End of 24

the government ended early. The coalition broke up and now germany faces an election in difficult times under difficult conditions and with a difficult choice for the voters. Presumingly the new government will be led by the conservatives with an quite unpopular chancellor as head. If only there would be a more popular and more competent alternative.

" We need to think about nuclear as an alternative!" ... "German cars and the car industry are world class and as such need to invest in proper cars with combustion engines!" ...  "The Green Deal needs to be cancelled as it is a thread to our industry .... and of course because renewable energy costs too much"... "We need green oil for our industry" ... "Hydrogen for everything and e-fuels are smart alternatives for future mobility"

The list of gross stupidity doesn´t end here, and unfortunately the heat is fanned by regulars´ table blab, right-wing idiots on social media, incompetent classic media and not the least politicians lying right in Your face.

"Wenn Du glaubst es geht nicht blöder, kommt noch ein Spruch von Söder" ("Just when You thought it couldn´t get dumber, Söder comes around with a slogan" He is chief of the bavarian conservative party, and bavarian prime minister. Known for turning his flag after the wind. Also known for promoting alternative facts without getting flushing red. Like Donald Trump he is nonetheless popular, regardless of how much bullshit both talk, or how plain idiotic they react).

The whole concept of the "Energiewende" hangs in the balance. Mr. Merz, the probable new chancellor is a tough proponent of the ´back to the good old days´ idea and frankly speaking a big-money lobbyist. Does anyone with a halfways functioning set of neurons actually believe that politicians of such kind could lead us in a better future? I certainly don´t. It pretty much seems that there will be no wakeup call to the voter´s minds in time.

Added on this there is a revision of the EEG (Renewable Energies Bill) soon ahead. According to first abstracts, it could well end the private PV boom in germany, as it will be full of lobbyistic restrictions and regulations, rendering small private PV systems economically nonsense.

Think I´m gonna puke bit.

May 24

Since prices for PV-Panels and batteries dropped soo much, I tried again to get a decent offer.

This time I was quite confident with the company I asked, because for the first time the guy visiting us appeared to be really competent. Before just salesmen and gold diggers visited us ... some not knowing the basics of the technology or house electrics/installations, nor the actual legal regulations. None of them took roof dimensions, or evaluated the state of the home appliances, some not even looking at the roof at all.

But all of them offering way incredible high prices and claiming to know my energy costs 20 years ahead calculated exact to the first after-comma digit!

Unfortunately the new guy´s offer was on the end also too high for my taste.

I certainly would have accepted a plus, valueing for proper work, but then I have to work hard for my money also. Googling for just a few seconds I got end consumer prices for the exact same hardware of about 1/3 of the offer. Assuming a labour cost of 150€/h the price difference would have been worth 100+ hours of mounting time ... for 24panels, inverter, battery and stuff.

Get the idea?

Even though the price niveau of the hardware dropped so much the prices for a mounted PV system almost stagnated ... prooving nothing else but pulling a fast one on the customers.

March 23

I still have no PV on the roof  *aarrgh*

First the new edition of the EEG (renewable energy law, after the ´easter package´ they followed up with a equally dump ´summer package´) made things not only not generally easier for the average private guy as government promised, but actually added more complications.

As an example they splitted the formerly single feed-in remuneration into two, depending on either the complete feed-in of power or the surplus feed-in of power, thereby rendering the surplus feed-in uneconomical. Full feed-in though doesn´t really make sense for small private PV-installations investors who strived for ways to reduce their power bills by using their own-created energy in a efficient and sensible way.

On top of this the gov omitted with the 70% reduction rule that stated that the solar inverters had to limit the feed-in power to 70% of the PV-module´s kWp power. With most PV-installations distributed over several strings and parts of a roof, this hardly ever led to limitation in praxis (less than 2% in average), but saved the nets from those power peaks around the middle of the days where alot more PV-power is available than is consumed ... putting even more stress on the anyway undersized power nets and leading to shut-downs of complete MW-solar-parks on up to 200 days per year!! Madness at its finest.

