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Comment by jskrablin | Hacker News Reader

What Germany gained is more pollution, higher CO2 emissions and a lot of hopium that current energy fubar will somehow be resolved sometimes in the unspecified future using semi specified technology (there is no large scale energy storage solution available for renewables and it will stay like this for some years to come). Shutting down nuclear was a political decision, fueled by pure ideology (and some Russian help because natural gas exports).

What entire EU gained is getting to support often unstable electricity grid in Germany. So we all gained a lot by the looks of it.

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The European electricity market is working quite well, imports and exports are expected to happen. Countries prefer to import electricity when it is cheaper than producing it themselves. Germany has more than enough capacity installed to handle its energy needs (even if a lot of this is still fossil). Germany does not have an "often unstable electricity grid", not at all. That information is simply wrong.

In other words, shutting down nuclear plants means a) replacing the energy generation with coal (mostly lignite), or b) importing energy from other countries, which generate it from coal (mostly lignite) like Poland.

Importing will likely be "cheap", because we all agree to collectively pretend that externalities like CO2 emissions or catastrophic pollution from coal plants are not a thing.

Can't see how any of these options are good.

Oh no no. Germany loves importing nuclear electricity from France, Czech Republic and others too. Makes the government feel good about having quit nuclear, because somehow when it comes from across the border it's not so bad anymore.

NIMBY has a strong tradition in Germany.

Many of your comments are misleading and are often renewable energy propaganda.

"In 2023, Germany lacks 15 to 20 gigawatt of secured power output”. This comment was from Harald Schwarz, Professor for energy distribution and high voltage technology at the Brandenburg University of Technology. EU Fact check rates this as mostly true.

The claim that germany has sufficient capacity for its energy needs is just wrong.

That is true, but it is also not the goal to achieve 100% secured power output, nor is it necessary. The calculations that determine the necessary electricity production to cover Germany's needs at all times are more complicated than just looking at the installed secured power output and involve factors, such as the likelihood of unavailable renewable energy production. And even if the worst case happens, there are solid strategies in place to avoid a blackout, including backup power plants and coordination with high energy consumers to reduce or shut down their consumption.

And all of this still ignores the fact, that there is a highly connected international electricity market, that large scale storage solutions are being prepared, and that the grid is becoming more decentralized.

this is all well and good but seems to ignore the central problem - energy security is a national priority. Hand waving away the problem by pointing to energy markets or a decentralised grid does not address the fundamental issue.

You are right, the goal is not 100% secured energy supply but we have multiple problems at the same time - energy security and climate change to name just two.

Zoom out one more time and you see that the world gained a solution to climate change that is actually competitive economically.

Competitive even without a strong government regulation to enforce people paying for externalities, and even working against the entrenched intests of fossil fuels.

A solution which is rolling out at a truly astonishing rate.

What happens in Germany is irrelevant compared with what has happened globally due, in large part, to Germany.

Yep. We all gained primarily a lower living standard without reducing any CO2 consumption globally at all _and_ without improving the environment locally. Looks like a good policy to continue with, doesn't it?

The grid in Europe is so stable that you can literally use it to synchronise a clock by counting the oscillations.

Error over time: 0

Total frequency error over time is not a good measure of stability because the frequency is actively adjusted to control this. The grid could fail every day and still have 0 frequency error over time if they ran it faster when it was working to compensate.

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