English is not my first language and in my main language, we call big producing places "centrals"... plants are... well plants, not a place! :D
But you are right, i was typing a bit distracted!

Based on the graphics in the links in my previous post, ithe amount of exported electricity is somewhat similar in size of the nuclear production in the past. I'm aware that energy exporting and importing is much more complex than that, but it is just a comparative observation. Now that was gone and Germany started to import more electricity instead of exporting.

I'm not saying that renewable didn't grow, it did and grew a lot !! But can it be better used with better distribution and more storage? Yes, but government preferred to invest in gas power plants, because they are easier to plan and gas WAS cheap.

I’m not actually disagreeing with you. My point is that Germany’s approach to improving base load relied a bit too much on gas, specially in industrial areas and that is bite them now, thinking that they should have kept the nuclear for longer until they had more diversity

Never said that they were actually better!! but between someone that you know that have a long history of other country abuse and control and a new one with still few history incidents, people actually prefer to bet on the unknown

a recent pool in europe show that people trust more in the Chinese government than in the USA government, a huge drop since Trump is president. Everyone knows that we can't really trust China, but Trump is actually much worse, so the China unknown but more stable position sounds better

Hey, blame Meta/facebook! https://www.yahoo.com/news/art...

They are the ones pushing this, so they can track the age of each user... but sold as a way to protect kids
Just like Bush sold all the the tracking and invasive scans and listenings in the name of fight against terrorism

People accept stupid things if there is a danger implied that will be solved by that... this was exactly the same argument Nazi used to slowly strip Jews from rigths until they had none left

well, seems better than the servitude to USA, that clearly do not care about the people living there, they just want to control it

Good call!! ROTFL!!

yes, that is the ideal situation for energy storage, that is why Portugal buys cheap Spain excess solar to power their storage... and them sell back to Spain when it needs the most and the prices are higher.
South Australia is the same, but they have much less interconnect with close locations

also check the https://app.electricitymaps.co... and compare it with other countries to see that the US are actually late to renewable energy, while getting better (https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US/all/monthly and compare with China or Australia to see how quickly they are adding renewable)

At least on places where solar is already a things, we already produce more energy during the day that we need to, so storage is a good thing. Same about wind, sometimes you have little, other you have much

See Portugal graphic:
https://app.electricitymaps.co...

Most of the energy in the last few days was renewable and getting more from Spain solar... and we are just starting to get sunny days
Most of the Spain energy imported is to be used as hydro storage, so Portugal sells later on end of day when the requirements (and prices) are higher
Actually something happen in Spain, the prices hiked a lot and Portugal actually powered most of the hydro (75% of the capacity in both regular and storage hydro) to help Spain with something. But you can see previous days for a more common layout

Another good example is South Australia:
  https://app.electricitymaps.co...

Yesterday was cloudy, but usually they get enough sun and wind to get the prices low or even negative, more storage would be great for them

So yes, invest in renewable and in a good grid and storage will help you a lot

if that is true, i will me amazed actually... it is a 120 turn of their past behavior... is not a 180, as for sure the "computer" is mostly a iphone board with everything solder and locked, so can't be replaced

And do they actually recycle it?! that is the problem

This laptop actually have around 6 years the previous one (maybe 9 years) also works well, minus the battery that lasts less than 50% of what i used to

Finally, you may not see it, but there is and the best example is framework!
you can replace and upgrade parts, keeping the same laptop... you can even certain older parts (ie: the motherboard+cpu) in a box and have a mini server

people do not repair current laptops because it is always the same for most problems:
you need to replace the motherboard (with everything solder in), so cost as much as a new laptop
Past laptops, were more expensive and more repairable, so people actually did repair them if the hardware was still good enough. Now with less performance increase in each upgrade, a laptop can last 6 years, specially if people can upgrade ram and hdd/ssd/nvme... but if something fails, the repairs are always too expensive on most brands

Sure. both gas and renewable increased, specially solar as it got cheaper and home installs slowly push solar production, but both increase, while nuclear and coal decreased:

https://app.electricitymaps.co...

So in 2017, gas had 261 TWh capacity
in 2025 gas had 322TWh capacity, so around a 60TWh increase
Nuclear had 96TWh, now zero, so a 96TWh decrease
Coal went from 392TWh to 273TWh, so 120TWh decrease
Solar capacity is less important (while always add little by little), Germany being more in the north, have always less efficient usage of the solar capacity (Spain in 2025: 100*55/305 =~18%, Germany: 100*74/884 = ~8.3%)

Gas centrals take years to build, wind and specially solar can be implemented much quicker... and notice that before, Germany exported energy, now it imports energy

So we can say that Germany actually didn't replace nuclear with anything, coal was replaced by gas and renewable and most of the nuclear was exported in the past, now without it, they import what is missing (as also gas have higher price, is probably cheaper to get from other countries, namely from France nuclear)

still the same problem, everything is fine while it works... when something fails, it is e-waste... with a few minor changed, it CAN be repaired or reused.

We dig mountains, we pollute rivers and the air, we poison people and animals to produce all those components and while many can be reused many times, we are throwing much of then in landfills

yes and they even had nuclear and it didn't save it from happening

what happen in Spain can happen in any country with enough renewable... Coal, gas, nuclear have inertia and can compensate for small oops, renewable can also have, either directly (wind) or indirectly (special systems, battery), but all renewable (even wind) were build around that "others" will do the inertia part, they just need to keep in sync with the rest of the network and even wind that can have inertia, it was hidden behind a simple sync controller. When the network had a small oops, all renewable shutdown because they were out of sync, causing a cascaded event. The lesson learned is that a part of renewable (no all) also need to have inertia systems, they need to keep working even if the network gets out of sync and help maintain the network inside the specs.

The same for black start systems, every modern central assumes that the network is already working and didn't install any black start system. When everything failed, Portugal had 2 black start systems and Spain is rumored to also have just 2 to 3 to restart the network. France and Morocco helped Spain borders, but clearly it is not enough. Portugal was even worse, as it was alone starting their network and is only connected to Spain that was also without power.

Notice that this could also happen with coal, gas systems or nuclear systems, they can break too, just look to Australia power issued before they installed the tesla batteries. Those batteries do not give power for a long time, but enough time to keep the grid stable until more coal station ramp up their power... as inertia works both ways, it also take a long time to ramp up

So again, this was a problem of modern installs, everyone assumes the grid is stable... but when it isn't, you have a big issue. Everyone saved money, but at least in same strategic locations, breakpoints must be installed, to avoid cascaded too much and more inertia systems need to be installed, wind, flywheels, capacitors, worse case, batteries

The problem is that, they don't recycle, all is thrown away, it is more expensive to recycle or repair than to build a new one. and why is so expensive to recycle/repair? because it was design to be so, glued parts, components that only work in THAT device, all solder-in components in just one board. Framework proves that you can build a modular laptop, easy to repair and where you can reuse older parts without any problem, but elites like apple because of it's status and do not care about the rest