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Germany's Glut of Electricity Causing Prices To Plummet
WIth an interesting followup to the recent news that Germany's power production by at least some measures was briefly dominated by solar production, AmiMoJo (196126) writes Germany is headed for its biggest electricity glut since 2011 as new coal-fired plants start and generation of wind and solar energy increases, weighing on power prices that have already dropped for three years. From December capacity will be at 117% of peak demand. The benchmark German electricity contract has slumped 36% since the end of 2010. "The new plants will run at current prices, but they won't cover their costs" said Ricardo Klimaschka, a power trader at Energieunion GmbH. Lower prices "leave a trail of blood in our balance sheet" according to Bernhard Guenther, CFO at RWE, Germany's biggest power producer. Wind and solar's share of installed German power capacity will rise to 42% by next year from 30% in 2010. The share of hard coal and lignite plant capacity will drop to 28% from 32%.
This just illustrates that carbon tax is too low
People here keep saying that Germany is adding coal capacity to make up for the closure of nuclear plants, but actually they are reducing it over time. Yeah, in the short term there are more plants, but that is just so they can get running before taking the old ones off line. After that the total capacity will be lower.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Set up aluminium plant that can absorb any surplus capacity.
Well, the big four utility companies had a 15% profit margin ten years ago, because they had a monopoly. So it's a good thing to see their profits drop.
You cannot move to a more decentralized model of power generation without huritng the big players, can you? And of course they are complaining about it.
That's odd, in Australia our prices have gone up to make up for losses from increased solar installs.
Lower prices???? In what world?
The prices per kW/h have risen year after year in Germany. How do I know this? I'm living in fucking Germany and get a higher bill each and every year.
RWE is one of the greediest bitches in Germany. They even have the audacity to ask the government to pay for the save destruction of their own nuclear plants, after receiving subsidies to operate them and extracting as much money as possible for their own pockets.
So instead of extremely high prices we are going to get high prices? Awesome!
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Lists an average price of 26,4 ct/kWh for 2012 in Germany. RWE.de gives me a current price quote of 25,72 ct/kWh.
The average in Europe is 18,4 ct/kWh.
Power may be cheaper on the exchange but the consumer is still getting shafted.
The only people who will profit from this are energy traders and power hungry corporations. They currently pay ~15 to ~12 ct/kWh.
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
The big four energy companies try everything to save their profits (which are shrinking, the horror), so the prices keep going up while energy can be bought for cheaper and cheaper.
They say that it is because of the solar power and its subsidies, but if you do the math, prices should be going down even though subsidies keep growing. The problem here is that the math gets a bit complex: solar and wind power has a minimum price associated with it. If the prices at the exchange sink, it is more expensive for the state to pay the minimum price. Therefore, the "tax" for the subsidy goes up.
The production figures in this article are all given as percentages of demand - not the actual amount generated. There's two reasons Germany could suddenly be producing an excess of energy: supply has increased, or demand has dropped. A quick Google shows German production has dropped 6% in the period 2004-12 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... ).
So the reason isn't that Germany's renewable plants are producing an abundance of power - it's that people are demanding less power; presumably because they cannot afford prices that are among the most expensive in the world ( http://www.contactenergy.co.nz... )
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Allows them to enjoy the products of mining and heavy industry, while lecturing the rest of the world about carbon emissions.
Funny, I just got a letter stating my (Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) energy prices will rise on August 1st to 27.42 cents per kWh. That translats to 37.43 US cents per kWh. This price will remain in effect until December 2015. Nice.
http://srsroccoreport.com/germ... :
Since the introduction of the Renewable Energy law in 2000 aimed at replacing coal and gas-fired as well as nuclear power generation by so-called renewable energy sources, the household price for electricity has jumped by more than 200%. German customers now pay the second-highest electricity prices in Europe. At the same time, the task of stabilizing the grid against the massive erratic influx from solar and wind power plants that produce without regard for actual need has pushed the operators to their limits.
One of the major problems with wind and solar is that the projects aren't commercially viable without huge Govt subsidies including long-term contracts by energy utilities to pay 2-4 times the going wholesale electric rate for solar and wind generated power.
