Here is an analysis from Germany: Quarter-hourly spot prices compared to the share of renewable energy generation in total generation. A higher share of renewables puts massive downward pressure on the spot market electricity price.

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/price_scatter/chart.ht...

Since price elasticity for electricity is very high, the market cap decreases by approximately €150,000 for every additional GWh of renewable energy production. A single additional offshore wind turbine with an annual output of 60 GWh reduces the combined revenue of all electricity producers by about €9 million per year that it is in operation.

Blocking wind power and solar projects only serves to secure the profits of monopolists and oligopolists in the electricity market, but causes massive harm to the economy.

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jstimpfle 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is interesting, but now explain why Germany has both the highest electricity prices in Europe as well as a relatively high CO2 footprint from electricity? Germany is buying not only nuclear but also coal energy from neighbouring countries.

Will this be fixed at some point or is the German model not actually as good as you imply?

	▲	throwaway473825 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The main reason why electricity is expensive in Germany is because it's taxed to oblivion. Even when wholesale prices are negative, electricity costs about three times as much as gas. Now you might ask why electricity is taxed to oblivion. Some don't like nuclear or coal. Some prefer oil or gas. In the end, there's a majority that wants electricity to be expensive.
	▲	sfn42 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Nuclear does not produce CO2. Nuclear energy is green energy.

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BenoitP an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It'd be really great if wind turbines across Germany were producing at uncorrelated times.

Let's look at the wind right now: uniform wind across Germany:

https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/09/04/1200Z/wind/surface/...

Let's look at the wind earlier: uniformly no wind across Germany:

https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/09/02/0000Z/wind/surface/...

Hmmmm.

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High-Five 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Good link. Germany is the case where it works cleanly — more renewables, lower price, lower carbon, all moving the same direction.

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leonidasrup 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No amount of solar panels will generate electricity without sun light. Also the amount sun light can shrink quite a lot in winter months at high latitudes and under cloud cover.

No amount of wind turbines will generate electricity without wind, or to be more precise:

Cut-in speed: 3–4 m/s (12–15 km/h) to begin spinning and producing power.

Cut-out / Stop speed: Above 25 m/s (90 km/h) where brakes are applied to prevent mechanical damage

Germany has to have backups, currently quite expensive, for all this times of missing renewables production.

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boshomi 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The apparent volatility of electricity generation from a single wind turbine is negligible, because what counts is the wind and PV output over large areas. Due to regular weather fronts, electricity output from wind and PV in Europe is surprisingly stable; when there is less sunshine, there is more wind. In 2025, for example, the weekly electricity output from wind and solar PV was 14.0 TWh, with no week falling below 10.5 TWh. If more wind power were installed in Eastern Europe, the curves would flatten out even further.

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&...

	▲	leonidasrup an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yes, single wind turbine is negligible, what counts is the wind and PV output over extremely large areas because weather fronts are correlated over hundreds of km. Of course night/day cycle is correlated over whole Europe with few hours shift. So in 100% renewables Europe scenario, you have build multiples of renewable production in each region. You build enough renewables in Western Europe to power the whole Europe, you build enough renewables in Central Europe to power the whole Europe and you build enough renewables in Eastern Europe to power the whole Europe and build electric grid to transfer 2/3s of electricity produced in each region into other regions. Can it be done? Yes, but it will be very expensive. Many renewable energy modelers often ignore realities and costs of physical electric grid and model whole continent as copper plate which can transfer infinite amount of electricity from each to point to any other point. For more realistic scenarios German government is looking into power-to-gas energy storage systems, where you convert renewable electricity to hydrogen, ammonia or ethanol and store it underground. There are also plans to import large part of these gases/liquids from other countries, so no energy independence in the future. https://www.bundeswirtschaftsministerium.de/Redaktion/EN/Pre... https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-revise-hydrogen...
	▲	BenoitP an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Took your link, changed de to en, reduced granularity weekly to daily. It looks way more spiky: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&... Also, both wind and solar (especially solar) change vastly under a sub-daily aggregation.

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flaburgan 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think the point is, if you can decide when to consume electricity then you will do it when it's the cheapest, so let's put the cheapest when the low carbon sources are available. So the website is taking into account that renewables are not always available, that's exactly its point.

And the backup source for Germany is the nuclear electricity from France. The grid is at the European scale.