27 ms·
Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs?
- ciconia 5y agohttps://archive.ph/cmHkE https://archive.ph/cmHkE
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- teekert 5y agoWhy would these links never work for me? “Can’t find a server with the specified host name”
- josephcsible 5y agoWhat DNS provider do you use?
- teekert 5y agoHmm, good point, I guess my ISPs standard one (on my iPhone? Not sure if Apple forces one.. I use DDG browser) it does work on my laptop indeed. Strangely that should use the same DNS... But maybe not, I’ll do some testing later, thanx.
- ur-whale 5y agoIf 1.1.1.1 is in your DNS resolution path, archive.is won't resolve.
- mdp2021 5y agoI do not quite understand why countries with large production such as France, which I remembered exported an interesting amount, seem to be hit severely (+50%). I thought they should have suffered less the unfortunate conjuncture.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pjc50 5y agoChanges in the marginal price affect the whole market. The value of exports has shot up, so the export interconnects are probably working at full capacity, resulting in marginal generation being brought online to meet domestic need.
- Wildgoose 5y agoOverworking actually - they've been running a couple of the interconnects on the South Coast of England at 50% over capacity. Not surprisingly, this eventually overheated and ignited the oil-fired cooling, burning one of them down. <<The fire at the Interconnexion France-Angleterre (IFA) site broke out in the early hours of Wednesday. The site was evacuated and there were no reports of casualties. After the fire an electricity interconnector running under the English Channel was "not operating", the National Grid said in a statement.>> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58579829 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58579829
- mdp2021 5y ago(If you are looking for the angled quotes ('«', '»'), depending on your system and layout, try [RightAlt]+[<] and [RightAlt]+[>]. There are keyboard layouts using four layers - regular, shifted, alternate and shifted-alternate, together with the combinations (e.g. [RightAlt]+[:], [u] → 'ü') )
- skocznymroczny 5y agoI'd have expected the CO2 tax to be a bigger factor than any shortages.
- mem0r1 5y agoNot building new nuclear power plants in the last 30 years was a major mistake, in terms of energy supply security as well as CO2 emissions.
- nikkinana 5y agoBecause they can
- Arnt 5y agoOr, if you want: Not building twice as many (wind/anything) was a major mistake. Nuclear power plants fail sometimes, just like the wind fails. In 2016 almost a third of the plants in France were offline at the same time, some for planned maintenance, some unplanned, and the peak prices were higher than now. All these things are fixable by overbuilding enough. There's nothing special or magic about nuclear.
- gabaix 5y agoBuilding more nuclear helps de-risk wind droughts. This isn’t specific to nuclear; building more of a different kind mitigates the risk.
- pfdietz 5y agoNot really. NPPs as backup to wind would be horribly expensive. Wind droughts don't happen often; even the current price during them would not make a NPP pay off. What would make sense is larger local stores of hydrogen, to be burned in combustion turbines during the rare wind outages.
- FartyMcFarter 5y ago> What would make sense is larger local stores of hydrogen, to be burned in combustion turbines during the rare wind outages. Would this work when there's little wind for a week or more?
- mhandley 5y agoThe strike price for nuclear power from Hinkley Point C when it becomes operational will be £92.50/MWh. This has received a lot of criticism for being too high. With current wholesale rates at £385/MWh, suddenly Hinkley Point C doesn't look so expensive any more.
- pfdietz 5y agoExcept Hinkley Point C would require those high prices persist for a decade in order to pay off. That's unlikely to happen.
- cbmuser 5y agoWell, I don’t see why it shouldn’t happen. It’s not like the UK is currently building nuclear power plants like China or Russia do.
- pfdietz 5y agoHigh prices like that will bring in a flood of new renewable capacity. It cannot last.
- Brakenshire 5y agoFor 3 and a half decades.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoCost of capital is a thing though. Much easier to raise money for a wind turbine or solar panel than a nuclear reactor. They're very efficient once running, but at that point they have investors and insurers to pay back.
- hanoz 5y ago> £92.50/MWh Index linked.
- pydry 5y agoGrid scale battery banks also make sense at that price.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago“ In Germany, for example, during the first two weeks of September wind-power generation was 50% below its five-year average.” I wonder what folks in the past would have thought about the concept of ‘wind draughts’. Maybe they experienced similar things with their grain mills?
- wrnr 5y agoDunno about grain mills, but sailers have long known about trade winds and the doldrums.
- pjmlp 5y agoIncluding the ability to develop sails that allow taking advantage of Wind in the opposing direction. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateen
- dan-robertson 5y agoWhat is the relevance of sailing upwind to the doldrums (where there was little wind) or to trade winds (which reasonably consistently blew in the same direction as the trade)? Even the article you linked suggested that early modern sailors would change to a square rigging once they got out of the changing winds of the Mediterranean. So clearly there were some advantages to square rigs (perhaps they could be made larger than triangular or gaff rigs with technology of the time.) And it would likely be foolish to plan a route to beat up a trade wind even if you could sail close to it, as you would likely be much slower than following the winds. On contemporary boats, it seems that Bermudan rigs win as they can sail close to the wind and can also be large. But most people who go sailing today are not taking large ships across oceans so their requirements as well as their technology will be different.
