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Record Wind Power Levels Trigger Energy Price Fall Across Europe
New submitter Forty Two Tenfold writes "Electricity prices across Europe dropped last month as mild temperatures, strong winds and stormy weather produced wind power records in Germany, France and the UK, according to data released by Platts. The price decline was more marked in Germany, where the average day-ahead baseload price in December fell 10% month over month to €35.71/MWh. On a daily basis, December was a month of extremes for Germany, with day-ahead base prices closing on December 10 and 11 at less than €60/MWh – the highest over-the-counter levels seen all year – only to fall to its lowest level December 24 to €0.50/MWh."
€35.71/MWh from the generator is not exactly cheap by US experience.
â60/MWh to â0.50/MWh?!
Seems to me they should smooth that out for the consumers. You know, like a futures market or something the way gas is done.
Otherwise it's impossible to function with wild swings like that. Could you imagine a $100 power bill one month, then using the same electricity and getting a $10000 bill the next? That's ridiculous.
Whereas up here in Canada, Hydro Quebec would put out the exact same statement to explain why they're bringing the prices up.
We shouldn't hate on fossil fuels. It would appear that wind energy needs global warming in order to be more affordable.
You should apply to Fox News.
I see you making millions of dollars every year and your grandparents can tell all the other old people they know that their grandkid is on Fox.
But just if I start getting emails from my parents that say, "FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: Environmentalist conspiracy to hide the truth!
Wind energy needs oil and gas in order to be affordable!" I will curse you!
Now can we stop bitching about global warming? See, it's not all bad. And don't forget the thank you card for our gas guzzling habbits! Which reminds me, gotta remote start the Humvee to grab a pizza before kickoff. Go Pats!
It's not like energy companies ever pass on cheaper wholesale prices to their customers.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Please note that those prices are day to day EPEX spot prices and have as much in common with the rate you get charged as a consumer/business. Even less than brent spot prices influence fuel prices at your gas station, since most electricity consumers have a yearly price agreement. The huge variation is due to the over-capacities of German networks during high wind/ sun times. This overload has to be sold to other meta consumers if necessary at a negative price. This is one of the reasons why a lot of companies here in central europe are investing in transportation (high voltage DC networks) and means to store the overproduction (water/salt/batteries).
Expensive, fluctuating, unpredictable as the wind blows, energy prices. The only people getting wealthy off that are the wind power manufacturers who successfully lobby governments to subsidise installations of THEIR product.
More nuclear, gas, clean coal please. Anything that can provide power reliably and economically viable enough that it does not require subsidies and corporate lobbying.
The ones affected are the companies that actually own power plants to generate power and sell it to the utility companies, as they are the ones who see their earnings fluctuate between $0.50/MWh to $60/MWh.
And guess what? These market conditions make it hard to impossible to make a profit out of modern clean gas-fired power plants. I know of at least one example (The Netherlands) where an ultra-modern gas-fired plant had to be closed down and dismantled because it couldn't compete. It was a plant that could both supply a base load and respond quickly to variations. It could compete very well as a peak-load plant ... but not as a base load supplier. Unfortunately the market for peak loads had shrunk to the extent that it could no longer be operated at a profit.
The plants best suited to survive in this market are old, dirty, written-off coal plants (base load) and old dirty written-off peakers. Oh irony ... abundant (but quite volatile) green power kills off the cleanest and most modern fossil fuel plants first. I bet the Greens don't like that.
Just to save time, let's all agree that wind power could never, ever, ever work in North America. Or solar. Obviously the blah blah blah mumble mumble obfuscate is so different here that it would be impossible.
Also, North American wind is like TOTALLY different from European wind.
Three Squirrels
According to this article:
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/1/10/energy-markets/negative-spin-europes-amazing-electricity-prices
"Over the Christmas holiday, which typically causes a drop in energy demand, wholesale electricity prices in Germany, the Nordic region, the Czech Republic and Slovakia turned negative on excessive renewable energy production and mild weather."
On December 24, 2013, when industrial and business power demand dropped sharply, the price of German power for intra-day delivery fell to an average of -€35.45 per megawatt-hour between 0000 and 0600 in the morning, touching lows of -€62.03/MWh halfway through that period.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Now we just need a practical, ecologically friendly way of storing, long term, the excess energy that has nowhere to go. It's great that this much wind energy can be generated under unusual conditions, it would be better if we would store the large quantities that no doubt went to waste for want of adequate storage technology.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
The Greens TKO The Fossils!
