Concerns about Germany’s energy system transition and the question of whether power companies are “screwed” are kind of orthogonal. There are different kinds o

Concerns about Germany’s energy system transition and the question of whether power companies are “screwed” are kind of orthogonal. There are different kinds of power companies. Utilities with a regulated asset base that get to socialize all of their costs across rate payers aren’t screwed. Asset-light energy suppliers/retailers in competitive deregulated markets aren’t screwed. Asset-heavy power generators in competitive deregulated markets might be screwed .. if they have a large portfolio of legacy assets. Solar PV creates two problems for them. Firstly, distributed solar reduces the load available to them to serve. Secondly, centralized and distributed solar depress wholesale energy prices in the middle of the day (and causes increasing frequency of negative-price events). Together these reduce the volume of sales, reduce profitability, and can increase running costs, because many legacy generators weren’t originally designed to be flexible with the ability to ramp up and down every day. While solar PV isn’t good for some power companies, it’s generally good for consumers.