Hacker News Reader

Comment by boshomi | Hacker News Reader

Not really. Nuclear power requires massive subsidies. In Germany, the "De Height" wind farm was completed in August. Sixty-four 15-MW turbines generate about 4 TWh of electricity annually, which is sold entirely on the open market without any EEG funding.

The market for baseload electricity has disappeared in Germany, as renewables push the residual load to zero or below for almost the entire year:

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?c=DE&l...

The base load is an imaginary line passing through the troughs of the residual load curve.

View on HN

Yes, but then when the wind doesn't blow, you miss upto 960MW of capacity, you can choose how to fill that; solar, coal, gas, waterpower, diesel, nuclear.

And the question is, are those wind turbines without subsidy?

Here in the Netherlands some big energy users like Aldel already have stopped, those big users are also good in up and down scaling energy usage on demand, and also those products have to come from somewhere else now, so in the end the question is about energy and availability.

Some (or a lot of) subsidies can be justified.

> when the wind doesn't blow

During day hours and with clear weather it's solar.

Currently at night in Germany it's: imports from other countries + coal power plants + gas power plants + little bit of hydro/biomass.

The plan for coming decade is to replace coal power plants with new subsidized gas power plants.

https://table.media/en/europe/news/gas-fired-power-plants-eu...

So, relying on others to fix your mess + catastrophic emissions + catastrophic but less so emissions + something pretty much at full capacity.

Or they could get with the times and build a ton of battery like California. Down to 25% fossil in 2026 due to the massive success of shifting solar into the night with batteries.

the answers exist, euro states just can’t get out of their own way and actually build things

It's expensive to build enough batteries to cover a few days with very little generation. Hydrogen and gas turbines currently look cheaper.

and thats fine by me! if we covered just the average daily cycle with batteries (like cali is closing in on) then you're talking like a 95% non-fossil production for the year. We've effectively won the climate crisis at that point. Or at least, can spend our efforts in other sectors while technology keeps giving us more options for the last 5%

A single wind turbine or a single PV module obviously provides only variable amounts of electricity. However, this is not the case for many PV modules and wind turbines spread across the entire continent. Wind and PV complement each other very well in Europe because of regular weather fronts; when there is little wind, there is more sunshine.

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&...

In Europe, the average weekly electricity generation in 2025 was 14.0 TWh, and no week fell below 10.2 TWh. In 2026, the average output was about 15.5 TWh, and so far, no week has fallen below 12.5 TWh.

Of course, batteries are needed for short-term storage, but with the creation of excess capacity in wind and solar power, the troughs below the load curve become narrower and shallower, drastically reducing the need for storage.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com