This is clever! The German people should be able to undercut the rest of the world with their manufactured products. Cheap 3 phase nuclear electricity should be the goal of every nation, so that fully automatic production of goods frees the people from the slavery and drudgery of repetitive jobs and can fund a new system of benefits for those who do not work that is effective and complete, and start a new “knowledge based economy” for those who do have the mindset to enjoin! If only we the people have to foresight to invest in 3d printing and factory robotics. Then there will be no unemployment or employment, just humans and droids! We move ...
The purpose of existence is to make money.
Chemical engineer here. The industry prices for electricity have become so low that it doesn't even make sense to heat up the reactors using turbine-generated steam any more. It's ridiculous. It's cheaper to buy the electricity to generate the steam!
The problem is wind and solar are useless for base load so there have to be fossil fuel plants able to cover 100% capacity when the sun isn't shining and wind is not blowing at the right speed. It is worse than that because all of those fossil fuel plants have to be kept hot at standby because solar and wind can quit suddenly. With this set of assets, it is obvious there will be a sunny day when the wind is just right and too much power is available. By the way, a combination of coal fired generation and renewables will produce more CO2 than a natural gas combined cycle plant.
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These markets are being screwed up by politics... both international and domestic.
If we self generate then the powers that be can sit on it and spin... I really can't wait.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Sadly other places have the same rises and some surpass Germany. It's as if Enron wrote the Standard Operating Procedures for "electricity traders" worldwide and now pointless middlemen infest most electricity industries.
It sucks immensely.
For example, Australia has much lower wholesale electricity prices than Germany yet has much higher retail prices than Germany with the distributors blaming their con on increased infrastructure. That price gouging has driven residential solar to around a two year payback when sized appropriately for consumption.
"From December capacity will be at 117% of peak demand."
Ignoring, of course, that when talking about solar/wind power and "capacity," the actual output is, to say the least, variable.
They had the big headline recently about how much they generated during one hour of one day - but for some reason, they didn't mention all of those cloudy and windless winter days where effective output was a tiny fraction of that - and they had to use lots and lots of coal to make up the difference.
Average German family pays $129 for their electricity bill, 3x higher than average US family
Source: http://www.voanews.com/content/green-energy-expansion-in-germany-comes-at-a-hefty-price/1858699.html
This seems "German prices are plummeting" story seems to be either a lie, or propaganda by the Green party.
Sunny days they make tons of "free" electricity.
On cold dark winter nights, where does the power come from?
They can build backup plants that run on coal/gas typically operating under nameplate capacity or they can buy nuke power from the French.
Oh, the irony...
what it means is we need better ways to spread resources. If Germany could export that power to places that have a lack of power generation capabiity, that would be ideal, no? Same applies for crop surpluses, etc.
We need a better global infrastructure not more taxes that, like all taxes, will not benefit who they are supposed to.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
A province that, because it has little storage capability, has a rigid hydro system geared to meet peak demand and 'dump' power during low demand periods. It's a province that has paid others to take its surplus power.
A solution to both Germany's and Ontario's problem is creating storage capability, and that needs innovative research world-wide. Sadly, the focus is mostly on new ways to _produce_ power. Go figure.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Burn that coal and irradiate your atmosphere 100 times more than a nuke, brilliant! Nuclear design mostly frozen for 50 years, brilliant! What we need is World War 3, that'll get people in gear.
Germany like Ontario (to a much lesser extent) invested in wind farms and solar. ... and maybe make renewables viable.
In Ontario, all wind farms have to be installed with back-up generators, gas-turbines for the most part.
Why?
On hot, windless days of summer, when demand peaks for air conditioning, the back-ups kick-in for the useless wind turbines.
In winter, when the skies are mostly grey, the solar is mostly useless to meet the demand peak caused by electric heating. When the wind does blow in winter, the speeds are usually above the wind turbine limits.
Renewables in Ontario, mostly a feel-good but large waste of money. Maybe it's the same in Germany. Either way, ways to store hydro power would help stabilise things and bring costs down
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
What does Germany's electricity glut have to do with the price of beans in China?
