from Hacker News

Germany has too many solar panels, pushed energy prices into negative territory

by tmalsburg2 on 5/24/24, 4:46 AM with 86 comments

• by bouke on 5/24/24, 5:15 AM

  Same over here in The Netherlands. We have subsidised solar panels and now have an abundance of solar energy, but only during sunny days. The remainder of the time we still have to burn gas and coal. There is some nuclear, which we’ll need much more of if we want to stop with fossil fuels. Meanwhile policy is still heavily pushing for electrification while the power grid is overloaded and will take years and billions to address.

• by KingOfCoders on 5/24/24, 5:30 AM

  If all cars in Germany would be EV, Germany could store 2 days of electric energy usage.

• by KingOfCoders on 5/24/24, 5:40 AM

  The most astonishing thing about solar energy to me, and I didn't know that until recently, on a cloudy day a house roof can produce 1-2kw of solar energy.

• by Someone on 5/24/24, 8:13 AM

  If you invest in a coal or gas power plant, there are times where supply outstrips demand, spot prices drop below your marginal costs, so you have to shut down your plant, making your capital investment seem wasted, too.

  There also basically always is more supply than demand because customers value reliability (possibly more so at times where demand is high)

  What’s different here is that, for solar panels and wind power, the marginal costs of producing electricity are zero, that solar panel ownership is way more distributed, and that supply varies with the weather.

  The main question for both cases though is whether the investment makes sense in the long-term.

• by KingOfCoders on 5/24/24, 5:28 AM

  Which will push getting storage capacity online.

• by dotcoma on 5/24/24, 5:08 AM

  I don’t understand: one day you read that Germany made a mistake closing their nuclear plants (they were old and at the end of their life cycle, by the way) and is relying on carbon plants, and the next day you read that they have too much solar power ??

• by rasz on 5/25/24, 8:45 AM

  Article: OMG negative energy prices!!1

  Reality: 72 Euro/MWh https://euenergy.live/country.php?a2=DE

• by joshspankit on 5/24/24, 4:34 PM

  High-quality problems being touted as catastrophic.

• by throwaway4good on 5/24/24, 5:26 AM

  I guess they need to buy some batteries …