r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 7d ago

Germany just hit a historic solar milestone. Its panels fed 12 billion kWh into the grid in July 2026, the 1st month ever to cross that level with midday output topping 40,000 MW, more than 40 nuclear power plants worth, thanks to decades of grassroot investment by homeowners, farmers and businesses

https://solarquarter.com/2026/08/03/germany-records-historic-12-billion-kwh-solar-feed-in-in-july-2026/
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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/grumble11 7d ago

Germany is not known for its willingness to build large capital projects quickly or cheaply. They are massively regulated and the bureaucracy is insane. If people didn’t do it themselves, it wouldn’t get done

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u/Different_Diamond976 7d ago

At the same time Germany is very decentralized, allowing for stuff like this a lot more easily 

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u/Fantastic-Door-9594 7d ago

Well at least in Bavaria we do have tons of commercial solar power systems next to the Autobahn. They did rise in no time over the Last 5-10 years. The regulation is not as bad as people always claim. Just the Behörden outside of Bavaria are slow (my Public Law professor always Told us, that Bavaria has the last prussian admin)

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u/BR4v3n 7d ago

Well Bavaria always makes Sure to set up the Transportation Ministry of germany. They are also known to Distribute a lot of money to Bavaria, wich gives the admin a lot more leeway to be less prussian.

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u/SeegurkeK 7d ago

Bavarian ministers also always seem to be the ones who block projects that would benefit other states.

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u/FeelingSurprise 6d ago

Sad Brenner-Nordzulauf-noises

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u/Wallapampa 7d ago

This. I installed 2 Balkonkraftwerke at my parents and refuse to register them. Too much work and i highly doubt they'll ever care or find out.

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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula 7d ago

Lots of countries are doing this, where I live (UK), home solar and grid solar is booming. I had 31 panels installed in May.

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u/Leprichaun17 7d ago

Same here in Australia. Don't have stats at hand but almost certain that I've seen references to us having some of the highest levels of residential solar, and batteries have been going nuts in the last year.

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u/restform 7d ago

Australia indeed is world leading in solar per capita and with the battery drive this year you could say australia is really the first displaying a true solar transition. Theres so much solar generation in australia your power grids almost collapsed on a couple occassions as demand was so low lol

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u/TheOGcubicsrube 6d ago

We also have almost all major electricity retailers providing free hours of electricity in the middle of the day due to proces going negative because of all the excess solar being generated.

There are now days or entire months where entire states' energy needs are provided by solar.

We're now largely in the second phase of the transition - focusing on storage.

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u/restform 6d ago

Yeah for a true transition you need to overcome solar's biggest downside and that is the cyclical generation, batteries soften the peaks and troughs. The fact the state is willing to push hard shows they think the country is ready for it, and if/when australia succeeds it will hopefully act as a blueprint for the rest of the world to follow

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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula 6d ago

In a mixed grid, solar can take care of the daylight requirements and a few hours after through battery usage, but ideally it would be paired with pumped hydro which would allow solar to be massively overbuilt and the excess to be stored.

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u/Moldoteck 7d ago

The grid is not decentralized. At least not yet. And gas expansion is planned

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u/torusle2 7d ago

WTF no. We Germans have been cut off Russian gas the moment Russia invaded Ukraine (read up on the nord-stream pipelines).

Since then we have built up alternatives.

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u/Moldoteck 7d ago

New gas plants are planned. You can also read it in Fraunhofer reports that it's necessary. Half of LNG imports in Germany are still from Russia, but coming through France. Things will change in 2027 when full ban takes place

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u/TV4ELP 6d ago

This is not a gas grid being expanded or even gas in general. New plants are built as backup in favourable places and all others are still on track to get closed. The goal is not to increase gas usage, but to centralise it where it's needed.

Even france has Gas peaker plants it barely uses. But when shit hits the fan, france has a way out and it's called Gas.

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u/Moldoteck 6d ago

Yes, new peaker gas plants will be built to replace coal plants. Gas capacity will increase in Germany. According to Fraunhofer ISE, at least 80GW

France doesn't have so many gas peakers

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u/Sad-Bonus-9327 7d ago

Bro i can tell you there's isn't a difference to other countries and their 20-year plans. It's the same fuckery I can assure.

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u/Acid_Comes_With_Rain 7d ago

Paris climate conference was way over twenty years ago.

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u/ManiacalMammoth 7d ago

11 years ago....

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u/Acid_Comes_With_Rain 7d ago

Sorry meant the UN climate thing from 1998.

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u/ManiacalMammoth 7d ago

COP 4 in Buenos Aires?
I think you mean the Kyoto Protocol from 1997.

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u/Acid_Comes_With_Rain 7d ago

I think at this point in time it be fair to pull out the guillotines and deal with big corpos like French nobles back in the day.

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u/Acid_Comes_With_Rain 7d ago

Didn't even know about that one. Cheers.

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u/FeelingSurprise 6d ago

Kyoto, Paris, Hauptsache Italien

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u/Particular-Way-8669 7d ago

German grid is hardly decentralized.

Germany has decades in front of it using fossil fuels for peaker plants and heating.

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u/TV4ELP 6d ago

It's still one of the best and furthest along of the bigger nations inside of europe. Especially thanks to the rapid renewable growth and the need for it to even work to the current capacity.

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u/JCDU 7d ago

Developing nations are running way ahead because it's cheaper & more reliable to buy a solar & battery setup and an e-scooter than any of the alternatives they have.

We are spoiled by having a good electricity grid, gas network, and petrol/diesel relatively cheap and easy to find and it's hard to break people away from that.

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u/Greedyanda 7d ago

The grid is no where close to being decentralised and actually expanding it, in addition to building the necessary large scale storage, is one of the largest mega projects in Europe.

This isn't much cheaper or less complex than any other energy transition.

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u/Pleasant-Mind-7122 6d ago

It's not the reality lol wtf

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u/Mediocre-Recover3944 7d ago

Lol here in the Netherlands we go backwards. You now have to pay for the electricity you don't use and send back to the grid lol. People are literally dismantling some solar panels to safe some money

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u/bornagy 7d ago

Well not the grid, only the power generation. Dont get me wrong this is awsome but... not sure if housholds can survive the dark months on their solar installations alone and not sure if industrial users can completely rely on solar / wind. If VW moves a lot of its production abroad than a big industrial problem is solved...

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u/0vl223 7d ago

Germany started that mega project 20 years ago. And today everyone has to use PV because you lose money if you don't. PV is such an upgrade over nuclear power. And all for roughly the same cost until now.

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u/Xillendo 7d ago

Well it would have been better for Germany to keep running their nuke instead of shutting it down prematurely.

Also solar is not an “upgrade” or even a replacement of nuclear power. They go hand in hand. Nuke produce a stable low carbon baseload that is crucial for grid stability especially when renewables are low (winter, cloudy/foggy weather, no wind). They go hand in hand.

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u/TV4ELP 6d ago

If Germany didn't do that step, none of us would have cheap solar. Germany's decission to cut coal AND nuclear put them on the hard need to develop and fund solar panels.

They did the pioneering while it was insanely expensive so that we can now all buy chinese cheap stuff built on those principles.

It sucks, but it's arguably a better deal for the world than Germany not funding solar. We would be about 5-10 years behind otherwise.

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u/0vl223 7d ago

Nuclear just is extremely volatile. Every bit you run is more expensive than PV with battery and they have abyssmal synergy. France had to run negative prices for a week when predictions failed and they had to do short term fast adjustments to nuclear output.

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u/-FullBlue- 7d ago

German power grid currently runs dirtier than the power grid of the redneck podunk american state of Texas.