Like I want German electricity. /s
Either way, ways to store hydro power
Ontario? OK, I'll cut you some slack. In the rest of the world, 'hydro power' refers only to power generated by hydroelectric plants. Not a term for electrical power in general. Storing hydro power is (in the rest of the world) typically done with a lake.
Have gnu, will travel.
Where I use them for 8 hours or more per day, they pay for themselves in about 6 months even at much lower electricity rates than in Europe. Proportionally longer payoffs for areas where i use them less.
And I don't have to replace them. None of them. My first ( a 20w) is still on the porch after more than a decade.
After trying them all (GE, Sylvania, Phillips, Ecolight)- I've settled on the G7 3100k 65 watt replacement bulbs.
2700k and 2900k look pink or orange.
5000k looks blue.
3100k look "right". In blind tests with friends- they couldn't tell which one was an incandescent and which one was the G7.
I also like the 3500k CFL bulbs from Home Depot (red package). They look "superwhite" and not blue.
The G7's are slightly larger than incandescent bulbs and will not fit in six inch glass bulb lights so I use the blue/white Ecolights in them. The extra 50 lumens makes a huge difference to my aging eyes.
My electric bill has been lowered enough by using LED lights (with a few CFL's) that I basically get a "free" LED bulb every two months. My old 52 dollar winter electric bills were 45 dollars this winter. The summer bill is harder to break out (ac is a huge factor) but it seems lower by 5 to 10 bucks too.
I continue to try all new LED's that come on the market but for now the G7 is my favorite.
For someone paying 29 cents per kwh, it seems like they would pay off even faster.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I live in the Netherlands at 5 km distance from the border. The Netherlands and Germany are both members of the EU, where there is free travel of people and goods across all borders. So why can't I get my electricity from Germany?
-- Cheers!
How 'green' of Germany - this is gonna blow a big hole in the 'see, Germany is doing fine without Nukes' argument, since an argument to follow Germany's lead inevitably leads to new coal-fired power plants... At least as a bridge until solar/wind become more affordable.
Ken
In the Netherlands, we don't have a feed-in tariff for solar, so one would expect lower (consumer) electricity prices. Unfortunately this is not the case, our government just adds more taxes and then adds a 21% sales tax over those taxes, ending op with a consumer electricity price similar to Germany, but without the advantages for renewable energy.
The more compelling your argument, the more likely that your comment will be moderated Troll or Flamebait in an attempt to hide that fact. Sadly, that only deprecates the value of moderation itself.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Uncle Frost will arrive and will bring with himself plenty of cold air.
1) Cutting waste in demand is a huge huge factor-- migrating to light bulbs from incandescent heaters was a BIG DEAL no matter the power sources; which do not get cheaper over time. You waste power because it was cheap; it is going up overall and for most, incomes have been in decline. Population rise = more demand; cheap fuels are running out, expensive coal and oil are plentiful; ignoring the high indirect costs of their continued over use. Fixating on old tech is ignoring the underlying problems. Even with cheap fusion power, if 7 billion people used the power of an American we'd have global warming just from the heat loss all that energy use produces. In the USA, we had to have a big fight just to kill the stupid light bulbs and raise car millage; hell just getting seat belts was a huge fight and even involved espionage.
2) Next Generation grid - no, not the "smart grid"; but a modern smartly designed grid which Germany has also been working on. Wind and sun happen somewhere in the nation. You can't route power around the earth cheaply enough (yet) but you can run it 100s of miles and have been for a century - it can be done smarter, cheaper, and more distributed.
3) Power storage. Germany just started a huge initiative that will move storage technology forward in a huge way just like their Solar policies did. From household to local to regional power storage, Germany is going to be leading on it.
4) Solar power surpassed nuclear power in cost. It doesn't need heavy regulation to keep it safe and risk the neglect and corruption nuclear power always brings (government run plants have significantly less risks.)
