Consumers In Germany Were Paid To Use Electricity This Holiday Season (inhabitat.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inhabitat: The cost of electricity in Germany has decreased so dramatically in the past few days that major consumers have actually been paid to use power from the grid. While "negative pricing" is not an everyday occurrence in the country, it does occur from time to time, as it did this holiday weekend. This gift to energy consumers is the result of hundreds of billions of dollars invested in renewable energy over the past two decades. This most recent period of negative pricing was a result from warm weather, strong breezes, and the low demand typical of people gathering together to celebrate. Germany's temporary energy surpluses are a result of both low demand and variably high supply. Wind power typically makes up 12 percent of Germany's power consumption on a daily basis. However, on windy days, that percentage can easily multiply several times the average. The older segment of Germany's energy portfolio, such as coal plants, are not able to lower output quickly enough. Thus, there is a glut of electricity. On Sunday, Christmas Eve, major energy consumers, such as factory owners, were being paid more than 50 euros (~$60) per megawatt-hour consumed. Further reading: The New York Times

Comments

Indication that overpopulation is false

[hackwrench]

It has always been a logistics problem not a production problem of caring for the world's population as this "overproduction" illustrates.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Anonymous Coward]

Overpopulation in Europe? What?

Looked at any demographic data lately?

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't even good trolling.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, like with any resource controlled by big business, it's just not worth delivering anything where it is actually needed the most. Capitalism doesn't function that way.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[DaHat]

It is still a production problem... it just depends on what kind of production.

Wind, solar and hydro are all great, in theory. For all three, you can rather quickly turn down the level of generation by disabling some turbines, closing some water outlets/inlets, or pointing solar panels in other directions... but they come with their own problems: requiring the wind to be blowing, the sun to be shining and the water levels to be high enough... they are good for peak & ideal times, but less so for base loads.

Nuclear is pretty straight forward... rods go in or out and affect the amount of heat generated. Heat leads to steam, steam can either be run through turbines depending on demand or dumped into environment (sorry to the poor birds flying by).

Natural gas, you can treat similarly (but not identically) in terms of turning down production and dumping excess steam if you don't want to run too much through your turbines.

Coal is a whole other matter. Load levels for coal are projected days and weeks into the future as you don't have the ease of a few pipes feeding the whole thing. You can slow the rate at which coal is added to the system, but what is there is going to keep burning for a while... and in the case of a low demand for the thermal energy... will often get dumped.

Source: Many long conversations with an uncle who be rather senior in a multi-state power co-op. While personally & professionally in favor of nuclear, he also understood the less than well known pitfalls of the other systems.

He was also the one who confirmed my theory on the silliness of 'Earth Hour'. Where such a sudden downturn in electrical consumption sees different carbon costs to dumping the thermal energy (though he is not a believer in man made 'climate change').

Nuclear: None
Natural gas: Low (given the ease of turning down the input).
Coal: High.

Keep that in mind: Quick & unexpected downturns in power consumption to save the earth, can actually result in a net positive expenditure of carbon emissions... and in this case, it may be more desirable to have people use the energy (either leaving their lights/heat on when not at home, mining for bitcoin, or looking for aliens with Seti@home) than have the thermal energy be dumped.

Re: Indication that overpopulation is false

[CGordy]

Hydro is ideal for variable loads; probably better than natural gas or nuclear. It is very easy to regulate the supply of water to control the amount of power generated, without needing to dump waste heat in the form of costly purified water (steam) to the environment. It just requires the operator to run the hydro plant during peak only, and not to attempt to run it as baseload.

Re: Indication that overpopulation is false

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with hydro is that there are a limited amount of places where you can install hydro.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Carewolf]

The problem in Germany here is regulation to make things very simply for consumers that also produce power with a wind-mill. They are paid standard prices, so they can't be punished for producing power when the net is overloaded, so the wind-mills owned by consumers are never put into free-wheeling mode.

Re: Indication that overpopulation is false

[Anonymous Coward]

overpopulation =/= overproduction. please pay attention.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Gregor Czisch's Dissertation, renewable Energies would be able to provide enough Energy to Europe for every single hour in a year.

Re: Indication that overpopulation is false

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is a reversible hydro, intended to accept power first to be able to return it later, it can be installed pretty much anywhere, although in some places it would cost more to build than in some other places. But basically, it is a giant cuckoo-clock mechanism equivalent.

Re: Indication that overpopulation is false

[Anonymous Coward]

Hydro is useful in order to dump overcapacity in a fashion that can be reused later yes, it's important to note that Hydro is nor carbon neutral in operation and is usually very expensive (cash and carbon) to build.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[nospam007]

"requiring the wind to be blowing, the sun to be shining and the water levels to be high enough."

While nukes need high enough levels of water in the cooling water river they use, which isn't' the case sometimes in summer so they have to shut down, or the water is already hooter than the law allows for using it as cooling and so they have to shut it down, while in winter it's frozen, so they have to shut it down...not to mention all those security inspections.
Ditto for the coal ones.
And remember, Germany uses brown coal mostly and they have to raze entire villages and pay off the owners to get under the coal beneath it.
It's just now worth it anymore.

And both use tons of subsidies while lately the offshore wind turbines don't need them anymore.
They'll replace all the coal and nuke ones.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Anonymous Coward]

he is not a believer in man made 'climate change'

Sounds like your uncle prefers to pick and choose his facts then, as might be expected from someone who has a history in traditional power generation (or perhaps he's just passing on only what he's been told by others). I'd suggest you seek out a less-biased source of energy knowledge for comparison.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Anonymous Coward]

he is not a believer in man made 'climate change'

You should lead with that. It would save the time wasted on the rest of the text.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Mr D from 63]

While nukes need high enough levels of water in the cooling water river they use, which isn't' the case sometimes in summer so they have to shut down,

This is a very rare occasion. For example, during summer heat waves in the US Northeast, it is nuclear plants that keep the lights one while almost no wind is producing. One plant out of many reducing output is very different than the entire wind output of Germany falling because of low wind conditions.

Re: Indication that overpopulation is false

[Anonymous Coward]

All generation has some sort of initial, and ongoing carbon cost. Lifetime emissions matter, although having all carbon intensive elements at once wouldn't be ideal

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Uecker]

Nuclear is not as straight forward as you say. You also want your fuel to be used evenly, have to take into account the level of fission products in the reactor, etc. Nuclear is also less reliable than solar and wind, so you also have to plan for sudden unplanned loss of power sources. There is also a weather factor for nuclear as nuclear plants depend on water for cooling, so if water levels are too low or it becomes too hot, it does not work. The later is the reason France depends on Germany for power and not vice versa as incorrectly claimed by many here.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[mikael]

Coal and Gas plants have to be powered up and down slowly, in order to all the components to heat up and cool down gradually and avoid any heat stress that could cause metal fatigue.

Re: Indication that overpopulation is false

[MoarSauce123]

The best places for such plants are abandoned coal mines. Also uses the same level of skill of mining jobs. Rather than extend coal mining the mines should be used for energy storage.

Re: Indication that overpopulation is false

[K. S. Kyosuke]

There is most likely an overpopulation in Europe, however. Density and resource consumption are at high levels around here. So I'm not sure how GP could react this way even to a misread comment.

Re: Indication that overpopulation is false

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly you've never played SimCity 2000. All you need to do is drop a water tile on a hill, then a hydro plant on top of it. It's only the bribes from the oil and coal industries that are holding us back.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Would it not make more sense to say, make it "Free electricity night" and instead of sending out rebates, buy batteries to solve the problem once and for all? Don't dump the energy, save it for lower production days.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Bartles]

As long as the population keeps increasing, it is self-evident that the planet is not overpopulated.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Stephan Schulz]

Nuclear is pretty straight forward... rods go in or out and affect the amount of heat generated.

Well, maybe your uncle should go back to university or get some remedial courses in nuclear engineering. Yes, nuclear reactors are controlled with control rods. And yes, if all goes according to plan, you can quickly shut the chain reaction down. But you cannot quickly vary the output of the reactor. First, because this leads to the build-up of undesirable fission products ("neutron poisons"), and secondly, because there is a large amount of residual decay heat. Nuclear powerplants typically provide base loads only, possibly changing at the several hours to days timescale. Like all thermal plants, they can in principle vent heat, but that is non-trivial on a large scale, and, of course, very inefficient.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[godel_56]

Nuclear is not as straight forward as you say. You also want your fuel to be used evenly, have to take into account the level of fission products in the reactor, etc. Nuclear is also less reliable than solar and wind, so you also have to plan for sudden unplanned loss of power sources. There is also a weather factor for nuclear as nuclear plants depend on water for cooling, so if water levels are too low or it becomes too hot, it does not work. The later is the reason France depends on Germany for power and not vice versa as incorrectly claimed by many here.

Nuclear power can load follow to an extent, but it's not capable of really fast responses like the big Australian Tesla battery. Also the economics do not favor using nuclear for load following. The big expense in nuclear is the initial capital cost and if you want to get a return on investment you run the plant as close to maximum output all the time, so nuclear is best suited for base load power.

I also think it's stupid to say that nuclear is less reliable than solar or wind. Does nuclear suddenly quit when the sun goes down or when the wind stops or when the plant is covered in snow?

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[godel_56]

As long as the population keeps increasing, it is self-evident that the planet is not overpopulated.

And if I eat and eat and weigh 400 pounds, it is self evident that I'm not over weight because I haven't actually died yet.

Re: Indication that overpopulation is false

[PoopJuggler]

Reichsfuhrer Pusigraber is making sure our coal mines are never left abandoned.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[angel'o'sphere]

Load levels for every power plant are projected days and weeks into the future.
Regardless if coal, wind or solar.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[angel'o'sphere]

Europe has no frozen rivers anymore since 1977, when AGW (and river heating by nukes) started to take effect.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[angel'o'sphere]

One plant out of many reducing output is very different than the entire wind output of Germany falling because of low wind conditions.
Hint: look on a map.

Re: Indication that overpopulation is false

[colonel spalding]

I can't waste time reading what you write because in your second paragraph you say solar doesn't work on a cloudy day which is patently not true do some research

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Mr D from 63]

Just look at a chart of wind output; Scroll through and see just how often then entire wind production of Germany falls to very low levels. It is quite commonplace.

https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[fgouget]

Source: Many long conversations with an uncle who be rather senior in a multi-state power co-op

I see your appeal to authority and raise you a conflict of interest.

though he is not a believer in man made 'climate change'

Which shows his understanding of aspects connected to his activity are pretty limited.

Keep that in mind: Quick & unexpected downturns in power consumption to save the earth, can actually result in a net positive expenditure of carbon emissions... and in this case, it may be more desirable to have people use the energy (either leaving their lights/heat on when not at home, mining for bitcoin, or looking for aliens with Seti@home) than have the thermal energy be dumped.

That's just an excuse to feel good about being lazy and keeping on wasting energy.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[WolfWithoutAClause]

There's two big problems with nuclear. One is subtle the other is pretty obvious. The obvious problem is that the cost/watt is high because of all the equipment you need to deal with a nuclear reactor and the steam cycle. You need a big heavy containment building, you need to get rid of the large amounts of waste heat; you need pumps, and redundant everything.

