A big factor in the quick return (and maybe one reason for its popularity) is that Germany has some of the most expensive electricity in the world. The ROI doesn't look as attractive in France, the US or Norway.
> A big factor in the quick return (and maybe one reason for its popularity) is that Germany has some of the most expensive electricity in the world.
Part of that is because our method of pricing is different than it is in the rest of the world.
It doesn't matter if you got a 3x50A or 3x200A three phase service, only during construction (because a 3x200A uplink will obviously be a decent bit pricier), the monthly fee is the same and very low (I think ~15€ a month). All other costs are rolled into the per-kWh price, making it appear much more expensive than in other countries. On top of that we have a ridiculous tax load because large industry is exempt from a lot of things and consumers gotta pick up the slack.
In contrast, Italians for example pay fees based on capacity which means a home there will usually have 3x10A uplink, something greatly troubling EV adoption and moving off of natural gas [1].
Additionally, Germany is one pricing zone whereas ENTSO-E, the European Commission and the Northern German population would rather like to have two or three pricing zones, given that there is a serious lack of North->South transmission capacity, but our "beloved" Bavarian prime minister Söder plus his green counterpart in BaWü Kretschmann both try to prevent that as much as possible because it would send prices in the south skyrocketing [2].
Yep in a lot of ways it's a failure of the electricity market.
It's absolutely bonkers how much I pay for electricity while I sit in the shadow of a giant onshore wind farm in Brandenburg. Transmission losses are nothing at this distance and the turbines cover the towns needs many times over.
But because of the lack of regional and dynamic pricing (and tax burden) we pay ridiculous rates.
I think if folks could financially benefit from renewable projects in their neighborhoods, suddenly citizens opposition would fall apart.
Maybe balcony solar is just a tax minimization play, in that the energy you get from panels isn't burdened by excessive network charges, consumer taxes etc.
> I think if folks could financially benefit from renewable projects in their neighborhoods, suddenly citizens opposition would fall apart.
That's actually happening already in some places - in Thüringen, nearby residents of a windmill get a share of the income [1], and the local municipality also gets a sizable amount... in small Mühlenfließ (Brandenburg) with less than 1000 souls living there, the 16 windmills provide 200.000€ a year in taxes, 10% of the municipal budget [2].
Unfortunately, you need politicians with a backbone to present such plans to their voters, and in rural areas many simply are afraid of far-right terrorism up to and including death threats [3], on top of "alternative" media and even supposedly democratic politicians riling people up against renewable power sources.
More and more "Energiegenossenschaften" are also founded, I think. At least here in the South-West near Freiburg it feels like every second larger village or community has its own Energiegenossenschaft. They are working on getting solar on every roof, pushing water and wind turbine projects forward and are really working on making the switch to renewables happen. I'm looking to get into some of them to fund the cause. :-)
Norway: yes, they are doing fine (80% EV, btw, so it seems you can actually use EVs in colder weather... I think the nordics are actually way ahead of the rest of Europe when it comes to sustainable energy creation, with norway getting about 90% last year from Hydro - super impressive. https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Norway
France: I think they might turn around, because their low prices are tied to massive subsidies (that are scheduled to end in part end of 2025). And, France has the weather and sun to be even more successfull. That would however mean a decentralization of the power grid and probably storage solutions (batteries, hydro or h2), something thats complicated and not sexy to sell to the public - one of the reasons Germany is so far behind. Our grid is stuck in the past and enough company lobby politicians to keep it that way.
US: it is probably less of a pricing issue and more a topic of resiliance and stabilizing the power grid. It looks like rolling blackouts in the US get more, especially during the summer months (where solar could directly be used for the AC). https://urbanclimate.gatech.edu/current-projects/blackout-tr...
I think it would especially make sense to run your AC on if you have a flexible plan - i remember so many stories of people suddenly having to pay thousands during peak times in summer.
California, Texas and most of the rust belt does have enough solar to easily get by, especially if you add a battery backup.
Norway gets most of its wealth from fossil fuel. While it's not Saudi Arabia nor Venezuela, and they invested in long term sustainability, it's not fair to everyone else to say that they are at 80%EV because they are forward thinkers, but because they have the money to do that.
It took forward thinking to dump their wealth into a sovereign wealth fund.
Australia started at a similar point with mineral wealth in the 90s and decided tax cuts for the middle class were a better idea (under Howard/Costello).
Yes, like any other argument about Norway, the situation must and shall be considered to be that they are smart and progressive and forward thinking, rather than rich. It's "not" that they have money to burn to do the new fancy thing. It must be forward-thinking policies!
There's a small amount of truth, I'll admit. I guess you can say that Norway's policies are easily a lot smarter than Saudi Arabia's policies. But what is always done is comparing Norway's policies to, say, Spain or France and declare Norway a progressive forward-thinking nation with great and working policies. In reality the opposite is true because France and Spain can't just fix big problems by showering them in money.
Yes, but you have to somehow insinuate that this is a bad thing without ever clearly stating a thesis of why it's a bad thing.
Otherwise people might think investing in green energy, EVs and heat pumps is a good idea with good return on investment and positive externalities and should be done by any competent government.
Any competent government with infinite money they can just dig out of the ground, and dump into the sky via its customers, a small, mostly-homogenous law-abiding population and military cover, at least until recently, mostly provided by the US taxpayer.
While we're on the topic, Finland gets around half of its energy from nuclear. It doesn't have the luxury of fjords for hydro like Norway and Sweden, or easily tapped geothermal like Iceland.