- pjmlp 5y agoLike polyglot development nowadays, naturally the best ones wouldn't bet their ship in a single technology.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoWe're working on reducing gas dependency, shortages and price fluctuations are one factor, but dependency on Russia is another. I do wonder how much our gas import from Russia is helping us keep the peace.
- zohch 5y ago> I do wonder how much our gas import from Russia is helping us keep the peace. And keeping Russians and their "dominion" oppressed. Just shows how morally bankrupt Europe is, and with how smug Europe is that is really cringey.
- adamc 5y agoI want to upvote the first sentence, but the second is so pointlessly judgmental as to be pretty cringey itself.
- zohch 5y agoAs a non Europen living among Europeans, it's pretty hard to ignore the second part. Europe can't care less about any actual injustice that happens in the world.
- anticodon 5y agoI'm Russian and I do not consider myself "oppressed". Stop living in your bubble of fake news.
- avtolik 5y agoOpressed or not, you are a troll. I scrolled through your history here and most of your messages are political BS. A lot of it - lies.
- chess_buster 5y agoThanks for your service.
- PJ_Maybe 5y agoIn Austria, the price per kWh has quadrupled since May 2020, which is when I moved in to a new home. Unfortunately this [0] chart from my provider only goes back 12 months, but you can see even during this short time that the price increased from 5.81c per kWh to 12.43c per kWh, which is more than 200%. I checked some of my statements, and in May 2020 the electricity price was 3.13c per kWh, which represents an increase of about 397% compared to today's price. [0] https://www.easygreenenergy.at/dam/jcr:a5800c50-948e-43e9-90b8-2cdacfe66338/flex-strom_basis-plus-03.pdf https://www.easygreenenergy.at/dam/jcr:a5800c50-948e-43e9-90...
- spyke112 5y agoStill cheap compared to Denmark. I'm not one for optimizing my electric bill, so I've probably got a fairly bad deal by paying between 27 c/kWh and 34 c/kWh. 75% of the electric bill consists of fees to the state anyway, it's quite ridicules. The upside is that these fluctuations are kind of mitigated and smoothed out.
- PJ_Maybe 5y agoYeah well these are the raw prices per kWh, there are also a lot of fees added by the state and the state run suppliers who provide the infrastructure. Pretty sure you can double whatever I have quoted for the actual per kWh prices.
- Ekaros 5y agoI remember having fun of two different bills one from transfer and taxes and one for power itself. The monthly fee for just having connection in apartment building in a town was more than what I paid for power it self... Not to even mention the taxes and fee for power transmission...
- albertopv 5y agoIn Italy we paid 13c/kwh o more for years.
- beezischillin 5y agoThey've been signalling a 40%+ gas price increase for the winter in the news here in Romania. For the poor people and pensioners who often live month to month this is tragic news. They don't know how they'll make it when they'll have to choose between food and medicine or heat.
- Scoundreller 5y agoI’ll assume poor and pensioners live in one of two situations: a house where they have a wood stove, or in a building block where heating isn’t a huge cost because you’re surrounded on most sides by adjacent units, not the outside. Of course, the windows may have visible gaps/be single paned and there may not be any insulation, iunno. My Canadian new condo experience is that if you have a south facing view, you may not need to turn on your in-unit heat unless it’s -20C and windy. But that’s when built to modern standards.
- bserge 5y agoThe answer is firewood. Often illegally acquired. But that's only for the rural folk.
- Ekaros 5y agoAnd they are thinking of banning that in cities... Not that it is wrong, particulate emissions can be real issue.
- beezischillin 5y agoCities tend to have central gas heating or communal here. Gas tends to be the cheapest option and electric the most expensive.
- beezischillin 5y agoFirewood is not cheap and is becoming increasingly harder to acquire. 10 cubic meter of processed and ready to use wood was around 750 or more euros this year and will be even more in the future. I put in an order at a mill in June and didn’t end up receiving anything due to bureaucracy shutting down businesses shipping out this year’s production. I don’t know if they ended up getting past that or not as I haven’t heard back on my reservation and I cancelled it. I managed to find the last of last year’s production at a local building supply store. They told me they will not be bringing new stock next year due to high costs and decreasing profit margins. I might have to completely transition to electric heating in 2022.
- hanoz 5y agoA combination of: * Post lockdown firing up of the economy * No investment in nuclear * Broken interconnect * Winter is coming * A spell of the doldrums * Reliance on imported gas * And last but not least, there's no hiding a debauched currency when you're using it to buy something the rest of the world needs too.
