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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%.
I used to pay like under 10 bux a month for gas when I used none, like 7 years ago, then they privatized and they got this minimum 25 bux a month fee, and usage comes on top of that. My only goal in life is to achieve a bill-less nirvana, live where no grass cutting is required, there is no water/sewer bill, no gas bill, no electric bill, phone bill is prepaid if you want to but you don't have to, car insurance is only required if you get caught, but then you figure out a way to commute without a fucking car, and property taxes are like 20 bux a year, because you qualify for CAUV(current agricultural use value) tax treatment. Then minimum wage is like extreme luxury, otherwise it's nowhere near enough to pay your bills, housing being the top one on the list for now, but give it 10-20 years, and it's gonna be the health insurance tax penalty for not buying one that's sucking the living life out of you and stops you from raising any kids because you can't afford to take care even of yourself, let alone extra people. Health insurance is gonna be the top killer, and even these days, my aunt's been buying health insurance even when it wasn't mandatory, from like the early 80's, and last year they jack up her price to like 800 bux a month, with a silver plan, and she had to go miles of runaround to get on the bronze plan for like 500 bux a month, she was told it's not possible, all she needs to do is pay the premium. Yeah? All you gotta do is pay the premium, and if you don't have a problem with 800 a month, we'll jack it to 4000 a month, and if you don't have a problem with that, then it's 80,000 a month, there is no limit to the greed on the part of doctors and insurance companies. And that's these days, wait til it's really mandatory to buy it, and Da Man will suck every last drop of blood out of your bank accounts through it. How can you live without bills? Is that even possible? What's this bullshit with all these mandatory expenses, and arbitrary expenses at that, arbitrary not in a free market way, but in a make believe, pretend we have a free market conspiracy of screwing everybody out of their every last dollar, letting them hover just barely on the negative side of zero, barely bankrupt, so they keep jumping like dogs for a piece of bacon that you hold higher and higher. This is how the world is supposed to work, everybody gets a hamster wheel, and without such constant semi-bankruptcy incentives everybody gets lazy. Yeah, well what that means is that honest people who care about making ends meet don't reproduce, and all the people who don't give a shit of being a dead weight on the system reproduce out of control, as they have no signal, no mark to watch of what limit to follow. Da Man is exterminating all the honest people, then wonders why the economy is fucked, and why Lehman Bros collapses from the dead weight of lies piled up high and deep. You cannot raise 3 kids and support a stay at home mom on minimum wage, and pay prevalent housing cost, and now online obmacare health insurance too on top of everything, and pay for college for all three, which is like a new high school diploma anymore. You need at least 3 kids, or 2.1 kids per average to maintain population levels, 2.0 is not enough. The only people who can afford to raise 3 kids, or for that matter, 7 kids, are people on welfare, or those, who are even if now they are temporarily on minimum wage, they've had special deals, or opportunities in life away from minimum wage to eke out a housing situation that's roomy enough and cheap enough, so now they can live on minimum wage, and show everyone how it's done. And everyone says: bullshit!
It's like this: $7.85/hr x 160 hr/month work = $1256 gross/mo. At 20% social security and medicare and income tax, 80% x 1256 = $1004.8. At $800/month health insurance, thats $204.8 left for all other expenses, and $700/mo rent, that's $-495.2/mo, then car gas for you 18-20 mpg manly Suburban or 12 mpg Hummer (because how else you gonna get the bitches, driving an 82 mpg 3 cylinder rusty old 95 Geo Metro?) so that's at least another 200-300/mo, so that' -$695/mo, (you're getting close to needing a full second salary) then you get your electric for $20/mo, gas is $25+(10 to 200(in winter)), then the water/sewer bill at 600/yr is 50/mo (most rent includes the water but then the landlord bitches), then food is like 100/mo, (which by the way used to be the top expense a millenium ago, in some form or other, military protection lordship taxes coming in second, religion third, and clothing fourth), clothes are like 10/mo (you don't have to buy clothes often for years, especially if you get work uniforms and you dont' wear them, shoes being the top wear item, and laundry is mostly included in the water/gas/electric bill). That's for yourself. Add a few people to it, health insurance goes up, housing, well, you need more room, gas about the same, food goes up proportional to headcount except kids eat a quarter to half, water goes up proportional (number of toilet flushes, showers and laundry loads), gas is the same, electric is the same, but now you got this friggin educational cost raping you in the ass in the form of college tuition quadrupling in the last decade, and there ain't no stoppin, you need extra cars once college age hits, etc. 5 people in a suburb on one 7.85/hr income, with $800/mo health insurance, and $700/mo housing cost, $200/mo commute gas + car payment of another 200/mo, and $10000/yr college tuition+ extra 3 cars saved up in 16 years? Yeah right, let's put the smart people to it to show how it's done. The only way it's done: forget about health insurance, and pay the 90/yr penalty, buy a junk house in a bad neighborhood and hope you don't get shot, (which risk is worse, getting shot in a bad neighborhood or getting sick? are they gonna make getting shot with a gun insurance mandatory too in violent neighborhoods now, cuz that's the only place you stand a snowballs chance in hell to make it with a family, everywhere else it's 101% certain doom extermination of not being able to support a family), pay 600/yr property tax (that's 50/mo housing cost), accept the assraping from the sewer system as you won't get no permit for a backyard outhouse or septic tank and rainwater collection/deep groundwater well system, because it's too crowded, so sewer is 600/yr, that's another 50/mo, ride a fucking bicycle to work for 40 minutes (when in a car you can do it in 10 minutes) to cut out gas and car insurance cost out, buy everything at Aldi's ((0.85 white bread, 1.50/dozen eggs, 1.19/tomato sauce, $4/10lb potato, and $15/20 lb rice at chiense supermarket, and $3.50 for a 2 gallon jar of pickles at Walmart. Distilled water to drink is 85 c/gallon, and 100 multivitamins (especially the D unless you work in the sun) is like $3.) In a pinch you can eat rice at 0.5 lb per person per day, which comes to 35 cents a day, and add 2 carrots, oil at another 20 cents, and a can of green beans for 50 cents, and spices for 5 cents, and swallow vitamin C pills. Green peppers cooked in make it a lot tastier, but I find they are too expensive, especially the hot pepper varieties(jalapeno, serrano, hungarian, or even dried chinese chili peppers, which are very cheap but don't have the taste. When low on protein, eat lots of eggs, bread, and tomato sauce. And butter, if you're allergic to soybean or other forms of oil, like mayo, but butter is expensive. Forget about milk, and cheese and mushrooms only for medicinal value, or if you're into wine, that works too. Cheese and very low alcohol wine helps you keep your teeth, that so many young people lose in their 20's lately, especially the druggies. Also shoveling horse manure can supply a