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Germany Had So Much Renewable Energy That It Had To Pay People To Use Electricity (qz.com)
Quartz reports Germany produced so much renewable energy on Sunday, May 8, that commercial customers were being paid to consume electricity: "Thanks to a sunny and windy day, at one point around 1pm the country's solar, wind, hydro and biomass plants were supplying about 55 GW of the 63 GW being consumed, or 87%. Power prices actually went negative for several hours, meaning commercial customers were being paid to consume electricity." Many critics have argued that renewable energy will always have only a niche role in supplying power to consumers, given its daily peaks and troughs. With that said, Germany plans to hit 100% renewable energy by 2050. Denmark, for example, has already generated more electricity than the country consumes from its wind turbines. It now exports the surplus energy to Germany, Norway and Sweden.
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It is not always sunny and windy across the entire continent
This would be an option in the US if we had a modern electrical grid
Just ask Congress where funding for the superconducting electrical grid upgrade is at...
It certainly is, if you look at the graph in the article you will easily see that there wasnt a particularly high amount of renewable energy being generated - this price
jump looks far more like someones pricing algorithm glitching than any actual market movement - there is little difference in the previous and subsequent pattern,
and the price certainly did not jump there. I would make an educated guess looking at the graphs that someone had a shutdown delay on a system and that may
have glitched the market a touch, causing a reaction in the algorithmic pricing models.
Yet another case of sensational headlines trying to sell a non-story.
The headline really should read 'German spot-price for energy collapses for no obvious reason, another algorithmic realtime pricing glitch?' or similar.
But you have to bait the clicks somehow apparently, so much for journalistic standards..
You don't use electrons, you use an electric field. And electrons move very (very) slowly through a wire. I don't remember numbers, bu think it's on the order of cm/min. Not only that, but all the electrons you get, you give back again (if using alternating current).
Adding a generator to the grid keeps the field propped up (measured in volts).
But at what price? Germany pays three times the price for power that the US does.
I don't really want a $1,200 power bill, thank you very much.
The details are that it was about the lowest demand point of the entire year, and coincidentally a very good solar and wind day overall. It lasted for a brief moment, and just a few hours later, renewables were back down to less than 50%. You won't see the headline when renewables are at the low point.
This is from the most recent historical generation data in Germany (Fraunhofer Institute)
(Total Production = Production from Solar, Wind, and Conventional)
Max Solar Day = 212 GWh (65 GWh wind). Total = 1211 GWh (June 6)
Max Wind Day = 562 GWh (20 GWh solar). Total = 1517 GWh (Dec 12)
Min Wind + Solar Day = 5.5GWh Solar, 31.2 GWh Wind. Total = 1407 GWh (Dec 3)
You can see how great the differences are between highs and lows. And despite how much Germany has invested, at times they still get very little from Renewables. These numbers are full day numbers, its even worse if you look for the low for a short duration as the one celebrated in the headline.
You do have to consider that Germany's power prices are about two to three times as high as in the U.S and have risen 30% in the last decade (20c/kWh to 30c/kWh). Tesla harnessed some really cheap renewable energy in the early 1900's and it's still going, stable regardless of the weather. I pay 8c/kWh for primarily 'renewable' energy from (Niagara Falls) and it's relatively cheap to maintain as well.
Please also note the graph in the article. That looks more like a trading issue/glitch (energy gets traded much like stock on a stock market) because the actual power generation was higher later on without a massive dip.
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How does Denmark push its electricity to its neighbours Germany, Norway or Sweden, when they are doing the same?
Because the wind doesn't always blow everywhere at once, but it is always blowing somewhere. Wind energy is more reliable when it is geographically dispersed, so one region's peaks can fill another region's troughs.
How does Denmark push its electricity to its neighbours Germany, Norway or Sweden, when they are doing the same?.
Simple:
- Politically you decide you want to have "the mostest" windmills, costs be damned (and anyhow the peons are the ones who'll pay)
- Those who buiild the mills are guaranteed a minimum price of ~3x market price the first 5-10 years (1.05kr = 15euro cents ~= 17-18 UScent/kWh)
- Consumers pay 7-8 times market price when all taxes and "green fees" are included, 2.25-2.5kr = 30e.cents ~= 35 US cents / kWh
- Industrial users can avoid many of the fees and taxes, and the few very large scale users have "special deals"
- Meanwhile baseload capacity is deteriorating as coal plants are aging out and nuke plants (Germany, Sweden) are being phased out.
Classic sovietstyle central planning at work
Basically all the countries in Northern Europe have made their plans assuming they can dispose over 90+% of the reservoir capacity (mainly in Norway) to balance variations in wind and solar, guess what happens when several of them tries it simultaneously
That's exactly why wholesale prices regularly go negative, because everybody and his dog are dumping wind & solar produced energy at the same time
Heating is very rarely done with electricity. So what is the question?
Electric heating is the overwhelmingly most common form of heating in Northern Europe.
When I moved to the US almost a generation ago, I was surprised that few homes had electric heating, and even fewer (like none) had floor heating cables. Not even in the bathrooms (but then again, American bathrooms seldom are wet rooms anyhow, so no need to heat the tiles that aren't there).
And I'm likewise amazed that after all these years, this is still the case. Heck, most houses don't even have thermopane windows with vacuum or noble gases. Many don't even have double glass windows.