The more subtle problem is that because the cost/watt is high, you have to run the reactor flat-out as much as possible to bring the cost/kWh down to a sensible level.

That means that it's mostly only baseload electricity. And baseload electricity is historically the cheapest electricity. So you've got a relatively expensive way of making cheap electricity. Well, with care the economics just about work out. For baseload. But that doesn't solve the problem of where you get the peak load.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Bartles]

Wut? That's a pretty shitty analogy.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[angel'o'sphere]

Perhaps you should look on a year instead of a week?
Low wind production us extremely rare, and in a european grid, why would anyone care?

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Mr D from 63]

Low wind production is quite commonplace actually. Step through every week of the year and you'll find many times it drops less than 2 GW total generation. I gave you the link....

In the first four weeks alone there are lows of 0.33, 0.53, and 0.78 GW output.... next to nothing.,
Even in a good wind week, like week 40, it drops to only 8GW
Then there are entire weeks that are really bad. Weeks 1-4, Weeks 26-35 are all pathetic weeks. 38.. There are others I skipped.

Please stop 'just saying stuff' that you want to be true and look at the facts.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[angel'o'sphere]

Well,
I lost track about what we are talking.
The web site you link is not showing the day by day wind production. It shows two selected grid operators and how much wind/solar they feed into their grids. That has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of wind/solar power is fed into the whole german grid.
So no idea about what you want to talk.

Fraunhover is a good starting point to get informations about german grid(s): https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Mr D from 63]

Well, I lost track about what we are talking. The web site you link is not showing the day by day wind production. It shows two selected grid operators and how much wind/solar they feed into their grids.

The link shows the entire German wind production for week, you can step through every week of the year. This is another case where you simply ignore facts and go off saying things that don't make sense. Your link does not show actual production history for days or weeks.

Wind variability does not go away just because you ignore it, and facts don't go away just because you decide to be willfully ignorant. You have no credibility.

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[angel'o'sphere]

No idea why you are so hostile.
Your link does not show what you think it does.
The base URL of the PDF I linked is a good starting point for your research.
But alas, as you seem to lazy, I look up for you a credible source of the weekly/daily wind production for 2016/2017.
Will take a few days ...

Re:Indication that overpopulation is false

[Mr D from 63]

Anyone else that reads this can plainly see what my link goes to, and how it backs my point. You can call it a potato if you like, but that doesn't change what it really is.

Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

It happens in the US as well in markets with few renewables and periods of low consumption. But it is always important to make it about renewables in every article such that we confuse the public. It is why the media and the left wing are so despised.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[gravewax]

well it is about renewables and more specifically the more unpredictable nature of generation under renewables that can lead to this scenario. They have such a huge base of renewables with massive fluxuating levels of energy generation that it can have this effect especially when they still need the gas/coal generation for reliable baseload when the renewables are below average. that isn't to say renewables are bad or good but this is most definitely a result of the increased levels of renewables.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[93 Escort Wagon]

Hey, coal is also a renewable!

... given a long-enough timeframe.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the conditions for coal cannot be repeated naturally. Coal formed before microbes evolved the ability to break down the hard cellulose of trees. This is long before terminates as well, which broke down trees in forests. Theoretically some coal can still form in the existing peat bogs, but new peat bogs cannot be formed either.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Altrag]

Which is where Tesla's coming in with their massive battery installations.. and likely other companies soon enough given Tesla's success with them (though I don't know the economics yet but that will come..) The batteries can balance out the unpredictability in near real-time, and compensate for the biggest drawback of renewables.

Of course its not all upsides. There's extra space required to house all of those batteries, you have to account for the manufacturing of the batteries when determining the relative cost of renewables vs traditional power generation, and of course they're very new so its possible that we haven't yet discovered all of the potential failure modes that could arise when we start relying on them to large extents like that.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

batteries do not make economic sense at this point and are actually still a long way off it, even in Australia where Tesla put in that big array of batteries it wasn't for storage it was to help moderate the fluxuations in the grid, their are far better storage solutions like pumped hydro which are exponentially cheaper where viable.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

.. massive battery installations .. doubling the price of power. Gee, can we afford another advance of this magnitude without going broke?

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of the batteries is to maintain grid stability. They can respond in milliseconds, where other technologies take seconds to fire up or produce more power, thus preventing a snow-ball effect. The ability is increasingly important with increased reliance on wind and solar, which exhibit more fluctuations over short time-frames.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Ol Olsoc]

Actually the conditions for coal cannot be repeated naturally. Coal formed before microbes evolved the ability to break down the hard cellulose of trees. This is long before terminates as well, which broke down trees in forests. Theoretically some coal can still form in the existing peat bogs, but new peat bogs cannot be formed either.

There appears to be a fungus that also breaks down lignum developing and essentially ending the carboniferous age - or at least the coal forming part of it.

We have what would be a peat bog a bit north of where I live, in a lake. But instead of forming peat, it's a fine source of methane gas.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[AHuxley]

A huge amount of subsidized renewables.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

umm yeah why did you think repeating what I said was important? regardless it makes no economic sense to use them as a power storage as the OP was suggesting.

Re: Nothing to do with renewables

[CGordy]

That's actually really interesting. Do you have a source that goes into more detail?

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[ShanghaiBill]

There appears to be a fungus that also breaks down lignum developing and essentially ending the carboniferous age - or at least the coal forming part of it.

The carboniferous age lasted about 60 million years, from 360 Mya to 300 Mya, and during that time a lot of undigested wood turned into coal. Enough CO2 was sucked out of the atmosphere to trigger a major ice age.

A fungus finally figured out how to digest lignin, in a process described by biochemists as "untying a knot with a flamethrower". The same process is still used by fungi today, pretty much unaltered. By stopping the carbon-and-ice death spiral, these little fungi saved the planet. Without them, even the dinosaurs would have never existed. If you want to show your gratitude, go to a Chinese restaurant and order some "mu er" (wood ear). Some people think they are slimy and don't care for the taste, while others (including me) love'em. But while you are chewing, remember that you wouldn't even exist without the little critters.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[ShanghaiBill]

Which is where Tesla's coming in with their massive battery installations.

Batteries are very expensive for grid storage. A better option is to widen the grid, so a peak in one area can fill in a trough in other areas.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[AmiMoJo]

That's exactly what Europe has done, except now people are saying "hurrrr Germany needs France to keep the lights on!!1"

Yeah, they do. By design.

On a related note, the UK government's assessment of the interconnection with the EU post Brexit basically amounts to "electricity is important in modern Britain." Great insight.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Maxo-Texas]

Add in good batteries and this all smooths out and lowers energy consumption generally too.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

'Batteries are very expensive for grid storage' NO SHIT? moron

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[jhol13]

Electric cars.
One company in Finland got fee ride (plus "coffee money") by loading (buying) electric cars when electricity was cheap and unloading (selling) when electricity was expensive. This is going to get big.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

We have what would be a peat bog a bit north of where I live, in a lake. But instead of forming peat, it's a fine source of methane gas.

And that's why natural gas is the fuel of the future, and coal isn't!

And coincidentally, that is exactly why we have problem with greenhouse effect: once we turn that naturally sequestered carbon back into the circulation, it never settles down into permanent solids again, it always breaks down into greenhouse gasses after a while. Our only hope is to make more non-biodegradable plastics (or pure carbon materials with controlled nanostructure) from biological materials, bury that deep into the ground and seal it. The time will come that humans will make diamonds in a bulk just so that we could bury them.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

and how do you deal with a fire in a building with several Gigawatts of battery storage.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh is that what you said? I should RTFC

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

very quickly and from a great deal of distance!

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[nospam007]

"Batteries are very expensive for grid storage. A better option is to widen the grid, so a peak in one area can fill in a trough in other areas."

They already do that, they export power to Austria and Switzerland (for free or negative prices) their nuke owners have already complained multiple times of the 'unfair competition'.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[nospam007]

"A huge amount of subsidized renewables."

The latest batch of offshore wind turbines are not subsidized at all, the companies didn't want the money.

"Offshore Wind Farms Offer Subsidy-Free Power for First Time"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[bluegutang]

I don't quite understand, why can't new peat bogs be formed nowadays?

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany needs France to keep the lights on

No more than France needs Germany to keep the lights on, anyway. The transfer capacity between Germany and France is surprisingly small, but it's regularly used in the winter and in the summer to cover for French nukes when they can't run at full power because the rivers are too cold (danger of thermal stress cracks in the aged nuclear plants) or too warm (lowered cooling capacity or the warm water kills the river). A lot of people and the nuclear power industry in particular want to see Germany's Energiewende fail, and they're out in force to badmouth everything about it. Fact is, Germany has rapidly increased the share of renewable energy in the electricity mix, is improving its electricity grid with long distance (for Germany) links, and despite pulling out of nuclear has not increased fossil fuel consumption for electricity production.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[skullandbones99]

Yep, it is France's 75% Nuclear power that is powering Europe. The previous French government had a plan to decrease France's Nuclear sector from 75% to 50% but luckily the new French government is reversing that plan. Otherwise, that would of been disaster for Europe's C02 emission reductions plan.

It is the natural gas peeker power stations that should be worried about any large scale deployment of grid storage. Adding battery storage to the grid is the end-game to get rid of gas fired power stations. Note that grid storage helps increase Nuclear power output because the minimum constant baseload level increases which would also help to kill off gas fired power stations.

One way of deploying grid storage is to use electric cars to feed power back into the grid whilst connected to the charge point. Electric cars charge during the night which also raises the minimum constant baseload level. Therefore, Nuclear could play a bigger role.

On the other hand solar, and wind deployments with on-site battery storage will likely increase at a rate that will mean no new Nuclear power stations need to be built.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[dunkelfalke]

Yeah, they do. By design.

Exactly. Conversely, France needs Germany to keep the lights on when their nukes cannot reliably provide (too hot, too cold, too much load - their availability is on average less than 80% and their installed capacity is just 2/3 of the peak demand). One hand washes the other.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[skullandbones99]

Battery storage facilities are currently outside and not in buildings so access is not an issue.

You mean GWh (Gigawatt-hours) of storage. Gigawatts is a term meaning power (Joules per second). Scientifically speaking, energy should use the term Joules but the non-standard term kWh was used by the energy generating sector and has stuck in daily usage which causes confusion of GWh versus GW. You could say GWh is a marketing term.

Just like the confusion over calories (Cal) versus kilo-calories kcal). 1 Cal = 1000 kcal. Cal is used as a marketing term in the food industry despite the labels in Europe saying kcals in the fine print.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Uecker]

Not really. Germany has so many plants, it exports still even when it is dark and there is no wind (Dunkelflaute). One could easily shut down some coal plants.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Mr D from 63]

The generation profile is not determined by low use conditions, but rather highest demand conditions coupled with worst generation conditions (low wind). You talk about exporting when demand is low as a reason to shut down plants.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[houghi]

They are not used for grid storage. They are used as a buffer. The Australian ones can cover about 30 minutes of downtime. That then gives enough to get a solution I.E start up fuel or gas based energy or reroute delivery while preventing a knockdown effect in other areas.

It is basically a very large UPS. The one you have before you start up the diesel generator at your NOC.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

umm yeah why did you think repeating what I said was important?

