Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’
These comparisions solely account for the production costs and not for the system costs of solar energy and are therefore completely useless.<p>Solar panels will <i>always</i> require a backup power plant as the Sun isn’t shining 24&#x2F;7 and storing large amounts of electric energy isn’t trivial.<p>I‘m really disappointed that this kind of non-sense gets posted on HN over and over again.<p>I‘m from Germany, we have 50% renewables in our electricity mix and our electricity prices are the highest worldwide.<p>France has 70% nuclear and their consumer electricity prices are half of the German ones.<p>Additionally, France emits only 50 grams of CO2 per kWh while Germany emits 400 grams on average per kWh.<p>I know lots of comments will counter-argue „Yes, but the high taxes in Germany.“ but those aren’t the main price drivers.<p>The main price drivers are the costs for subsidizing solar and wind (the so-called EEG-Umlage) and the costs for keeping backup power plants available which are allowed to produce only when solar and&#x2F;or wind won’t deliver as both solar and wind have precedence over other electricity providers in the electricity net (the so-called Netzentgelt).<p>Solar might be cheapest when you consider the pure production costs per kWh but it’s not the cheapest when you consider the costs for a conplete system to provide electricity for a population.<p>Even single houses aren’t able to live off just solar while every house can live solely on power from a nuclear power plant which provides electricity 24&#x2F;7.