Greens:1
Fossils:0
Wait...so mild weather and a season lack of demand resulted in...lack of demand, yet wind power is the cause of the price drop? Seems to me that the lack of demand is the clear explanation and that excess wind production was only an added benefit.
Cost reductions mean higher profits, not cheaper energy for the people.
Any Business that decides to put Solar Panels on their roof they should get a TAX CUT !
Bullshit. Pr piece. Have massive amounts of "wind farms" in my area for going on 5 years and no drop what so ever. I call complete and utter bullshit on it. Pr for those pushing a waste of money resource
Are the increased winds "climate" or just "weather"?
I don't see anything in the article about "Record Wind Levels", just that December was more windy than November. And a significant driver for the lower prices was lower demand due to warmer temperatures. But it's okay to cherry pick data in this context.
Step one: Don't price yourself out of the market
Step two: Make Money
Step three: ?????(LOBBY)
Step four: Profit
The price fell because of a surplus that probably wasn’t being fully consumed. I wonder what kind of energy storage solutions they have. Batteries have substantial energy loss between charge and discharge, and supercapacitors aren’t cheap or super enough.
I'm from Portugal, this type of "green-article" never tells the whole story .
,this is terribly expensive for us, because the more subsidized energy is produced , naturally we paid more and more. Portugal already has one of the most expensive energy prices in Europe, but as the price of energy sold to public is regulated, dont reflect the real and crazy cost, consumers have accumulated a huge tariff debt to the system . In Portugal this tariff debt already exceeds 4000 million € in Spain now exceeds € 25000 million €.
We have a serious problem with subsidized renewable energy , as has Spain , or Germany ( but these are rich and in Portugal we live in a severe crisis).
When there is too much wind and hydro generation, prices in the energy market fall, BUT producers of renewable energy ( exluindo large hydro ) receive the same guaranteed rate ( feed-in tariff). As these producers have priority in the system all energy produced by them have to be bought, even if there is much cheaper energy in the market (gas, nuclear, oil, etc), even if it's free as has happened several times in the past (in Germany last year energy price at one day was negative) we have to buy the subsidized energy !
So actually what happens when there is too much wind and rain
To get an idea of prices paid to subsidized energy, here I leave these two pictures:
Annual change in average cost per type of energy: http://i.imgur.com/MFaPFRZ.png
Annual changes in the average cost of energy subsidized vs. average market cost: http://i.imgur.com/OFn71pI.png
Given the track record of UK power companies they will probably try and fiddle it so works out as a price increase to consumers. If there was any justice those running these companies should be looking at serious time behind bars for what they have been up to, Hollywood accounting and manipulating the wholesale prices to justify increasing household bills. As it is they will be allowed to retire to their huge piles in the home counties with probably a knighthood or some such to keep them cosy.
Yes, the big wind fat cats, oh how they pull the strings. Meanwhile, poor little fossil fuel just can't figure out how lobbying works.
Is this opposite day or something? Am I doing it right?
Seriously though, your comment is proof of how well fossil fuel industry handles lobbying and PR. You're either a shill, or some confused individual who has swallowed their rhetoric hook, line, and sinker. Either way, it's depressing.
These are wholesale prices. Once you add in VAT and the EU's subsidy taxes the actual retail prices are quite a bit higher.
The prices also vary quite a bit from country to country, and within countries.
http://energy.globaldata.com/media-center/press-releases/power-and-resources/europe-paying-more-for-electricity-than-us-states-globaldata-consultant-with-dramatic-differences-seen-between-countries
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/10/27/berlins-ballooning-electricity-rates-become-highest-in-europe/
I forgot to mention that as fossil energy plants (natural gas turbine plants, etc) have long stops, the government has to pay them big compensations for not producing, as anyway they are necessary to the system.
On a daily basis, December was a month of extremes for Germany, with day-ahead base prices closing on December 10 and 11 at less than â60/MWh â" the highest over-the-counter levels seen all year â" only to fall to its lowest level December 24 to â0.50/MWh.
What you really must know there is that these low costs are not passed on to the customer. On the contrary, energy prices for private users have been constantly rising for years.
Why? Because our corrupt bullshit non-government has passed laws that exempt the - wait for it - biggest industrial users of energy from taxes. Which, of course, means that the rest of us have to pay their share.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The hundreds-of-millions of dollars spent every year by the fossil fuel industry, in order to curve public opinion, really comes to light when articles like this are posted. An overwhelming number of commenters (for this site) would have us think that "big wind" is pulling the wool over our eyes, and that nonsense like "clean coal" is the only fair way to generate power. Unreal. I've seen similar happen elsewhere (e.g. anything about fracking on reddit), but they are here now too, infecting helpless threads with pseudoscience bullshit. Had to make sure I hadn't stumbled onto Fox News, nope, it's Slashdot. Yikes. Is anywhere safe?
oil and gas are cheaper only when environmental damage is not accounted for.