Why did you think repeating what Altrag said was important?

regardless it makes no economic sense to use them as a power storage as the OP was suggesting.

Please show us where in Altrag's post they said that. I'll give you a hint, they didn't. They said the same thing you did.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dunkelflaute" refers to the supply side: Dunkel (dark) = no solar power. Flaute (calm) = no wind power.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[mikael]

They could make even more money if they could do cryptocurrency mining while the car was idle.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

The batteries can balance out the unpredictability in near real-time, and compensate for the biggest drawback of renewables.

Wrong. The world's biggest battery installation, in South Australia, can meet the state's power needs for about 20 minutes. It's purpose is *not*, as too many news stories have misleadingly implied, to keep the power flowing until the wind starts blowing again. It's purpose is to give the engineers enough time to shut down the grid cleanly so the outage doesn't cause hardware damage, like the last time this happened in South Australia.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Ol Olsoc]

I don't quite understand, why can't new peat bogs be formed nowadays?

Peat is considered a very slowly renewable energy source. It is formed in wet acidic and anaerobic conditions, which slow down the decay process. The peat forming waters that I refer to are in a lake, at the shallow areas, just deep enough to canoe through. The plant material is mostly the remains of various water lilies, some of which have substantial plant mass. Every year, new mass is formed. The water has a lot of tannin in it, and is acidic. So the biomass at the bottom decomposes very slowly. This is not the typical peat formation method. But when canoeing or kayaking through those area, you can't help but touch the stuff on the bottom, and you get methane bubbles.

I should take a lighter and try igniting the gases some time.

So to be accurate, peat is renewable, just very slowly. To turn it into coal, you'd have to figure out away to stop those lignum munching fungi. Shanghai Bill has the best explanation in the thread.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[MachineShedFred]

Answer: on-demand bitcoin mining! Use up all the extra generation and get paid twice to do it!

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[bluegutang]

Germany emits almost twice as much CO2 per capita as France. Hard to call that a success.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

"cheaper where viable"

And if you have a big flat area of arid land not well suited to agriculture, which would be very easy to pour a concrete pad to put big steel boxes of batteries on, and a series of high-voltage lines on utility towers?

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[MachineShedFred]

The same way you deal with a fire in a building with several hundred tons of coal, or a warehouse filled with oil barrels?

Nice FUD. It turns out that energy-dense materials are energetic, no matter what form.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany emits almost twice as much CO2 per capita as France. Hard to call that a success.

Germany also has over twice the exports compared to France. That's the problem with statistics, they can mislead.

Besides, Germany's historical emissions are what you need to compare with, otherwise you get a muddled picture anyway.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit
http://www.abc.net.au/science/...

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You don't even need to sell it back. Just the flexibility of electric cars as consumers alone rewards both their owners (who can ride more for the same money paid) and the electricity producers (who get perhaps less money they'd get otherwise, but still more than if they had no outlet at all).

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

...There's extra space required to house all of those batteries,,,

If only there were a way to create underground spaces in which to install batteries of batteries.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Uecker]

I am talking about the worst case scenario with no light and wind. As for example, in January this year there were several days where this was the case. This is not unusual. But even then - in contrast to what many slashdotters seem to believe - Germany was still able to export (net exports) electricity at all times during January. At no time - even during high demand - was the amount of imports bigger than the exports. The idea that Germany would somehow depend on nuclear power from France is simply a myth (or a lie).

Source for the data: https://www.agora-energiewende...

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Uecker]

France still plans to reduce nuclear to 50% - just not already by 2025 as planned by the old government.

http://www.mining-journal.com/...

While France exports a huge amount of electricity, this is mostly cheap surplus electricity at times of low demand. At times of high demand or many plants are down (e.g. during heat wave), it often critically depends on imports. In contrast, in the last years this was never the case for Germany.

http://energypost.eu/france-ca...
https://www.reuters.com/articl...

But even in total, Germany is about to overtake France as the biggest electricity exporter - especially with all the trouble France had with its nuclear plants this year.

http://www.worldstopexports.co...
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/...
https://www.platts.com/latest-...

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Mr D from 63]

I never said Germany depends on nuclear power from France. They have their own nuclear power which provides a stable base. They also, like France, are a large net exporter of electricity.

There are times, like France, when they import more than they export. Those are not very often but they happen.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Uecker]

The person I originally replied to said Germany depends on nuclear power from France. Yes, there a moments where Germany imports more than it exports. This is rare, for brief periods of time, and never critical (as there are enough plants to create the electricity in Germany, but may be just cheaper to import). In France, this happens more often and for longer times when demand is very high (e.g. due to electric heating in winter) or when many nuclear plants are off-line (e.g. during heat waves in summer or this November due to inspections and outages) and France then often depends on imports.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Mr D from 63]

France has not historically had issues with plants being off line, and heat related shutdowns are very rare, and can be planned and dealt with. Unlike wind, where massive drops in output cannot be scheduled, and must be made up from other sources. In fact, most of Germany's net import periods coincide with low wind output nationally and higher demand.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Uecker]

You are kidding, right? France had historically lots of issues with plants being off line (planned and unplanned). Most famously, during the major health crisis caused by the heat wave of 2003. Most recently, this year in January and November. It deals with this problems by importing power from elsewhere (e.g. from Germany) but it is generally considered a major issue, especially because it has an aging nuclear fleet and also because heat wave are expected to become more common. If other neighboring countries would rely on nuclear in the same way as France did, there would be a major crisis every two years or so. In contrast, even without wind and sun, Germany has enough plants and does not have to import power at any time. It can produce much more power than it needs at all times. It is only France, which has a very fragile grid in terms of unplanned outages.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Mr D from 63]

You are kidding, right? France had historically lots of issues with plants being off line (planned and unplanned).

They have had plants come off line, but it has not historically presented any problems. You are trying to make it out to be some sort of problem.

The real problem is CO2 emissions, and that is much more a German problem than a French one, nuclear being a key differentiator.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Uecker]

You are kidding, right? France had historically lots of issues with plants being off line (planned and unplanned).

They have had plants come off line, but it has not historically presented any problems. You are trying to make it out to be some sort of problem.

You apply double standards. If Germany imports a little bit of electricity in the evening after sunset with low wind because this is a bit cheaper than spinning up a conventional plant, this indicates that wind power is a failure. If France relies on imports for most of January and November because the remaining operational plants of its nuclear fleet can not fully fulfill the demand this is "not a problem". Of course, it is not a problem. But only because others have an energy mix not mainly based on nuclear.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Mr D from 63]

You apply double standards. If Germany imports a little bit of electricity in the evening after sunset with low wind because this is a bit cheaper than spinning up a conventional plant, this indicates that wind power is a failure.

I never said nor implied that wind is a failure, I don't believe wind is a failure, I've always maintained it is an important part of the mix to reduce CO2 emissions. Just pointing out the contrast to those that want to point out petty import/export balance perturbations as if it were some statement on nuclear in France, particularly when they've traditionally been a leading exporter of electricity in Europe.

Its well documented that France's energy mix, which includes significant nuclear contribution, provides a stable generation base, low CO2 emissions, and low cost. Germany, meanwhile. is struggling with their CO2 reductions under a strategy which reduces nuclear, as such they are facing higher costs and higher CO2 emissions, with no clear turning point in sight.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[Areyoukiddingme]

The latest batch of offshore wind turbines are not subsidized at all, the companies didn't want the money.

Not true. That Bloomberg article is quite poor analysis for an alleged financial services company.

The approved projects for offshore wind turbines in the North Sea will not enjoy any construction subsidies, but they will enjoy plenty of operating subsidies in the form of Germany's absurdly high energy taxes that go to operators of renewables. If they weren't going to be selling in to Germany's energy market, these projects would still not be viable.

Presumably economies of scale and efficiencies of installers will continue to drop the installation costs of large scale wind generators, but there is a floor, a minimum cost below which installers can not go without taking a loss. Raw materials will always cost something, and for the foreseeable future there will be some labor involved. I would be curious to see an analysis of what that floor might be, and how it compares to current wholesale grid prices around the world. Not curious enough to try googling myself though...

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[jhol13]

Why wouldn't you sell it back if you can make risk free money?

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[angel'o'sphere]

The im-/exports of power between european nations is purely based on EU markrt conditions.
There is no single nation in the EU that could not disconnect from the EU grid and take care for its own power.
Believing otherwise is complete idiocy.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[angel'o'sphere]

France has since ten years continuously 30% of its plants offline ...maintenance and security upgrades.
During summer time, another 30% go offline because of low water levels in the ricers, they lack cooling water. No idea were you get this from: and heat related shutdowns are very rare Since the 1990s that happens every year: AGW! And Germany is the partner who provides the back up.

In fact, most of Germany's net import periods coincide with low wind output nationally and higher demand.
That is not a coincident, that is how power production and markets work. Why should we ramp up a coal plant when we can import power cheaper than produce it with our own plants?
Hint: the fact that we back up the French grid is usually a mutual deal of assistance, and not only purely run via the EEX. Hence we get power back when it fits them, us, and the rest of the market.

If we would talk here about two restaurants needing beef and beer no one would complain if the two owners help out each other by exchaning beer and beef. But because we are talking about Germanies Energiewende, helping each other out is now a bad thing?

The owners don't need to help each other out, they can run to the next super market and pay the super market price instead ...

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[angel'o'sphere]

You are extrmely uninformed about the european and french grid ...

What do you mean with historical? .the french grid has problems since about 1990/1993 ... for me that is historical enough.

Re:Nothing to do with renewables

[angel'o'sphere]

I'm more thnking about a mechanical mining computer (Baggage, or how ever he is spelled) that creates coins while drivig :)

Throw another muslim on the fire

[Anonymous Coward]

Grease, fat, and feces burn real good.

Not a single consumer was paid anything

[Anonymous Coward]

The title is misleading and typical greenwash propaganda.

Germany has one of the highest energy price on the world and even in times when the wind blows consumers pay a premium. Prices here only have one direction - upwards and the sky is the limit.

Re:Not a single consumer was paid anything

[lucm]

Prices here only have one direction - upwards and the sky is the limit.

Maybe you could create an energy marketplace where brokers would buy electricity in one region and sell it at a premium in another region. You could call it Einron.

Re:Not a single consumer was paid anything

[Anonymous Coward]

cryptocurrency mining using cheapest electricity is the new shell game

but cryptocurrency is stupid

Re:Not a single consumer was paid anything

[lucm]

You can't compete with china on crytocurrency mining. The only smart bitcoin strategy is to scan exchanges for sql injection bugs and steal millions from people who triple-mortgaged their house to cash in on the bitcoin craze.

Re:Not a single consumer was paid anything

[angel'o'sphere]

Consumer energy prices are falling since 5 years in germany.
And we are and always were far away fromthe top, look e.g. at Hawaii.
Comsumers never payed a premium here, as simple house hold consumers have a fixed price, completely unrelated to the spot market.

