[colechristensen]

Germany is famous for being cloudy and is much further north, much of it is north of the primary US-Canada border. It is one of the leading solar adopters.

Not being ideal for solar just means you need to install more area, and there's plenty available space. Solar is already the cheapest (if not it's competitive with the cheapest wind power) power source. Also having to, say, double the panel area in lower solar irradiance requires less than double the non-panel costs (you don't need double the inverters or power transmission).

California is leading because the politics/economy/irradiance are the best combination, you would expect a place like that to lead first. It does not follow that other places are unsuitable for solar, it will just cost marginally more.

It's a strange but persistent pattern where success in ideal conditions will draw out a litany of reasons why that success is actually a sign of failure when instead the early success is just a sign of ideal conditions. Why wouldn't something promising succeed first in the place with the best conditions for success?

[bluefirebrand]

> Germany is famous for being cloudy and is much further north, much of it is north of the primary US-Canada border. It is one of the leading solar adopters

Looks like it's about 12 cents (in USD) more expensive on average per kwh in Germany than Cali

So maybe Germany isn't exactly a great example of energy production if it's that much more expensive

[colechristensen]

>Looks like it's about 12 cents (in USD) more expensive on average per kwh in Germany than Cali

What is? Consumer energy prices?

Apples-to-apples consumer energy prices are difficult between the US and EU, Germany has historically had particularly high energy prices for various reasons, taxation is significantly different. Also they were a heavy importer of Russian gas and foolishly dismantled their entire nuclear generation capacity, so there are other reasons why their energy prices are high. The peaking energy costs caused by the Ukraine/Russia war have gone down.

[acdha]

That’s both moving the goalposts and also leaving out the true cost comparison. Solving climate change should be worth a lot more than $0.12/kWh and viability in countries like Germany suggests that fossil fuel advocates saying that it would be economically ruinous are not making a good-faith argument.

[colechristensen]

Solar is still cheaper than anything else is in Germany. Deutsche Bank thinks so [1]

There's no "moving goalposts" possible. Without any morality, preventing future costs, or any such way of adjusting the "real" costs... solar is just cheaper, and by a large margin which is only expected to grow. Yes you need storage and methods to move power east and west, solar is still cheaper. The greediest, most short sighted, heartless monster would still invest in solar before anything else because it makes them the most money.

https://www.dbresearch.de/PROD/RPS_DE-PROD/PROD0000000000528...

[acdha]

Good point. I’m not familiar with the German power market but the amount in question is small enough that I suspect our descendants will consider it trivial compared to the cost of dealing with a broken climate.

[bluefirebrand]

For what it's worth I'm a nuclear advocate not a fossil fuel advocate

[acdha]

I think it has a place in the portfolio but one of the reasons why fossil fuel-backed think tanks like to push nuclear or hydrogen as the green option is that it means years of continued growth in oil consumption before anything competing comes online, whereas solar cuts into their profits within weeks. Deploying solar as much as possible buys the decades we need to get much new nuclear power online and in many cases it doesn’t require much more than buying commodity products.

[seec]

Germany also generates very little electricity from solar in the winter, use quite a bit of coal plant and imports multiple Twh from its neighbors in the worst months.

So yeah sure, it can pretend to be ahead on green tech, as long as France invests in nuclear and sell it cheap electricity in the winter when it is most needed and most expensive.

I am so tired of the bullshit about Germany "success", I think they should be disconnected from the EU grid so they can walk the walk before talking the talk.