Hacker News Reader

Comment by coryrc | Hacker News Reader

> we paid dearly for that

And if you had invested in Drake Landing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Landing_Solar_Community solar setup instead of PV, then neither the Russian invasion of Ukraine nor Hormuz blockade would have been a huge deal. The cost of energy is destroying your industrial base.

> Also, Germany will (and does) a large share of it energy requirement ... from wind

15TWh in January 2025. Again, you burned about 230 TWh of fossil fuels. Nearly every heating system is over 80%, electricity closer to 50%, so lets say 150TWh. Do you have an order of magnitude more land and water you're able to put wind generation on? And are you willing to base your life and economy on not having Dunkelflaute?

View on HN

> Do you have an order of magnitude more land and water you're able to put wind generation on?

Actually yes. We currently use less than 0.5% of our agricultural land for PV (and some agricultural use is technically possible below PV). We could of course dedicate 5% or even 10% of land use to PV, if we really needed to (which we don't). We also could still expand PV to large swathes of build-up area (car parks and the like).

And Wind turbines actually don't need much space at all, the main issue is distance to settlements because of noise/shadow concerns.

> And are you willing to base your life and economy on not having Dunkelflaute?

I think there is an interesting discussion to be had. If we could i.e. half the cost of energy but have to live with drastically reducing energy consumption every few years for a couple of weeks in winter, would that be worth it?

We actually did so in the first winter after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because energy prices rose dramatically and people and businesses reacted accordingly. That was painful (and had no upside whatsoever), but I think if it didn't come completely by surprise but would be a designed part of the system, it might be worth it.

> We also could still expand PV to large swathes of build-up area (car parks and the like).

That doesn't solve your problems in the slightest. You get less than half the return on investment for PV that most other countries in the world get, and does nothing for when your peak energy load is. Every dollar spent on PV requires another dollar on natural gas for the winter and locks you into fossil fuel dependency. Spend the money on something which gives you winter power!

> the main issue is distance to settlements because of noise/shadow concerns.

That's exactly what I mean. Where can you actually build it? And is that enough? And why spend a dime on solar until you've maximized wind?

> If we could i.e. half the cost of energy but have to live with drastically reducing energy consumption every few years for a couple of weeks in winter, would that be worth it?

See, exactly, that's the kind of national conversation you (and here in the USA) should be having. But we don't do that kind of thing any more. The politicians make money lying about the costs of things -- Gerhard Schröder being, I guess, a Russian stooge at best, a great example of downplaying the full costs.

> then neither the Russian invasion of Ukraine nor Hormuz blockade would have been a huge deal. The cost of energy is destroying your industrial base.

Domestic heating has little to do with industrial base. Fertilizer prices would still have risen. Grain supplies would still be affected.

> Domestic heating has little to do with industrial base.

It does because 1. they're both fighting for now-expensive imported natural gas 2. rates go up for everybody to pay for the malinvestment in solar

> Fertilizer prices would still have risen. Grain supplies would still be affected.

I meant "for Germany". Those are a problem for others.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com