Re:Not a single consumer was paid anything

[angel'o'sphere]

It is actually called European Energy eXchange: https://www.eex.com/en#/en

Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

Germans pay more for power than almost every other Western country. That fact was conveniently left out of the push piece in the submitted story.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Klaxton]

The wholesale price of electricity in Germany is about the same as the rest of Europe. Residential electric bills are mostly taxes and fees. You conveniently left that fact out.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[atomicalgebra]

Not only does Germany pay more, they pollute more. Germany has spent a quarter of a trillion dollars, and they are still **10x dirtier** then France. Any way you put it Germanys energiewende is a failure . Here is a second source And here is a previous slashdot story about it.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence the point of the article, that renewables are causing people to pay less now, which you conveniently have a lobotomy to prevent you from realizing in your push piece rebuttal that doesn't rebutt.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[AHuxley]

AC its one person paying too much for power having their money taken and redistributed to others to show "renewables" works.
Someone is paying for that power and the "free" payments.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany comes in as a close second, with electricity prices of $0.19

some markets in the U.S. have prices that high.. and i'm not even talking about alaska or hawaii, either.

hell, i live 2 blocks from a public-owned hydro facility and an hour from the nuclear plant that supplants the town's needs, and my summertime rates are nearly that much.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[AmiMoJo]

It's only a failure of you selectively compare it to France, a country with a lot of really expensive and extremely heavily subsidised nuclear power. In fact it's so expensive that the French don't want it any more, leaving their energy companies to start leaching off other countries like the UK.

Germany started in a poor position. It's half way through its transition, so any proclamation of failure is premature. It's reduced its coal consumption, massively increased renewables, and built up a huge new industry with jobs and wealth.

Oh, and done something good for the planet too.

What is the alternative? Throw even more money at a dying technology like nuclear?

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

You're ignoring the cost of medical care, early deaths, and environmental damage of burning fossil fuels. Yea, if you ignore those (incredibly important) costs then super-polluting countries probably have the "cheapest" power. Unfortunately, life, mother nature, and physics doesn't ignore those costs like we do. So no, Germany doesn't pay the most.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[garry_g]

Not sure where those numbers come from, and what amount of taxes it includes, but the 0.19€ that sites lists for 2017 is WAY OFF ... typical prices are in the range of 0.25 and 0.28 per kWh with all the taxes etc ... plus additional fees on that (meters, etc.)

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

Residential electric bills are mostly taxes and fees. You conveniently left that fact out.

You're not helping your case by mentioning taxes and fees. Roughly half of those taxes and fees directly subsidizes green energy. Much of Europe is heading down a similar path as you mentioned.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot to take your valium?

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

As a resident in Germany, i do not care how much is taxes and how much not. I get ripped off by this going green scam.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only a failure of you selectively compare it to France, a country with a lot of really expensive

Stop right there.

France's power is expensive, therefore a claim, which is a fact, that Germany's power is more expensive, the most expensive in the west, is false.

You managed to claim the fact that a number being highest is false because another number is lower.

Re: Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing the price paid by consumers with TCO.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

But much cleaner than America.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[dunkelfalke]

Actually a part of it is just greed of the energy companies. The wholesale prices went down, the taxes will also go a bit down in 2018, but the end user prices are still going up - simply because most Germans can afford it.

Re: Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[AmiMoJo]

Bingo. French bills look low, but actually when you factor in the tax diverted to EDF and the other French energy companies, it's insanely expensive.

The French got fed up with it and it nearly bankrupted EDF. They were saved by ripping off other countries, e.g. the UK where they are getting all the usual subsidies plus a guaranteed ultra high price per MWh and Chinese investment. Yeah, a critical part of the UK power supply is owned by the French and Chinese, and we are paying them handsomely for the privilege.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

As a resident in Germany, i do not care how much is taxes and how much not. I get ripped off by this going green scam.

Yearning for the good ole days when we still had the warm satisfaction of reading the electric bill and seeing that it was a few euro lower while choking on the smoke and dust of a lignite plant are we? I bet you voted AfD.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[MrL0G1C]

Which has nothing much to do with the actual cost of renewables, German residential consumers pay:

For the electricity (under 1/5th of the total)
Grid Fee (excessively high)
VAT (value added tax, VALUE?!??!)
Concession fee (WTF?)
Renewables Surcharge (excessively high)
Electricity tax (would you like some tax to go with you're taxed tax)
CHP surcharge (they're just making shit up now)
Other Surcharges (Yes, more surcharges, plural)

composition-average-german-household-power-price-2006-2017.png (PNG Image, 1132 x 800 pixels)
What German households pay for power | Clean Energy Wire

Summary, they are paying 29.16ct per kWh for 5.63ct worth of electricity.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany does not pollute more. Germany uses close to half as much electricity as the US per capita (7.1MWh vs 12.96MWh per year). Germany produces almost a third of the electricity from renewable sources. A little over half is from fossil fuels (including natural gas). The rest is nuclear. The US gets close to two thirds of its electricity from fossil fuels and only 15% from renewables. The remaining 20% are nuclear. The Per capita, the US consumes far more electricity from fossil fuels than Germany consumes in total.

The "Energiewende" is not a failure, although the nuclear lobby certainly wants to make people think so. Germany has steadily increased the share of renewable energy in the electricity mix. The share of coal and other fossil fuels in the mix is slowly decreasing, even though fossil fuels are picking up some of the share from the declining nuclear energy.

While nuclear energy has the advantage of low CO2 output, it is neither clean nor cheap. Nuclear fuel production is very polluting. CO2 isn't the only form of pollution. France subsidizes its nuclear power plants. Don't forget that France has nuclear weapons, so it needs nuclear know how for that too. Besides, the subsidized electricity has caused wasteful habits: Resistive heating is still common in France. Residential electricity use is significantly higher in France than in Germany. This is going to cause significant problems when nuclear power plants become untenable, even for a country as heavily invested in them as France. France's nuclear power plants are aging to the point of making further operation reckless.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[nospam007]

"Germans pay more [worldatlas.com] for power than almost every other Western country. That fact was conveniently left out of the push piece in the submitted story."

Indeed, But in a few years that will lead to no more nukes nor coal plants, saving thousands of lives each year because of emissions alone.

While other countries 'take the coal and clean it'.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me fix that for you:

Residential electric bills are mostly taxes and fees to subsidize green energies. You conveniently left that fact out.

Done

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

Carbon dioxide emission != pollution.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Uecker]

I really start to be annoyed by the stupidity of this argument, because you conveniniently left out a couple of facts:

- This high price is not only due to the energy transition. In fact, the price increase due to the renewables levy is 6.74 Euro Cents in 2017. There are other reasons, why the price of electricity is high in Germany: For example, it maintains one of the most reliable grids.
- Other power sources got (and still get) a huge a mount of subsides paid from general taxes. While this did not affect the electricity price as it was hidden in taxes, this is also paid by the population. A fair must take this into account and not only refer to the electricity price.
- This is by design. The idea is to encourage saving and this does indeed work.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Uecker]

You are right that Germany pollutes more than France (but don't judge too quickly: CO2 per capita is still far lower than for the US). It was a mistake to first shut down existing nuclear plants instead of coal. But this does not imply that the energy transition with its push towards renewables has failed. Only the effect on coal and CO2 has been delayed. But in 2017 you can already clearly see how renewables start to cut also into lignite and coal:

lignite 155.1 (2007) 148.0 (2017)
coal 142.0 (2007) 94.2 (2017)
nuclear 140.5 (2007) 75.9 (2017)
renewables 88.3 (2007) 216.6 (2017)
net exports 19.1 (2007) 54.0 (2017)
numbers in TWh, source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...

Just by looking at the actual numbers, one can easily see how many statements about the energy transition you can find in the internet a completely wrong. I can only recommend to look at actual numbers and build your own opinion.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only a failure of you selectively compare it to France, a country with a lot of really expensive and extremely heavily subsidised nuclear power. In fact it's so expensive that the French don't want it any more, leaving their energy companies to start leaching off other countries like the UK.

Germany started in a poor position. It's half way through its transition, so any proclamation of failure is premature. It's reduced its coal consumption, massively increased renewables, and built up a huge new industry with jobs and wealth.

Oh, and done something good for the planet too.

What is the alternative? Throw even more money at a dying technology like nuclear?

Frances' electricity prices are much lower than Germany. Also, they have reversed course on their 'political' announcement they would cut back on nuclear and have since stated they must keep nuclear. This was after the French Academy of Science issued a statement about how misguided the political announcement was. You know this, but you will repeat lies.

Re: Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Mr D from 63]

French bills look low, but actually when you factor in the tax diverted to EDF and the other French energy companies, it's insanely expensive.

Please cite your source. This is just a fabricated rationalization. Frances nuclear plants have been paid for for quite some time. Not only is Germany subsidizing power at higher rates than anyone else, they are trying to figure out how to pay for it outside of the rate structure, including added taxes;

https://www.cleanenergywire.or...

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Mr D from 63]

Which has nothing much to do with the actual cost of renewables,

All those fees and taxes are high BECAUSE of Energiewende costs. Their increase corresponds with spending on renewables and reduction of nuclear.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Mr D from 63]

But in a few years that will lead to no more nukes nor coal plants,

What are you basing that statement on? There are no projections for Germany to eliminate coal in the next 25 years. Reduction of nuclear is one reason their CO2 emissions are so high and they have made little progress reducing it.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[MrL0G1C]

Rubbish, we have a high percentage renewables here in the UK and our electricity costs very close to half of that. Wind is cheap. Solar is getting cheap.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[thegarbz]

How about rather than throwing money at it you attack the root cause of the costs. Nuclear power is actually incredibly cheap once you cut project overheads and investment risk out. Why do you think it was the great saviour of the 80s? Hint: it is cheap, and safer designs do not cost appreciably more.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Mr D from 63]

Rubbish, we have a high percentage renewables here in the UK and our electricity costs very close to half of that. Wind is cheap. Solar is getting cheap.

In 2016, renewables made up about 8.9% total UK energy consumption. That includes hydro and biomass. Wind was about 4%, Solar about 1%. Conversely, in Germany , Wind was about 15% and solar about 5% annual generation. So that puts Germany about 4 times UK in terms of solar and wind percentage, plus Germany is a bigger producer and user.

Systemic cost goes up significantly with higher penetration, which is why Germany is struggling to pay for Energiewinde. Transmission upgrades along with backup asset costs are two key factors. Germany's cost per KWH wind and solar addition will continue to rise because of systemic costs, not because of based capacity costs.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[MrL0G1C]

"In 2016, renewables made up about 8.9% total UK energy consumption."

And what about electricity generation? Disingenuous statement there.

"Official figures published on Thursday show low carbon power, which has been supported by the government to meet climate change targets, accounted for 50% of electricity generation in the UK in the third quarter, up from 45.3% the year before"

We have a choice here and I chose to buy 100% renewable generated electricity, it cost less than half of what the Germans are paying.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[squiggleslash]

That isn't that surprising, given Germany is a combination of West Germany, which has had a progressive, environmentally conscious, government since pretty much every other Western nation did, and East Germany, whose disastrous environmental policies are legendary. It takes time to recover from that kind of legacy.

It sounds to me like they're doing a pretty good job of it, see sibling posters.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[MrL0G1C]

UK:
"Despite a recent rise in wholesale prices, which were blamed for one small energy supplier going bust last month, the average household energy bill was down 4.6% in 2016, to £1,237."