The only problem is, that stupid German laws make sure, that nothing of the price fall ever reaches the end cosumers. Prices for alternative energy are guaranteed in Germany and the difference between market price and guaranteed price has to be paid by all consumers. This same law also makes sure, that environmental impact of energy production doesn't go down, because although production of renewable energy is surging at some times, conventional productions remains the same (just driving market prices low and increasing exports). All paid by the law guaranteed prices for renewables.
Shut up! You are ruining the parade with "reality"!
Any time a lefty brags about how far down some bad thing is, you can be CERTAIN he does not want you to pay attention to [a] how high it WAS, [b] WHO made it so high previously, and [c] WHY it was previously so high. I only care about direction of change AFTER I know the current level and why it's at that level. If some jerk gives me a bad headache by repeatedly hitting me in the head, and then reduces the force of his blows, he does not get a gold trophy from me for reducing the pain.
What various governments in Europe (and increasingly in the U.S.) do not want their citizens to notice is that many costs (like energy costs) are being artificially driven up in the first place by those very governments - usually to satistfy various political supporters with special interests. The left, throughout the northern hemisphere, has long argued for artificially inflating the prices of traditional energy sources to make it painful for all the "little, unimportant, people in fly-over country" then offering very expensive and stupid energy sources as a "cheaper" or at least "competitive" alternative (to the artificially-expensive normal power sources). This is a scheme to manipulate the public into being dumb and inefficient in order to satisfy some political goals. They NEED people to not notice that, in the end, they will be paying more money every year for less energy than they used to (before the politicians started manipulating them).
This is the same ploy Obama uses with jobs, health insurance, and deficits. Drive the problem way up, then as it eases-back a bit - BRAG ABOUT THE DECLINE! (even though it's still way worse than when he started). This scheme only fools idiots.
People who say this ALWAYS disregard all the damage caused by the sources they prefer.
How about all the damage from the mining for all those precious minerals required by those windmills (massive rare-earth magnets) and solar panels (lots of exotic and toxic stuff - not just in the panels but in all the manufacturing neede to make them). Big strip mines with their run-off, "tailings", de-forestation, etc are worse in many ways than oil wells. And all that is BEFORE you account for all the endangered and non-endangered species killed annually by those systems...
In fact, environmentalists were SO effective in pointing out just how much worse these mines are that they drove nearly all such mining out of the U.S. even though we still have the much-cleaner and better-for-the-environment oil wells and frakking for shale gas...
Yes, that's how a subsidy works... Your government believes the long-term benefits of renewables are worth a (hopefully modest) short-term electrical price increase to incentivize the investment in building and installing them. If that has changed, the government should review the rule, and perhaps modify or change it.
Once the tariffs end, you can never have "too much wind", as the power companies can just tell the wind turbine operators to adjust the pitch of their blades to reduce supply to reasonable levels, when needed. Similar applies to solar. Since it's not a fossil-fuel plant, they aren't wasting any money on fuel when they just don't operate at peak efficiency.
And short-term negative energy prices like this are a HUGE opportunity for someone to invest in grid-scale energy storage. When there are strong winds and the power company doesn't want all the electricity you can provide, you could always use the excess to do something like charge batteries, generate hydrogen, heat-up an insulated tank of liquid sodium, pump water up to the top of a dam, process other valuable atmospheric gases (liquid nitrogen?), or similar. The more wind capacity you have, and the more often you have zero or negative electricity prices, the more economic it is to build a facility like that.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Maybe allowing speculators to connect to the grid and buy, store, and sell electricity would smooth it out.
Correct me if I am wrong (I am speaking of the UK but it must be similar for most countrys) but isnt it just one national grid broken down in to multiple inputs and suppliers? If I was to sign up to a "Green ecolec" supplier who claimed that they only use 100% renewable power it would actually only be my money that is going out to a renewable supplier, the electricity coming in to my house would still be the same electricity as if I had stayed with the bogymans coal powered generator. Its not as though they come and rewire your house to a different source is it? I can't really claim that 100% of MY electricity comes from renewable sources (unless I have solar panels and off grid) but I can claim that I support a supplier who invests 100% in renewable energy on my national grid. Which isnt a bad thing unless it costs me twice as much.
because I'm in germany and still I have to pay each year more for energy. prices never go down.
here in Germany, solar and wind power is painted as unreliable yet we export energy to France, our neighbhour with the good, reliable atomic power - which, reliably, has to shut down its nuclear plants every summer and winter when power demand is highest...
