It’s going to happen worldwide and it is less of a reflection of a lack of interest, but the current price of PVs mean they are economical even without subsidies. link
I think this is a good thing, IF the subsidies are shifted from PV to other de-carbonising measures (e.g. increased heating system replacement subsidies).
If German electricity was cheap, like in Portugal Here I would say it is reasonable to reduce the amount of subsidies. However German electricity prices appear to be double that, likely constraining industry
And solar energy has considerably contributed to lower electricity costs for the German industry! It is households which pay the extra costs of grid modernization, but don’t harvest much advantages of cheap renewable generation.
Also, IMO grid modernization should be considered a cost caused by fossil energy use, because it would be much cheaper if we hadn’t been clinging to coal for so long. And the necessity to modernize the grid is also caused by the climate damage which fossil energy is causing, so it is wrong to charge even consumers which already use 100% of cheap renewable energy with the cost of modernization.
And regarding nuclear, which somebody surely will bring up - at that point betting on nuclear was just an excuse for continuing to use fossil energy without changing ways. Nuclear is just too expensive to be any reslistic alternative. Especially considering that the billions spent on nuclear plants would have much better effects if spent on modernizing train infrastructure and giving interest-free KfW credits for investments in buildung insulation, heat pumps, and EVs.
I would agree with you generally, but this case is a bit different. Currently, you can get compensation for feeding electricity into the grid. For small PV systems this is negligible (though it used to be substantial), but larger ones exceeding I’d say 10 kW can still recuperate some of the costs that way while covering their need. In addition, large commercial plants could get compensation for electricity production exceeding the local grid’s capacity to incentivise the development both of local grids (to save cash) and for local providers to increase generation capacity early on.
The current ministry is essentially slashing all these incentives (and turning them around: you have to pay to be connected to the grid) which is likely going to lead to a second crash in the PV market.
It’s going to happen worldwide and it is less of a reflection of a lack of interest, but the current price of PVs mean they are economical even without subsidies. link
I think this is a good thing, IF the subsidies are shifted from PV to other de-carbonising measures (e.g. increased heating system replacement subsidies).
If German electricity was cheap, like in Portugal Here I would say it is reasonable to reduce the amount of subsidies. However German electricity prices appear to be double that, likely constraining industry
And solar energy has considerably contributed to lower electricity costs for the German industry! It is households which pay the extra costs of grid modernization, but don’t harvest much advantages of cheap renewable generation.
Also, IMO grid modernization should be considered a cost caused by fossil energy use, because it would be much cheaper if we hadn’t been clinging to coal for so long. And the necessity to modernize the grid is also caused by the climate damage which fossil energy is causing, so it is wrong to charge even consumers which already use 100% of cheap renewable energy with the cost of modernization.
And regarding nuclear, which somebody surely will bring up - at that point betting on nuclear was just an excuse for continuing to use fossil energy without changing ways. Nuclear is just too expensive to be any reslistic alternative. Especially considering that the billions spent on nuclear plants would have much better effects if spent on modernizing train infrastructure and giving interest-free KfW credits for investments in buildung insulation, heat pumps, and EVs.
I would agree with you generally, but this case is a bit different. Currently, you can get compensation for feeding electricity into the grid. For small PV systems this is negligible (though it used to be substantial), but larger ones exceeding I’d say 10 kW can still recuperate some of the costs that way while covering their need. In addition, large commercial plants could get compensation for electricity production exceeding the local grid’s capacity to incentivise the development both of local grids (to save cash) and for local providers to increase generation capacity early on.
The current ministry is essentially slashing all these incentives (and turning them around: you have to pay to be connected to the grid) which is likely going to lead to a second crash in the PV market.
We’ll, thats where the problem lies…