Germany:
"Germans respond by saving energy
Monthly energy costs, which include heating, electricity and petrol, amounted to almost 280 euros in 2014 for an average German 3-person household, according to the Renewable Energies Agency (AEE). Petrol had the biggest share, followed by heating. Costs for power amounted to 85 euros."
- â2088 per year household energy. (£1,853 - ~ 50% more)

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Mr D from 63]

Yes, I agree German electricity is much higher than UK, mainly due to Energiewinde. Your post does not make sense in that context, as it is not relevant.

What is your point? My statements still stand. Why are you conflating other energy costs when we are talking about the high electricity cost in Germany?

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[MrL0G1C]

You're the one who said something about renewables being 9% of *energy* usage - it's certainly not 9% of electricity usage, renewables accounts for well over double that.

Re: Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. The taxes are not a percentage, they are fixed absolute sums put on top of the energy price. Fluctuations of the energy price are almost of no consequence because of this.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Mr D from 63]

OK, we were clearly talking about electricity prices, and hence electricity generation percentages, that was pretty clear. If you want to pick on word choice, and that is your only point, so be it.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

keep eating shit

Re: Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[dunkelfalke]

The taxes being absolute sums (and VAT isn't absolute, by the way) has nothing to do whatsoever with end user prices going up despite wholesale prices and the renewable energy surcharge going down.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[dunkelfalke]

The numbers are even higher this year - wind power in Germany was the #2 electrical power source at 18.3%. Total renewables are at 38%. Let's see whether we can reach 45% next year.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Mr D from 63]

'total renewables' include CO2 producing biomass burning, and non-expandable hydro generation. Total wind can vary year to year based on wind conditions. You should hope for a steadily windy year and a lot of biomass burning if that short term number is important to you.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[atomicalgebra]

Not according to the new york times. Scroll to the chart halfway down the page You will see that that Germany is only 2% cleaner then the United States (34% vs 32%). You should remove the adjective "much" from your statement. Germany is slightly cleaner than America.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[dunkelfalke]

I think you don't understand your own numbers
German percentage of renewables is not much higher than the US percentage (mostly due to fewer opportunities for hydroelectric power) but the CO2 emissions per head make Germany much cleaner indeed (a bit more than half of what the USA emits).

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[atomicalgebra]

What are you talking about? Only 34% of German electricity is clean. Only 32% of US electricity is clean. Germany is still a major polluter.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, But in a few years that will lead to no more nukes nor coal plants, saving thousands of lives each year because of emissions alone.

Do Nuclear power plants emit significant amounts of CO2 in Germany?

Sounds like a strange place.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Klaxton]

It is meaningless to cut out project overhead and investment risk, because those costs most definitely do remain and they have to be paid. Then there is the cost of capital, which in recent cases appears to be about $25 billion for a nuke plant which produces zero electricity for the 10+ years it takes to build one. That's why the levelized cost of electricity for nuke is higher than pretty much everything else.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me fix that for you:

Residential electric bills are mostly taxes and fees to subsidize green energies. You conveniently left that fact out.

Done

Agreed.....

Socialist State At Your Service

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Anonymous Coward]

Carbon dioxide emission != pollution.

True to a certain point.....

Where would plants and trees be without carbon dioxide?

Think about it.

Hint: They would be dead.

So some amount of carbon dioxide is actually necessary in the atmosphere. The challenge for all humans it controlling how much we contribute to that.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

End user orices are actually going down since a few years, and if you are using heise.de or other web sites to switch away from your local power company you basically pay 30% less than you used to pay.
Customers are lazy, that is whay the energy prices for house holds don't drop rapidly.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

You are an idiot.
France has 60M inhabitants, Germany 80M.
How should Germany polute 10x more than France?
Who and how should use the energy? You have no idea about scales, as I said above: you are an idiot.

Re: Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

Well,
cite your sources [common knowledge]
We live here since a while, I for my part for 50 years.

I'm not googeling stuff for you we learn in school here, google your self, lazy ass.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

Then "additional fees" are already included in the comparision of energy prices, otherwise comparision would not make any sense.
I pay 16cent per kWh, and that comes down to 19cents in total including all fees and taxes.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

German residental customers usually don't pay a grid fee.
Greed fees are payed when you don't buy from your local utility, but from elsewhere.

Summary, they are paying 29.16ct per kWh for 5.63ct worth of electricity.
How do you calculate the 'worth'? Production cost, depending on power plant, is around 4.5 cents.
So you think, the government should not put VAT on it? And you think transportation, aka grid fee, should be free?

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

which is why Germany is struggling to pay for Energiewinde.
Germany is struggeling with many things:
o kindergarden places for young kids
o integration of immigrants
o direct democracy
o mediocre school system (or a steady decline in absolvents quality from schools)
o aburd (secret) high amount of unemployment
- plenty of more, I'm to lazy to think about right now

But the 'Energiewende' is nit amoung thise things. It is running rather smooth and in another 20-30 years germany will dominate the European markets with clean Energy.
But thank you for your concern!

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

Sorry, your numbers make no sense.
You can easily go to e.g. http://www.check24.de/ to get offers for 3 person house hold for electricity and gas.
No one pays more than 150â and you can cut it down to 120â easy.
Your 289â make no sense, perhaps you wanted to type 180â?

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[MrL0G1C]

I didn't calculate the worth, it is right there in the chart. And I didn't say there shouldn't be a grid fee but it should be reasonable and that fee is not at all reasonable, the grid does not cost considerably more than the production of the electricity long term.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[MrL0G1C]

Your post makes no sense, I didn't make up those numbers, they're averages quoted from a site. I subtracted out the petrol for the yearly amount for a fair comparison and I was quoting there with the word petrol implicitly included.

No-one pays more than 150? clearly they do, they pay more than that on average for an average household.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[atomicalgebra]

I have a source. Scroll to the third graph comparing Germany and France. You will notice that Germany emits 560 grams of CO2 per kWh and France emits 58 grams of CO2 per kWh. That is almost 10x.

You are a liar. Tell us more about the 1000's of dead people you personally witnessed.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

If you want to talk about CO2 emissions then in future make sure if you want to talk about electric power generation, or per person consumption.
You factor 10x makes no sense even if we talk about electric power, idiot.
Get some math skills ...

Considering that France produces about 65% of its power with nukes and renewables, and Germany about 50% of its power with nukes and renewables, the remaing part is 35% on Frensh side and and 50% on Germanies side.

Even a low brain like you might realize that 35% on one side and 50% on the other side can not add up to a 10x factor. (Considering that both numbers refer to the same coal and gas plants anyway)

No idea why you are so obsessed with stuff you neglect to research. Yes, I saw about 1000 - 10000 death from Chernobyl. If you don't believe it, that is your problem not mine.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[atomicalgebra]

Your numbers are wrong. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/business/climate-carbon-renewables.html?_r=0 89% of French electricity comes from clean sources. Only 34% of German electricity is from clean sources.

And no you did not personally witness 10000 dead because there were not even 100 dead from Chernobyl.

Given the realities of climate change it is immoral to oppose nuclear power.

Re: Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[Mr D from 63]

I regularly find what you say and post is completely wrong, and prove it with references, so I'll just ignore your crap today.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

It does not matter how the numbers are exactly.
It is still impossible that a german electricity consumer would produce 10 times more CO2 than a french one.

Yes I did personal witness the death, if witness via TV counts. Like every other european. After all the death celebrations in the first 6 to 8 weeks on the red place in Moskow were public televised, moron.

They stopped putting up the dead there when the country was close to rioting.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[atomicalgebra]

It does not matter how the numbers are exactly

Of course facts matter. 560g CO2/kWh vs 58g CO2/kWh. Those are the numbers. German electricity is dirty.

witness via TV counts

No witness via TV does not count. The World Health Organization(WHO) found less then 60 deaths directly attributed to chernobyl.

Maybe you should stop calling people morons when they cite facts

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

Well, and we already established that the numbers you now gave make no sense considering the power plants producing the power.
The difference is less than a factor od two, somewhere in the 1.5 range. Not a factor if ten as you now again try to claim.
It does not matter what the WHO - now - claims. 5 or 10 years ago, they talked about nearly a million death.
From the 600,000 so called 'regulators' most are dead now.
And yes, I also only know that from TV as every few years when there is 'Chernobyl aniversary' TV crews travel all over europe and interview the survvivors they ccan find.

When the fire started some idots gathered in e thousands in the other side of the lake to watch the fire. Basically all of them died in the first weeks. But they are not contributed to the Chernobyl accident.

I really wonder why people like you want to put 'the truth' under the carpet. You have no benefit from ignoring the truth.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[atomicalgebra]

The numbers absolutely do make sense. The problem is not the numbers. The problem is you. You are incapable of acknowledging a fact that contradictions your preconceived notions. You previously said "It does not matter how the numbers are exactly" which is strong evidence of cognitive dissonance.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

Well,
I explain it to you AGAIN:
France is producing about 75% of its power with non CO2 producing means (60% nuclear, 15% wind ,solar and water).
Germany is producing about 52% of its power by non CO2 producing means (38% wind, solar, biomass and water 14% nuclear).
So France has a chunk of 25% of its electricity produced by CO2 producing means and Germany a chunk of 48%.
This is less than a factor of 2. Considering that France is using ages old coal plants as supplements and Germany brand new ones the difference is probably between 1.5 and 1.75 .... this is far away from your proclaimed factor of ten.

Everyone with 2 brain cells had grasped that his information source is wrong and were not jumped on that wagon and posted this nonsense on /.

So: Germany does not produce electricity with ten times the CO2 production of France per kWh. If you believe otherwise: you are an idiot. Even if Germany would produce 100% of its electricity via coal/gas/oil it still would only be a factor of four!

I hope you are not working in a business where math skills or the lack there off costs life.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[atomicalgebra]

I only have 1 brain cell left, but the facts are as follows. 89% of French power is from clean sources. 34% of German power is from clean sources. German biomass is a large greenhouse gas emitter and is not clean. Meaning only 11% of French power is dirty while 66% of German power is dirty(Lignite, biomass). It might appear that it is only ~6x, buy due to heavy German coal usage it is ~10x.

The numbers are as follows 58g CO2/kWh vs 560 g CO2/kWh

Given the realities of climate change it is immoral to oppose nuclear power

Al least I do not get my "facts" from TV

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

Sorry, I explained the facts now several times.
French power,is from roughly 75% clean sources, which you easy can google.
Germany produced 52.4% of its power 2017 from non CO2 producing sources, which you easy can google.

Biomass, is clean, you are an idiot. If we would not use the Biomass to produce power, the same amount of CO2 or CH4 would be produced by letting it rott on the fields.

The numbers are as follows 58g CO2/kWh vs 560 g CO2/kWh
Then please, show me your calculation with your wrong numbers above :)
It might appear that it is only ~6x, buy due to heavy German coal usage it is ~10x.
And that is your math?

Oki, Mr. algebra ... I give up.

Please include the rotting biomass of the french, as they do not collect,it and make energy from it, but let it just escape into the atmosphere ... it must be super polkuting, too! Or not?