As if this weren´t enough the prices shot up due to the Ucraine crisis and the associated rise in  inflation. Prices were and are still so high that its simply not economically sensible to put a PV on the roof ... let alone to invest in a battery storage.

Strange though people seem to buy and build solar installations at a incredible high rate .... but are seemingly not able to do basic calculating. Energy prices could hardly reach such high values that it possibly resulted in a ROI of at least +0.

Due to the solar hype it´s becoming increasingly difficult to get even an offer let alone to find a electrician. It goes without saying that DIYing a PV installation has been ´taken off of the agenda´ of the EEG alltogether.

What this country desperately needs is a sensitive and plausible energy politics, such as the EU propagates since years. Less lobbyism more democracy and much much less burocracy.

Germany is just doing it the exact opposite way.

So I decided to wait longer to see how things develop.

Just today our secretary of commerce announced a list of ´improvements´ to come in Mai.

So let´s hope that Godfather lets rain brain on them.

May 2022

Can it become even weirder and worse I asked last time .... and the answer is most defintely and unfortunately Yes!!!

Wlado Putler, dictator in charge of Russia and scum of the earth brought a terrible war to the Ucraine ... again. The civilized world looked away for too long, as he slowly turned Russia into a dictatorship, when he terrorized Georgia, slaughtered Chechenya, annexed the Ucranian Crimea and bombed Syria. As so often political and business interests in oil and gas weighed more than lifes, decency and respect.

Now he´s invading the Ucraine again trying to annex their east and south and to manifest russian influence and supremacy over the black sea. Also he´s offending all democratic nations, the West and the EU.

If theres one good thing to see in this idiocy, then it is the joined conviction of  Putin´s illegal war under international law by 140 states in the United Nations council and that the West and the EU are getting closer again.

The Russian army plundering the Ucraine, stealing crop and everything they find valuable will rise the problems of many starving people in Africa and will cost the life of humans. As a sideeffect of the war and the associated sanctions, inflation and as such prices rise worldwide.

Fuel has gone up by almost 30cent/L, residing now by ~2.10€/L.

This also increased the pressure on politics to increase the speed of the energy transition.

Our Government now presented the ´easter package´, a premature part of the national energy law EEG2023 which was planned for 2023. And it sucks! 500 pages full of big player lobbyism.

They made it more complicated and economically less attractive for private investments in PV.

They even ´forgot´ to define the day X for the retroactive feed-in remuneration.

A big disgrace .... but people still order PV- and battery storage systems as if there were no tomorrow ... not realizing that it probabely never pays back economically ... not within the next 20years at least.

On may 04th Germany already crossed the limit of ressource overload. From this day on the average german consumes more ressources than mother earth provides for within a year.

And still no change in the thinking and attitude of most.

I hardly can eat as much as I wanna puke.

Feb. 2022

My PV project is becoming more concrete. Got first offers ... not cheap. As with almost all other products and services prices have risen considerably in Corona-times.

And while the feed-in tariffs are dropping to almost ineconomic low values the supplier´s prices for electric power are shooting through the roof. Assuming that the prices probabely won´t drop but rise over the next ten years the savings in power costs could make a personal PV on the roof economic again. So I´m still in business atm. ;-)

If politics wants the private sector to invest massively into PV then they have to create a legal frame in which these investments pay off within a 20 year, better still a 15 year period.

At the time it also seems that the large energy suppliers are doing whatever they can to oppose the private sector, from refusing to accept new customers if they own a PV, to charging ridicolous high tariffs, to erecting high burocratic hurdles.

So, instead of only looking at investing in hydrogen-technology projects -which of course are big-players games only- politics must(!) care at least the same about the private sector, or the "Energiewende" (energy transition) simply won´t take place on the required scale.

Till election day all three parties forming the now-government talked alot about climate change and recipes to avoid the catastrophy. But since inauguration they all disappointed. EU green-washes nuclear and fossile gas and Germany abstains from a veto.

France, America, China and others invest in nuclear power. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet invest in Uranium stocks and stocks are shooting up.

Can it become any weirder and worse??  Seemingly the anwer is Yes!

Einstein was right in assuming that human stupidity may be the only proven infinity within this universe.

Good grief!