Finarous t1_j4yvofg wrote
Now hopefully Germany can try and get off of its coal habit. Hopefully adopt more things along the lines of nuclear, wind, or solar if they can manage to make the latter work with how cloudy the place is.
Fellow-Child-of-Atom t1_j4zzh8a wrote
Photovoltaic works absolutely fine in germany. Pretty much every new building has it. The only reason we are behind our plan for renewables is because people were dumb enough to vote conservatives into government for 16 years until last year.
Finarous t1_j504mkt wrote
Out of curiosity, how does that work when Germany has a much lower number of sunny days on average?
Fellow-Child-of-Atom t1_j50a7lb wrote
I don't have numbers unfortunately. All I can say is that photovoltaic is the default rather than the exception for new buildings and that all people I know with photovoltaic talk very highly about the returns.
Obviously in more southern countries it works even better and countries in scandinavia will have less returns. I think photovoltaic is pretty much nonexistent in Norway or Sweden for example. But from what I know, photovoltaic is a riskfree, profitable investment here.
I'm not sure how widely it is known, but Germany has been the worldleading producer for photovoltaic around ~2010 thanks to the subsidies by the past progressive government until - as always - Merkel and other corrupt conservatives destroyed the industry with over 100.000 workers shortly before it became profitable by itself by cutting all of the funding.
If people had been smarter in the past elections, this whole current mess would have been very different and maybe Putin wouldn't even have dared to wage war because Germany would have been way more independant of their energy supplies.
Finarous t1_j50cbfr wrote
In fairness, adding PV to buildings seems sensible even if it weren't terribly efficient because to not do it simply seems to be wasting energy that is literally falling from the sky for free. And I would agree that a major country such as Germany being dependent on other countries for something as significant energy is rather poor as a policy decision, given how it allows other countries to use that as leverage. Always good to have leverage over others, not so good for them to have it over you.
TaXxER t1_j51ll88 wrote
The definition of “sunny days” are simply not so relevant, since the output of solar panels on sunny and on cloudy days differ by a margin that is much smaller than most people think.
kraenk12 t1_j51y4av wrote
Honestly the last summers were so sunny and dry as if it was Italy.
Janni0007 t1_j50fa9w wrote
We are not in the 90s anymore. PV does not need direct sunshine only at this point diffuse light suffices. If you want to look at interesting data look at the fraunhofer institute ISE (it is also available in english)
Finarous t1_j50s2mn wrote
Thank you very much good redditor! Always a pleasure to learn new things.
TaXxER t1_j51le26 wrote
> solar if they can manage to make the latter work with how cloudy the place is.
You do know that clouds have only a limited effect on the output of a solar panel, right?
kraenk12 t1_j51xz7r wrote
Lol Germany has one of the highest amounts of renewable energy among all countries on this planet!
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