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[atomicalgebra]

I have cited my sources dumbass. Your sources come from TV. French is only 75% nuclear. They also utilize renewables and hydro. That makes them 89% clean. Germany is only 34% clean(biomass does not count). Biomass is dirty.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

You did not cite any sources.
1/3rd of the french nuckear plants are offline since 5-6 years because of security issues.
Biomass does count, if you think otherwise please file a paper and get your Nobel Prize.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[atomicalgebra]

I absolutely cited my sources. Look at earlier posts in the thread. I made several citations. You probably just did not remember (not surprising from someone who gets his facts from TV)

French reactors have not been offline for that long. And not for security issues.

Biomass releases greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Meaning it is not clean. Here is the first link I found on Google.. You are free to google this issue yourself. It turns out that biomass is dirtier then coal. Give me my Nobel Prize now.

Re:Germany 2nd Most Expensive Power in the West

[angel'o'sphere]

The links you gave were false. More precisely the information in them was wrong.
21 of 58 reactors are offline: https://www.reuters.com/articl...

Biomass releases the exact same amount of CO2 regardless if it is burned in a power plant or left rotting on a field. How stupid are you?

Misleading

[bracktra]

I doubt that random negative price days offset the ~50% rise in electricity costs for German households over the past 10 years. They are paying even when it's "free" via the government funded subsidies paid out to green energy providers funded by their tax dollars.

Re:Misleading

[AmiMoJo]

Doubled, really?

https://www.cleanenergywire.or...

Doesn't seem like double the 2007 price.

Re:Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

You fail at math, just like the rest of the leftard environuts with NIMBY syndrome.

Re:Misleading

[Calydor]

Since when is +50% the same as x2?

Re:Misleading

[Freischutz]

Since when is +50% the same as x2?

Well, it depends on your point of view if the price in 2007 was 50% of what it is now then it has doubled, if the price is now what it was in 2007 plus 50% of what it was then the price has gone up by 34%. The actual electricity price increase in Germany since 2007 is more like 27-8%. This is not wildly different from what has happened to energy prices in the US since 2005. The difference being that Germany built renewables while the USA built coal and gas and blamed price hikes due to rising extraction costs and good old fashioned price gouging on the EPA. Extraction prices are only going up, renewable prics are going down due to economy of scale in production and the absencenof extraction costs. I’d say the Germans are betting on the right horse in this race.

Re:Misleading

[AmiMoJo]

The ultimate test will be of energy prices in the US fall dramatically due to Trump's anti-environmental polices.

Re:Misleading

[Freischutz]

The ultimate test will be of energy prices in the US fall dramatically due to Trump's anti-environmental polices.

The real test of all of this has actually happened in the Gulf. The Arabs are actually pumping oil and gas around with solar power because it is cheaper than generating electricity by burning gas, so they stopped burning gas, sold it off and pocketed the difference... that's writing on a wall, ... large amounts of wall street money moving into renewables is writing on a wall. You'll know renewables are winning when the average price of solar & wind per kWh dips below that of gas in Europe and N-America and it is about to do that (according to Bloomberg it already is). What you are seeing in those graphs is the natural gas and coal industries with their ever increasing extraction costs at war with renewables and their ever decreasing production prices due to ever increasing economy of scale and it was Germany who played a large part in setting that off with it's Energiewende. Form the point of view of a renewables enthusiast the fun is only beginning now. Germany and China are going to be the biggest players in the renewables techology scene and from their point of view Donald Trump and his presidency is a 4-8 year grace period to leave their American competitors behind as they struggle to defend themselves against Trump's efforts to put them out of business. Just watching the US delegations show up at these energy technology and climate conferences and giving presentations about how coal and gas are the future are regarded as comedy performances, people are actually laughing at these people.

Re:Misleading

[skullandbones99]

Except, the US energy prices in the US will fall despite Trump's anti-environmental polices. This because the deployment of renewables will continue regardless of Trump. Nevertheless, Trump will claim it as a victory.

Re:Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

50% rise == previous price * 1.5

doubling == previous price * 2.0

This is seriously math that someone in grade school should be able to do simply. Point of view has nothing to do with standard interpretation of math. Nobody should interpret "50% rise" with the retrospective mental gymnastics you are using to try to explain the simple linguistic mistake a previous poster made.

Re:Misleading

[stoatwblr]

The real test of renewables is when they're called upon to replace not just current electricity production (only 30% of carbon emissions), but also for increased electrical demands as direct carbon sources are re[;aced with electrical ones (eg, gas heating systems, more-electric transportation, etc)

Right now, renewables can just about replace all carbon sources on a good day with low power demands, In the future they may be able to replace all carbon-sourced generation 24*7*365 - but replacing other carbon-emitting energy sources with electrical capacity is going to see a 6-8 fold increase in demand and there is no way they could achieve that even with 100% efficiencies. (There are safety aspects to consider, given windmill blades have been known to fly over a mile when they break - and they do break, there are environmental aspects to solar PV manufacture, plus the generation in high latitudes in winter isn't worthwhile, plus electricity can only be economically transported over grids for about 1500 miles before you run into practical and economic limitations - ideally you only want a maximum 2-500 miles between source and load)

Renewables are a stepping stone. The future is nuclear by necessity - and once you have "enough" nuclear to be able to supply the grid and load follow (the french load follow with nukes already), you no longer need the renewables as they cost more than nuclear sources.

Water-moderated nuke plants are 300,000 times safer than coal, but molten salt tech would be a few thousand times safer than that and reduces waste at output by 99%, waste at input by 90% and energy waste in fuel enrichment/refining by 99% to boot.

Fusion might be economic one day, but not in our grandchildren's lifespans and likely not in their grandchildren's lifespans.

It should be noted that China is the largest renewables market in the world - but they're also engaging in a massive program of building (conventional) nuclear energy plants AND ploughing billions into nuclear research, with a heavy emphasis on molten salt technologies.

Alvin Weinberg would be pleased that his research is being used 45 years after Nixon killed off the USA molten salt program, which was opposed by US vested interests primarily because it was good at producing heat for energy, but lousy at producing bomb-grade plutonium.

Re:Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

The ultimate test will be of energy prices in the US fall dramatically due to Trump's anti-environmental polices.

The real test of all of this has actually happened in the Gulf. The Arabs are actually pumping oil and gas around with solar power because it is cheaper than generating electricity by burning gas, so they stopped burning gas, sold it off and pocketed the difference... that's writing on a wall, ... large amounts of wall street money moving into renewables is writing on a wall. You'll know renewables are winning when the average price of solar & wind per kWh dips below that of gas in Europe and N-America and it is about to do that (according to Bloomberg it already is). What you are seeing in those graphs is the natural gas and coal industries with their ever increasing extraction costs at war with renewables and their ever decreasing production prices due to ever increasing economy of scale and it was Germany who played a large part in setting that off with it's Energiewende. Form the point of view of a renewables enthusiast the fun is only beginning now. Germany and China are going to be the biggest players in the renewables techology scene and from their point of view Donald Trump and his presidency is a 4-8 year grace period to leave their American competitors behind as they struggle to defend themselves against Trump's efforts to put them out of business. Just watching the US delegations show up at these energy technology and climate conferences and giving presentations about how coal and gas are the future are regarded as comedy performances, people are actually laughing at these people.

Are you posting from a mobile phone? Why?

Is there any possibility that you can write and post clear and concise thoughts in a nicely formatted & easily readable manner so everything does not look like the above "almost run-on" sentence?

Coal needs to die except for metal smelting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Baseline energy requirements can be filled by CNG/propane turbines which don't have the same issues and cost similarly. COAL NEEDS TO DIE.

Re:Coal needs to die except for metal smelting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay. Tell that to the eastern provinces of Germany. Or really any part of Germany, when they realize that CNG in their part of the world will come from Gazprom.

The renewables aren't just about getting off coal. They're about getting off Russian energy supplies, and away from Russian price manipulation.

Re:Coal needs to die except for metal smelting.

[AHuxley]

AC re Russian price manipulation?
Nations in free Europe and the Soviet Union worked on a gas network. The network was built and nations in free Europe could then buy gas if they wanted.
The Soviet Union delivered a set amount of gas for a set price. No changes to the price after the contract by the Soviet Union.
Russia now delivers a set amount of gas at a price nations in free Europe want to pay for.
The gas flows from Russia as agreed and then new contracts are agreed on.
Russia cannot do retroactive "price manipulation" as the contract is signed before the gas flows. The price is agreed and then the gas is delivered for that set price.
If the price was going to be too much for nations in free Europe they are free to not sign the next contract and consider the costs of new gas imports with ships.
Ship cost compared to established pipe line? Russian gas price is found to be very competitive and the nations of free Europe get the gas they paid for.

Re:Coal needs to die except for metal smelting.

[Freischutz]

The renewables aren't just about getting off coal. They're about getting off Russian energy supplies, and away from Russian price manipulation.

If the price was going to be too much for nations in free Europe they are free to not sign the next contract and consider the costs of new gas imports with ships.

Firstly, you just confirmed what the said, the Russians set prices at what they want and tell people they can always freeze in the cold over the winter becaue as you know full well gas consumption would be hard to cover by sea routes. Russia uses gas as a political blackmail instrument so it's about more than just the gas prices, it's about politics and blackmail. Secondly, renewables are now getting cheaper than even natural gas, renewables are simply shaping up to be less expensive in every way so investing in them is investing in the future of energy production.

Re:Coal needs to die except for metal smelting.

[Anonymous Coward]

So if that was the case then why don't they build new pipelines to somewhere else? Or invest in other types of energy-production? Or start building houses with better insulation to reduce the heating-requirements >90%..

Renewables are starting to drop in price, and i like it. Renewables do get quite a bit in subsidizes and nuclear is paying a penalty tax (actual tax + over-regulation for non-safety related things) to artificially inflate the price..

If they where actually caring about the environment then they should start by shutting down the gas/coal-plants first before ever touching the nuclear-plants.

Re:Coal needs to die except for metal smelting.

[Freischutz]

So if that was the case then why don't they build new pipelines to somewhere else?

Because gas in general is getting too expensive and you'd be better off spending your money on renewables, even the Wall Street banksters and the sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf States are beginning to figure that out.

Or invest in other types of energy-production? Or start building houses with better insulation to reduce the heating-requirements >90%.

I think you'll find that this is what many N-European countries are doing. Both of these trends translate into bad news for Russia though since Putin relies on oil and gas money to pay for his war machine and buy popularity with the people.

Re:Coal needs to die except for metal smelting.

[AHuxley]

The Soviet Union and Russian pipelines got paid. Just the cost of energy. Thats why the nations of Europe wanted pipelines into the Soviet Union and Russia years ago. A pipeline is a very easy and low cost way of getting energy from Russia into Western Europe.
That is why nations in the EU keep going back to low cost Russian energy for generations.
The Soviet Union and Russia kept to every agreement nations the EU agreed to. All the gas flowed at an agreed price.
Bringing in energy by ship to a new port with all ints new costs is not going to be a cost saving to budgets that are limited.
Re "gas in general is getting too expensive" if you want to bring it in by ship.
The pipeline from Russia is in place, working and ready for any energy deal nations in the EU want.
Pay for ports and ships? Buy lots of energy at a low cost for Russia? Whats better for a growing EU economy? Low cost dependable energy?
Expanding ports, doing deals for ships and bringing in energy from random other nations?
The Soviet Unions and Russian energy deals with nations of the EU go back many years.

