It's still not earning you money to spend electricity because you still have to pay the transfer fee which is around 6 cents / kWh but it's pretty damn cheap nevertheless, mostly because of the excess in wind energy.
Last winter because of a mistake it dropped down to negative 50 cents / kWh for few hours, averaging negative 20 cents for the entire day. People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.
I know nuclear isn't ideal but to rule it out completely while the alternative for stable baseline power is still coal and gas seems problematic to me
It's not ruled out, Finland already has nuclear, it exists.
Yes indeed. Best is to move to renewables as fast as possible. This will make power very cheap in the middle run.
Storing solar and wind isnt cheap enough. The battery costs are outrageous, not to mention the thing you dont want: the materials Arent easy renewable. Nuclear can generate 30% of you base powerload while the rest is powered by solar and wind (that way you dont need coal of gas).
Storing electricity from wind/solar with hydrogen isnt efficiënt and would drive up energy prices just like with batteries
Battery costs are going down rapidly. And just see LithiumNatrium-Solid state batteries next years. (I‘m not saying Lithium-Ion that we use in our electronics nowadays) LithiumNatrium is fck cheap, doesn’t burn fast, low loss at winter.
Germany shut down nuclear last year entirely and is closing coal mines very soon (by 2030). That is an adventurous path for sure. Fall back is gas only.
However, I see France has serious issues with nuclear in summer time (too hot rivers - nuclear plants need to stop & too costly - power company was bankrupt and bailed off/ socialized by government).
I see our strategic dependency on Russian gas, which makes us attackable.
In my opinion, renewables in a decentralized manner with many local storages will make your economy more robust and energy cheap. Technically this is a challenge, but which engineers can solve that if not German engineers?
Edit: And this decentralized production will be an advantage when your heating and transportation move to electric as well. In this case Germany, that hasn’t oil, gas, and uranium is more self-reliant and independent.