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Comment by _Microft | Hacker News Reader

If you need any values, check this page [0]. It’s run by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy (the Fraunhofer Society [1] is a large organization for applied science and has lots of different institutes).

[0] https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_Society

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What is really depressing when looking at this graph, is that if Germany had kept the same nuclear generation as in 2010, it will be producing electricity almost free of CO2 for a large part of the year... but instead they are burning lignite. If you look at how many people will have to ride a bike instead of a car to offset that you see how ridiculous this is.

I agree that keeping nuclear would have been the right choice, but it is also easy to see why it was politically impossible.

After years of public debate and negotiations nuclear was accepted as a bridging technology just a couple of months before Fukushima happened. Fresh in the publics mind on already extremely shaky ground Fukushima sealed the fate for the existing nuclear plants.

I totally agree but the only tangible result is that "extreme green parties" are making the planet more miserable.

We have on the other hand gotten new built renewables costing less than the marginal cost of traditional fossil plants. Germany's start may have been slower, but who is fastest in the end? The turtle enjoying exponential development or the hare living on past achievments?

I usually find electricitymaps easier to digest: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

So, the line is the demand, the colored areas are the generation by source and the mismatch between both is... the import/export and pumped storage that I've just found that are turned off at the bottom, cool.

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