k8wk1

Nextcloud is great.

However, at least in my case selfhosted version is rather slow even with enough hardware and recommended tuning.

The amount of annual subsidies is around $2 billion. It's a tiny number for a country as large as Japan. Their GDB is $4 trillion per year.

5PJ is not that large, only 1.4 TWh.

Low electricity costs are a problem for all electricity plans, not only nuclear.

Renewables are even more susceptible to this because the weather affects all renewable plants of the same type similarly across wide geographic areas, so there will be times when they all generate more than is needed and nothing can be done about it. What's worse, the output is unpredictable, so there's little opportunity for some business to base its operation on renewable electricity generation patterns.

At least the weekend demand drop is predictable, so businesses can use this predictable opportunity to reduce their costs and thus reduce the impact the weekends have on the profitability of nuclear and similar dispatchable plants.

> hydrogen fuel cells are technically batteries and have absurdly high energy densities.

The devil is in the details - this is only partially right. Hydrogen has absurdly high energy densities when considering weight, however when considering volume it has absurdly low density. The low volumetric density is one of the primary barriers to hydrogen adoption.

Fuel cells is not a problem. Hydrogen storage is. Hydrogen is just a very nasty material, it leaks through everything, makes steel brittle and requires extreme pressures to store it at meaningful density. Combine the last two problems together and it's easy to see why there are significant technological barriers to hydrogen adoption.

> What utter bullshit. Most countries could do so.

Unfortunately when wishes and hard reality meets for a fight, the reality wins.

In this case failure modes of renewable-only policy are not obvious, but this doesn't mean they don't exist. Claiming otherwise is just wishful thinking.

> This is patently false.

It's not false, it's just probably not easy to understand.

It's easy to understand if we consider a hypothetical situation where the nuclear power plant is running AND Germany still keeps all other renewable plans. Since the demand does not change, what other generation would not be running in this case? It is coal and gas.

Thus, by shutting down nuclear, several coal or gas power plants are running instead of idling somewhere.

> What? Supplying nearly half of a country's energy needs is now a sign of failure?

Success in this case is replacement of dirty electricity generation and not using the rest of Europe as a giant battery to solve the unpredictability of renewable generation. The limits of easy renewable deployments are becoming exhausted and it will become much harder to increase the share of renewables even more.

I think we agree that it's great that Germany runs so many renewables already. But long-term objective is much more and it's not clear that it will be achieved.

It's not even that all the nuclear power plants failed. It was a combination of a choice to defer maintenance due to Covid, and also a choice to stop every power plant to address a new possible fault regardless of whether it impacts the specific power plant or not. The latter is a sensible choice given the zero risk tolerance, but it is nevertheless a choice.

Renewables won't power everything, bulk electricity prices are already becoming zero across Germany when the weather for renewables is good. Once this is widespread, further subsidies will be required for additional renewable generation.

The current renewable build out across Europe so far tackled the easiest problem - replacement of other sources of electricity during times when the Sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Going the other ~70% of time will be much harder.

The obvious downside of this decision is that nuclear generation that has been shut down is replaced by coal and gas.

Also it's not a given that the renewable strategy will succeed. The bulk electricity prices are already going down to zero across Germany at random times when the weather is good. Which means the renewable energy business don't get revenue when they generate the most electricity. As a consequence even more subsidies are required to further increase the share of renewables.

There are many different consensuses. In this case the most important consensus is what is the opinion shared by the operators of electricity grids and the like, because ultimately they will need to match energy supply and demand.

Their consensus is that specifically batteries are completely nonviable for long-term balancing of intermittent energy sources. Physics simply do not add up.