover about 8% of demand)

https://www.wartsila.com/static/energy-vision/#/country/DE

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