Re:Coal needs to die except for metal smelting.

[angel'o'sphere]

You are an idiot.

Gas prices between the EU (esoecially German, that build the gas pipelines between the EU and Russia) are based on 30 year long running contracts. Every ~5 years a new contract running for 30 - 50 years over a new contingent of gas is made. The prices are 'fixed', or in other words, there are clauses binding the gas price to the world market oil price. E.g. every 3 month the price is adjusted to/by the average of the previous 4 or 6 month oil price.
With that you have a set of 6 contracts, overlapping each other and expiring one by one every 5 years.
There is absolutely no way the russians can manipulate the EU gas prices based on their own gas delievery.

And they can not cut of Europe.
The whole of Euore has enough gas storage and local gas production e.g. in the north sea to run the whole EU for minimum 5 years,

If the russions would 'invalidate' one contract, we could cancel all of them, who you think is hurt more? The poor EU citizen who does not care if gas prices double or the Russian economy that loses 50% of its gas customers?

The idea that the EU, in particular Germany, is dependent on Russian gas is just fud, and who believes it, is an idiot.

Call Tesla

[davidwr]

Time to get some of those mega-batteries on the grid.

This would never happen in NA

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I want this to happen someday in North America. We were promised that electricity would be free by our provincial government when we funded a government owned electricity company through our taxes a few decades ago... but nope, all lies, super expensive...

Re: This would never happen in NA

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't happen in Germany, either, so don't feel too much poutrage.

This is in continental Europe

[Krishnoid]

Can't they sell the surplus to bordering countries? Seems like they could get some sort of rebate from the extra power generation.

Re:This is in continental Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

The grids aren't interconnected with systems to do that now, it would require a big investment. But your idea is spot on, I've wondered why we don't have more universal grids and worry about the cost-sharing arrangement after we get the overall efficiency up for whole continents. Local fiefdom greed = massive inefficiency, lost productivity.

Re: This is in continental Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

The grid most certainly is interconnected as Germany usually gets a substantial amount of electricity from the French. But France was probably also consuming little electricity on Christmas Eve. And the grid can only transfer so much electricity anyway.

Re:This is in continental Europe

[AHuxley]

Surrounding nation now have their own nuclear, wind, hydro, solar power to sell.
They want to export too.
The good power deals that got done was for West Germany and communist eastern Europe.
Poor nations sold their power to West Germany at a low price while their own people did without energy.
A lot of the heavy energy use domestically has also been lost by the EU to exporting nations like China, South Korea, Japan.

Re: This is in continental Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right that they share power loads, you're wrong to say they could efficiently buy/sell on a short-term with other countries without some mechanism to do that. It doesn't exist now, the ability to transmit the power exists, the lines exist that's true.

Re: This is in continental Europe

[angel'o'sphere]

Why do people always bring up that 'French myth'?
Germany has a suplus power production of iver 50%.
Bottom line since 20 years Germany is anet exporter to France (we export more to thenm, than we import back).
There were a few years where this was reversed, France exported more than it imported back.
Bottom line we talk about percentages in the 1% range. France imports perhaps 1% - 2% of its power from Germany, and Germany imports 0.5% - 1% of its power from France (while exporting same time 30% of its production to Swizerland, Spain or Norway or Denmark)
Im-/export of power in a european grid, counted by country, makes no sense. Especially if you compare two neighbours.
Especialy when idiots like you inly repeat myth that never were true anyway.

Fact is: France nuclear power plants would not run without Germanies power exports to France. Because in summer they have not enough cooling water, hence no power to run the plants, hence no power to refill their pumped storages. So: they import cheap German renewable power to refill their pumped storages that they need for balancing power?

And, asshole? Do you see what is wrong in my statement above? No you don't. So I tell you.
Actully my claim, that they can not run thier nukes without power from Germany is wrong.
They could simply by the power from Spain, Italy, or Norway. You see, what a simple lie. But: power from Germany is cheaper.

How does anyone even find this out at the time?

[Leuf]

Who is sitting around checking the current electric rate to see if it goes negative and they can turn stuff on to make a profit? I just don't see how a short term negative rate translates into anybody actually using electricity more because of it.

Re:How does anyone even find this out at the time?

[famebait]

Computers are pretty good at that sort of thing.
It is still early days, but as the car fleet goes electric you can imagine people keeping only charging a couple of commutes worth as a minimum, and topping up only when rates are low. If house batteries take off, they would also enable market-driven demand smoothing. Every household would be a power trading bot.

Re:How does anyone even find this out at the time?

[ThosLives]

Every household would be a power trading bot.

That is terrifying.

Re:How does anyone even find this out at the time?

[angel'o'sphere]

Consumers interested in that are connecre to the EEX.
And that the pwer prices will turn negative is known hours in advance.
See, that happend on a mayour holliday.
To take advantage from that you have to get workers into a factory ... pretty difficult on short notice.
So bottom line likely other energy companies bout the power to refill pumped storafes or do other fancy stuff with it.

Bit;ch

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeaBSD core team Satan's dick And

creimer has a gnarled tootsie roll for a dick.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure creimer will post an affiliate link so you'll save some money.

Re:creimer has a gnarled tootsie roll for a dick.

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep posting this under every article.

I'm just wondering how you know what Creimer's dick tastes like.

And they overpaid at that.

[Anonymous Coward]

We want and need cheap and dependable power, not expensive and erratic power.

Re:And they overpaid at that.

[Ichijo]

Now only if we had dependable, constant power demand, not erratic demand!

zBitcoin!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, hell, if I'm paid to waste electricity then Bitcoin mining is again profitable!

Crap shit

[Anonymous Coward]

"some" consumers like factories? Means the industry. For the rest of us, the electricity prices only know one direction and that is up up up. Danke Merkel!

Why negative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone explain why the price becomes negative rather than very close to zero? TFA has a related heading, but no explanation is given.

Re:Why negative?

[Anonymous Coward]

What causes negative prices?

Basically, when the supply of power outstrips demand for it.

Demand is particularly low on weekends and holidays, when factories are idle and offices empty. The energy supplies that Germany depends on, however, are less predictable than they used to be.

Wind power, in particular, is highly dependent on changes in weather patterns. Giant spinning turbines produce, on average, about 12 percent of Germany’s power, but on windy days, they can generate several times that amount.

At the same time, other mainstays of the country’s electricity supply, especially some coal and nuclear power plants, are unable to dial back quickly enough, leading to negative prices on electricity trading markets.

Re:Why negative?

[skullandbones99]

The rate goes negative because the energy supplier needs to pay someone to consume the surplus energy otherwise it costs the energy supplier even more money in trying to manage the surplus. Therefore, the rate goes below zero to make it attractive to someone to consume the energy, having free cost energy is not attractive enough.

Re:Why negative?

[Anonymous Coward]

it is never normal customers who get the privilege of using this cheap energy...

At 30 cents per Killowatt Hour for electricity

[Crashmarik]

It seems the story is missing a vital statistic.

Re: At 30 cents per Killowatt Hour for electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

True, it makes the negative pricing even more notable.

Re: At 30 cents per Killowatt Hour for electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

How about you pay me $1 million for a kWh of electricity? Don't worry, after buying a single kWh I'll give you negative pricing for the rest of the year.

Negative pricing for the rest of they year! Surely you can't turn down a great deal like this?

Much unlike "regular" consumers ...

[garry_g]

Unlike large companies, the regular consumer in Germany doesn't profit from the ever decreasing cost of electricity ... prices keep going up, despite the falling prices on the energy market. Thanks to guaranteed prices for producers of renewable energy, the EEG-Umlage (Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz, renewable energy law) - which is something like an additional tax - has increased from about 0.02€/kWh to almost 0.07€/kWh between 2010 and 2017. Interestingly, this tax doesn't have to be paid by "energy-intensive" producing companies, like steel production etc., so - thanks to successful lobbying - the people have to pay the big companies' part, too ... typically, Germans have to pay around 0.32€ per kWh of electricity ... while electricity companies pay something like 0.05-0.06€ on the open market ...
While the EEG has succeeded in increasing the production of renewable energy, as usual the politicians have failed in writing a law that is halfway balanced ... so private customers are paying the bill for companies ...

Re:Much unlike "regular" consumers ...

[garry_g]

Slight correction, typical prices are in the range of 0.25-0.28€/kWh ... still high enough ...

Re:Much unlike "regular" consumers ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Germany and can attest. It is a scam and a regressive tax on the poor. The Greens are so thrilled with it though. Their recent rise to power came from the fear of Fukushima and Chernobyl. The governor of the sate where I live (Baden-Württemberg) is from the Green party and they salivate at building as many windmills as possible, even though they destroy nature in the process.

Sick world where the Greens destroy nature and tax the poor to give cheap power to the industrialists. Fuck Germany... I want to move back to California... oh wait, same type of group think idiots in charge there. Pander to the environmentalists while raping the land and destroying the middle class. Fuck this world. No one actually protects nature... there are no conservationists left like John Muir. Everything is controlled by corporate politics, from the left, right and center (in Europe and the US).

Re:Much unlike "regular" consumers ...

[110010001000]

I am always amused by "environmentally aware" architects who show off the houses they built. They are usually 6000 sqft monstrosities, placed in the middle of a forest that has been cleared for the land. But they put a few rain barrels and solar panels on it, and think they are environmentalists.

Re:Much unlike "regular" consumers ...

[angel'o'sphere]

My prices are going down since 5 or more years.
True is that residental consumers don't get their power from the EEX.

Sorry, there is no german who pays 32cents. Except perhaps on an isolated island.

Re: How does anyone even find this out at the time

[CGordy]

Pumped hydro installations. They "buy" excess energy and then sell back into the grid when prices are high.

Re: How does anyone even find this out at the time

[CGordy]

Oh, and it used to be possible (back in the old days of predictable low demand at night) to purchase an off-peak hot water system, that only heats water when electricity is cheap. I imagine adaptive systems are now available.

That is absolutely undeniably false

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumers were not paid to use electricity. A short-term negative price at the wholesale level does not reach consumers. Despite the criticism, the renewable energy law, which is in part to blame for these pricing artifacts, has been a big success. Almost a third of the electricity produced in Germany is from renewable sources.

Yuo fai7 it...

[Anonymous Coward]

problem stems The reaper In a legitimise doing

Live in Germany...

[Anonymous Coward]

the rate I pay now in Germany is about twice the rate I paid California. Gotta love Green energy and "Atomkraft, neien danke!" I would say, "Ja Bitte!" Not to mention they are ruining the beautiful Schwarzwald region by covering every hill in sight with a trio of ugly and noisy windmills. I'm an avid hiker and some of the hiking clubs are beginning to protest. Schade!

Re:Live in Germany...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, fuck right off back to California with that attitude. Where you see "ugly and noisy windmills", I see a sustainable energy source. The Netherlands are famous for their windmills, but I guess technology has to be cutesy and old to be to the taste of a Californian.

Re:Live in Germany...