5) Initial Costs; aka long term investment. Without somebody jump starting it, we'd never be "ready" -- see Tesla. Germany can afford to be early adopters and smart enough to have an economic boom at the same time instead of taking a loss.
6) German power is more democratic, more distributed. It seems to be getting more so with time. A different kind of market is forming. They may even get to having their backup baseload being actual public utilities where the gov runs them at a loss for energy emergencies. It's not going to be profitable to run a conventional power company in the climate they are creating. WHY SHOULD THEY DEFEND AN OUT OF DATE INDUSTRY?
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- Prices are plummeting, which is good for consumers (which is also pretty much everyone).
- Green energy is up, which is good for the human race in general. Clean air, less pollution, that sort of thing.
- Other countries may get inspired by this example, but even if they don't, if the Germans export their surplus to other countries, that's good for those other countries too.
Oh, and of course
- CEO of power company complains about their bottom line.
Well, I guess we should all go back to burning coal and other fossil fuels then.
The countries of Europe do import and export electricity between themselves. Germany is a big exporter.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/...
Of course electricity suffers transmission losses, so there are limits to how far it makes sense to export it.
So what all this is saying is that at the times when the solar panels are producing the most power they can only sell it for peanuts? If it wasn't for feed in tariffs that guaranteed a big payment no matter what the selling price they'd be stuffed.
That's not exactly a ringing endorsement for solar power.
What you subsidize, you get more of, though not economically.
Intense research indicates that the sun doesn't usually shine at night in Germany and that solar cells operate at greatly reduced power levels in the dark. In other news, electricity production varies significantly from one day to the next, due to strange weather conditions such as clouds.
The upshot is that during some hours and on sunny days there is a glut of electric power which drives the spot-market price to zero.
This of course is bad news for companies that operate coal, gas, or oil-fired power plants because such plants are expensive to build and maintain and can't compete during the hours of abundant sunlight leaving insufficient hours during which to make enough to service debts and recoup investments.
Dirty old base-load plants powered by coal can usually continue to compete on price. Expensive modern gas-powered peak-demand plants on the other hand will operate at a loss.
Having caused a volatile energy form to gain prominence, the next thing for the Germans to do is to shift their subsidies from solar cells to storage capacity. They're already doing that, but in the mean time their conventional power plants will bleed red ink.
I'm happy to watch their experiments from afar and eager to learn how they will solve this particular problem, aren't you?
Where I live, it would be quite easy to put solar panels on every roof. They don't block the view. They don't change the aesthetics of the house, they don't kill birds, they don't make an ungodly hum, and they don't blight the landscape. A typical roof should generate about 3KW/h of power every hour the sun is shining (on average through the year, this is 12 hours per day), so 36KW of power per day. Does it work at night? No. What if I want power at night? And I reply: go to the grid. You don't use 3KW most of the time, and if electricity prices could drop by 50% where I live, I would be happy.
Germans need to start using more energy in order to raise the market price for energy to a level that can make the new power stations viable. Or how about a new tax whose proceeds will be passed onto the electricity companies as a subsidy?
...will eventually eat in to that glut.
The same places that lack power generation capacity also lack baseline power generation capability. Exporting excess dynamic power to places *with* base load capacity will just make their base load capacity less economical.
Provides an EXCESS of what Capitalists have limited in order to get a profitable price
Germany, France, China, Sweden, even the Brits seem to have the sense to keep Capitalists on a short leash in order to serve the needs of the many ahead of the privileges of the few.
Germany like Ontario (to a much lesser extent) invested in wind farms and solar.
In Ontario, all wind farms have to be installed with back-up generators, gas-turbines for the most part.
It is not true that gas turbines are co-located with wind turbines.
It is true that gas turbines are installed thoughout Ontario for peak-filling, for reliability and to reduce load on the transmission system, but these plants are completely separate from the wind turbines and are built by different people.
On hot, windless days of summer, when demand peaks for air conditioning, the back-ups kick-in for the useless wind turbines.
Nope, that's when solar is at it's peak power.
store hydro power
Hydro power is stored. You open the gates when you need power, you (mostly) close them when you don't need power.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.