Comment by dashundchen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dashundchen | Hacker News Reader

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I look at maps like this http://www.electricitymap.org/ which show the solar and wind potential across Europe along with imports and exports between countries.

It makes me wonder how much more of a baseload renewables could provide with a more integrated energy market and continent wide capacity planning. At least in the US, electrical grids are highly fragmented and poorly connected between states and regions.

When Germany was in the 10% range, was there a region that could provide high amount of wind generation to pick up the slack? Or on sunny, windy summer days when electric prices go negative, is there somewhere to put that energy? https://energytransition.org/2014/05/german-power-prices-neg...

I noticed in Germany, there are solar panels on houses and barn roofs everywhere, even in not so sunny regions - maybe that investment would be better put into grid scale wind, while Spain and Portugal build out grid scale solar.

If investment in renewables took place on a continental scale, with high capacity connections between solar installations in Spain, wind turbines in the North Sea, nuclear plants in France, renewable and lower carbon utilization could go up and some of the gas and coal plants could be spun down.

> If investment in renewables took place on a continental scale, with high capacity connections between solar installations in Spain, wind turbines in the North Sea, nuclear plants in France, renewable and lower carbon utilization could go up and some of the gas and coal plants could be spun down.

Yes, but countries don't typically like being dependent on each other for their energy needs. We are even in an era where people are openly questioning the future of the EU due to the rise of Euro sceptic parties in France and the Netherlands.

The power grid operates at a snail's pace compared to the rest of the high tech industry. Getting the permission to build something, passing all the environmental impact assessments, financing, etc, can take years before the first shovel of dirt is moved to build the project.

> I noticed in Germany, there are solar panels on houses and barn roofs everywhere, even in not so sunny regions - maybe that investment would be better put into grid scale wind, while Spain and Portugal build out grid scale solar.

This I do agree with. Financially, I can't see how it makes sense for someone in Germany to install solar, when places like Spain or Greece get far more sun in the year. It simply a question of location, and northern localities such as Germany receive much less annual irradiation than more equatorial localities do.

However I think most people in Germany would install solar not for the electricity, but because they are conscious of the environment and believe that by installing solar, they are reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.

Ökostrom (ecological electricity) is very big in Germany.

Ökostrom is indeed big here, but the solar thing seems logical enough for me if you look at the policy picture: The German government needs to reduce the country's overall CO2 emissions by X percent over the next Y years to keep political promises. I mean promises in both the sense of treaty obligations, and also social expectations from its own citizens as you alluded to.

And it has to do that at the very same time that it is constructing new coal-fired power plants to keep the base load power it will lose by shutting down its remaining nuclear plants. So there is some urgency to this. Rooftop PV is really the only option that can be quickly deployed en masse through incentives, right across the country, skipping all that red tape you mentioned.

If solar in Germany can be very effective for half the year, then it is still going to make a sizable impact on those annual CO2 figures. So obligations are being met on paper while also having a pretty visible presence on the ground in cities and towns.

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