The Greens TKO The Fossils!
Greens:1
Fossils:0
Until the wind dies :D
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
You are so wrong. Look at what people are saying about wind subsidies. I live in Germany and currently pay 22.28 Euro cent per kWh (.3045 $/kWh). My provider adjusts tha prices every six months. That's not including 80 Euro a year just to have my apartment hooked up to the power grid. The renewables have increased our electricity prices over the past few years with no end in sight. The renewable producers are guaranteed to make money at the expense of my power bill. The government believes this is in our best long term interests (global warming, nuclear fears). I do not agree. Can someone disagree with you without being a 'shill'? Think about what people are trying to say before you attack. When you disagree, please do so with logic, reason and evidence. Perhaps you ARE correct. But acknowledge that you may NOT be (at leas to yourself). Let's together bring a measure of rational discourse back to Slashdot.
Thanks to climate change, we are bound to getting more wind. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Base load is a limited way of thinking about things.
Really, a more generic model is that you need to follow the power usage curve. That's the only thing that matters. If you think about it that way, nuclear and big coal plants aren't too great either because it tends to be uneconomical to ramp the production up and down. For nuclear, you need to be operating as close to 24x7 you can get to recoup the capital costs.
This more generic way of thinking about things also allows us to see that even in base load scenarios, you will have gaps where the base load plants are offline, e.g nuclear plants go offline for refueling and service.
The job of a good power system is to make sure you have capacity that can relatively quickly ramp up production to fill in the gaps, e.g. hydro power or gas plants, or perhaps in the future some sort of grid-level storage. Wind power is compatible with this model. That's why it, despite your remark, actually works just fine in practice.
RIght now, oil costs are extremely high even though gas is relatively cheap. In the more settled markets of the 1990s coal generated electricity costs at the lowest cost generators were in the range of 1 - 2 cents per KWh ($10 - $20 per MWh).
Here in the USA they would start talking about how the poor poor billionaires that own these power companies need government bailouts because of falling electricity prices.
Oh woe is the Robber Baron, for his massive fortunes are not growing fast enough. We the people must help this poor destitute billionaire..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Well the EPA does what it can to make sure the poor cant heat themselves here in the USA. Wood stoves are currently under battle as polluters. Even though the Rocket mass heater burns so completely that very little comes out of the chimney.
IF you outlaw heating systems that people can gather the fuel themselves for, you lock them into more of a slavery system.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The big German utilities love wind power - precisely because it artificially inflates spot volatility and hence increases the rates they can charge industrial customers for long-term supply contracts. They make a killing selling lignite-generated power at wind-generated volatility.
RTFA: "In the UK, day-ahead baseload power prices were stable in December on a month over month basis, but were up 6.5% year over year. With only two cable interconnections to France and the Netherlands, the UK's exposure to mainland European power surpluses is limited"
The prices are not inflated for all industries - some companies (at the moment app. 1700, until the end of 2014 another 1000 - all of them industries with high energy input) are exempt from some fees AND are able to procure energy directly at the electricity trading exchange. The strange situation at the moment is, that german companies with high energy intake (>40 GWh/a) pay less than the european average and that future prices for 2015 or 2016 are well below lets say dutch or french prices (36€/MW for D, 42 €/MW for F, 44€/MW for NL). German utilities do love wind power, but only as far as small and medium customers with no access to EEX or PHELIX are concerned...
in europe and see if those numbers mean anything in a free unsubsidized economy.
we have oligarchs spending millions to kill alternative energy (to coal and oil). Meanwhile, the aftereffects of pollution is killing the plebs. See Freedom in WV for the latest example.
Please remember to think more than a day down the road... That is not very much money, to invest in the most important part of living (next to food) in the modern world. So now, just because it is cheaper, you want to burn more coal again? The future is made of renewable energy, but we have to pay now to save ourselves later. And luckily enough for those in parts of Europe, it's being built so quickly, people will actually get to experience extremely low energy prices soon, all the time. Hang in there...
THIS is why generation companies don't like or want renewables.
Because they have lost profit because the usage hasn't gone up, but the cost of production has gone down, and that's not good for the old players. They want the same revenue. Changing that downward means they have to work out what to do about it, and that's work.
So I guess we don't have an electricity grid, huh?
Oh, and the amount of kinetic energy taken out of the air by wind turbines even if they were to take every joule we use for all power sources is a minute fraction of the whole.