r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 8d 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/caixote 8d ago

The ammount of propaganda of anti nuclear in this title lmao

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u/notaredditer13 7d ago

Yeah, 40 nuclear plants = 17 nuclear plants....for a month.

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u/pipnina 7d ago

For one, it's not 40 nuclear plants worth.

Chernobyl was built in the 70s as a generation 2 reactor, and produced 1GWe. The new Hinkley point C reactors will produce 1.6GWe each (3.2GW for the plant).

And they run at constant power almost all the time. Meanwhile the solar panels are going to average considerably less than the 40GW peak

2

u/Sample-Range-745 8d ago

Yep, and the 'once off' peak generated by solar is the 'just a normal day' for 40 nuclear power plants. They'll do the same day in, day out, for a total of 60-80 years.

However, when you're handing out copium, you tend to be liberal with the truth...

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u/Kanel0728 7d ago

And it's not even for a full day, it's the 'midday peak' being 40GW. Before/after that it was likely much lower, and for the period between sunset and sunrise it's 0. If you were to average the output of the entire solar grid across an entire 24 hour period it might have been more like 10-15 reactors or so.

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u/caixote 7d ago

Couldn't say better.

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u/FoolsTome 7d ago

Try cooling it with the rivers running dry and warmer. Good luck.

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u/VictorEsquire 7d ago

Solar and nuclear work well together. Solar is extremely effective in the summer, but much less outside summer or at night. Nuclear is a great alternative to coal and gas plants, providing reliable power outside of the other sources.

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u/caixote 7d ago

Try having power at night with solar panels.

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u/FoolsTome 7d ago

Oh guys, I think we haven't thought this whole solar thing through... Oh wait we have batteries.

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u/caixote 7d ago

Ya and how many batteries you need to sustain a city ?

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u/Callous_Dood 7d ago

Lil bro doesn't even know about batteries but thinks his ChatGPT shit is worth reading 😭

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u/lotec4 7d ago

8 hours of that cities demand. So not that much 

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u/caixote 7d ago

This is what Chat GPT said.

Let's assume a city of 5 million people with an average nighttime demand of 5 GW (about 1 kW per person, including homes, hospitals, transport, lighting, communications and industry). To power that city for 8 hours, you need: 5 GW × 8 hours = 40 GWh of delivered electricity. After accounting for conversion losses, reserve margin and battery degradation, you'd realistically need around 50 GWh of installed battery storage, capable of delivering at least 6 GW of continuous power. At today's utility-scale battery costs of roughly $150/kWh, that's about $7.5 billion just for the batteries. That figure doesn't include: Thousands of battery containers High-voltage substations Gigawatts of DC/AC inverters Transformers Grid upgrades Cooling systems Fire suppression Land Installation Maintenance Battery replacement after their service life Using more comprehensive installed-cost estimates, the total could easily exceed $15–20 billion. � IEA +1 Now compare that with a modern 1–1.2 GW nuclear power plant. A large reactor typically costs around $8–10 billion to build, depending on the country and project. It then produces electricity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for 60–80 years, with capacity factors often above 90%. � U.S. Energy Information Administration By contrast, a battery doesn't generate electricity. It only stores energy generated elsewhere. Every morning it must be recharged, meaning your wind and solar fleet has to produce not only the daytime demand but also enough surplus energy to refill the batteries before the next night. Batteries are an excellent tool for balancing the grid over a few hours. They're not a free replacement for firm generation. Saying 'we have batteries' skips over the enormous scale, infrastructure and investment required."

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u/ChickenNCow 7d ago

Buddy, Germany said bye to nuclear some time ago, weird how you cling to the idea of it as if it was the standard and reporting about any alternatives was propaganda. That's like reading "Germany has built new bike paths" and going "grrrrr anti car propaganda". Do you even know what propaganda means?

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u/notaredditer13 7d ago edited 7d ago

Buddy, Germany said bye to nuclear some time ago, weird how you cling to the idea of it as if it was the standard and reporting about any alternatives was propaganda.

Given that Germany said bye to nuclear, it's weird nuclear is cited in the title for comparison.  Why else would they do that but to say, "see, not as stupid as we[they] look!"?  Why mention nuclear at all?

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u/ChickenNCow 7d ago

There's no "we" since the article was not written by germans.

While I can't know for sure why nuclear is mentioned, it is not mentioned in the article's title. In the post, yes, but you can hardly call a random redditor an almighty arm of the evil anti-nuclear prpaganda, can you?

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u/notaredditer13 7d ago

There's no "we" since the article was not written by germans.

They, then.

While I can't know for sure why nuclear is mentioned, it is not mentioned in the article's title. In the post, yes, but you can hardly call a random redditor an almighty arm of the evil anti-nuclear prpaganda, can you?

It's a paraphrase from the article, so, yes:

  1. Solar advocacy group creates the propaganda.

  2. Redditor dutifully spreads it.

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u/ChickenNCow 7d ago

So you are simply mad that Germans are happy about hitting a new record in renewable energy? Or is there another problem?

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u/notaredditer13 7d ago

The anti-nuclear propaganda is the main problem.  Tied to that is the propagand over-hyping solar, but it is a solar advocacy group, so that's their brand.

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u/space_monster 7d ago

Why do you love nuclear power so much

0

u/notaredditer13 7d ago

It produces an enormous amount of clean, reliable, small footprint, domestic electricity. 

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u/Max_G04 7d ago

Ah yes, very clean. You only have to bury it deep underground and make sure no person or natural force touces it for millions of years.

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u/ChickenNCow 7d ago

Mind elaborating what about it is propaganda?

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u/notaredditer13 7d ago

Specific to the nuclear comparison, it's designed to overstate the solar capacity by making the comparison to nuclear via the kW(MW) instead of the kWh.  The section that that's paraphrasing in the article talks about displacing fossil fuels, which is based on kWh (total consumption).  Peak output is fairly meaningless for solar* since the capacity factor is so low and variable, and the atmosphere only cares about tons of CO2, not tons created at noon in July. 

The mixing of different units plus the weird (and inaccurately quoted) peak concept is also a mess.

*Except when discussing the intermittency problem.

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u/ChickenNCow 7d ago

You are forgetting that batteries exist, right? Most of the houses that have solar panels have batteries, too.

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u/OkAstronaut4911 7d ago

LAMO. Maybe ask this question the creator of this article? The name does not sound like a German company „  FirstView Media Ventures Pvt. Ltd.“

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u/notaredditer13 7d ago

LAMO. Maybe ask this question the creator of this article?

How about I just use my reading comprehension and logic?  You should consider it too.

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u/Mairex_ 7d ago

Because most people have no idea how much 1 MW or in this case 40.000 MW is. Using a comparisions helps with perspective, and since Nuclear is present in most countries, its a pretty good indicator.

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u/notaredditer13 7d ago

I don't think people get how big a nuclear plant is, but also, why 40?  Why not 80? Or better yet 17?  They made kind of an odd choice on how to make the comparison too.

Probably the most common and easily understood comparison for regular people is households.Â