...and for residential customers, Germany has some of the most expensive electricity in the world. Residential customers and small businesses pay a "renewable energy tax" (EEG) of 6.354 cents / kWh as of 2016. I have a large family, so this works out to be about 440€ additional tax burden per year, not counting the 19% VAT added on top of the EEG tax. So I am paying for all this "free electricity". This tax is highly regressive and hits poorer residents much harder because they cannot afford to invest in energy-saving appliances.
Which country are you living in? The US averages $0.10/KWH and Germany Averages $0.15/KWH.
No it doesn't...
The US averages 12 cents per KWh.
Germany averages 33 cents per KWh.
A dozen different web sites support that, from Wikipedia on down.
You cannot get a $0.15/kWh power plan in Germany for private homes, only for large industrial plants.
The cheapest price (by kWh) I can get for my German home is 0.23€ ($0.26) / kWh plus 60€ ($69) per year, so it's 0.25€ ($0.28) / kWh in total.
Latest statistics say the average price for private customers is 0.28€ / kWh:
http://de.statista.com/statist...
That graph is the averaged over a long period. One of the issues with solar and wind power is that they tend to be very bursty, wind in particular. The power output from a wind turbine is proportional to the third power of the wind speed. If you have an hour of wind that's double the normal speed, then you're generating eight times as much power from the wind generators as normal for that hour. Most other power plants can't reduce capacity instantly to compensate so for short bursts there is a lot more power being generated than is being consumed. In some cases, it's cheaper to produce the waste power than to start decoupling things from the grid and spilling the power somewhere (ideally into storage, sometimes just as waste heat), so you end up paying people to consume the power, because it costs more to stop producing it.
Most consumers don't see this, because we buy power indirectly but some big industrial consumers have contracts that allow them to get direct access to the spot price and consume power when it's very cheap. The idea behind a smart grid is to allow everyone to benefit from this kind of thing. For example, having your fridge run its compressor when the cost of power drops very close to zero.
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Germany residential rate averages 0.30 EUR/kWh, not 0.15. 0.15 EUR is industrial rate, it is something like 0.06 USD in the US.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s...
Problem is that it only happens on a few days a year when the sun is high in the sky, the days are long, and the wind is also blowing. Moreover, the reason that the price of electricity goes to zero (or below) is that no one really wants it at any price. In short, generation capacity is overbuilt. Why is it overbuilt? Because subsidies for renewable energy in Germany are poorly structured and do not go to zero when the wholesale price for electricity goes to zero. Who pays for the subsidies? Why the ratepayers of course.
Is there a lesson here for the US and other countries? You bet there is. But it isn't that renewable energy is dirt cheap. It's that one better be careful how one structures renewable energy subsidies (if any) because if one does not, one's electric bill is going to to include a surcharge to pay the Warren Buffetts, Koch brothers, T Boone Pickens et.al. for generating electricity that no want needs or wants.
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The answer is that the cost of industrial electricity goes so high that industrial users shut down. Residential users are so used to fixed rates that we are mentally divorced from energy market realities. Industrial users actually have a *lower* average cost than residential due to their ability to moderate usage. The fixed-retail price that we pay comes with a huge cost in the from of higher average prices. https://www.eia.gov/electricit...
The consumer pays through higher taxation. Nuclear is heavily subsidised in France isn't it. In fact the sector is almost wholly owned by the government.
Nuclear is indeed subsidized in France, just like renewable energy is in Germany through artificially high costs for residential consumers (added tax). The German city where I lived for 10 years until last month has 99.99% of its energy supply (and the supply of its county) coming from dams that have been operating for decades and had been paid through a mix of city taxes and citizen investments. Yet, we were also paying the extra tax to encourage the switch to renewable energy, which was then used to put solar panels and windmills that didn't even register as a blip in the energy mix of the city. Probably because the now privatized operator wasn't using those to supply the city, but selling the energy somewhere else. In France, I'm getting my electricity through a local supplier using biomass... I'm paying less than half of German prices at peak time, but slightly more than half of German prices off peak time.
For taxation, it depends in which tax bracket you are... for a single person:
German tax rates:
French tax rates:
Germany taxes are lower if you earn between 26 791 and 52 153 a year, it is unfortunate for most of my ex neighborhood that they were mostly in the bracket where Germany is more expensive, below 26791 a year. Most of my new neighborhood is in the same bracket and pay less taxes. In my tax bracket, there is a less than 1% difference in the effective tax rate (in favor of Germany) but that is still below what I save through utilities, services, price of real estate and interest rates on the house credit. It's also a theoretical saving as I am paying my income tax in Luxembourg where my effective tax rate is a whole 11% lower than what it would theoretically be in Germany (theoretically, because my gross salary would also be lower in Germany).
Another big difference in taxation between the two country is property taxes, I'm paying roughly the same amount of property taxes in France as I was paying in Germany. My property in France is way bigger than the one I had in Germany. In France, the property tax includes things like garbage disposal, water treatment and TV tax. Garbage disposal and water treatment have been privatized in Germany, so you have to pay extra money on top of the property tax. As I lived in the suburbs of the city in Germany, I wasn't actually getting any of the services I was supposed to receive through my property taxes (library, maintained roads, ...).
I was paying a pet tax in Germany, which doesn't exist in France, and gets very expensive if you have more than 1 dog. I'm getting far better network connectivity options in France even tho I moved to the middle of the sticks and I lived in the suburbs of a decent sized city in Germany. Road tax in Germany is to be paid every year, it is a once-off in France when you register the vehicle. As a trade-off, in France, I would have to pay to use toll roads (highways I use maybe once or twice a year). The car road-worthiness check in France is half the price of the same check in Germany.
All in all, France is a cheaper option for me.