You can see a nice live graph here. Wind isn't blowing at the moment, so the fossil fuel co-generation plants had to kick in.
I mean, in Germany, issue number 1 is the grid, especially in Bavaria. Politicians were just asleep or did not care.
For example, there is a super interesting agri PV installation in the Hallertau, where they grow most of the hops for beer. The farmer built and payed it himself and its a commercial trial instead of a public testrun.
He lost about 20 percent of the hop compared to the non-pv areas; however, the money from the solar panels easily covered that and made a profit. In addition, he used about 30 to 40 percent less water with no impact on the quality of the hop, which is one of the biggest issues in that area, as it runs out of water in summer.
The Hallertau would be ideal for generating large quantities of power; however, due to not having a modern power grid, he is unable deliver more power to the grid.
(article in German here: https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/pilotprojekt-hat-erfolg...)
you would think that this is a simpel fix, and it would be in the political interest to decentralzie the powergrid and create local storage solution (or at least in the local power companies interest), but it seems like nothing is moving forward for about a decade now.
Personally, i think agri pv has a huge potential as enables the farmers to have additional income while keeping the field open for farming. Its also an easier sell than wind or hydro (especially because you have the farmers on your side, and with them their lobby), but it needs grid upgrades and storage capacities. It baffles my mind that our politicans are willing to throw millions at nuclear, but everything besides that needs to have a strict business plan or it is not even tried.
To add to this, I know person a farmer who wanted to use part of his farmland for solar panels. The project failed. Reasons: lack of power grid connection, no one wanted to takeover the costs for added capacity; and local resistance from residents. „I want to see the nature in front of my home“ is all what’s needed to fail consent.
i don't understand those nimbys. With solar, its crazy! The soil will regenerate and you'll probably get more nature than before, especially if the farmers use sheep to mow it. That's why we can't have nice things.
To be honest, I do understand some people preferring pastures in front of their home. But we can't have nice things if individuals are capable of blocking projects for that. Personal preferences should not be a valid reason to block projects. Unmitigated negative externalities are reasonable objections, but even then, you have people "finding" this one protected snail type living there and - boom - project can't be realized due to environmental protection laws. There needs to be a re-balance of the commons, but try getting that through legislation.
FWIW, that "blackout tracker" link is garbage. First, because it's five years old: if the data showed that growth someone would have updated it.
But also because it's wrong! There's one outlier bad data point, in 2020, and they draw a line straight through it. Take that one year out and it looks awfully flat to me.
And it barely works out in Germany. I did the math for my small city flat with a small south facing balcony and got a realistic payback period of 6 years.
The issue is not solar per se, but that tiny installations are not very efficient. It'd make much more sense to bolster funding for building sized installations.
The other aspect of this is the reduction of demand on the grid - which potentially reduces infrastructure costs ( or reduces the rise ) and hence shows up in a reduction in electricity prices ( if not absolute, against where they would be ).
Balcony solar is likely to make this worse, given Germany has low/zero electricity market prices when the sun shines.
Balcony solar production means Germans don't buy solar from their utility when utility costs are low, and they do want to buy some when utility costs are high.
Unsurprisingly, fixed contract prices are bound to be an average of electricity price at different times. With balcony solar, the times where it costs the least will be weighted less in the average, so contract price is bound to go up.
Germany needs more battery storage, full stop. It is rapidly declining in cost, it is fast to deploy, and it will soak up excess low carbon energy (both domestic and imported from interconnectors) versus curtailment as more generation comes online.
> Germany’s solar industry calls for 100 GWh 2030 grid battery target
Yup. Flexibility should be the thing that’s subsidized. However, I would advise against "balcony" battery subsidies, and I assume balcony solar is an electoral strategy more than an energy strategy.
> By the end of the first half of 2025, Germany’s official registry of energy installations recorded nearly two million battery storage systems in operation. This figure, now unofficially but safely surpassed into July , includes a gross power capacity of 14.535 gigawatts (GW) and a usable storage capacity of nearly 22.1 gigawatt-hours (GWh).
> Photovoltaic home storage systems constitute the majority of these installations, with 1.967 million small battery storage units (up to 20 kilowatts) accounting for 11.5 GW of gross power and almost 18.3 GWh of usable capacity.
> Small photovoltaic home storage units made up the bulk of new additions, with 251,948 systems providing 1.34 GW and almost 2.7 GWh. In the medium segment, 2,418 new systems added 117.7 MW of power and 160 MWh of capacity.
> The expansion of battery storage is driven by increasing demand, highlighted by 389 hours of negative wholesale electricity prices in the first half of the year. Germany has also significantly expanded its solar power generation, with approximately 107.4 GW of photovoltaic capacity installed and over 7 GW added in the first six months of 2025.
The future of electrification is distributed, broadly speaking. Distributed assets can be orchestrated to optimize for both cost and grid stability ("VPP" aka virtual power plants). Get generation and storage as close to the load as you can.
I pay 13 cents a kWh here in Canada. I got a 7.8kw system on the roof, payback will be 6-7 years, then I get $1000 of free electricity a year for the life of the system.
I’m in a tight valley where it snows a ton
Also got an interest free loan from the gov to cover the outlay.
That is definitely a factor. But depending on your energy usage and how smart your home appliances are, you can save a lot more than 10%. I.e. if you run all your washing and most of the heating of the water tank during your own generation times you can potentially save quite a lot more than 10%.
Electricity costs 24c per kwh in France and I just checked and can get it for 23c. So it's not true any more. Once you factor in that one is financed by the state and the other is not, it was likely never true. Germany's expensive electricity is a myth.
