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Comment by direwolf20 | Hacker News Reader

Solar is the cheapest form of energy averaged over the whole year. 2025 was the first year where more total electricity was produced by renewables than not.

It has the obvious problem that it doesn't work at night and in winter. That's a big problem. I don't know how to fix that.

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Yeah that's a theory. Practically you have something called electricity exchange in Leipzig where price bottom is set by the most expensive power source.

That's how every electricity market works and the only way that's been discovered for them to possibly work. It means solar producers, if they're getting paid the sky–high USA natgas price while paying nothing at all, are making huge profits, which explains why there are suddenly so many solar farms, eh?

These savings don't trickle to the end customers. It's only making middlemen richer.

Well then why aren't there competitive middlemen?

Companies can (and do) install solar for their own consumption. No middleman involved.

Every study I've read that supports the "cheap solar" thesis assumes sunny days in normal temperatures, and never includes enough storage to maintain consistent output overnight (after sunny days in normal temperatures, let alone bad days).

In other words, they count on non-solar backup... which not only makes solar more expensive, but basically redundant.

Until Solar+storage is the cheapest form of energy while delivering its promised output at 4AM after a cloudy day in freezing temperatures, the "solar is cheap" stuff is simply dishonest.

That is true. We should not discount the drawbacks of solar and wind, nor their upsides. When they are working, they are producing energy almost completely for free. The advantage of free energy, even when intermittent, is so great that we should spend considerable effort trying to make the grid use it as much as possible.

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