[Anonymous Coward]

Three is nowhere you can go in the Ortenau or Schwarzwald-Bar counties where you can enjoy a view without a windmill. They place them atop the hills almost everywhere. A few years ago it wasn't a problem, annoying like TV/microwave masts, but limited in scope and not overly obtrusive. Now they are everywhere. Hearing "whoosh-whoosh" for over a kilometer in every direction is a nuisance. They aren't as bad as an autobahn or major road, but they do ruin what little feel of nature the region had left. My wife grew up here and really misses the forest feel that is constantly under attack. Farmers, wine growers, autobahns, ski lifts, now windmills.

Each windmill has a huge concrete block (600 tonnes). A street must be constructed to reach it, heavy enough for construction equipment, flat bed trucks with over sized windmill parts, etc. It isn't temporary as they must be serviced and inspected, so the network of roads stays. Then there is the power distribution infrastructure.

Most of the forests here are already managed, so you can't classify them as nature. There is now a kind of national park in the area to stop development. Guess what, wind mills get an exemption as the state and county want as many as possible.

It literally makes me and my wife cry. If we fuck off to California, the region will have two less champions and custodians. You city dwellers and your left wing BS politics care not for nature and known nothing of what you speak. The BS in California makes me cry too.

Put windmills out at sea or in industrial areas. Not in the middle of what little nature Germany has left.

Re:Live in Germany...

[Anonymous Coward]

If we fuck off to California, the region will have two less champions and custodians.

Please do fuck off and take your NIMBY attitude with you. Everybody becomes a champion for nature and custodian of pristine environments when something encroaches on their view. I am not a city-dweller and there are dozens of windmills that I can see from my place. That's why I can't stand people who bullshit others about the ways they're impacted by windmills. "Whoosh-whoosh" from over a kilometer away in every direction? Are you Dumbo or do you just have his ears? The fucking nerve; Comes here from a country that rapes the planet like no other and wants to tell us we can't put windmills within sight of him in one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

Re:Live in Germany...

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't encroach on my view. I live in a densely packed urban environment with windmills nearby too. The ones near my residence don't disturb me, nor do I object to them as the street noise is louder. Your feeble intellect cannot fathom that your critical reading skills have failed you. I object to Windmills which encroach on and destroy nature. They obscure, invade and yes overtone it with noise. I have for years escaped into nature to enjoy being away from industry and city life; as often as I can afford. Pity our descendants will no longer be able to enjoy that because of sick fools like you.

I pity you. Please read Walden by Thoreau, one of the best authors my country has produced. Then look up John Muir, a Scotsman who understood and nurtured conservationism. We are destroying nature in the name of progress, profit and even in the name of saving the planet. It must stop.

Re:Live in Germany...

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't a patch of uncultivated land in this country. Even the parts that may look like wilderness to you have been turned over many times. If you have a problem with the way we use the land, FUCK OFF. The woods are not your personal spa retreat. They wouldn't even be accessible to you if people who understand this better than you had not cultivated them. Learn to love contemporary technology the way Americans seem to gobble up sights of outdated technology, then you will be fine with windmills. If you can't do that, GTFO.

An article to piss just about everyone off

[MrL0G1C]

If your a libertarian you'll hate this:
composition-average-german-household-power-price-2006-2017.png (PNG Image, 1132 x 800 pixels)
  If you're left wing you'll hate that too.
If you're right wing you'll hate all of the renewables stuff.

German is doing a remarkable job of making renewables look bad, their public pay insane amounts whilst electricity gets offered for free or less to factories when they're all closed for Christmas.

Re:An article to piss just about everyone off

[jbmartin6]

I am missing why a libertarian should hate this chart, please clarify.

Re:An article to piss just about everyone off

[MrL0G1C]

https://www.lp.org/issues/taxe...

Re:An article to piss just about everyone off

[jbmartin6]

haha oh of course, the taxes. So obvious I overlooked it

Inertia

[Anonymous Coward]

There is always problem when regulating large power. Try to quickly squeeze a huge water flow and feel the wraith of the hydro-shock (and cavitation too) slamming at your pipes, valves, safety release valves and other parts of the installation. Equivalent problems exist for any power station type. You always have some sort of dynamics, material flow, mechanical and/or thermal stress, ... and regulating doesn't come for free. Even in navigation, steering the ship robs some of its momentum.

The title is 100% clickbait.

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumers don't benefit at all. Negative price is a *penalty* to electricity producers that can't drop production fast enough.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is pure misleading BS. FTFA:

major energy consumers, such as factory owners, were being paid

Companies with intensive energy requirements are being paid. Those very same companies which already receive subsidies paid by private persons because otherwise those companies would not be competitive. Next year electricity prices will raise again 6%. Germany has the second most expensive electricity in Europe and the most expensive with Purchasing power parity (I think even from the Western World). Germany's share of renewables in gross final energy consumption is way below the European average (very same percentage as the US with a much higher percentage of hard coal and lignite). Germany's renewable model is an economic ruin which barely delivers results.

No, clearly +50% is percentage of OLD amount

[KWTm]

Since when is +50% the same as x2?

Well, it depends on your point of view
if the price in 2007 was 50% of what it is now then it has doubled

I would beg to differ on your attempted "it depends on what you mean"-type excuse for misinterpreting what is generally a socially accepted translation of those words into a mathematically expressible meaning.

While your statement that "if the price in 2007 was 50% of what it is now then it has doubled" is, by itself, correct, this is not at all what GGP said. Saying that the price has gone up by +50% definitely does NOT mean "the price in 2007 was 50% of what it is now". To me, and I would wager most Slashdotters would agree with me, when one says "the amount has gone up by p percent", that is a percentage before the change; that is:

p = (NewAmount - OldAmount) / OldAmount
        where p can be (but doesn't have to be) expressed as a percentage
I've never seen anyone use NewAmount as the denominator when only the change is mentioned.

Of course, if you say "that's p percent of the new amount," then it explicitly gives the denominator to be NewAmount. But just to say "a change of p percent" is to use the old amount.

In other words, if a certain price increases by 300%, and then drops by 75%, and then the cycle repeats itself several times, you might think that the price is rising rapidly (since 300 sounds so much more than 75) but you still end up with the same price:
        Price2 = Price1 + Price1 * 300%
        Price3 = Price2 - Price2 * 75% [which is the same as Price1]
        Price4 = Price3 + Price3 * 300% [which is the same as Price2]
        Price5 = Price4 - Price4 * 75% [which is the same as Price3, and so forth]

Meanwhile the US is the most powerful and envied c

[Anonymous Coward]

Let them laugh. Weâ(TM)re laughing at their laughter on the inside.

The solution is BitCoin

[bromoseltzer]

All excess power generation should be used to mine BC. What's not to like?

German Consumers were NOT paid to use electricity

[branchingfactor]

From the article: "Do German consumers benefit from negative prices? Not directly. The wholesale costs of power make up only about a fifth of the average household electricity bill in Germany. The rest is a stew of taxes, fees to finance renewable-energy investments, and charges for use of the grid. That means their bills are lower than they otherwise would be, because power prices are sometimes negative, though household energy bills have been rising overall anyway. Basically, utilities are not depositing money in customer's bank accounts." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...

No, not for consumers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Today, the big German magazine "Der Spiegel" wrote that electricity pricing for German consumers is at an all time high. For 2018, price increases are already announced.

Evolution and cellulosic ethanol production

[Guppy]

A fungus finally figured out how to digest lignin, in a process described by biochemists as "untying a knot with a flamethrower". The same process is still used by fungi today, pretty much unaltered.

To add to this description, the way the knot is "tied" is that wood is a cellulose-in-lignin composite, in which the lignin is a combinatorial polymer -- the plant uses several different monomers that are sort-of randomly put together, giving you a very large number of possible products, making it impossible for any reasonably-sized set of enzymes to tackle. As Shanghai Bill described it, the eventual fungal solution was to start by pumping a blast of free radicals into the lignin, breaking it up into fragments that were more amendable to further processing.

This also points to a fundamental problem with the development of cellulosic ethanol -- we haven't managed to speed up the fermentation process much, because wood and other plant structural materials are the end result of a eons-long evolutionary stalemate between plants and microbes. There simply aren't any easy molecular biology shortcuts for digesting it; all approaches appear to have been well-balanced between biological costs incurred by the defender and the attacker.

Of course, maybe we can get around the problem by circumventing the rules of the game. For instance, bulk physical treatment process can pre-degrade plant material (physical conditions aren't accessible to microbes because of scale or biological compatibility, but engineers will still need to make the cost and energy consumption of the process economically worthwhile). Or, genetically engineering plants to produce easily degraded lignins (but this means your biomass crops have unilaterally disarmed one of their defense mechanisms).

Renewable=Good is stupid

[Jodka]

The "Energiewende" is not a failure... Germany has steadily increased the share of renewable energy in the electricity mix.

Opinions differ. While "environmentalists" endorse that, it is opposed and regarded as a massive failure by people who care about the environment. Germany did not shut down all of their coal-burning power plants, instead they switched from burning coal to burning forests. That practice causes natural habitat destruction on a massive scale.

Generally, a helpful thing to keep in mind when when discussing energy and the environment is that renewable energy sources are not categorically good. Renewable=Good is stupid. Whale oil is renewable resource, should we go back to harvesting whales? Corn Ethanol is a renewable resource and its production uses about the same amount or more energy as it yields and promotes forest destruction, results in massive soil erosion causing river and stream pollution, places enormous amounts of toxic agri-chemicals in the environment and promotes food scarcity in third-world countries. Windmills murder birds, and so many that wind energy was only made viable in the U.S. because Obama gave the wind industry environmental waivers to murder American Eagles.

It is also important to keep in mind that though we depend on coal, coal is harmful. Though AGW alarmism is political propaganda supported by junk science, coal releases mercury and other toxins in quantities large enough to yield significant and measurable declines in human health and longevity. Mountain-top removal mining is an environmental disaster. It would be good to replace coal with cleaner energy, but let's not be idiots and replace it with worse energy sources because we are suckered by the environmentalist lobby. Switching to more energy efficient homes, electric cars, grid-scale storage, photovoltaics, natural gas and fission reactors would be net environmental gains and some of those continue to get cleaner and cheaper. R&D on new technologies on average has big efficiency and environmental payoffs, despite government preferentially funding losers and that no on particular technology is a sure win. But many incremental improvements and/or a big breakthrough like viable fusion reactors would move us off of coal.

Re:Renewable=Good is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

American propaganda is becoming too obvious to be taken seriously, but it's still annoying. "Murder American Eagles." "Junk science." "Let's not be idiots." "We are suckered by environmentalist lobby."

Re:Renewable=Good is stupid

[angel'o'sphere]

Germany is nit destroying bio habitats.
Actually the amount of forrests in Europe, not only Germany, is increasing ever decade.

Your Ethanol example is just nonsense ...

Trump's Genius Followers

[Anonymous Coward]

The Big Giant Orange Head is screwing the US public every way from Sunday. Meanwhile his genius supporters think he's doing a great job.

Make America Stupid Again (MASA)!!

Re: How does anyone even find this out at the time

[angel'o'sphere]

No, they don't sell it back, when rices are high.
Pumped storages are used for balancing power: they are continuously used to stanbelice the grid.
Usually grid operators have day ahead and month ahead contracts with pumped storage providers.