3 ms·
Even if you are running an aluminum smelter 24/7 having periods when the price of electricity goes to zero helps your bottom line a lot. Aluminum is difficult c
by Gibbon1 6y ago
Even if you are running an aluminum smelter 24/7 having periods when the price of electricity goes to zero helps your bottom line a lot. Aluminum is difficult case because the electrolytic cells have to be kept hot. I've saw paper describing electrowinning iron. The process used aqueous sulfate electrolyte. One assume the capital cost of the cells themselves would be minimal.
- bigbubba 6y agoYes but if the average price of the clean energy is sufficiently high, brief periods of free clean energy may not be enough to offset that.
- imtringued 6y agoIt's the opposite. Low whole sale energy prices in Germany cause policy failures that increase the EEG surcharge. Here are some made up numbers. If the wholesale price is 0.10€ per kWh but the subsidized price is 0.20€ per kWh then the EEG budget has to make up the 0.10€ difference. That difference is added to the retail price so you end up paying 0.10€ for the electricity itself and 0.10€ per kWh for the EEG surcharge. Industrial users are exempt from the surcharge so consumers end up paying electricity bills for the biggest energy consumers. You actually end up paying 0.10€ for the electricity, 0.10€ for the EEG surcharge and 0.05€ for the EEG portion that industrial companies didn't pay for. Total: 0.25€ which is higher than even the subsidized price. Meanwhile industrial users only pay the wholesale price of 0.10€. Of course I have simplified grid costs and taxes but this is the general problem with the EEG surcharge.