- mrweasel 5y agoYes, but also no. Interconnects are fine in Scandinavia, but a dry summer means less hydro to pick up in a period of less wind. So you need to fire up the coal plant once again, and they are slowly being dismantled. It’s really an unfortunate combination of circumstances, and it affects areas which doesn’t rely on imported gas and nuclear, with working interconnects as well.
- marvin 5y agoIt would be super funny if the result of the increased interconnectedness of Scandinavia and Europe, sold as a measure to decrease the risk of extreme events causing power disruption, actually caused power disruption as we've now sold off all our generation capacity.
- fy20 5y agoNord Pool has historical prices for a number of European countries: https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/Market-data1/Dayahead/Area-Prices/ALL1/Monthly/?view=table https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/Market-data1/Dayahead/Area-Pri... In my country the price this month is around twice that of the historical average. Switching to a electricity plan last month that is based upon these prices, instead of fixed, probably wasn't a smart idea :D
- siliconunit 5y agoIt would take about 115k square miles of normal solar panels to cover the world energy use (23000TW), this translates to about 340 miles side square of land, I'm sure we could split this to various solar efficient locations and just close the deal with all this hydrocarbons Et al. BS. And can be solar parabolic-through systems instead of PV, no efficiency loss and night thermal storage built in. But of course we'll never unite and forget about profit and petty arguments just for once...World mechanics are just broken.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thehappypm 5y agoI don't really think that's the right approach to solar. Centralized power generation makes for unbalanced power. If we put this in the Sahara, for example, who is in charge of the exports? Egypt? What about a big terrorist attack on it? Or a war, where the power lines are a prime target to cut Europe off from its energy? Best to have decentralized grids. Every country and state having 100 solar farms is better than 1 fucking huge one.
- Proven 5y agoThis is laughable analysis - one of the reasons given is the lack of wind. WTF. Right, it's not because the government, greens and crony capitalists made sure the money had to be burned on wind power plants. Why don't you also blame it on climate changes and call for more public investment in solar or some shit. Maybe that's what they did by the end of the article....
- hanoz 5y agoSeveral UK domestic energy suppliers are now on the verge of bankruptcy it seems, and seeking emergency loans from the government. At this time of year almost all of their customers will be many hundreds of pounds in credit with them. That money is supposed to be protected, but still it's a bit of a worry.
- lbriner 5y agoSome have already gone bust. I don't think the concern is the credit money, the problem is getting moved to another provider and instantly paying a higher rate than before.
- kzrdude 5y agoWhy are the suppliers struggling?
- intunderflow 5y agoCustomers have already agreed their tariff (how much they pay) with the supplier, since a massive spike like this wasn't predicted and the supplier is obligated to keep paying to supply their customers regardless of whether its at a loss some suppliers with limited capital reserves are quickly burning through them.
- haxnewsben 5y agoThere's also a price cap for how much suppliers are legally allowed to sell their energy for in the UK (set by ofgem). If the price of energy exceeds this value, every supplier will be selling energy at a loss till ofgem increases the cap. To get around this, most suppliers purchase their energy a few months in advance, but the ones who haven't will be in trouble currently.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- the_mitsuhiko 5y agoFor the UK it's a tripple whammy right now: high gas prices, a fire at an interchange to France and with Brexit they left the EU’s internal energy market. As a result the prices for electricity are skyrocketing at certain times of the day. That's what weekend pricing looked yesterday: https://i.imgur.com/U275C5r.png https://i.imgur.com/U275C5r.png
- jeffbee 5y agoI mean, £1/kWh is pretty high, but it's not totally outrageous and it appears to have been capped by some kind of regulatory limit. 42¢/kWh is the standard retail price in California during peak demand hours, and that's not a huge difference.
- vel0city 5y agoYou pay $0.42/kWh real time peak price in CA on a normal day? That's an absolutely bonkers number to me. Normal peak real time prices in Texas are like $0.12/kWh
- maccolgan 5y agoYes, we are talking about California not Texas, not unexpected.
- jeffbee 5y agoThat’s the summer price between 4pm and 9pm in PG&E territory, yes. Avoiding this rate is pretty straightforward.
- sethammons 5y agoWe moved from California a few years back. We lived in an area that they had tier usage based on $DATA. That meant that you went out of the most affordable tier after you ran a refrigerator and a lightbulb. We always were charged over a dollar per kWh. Moved out to the PNW and I'm paying under $0.07/kWH now. It's fantastic.
- mjburgess 5y ago
- atombender 5y agoIn Norway, where hydro powers most of the country's energy demands, consumer energy prices are now around 100-130% above July-August rates. The explanation is apparently partly milder weather, with less rainfall and less wind. The other part of the explanation is that Norway is connected to the continental grid, and is affected by higher rates in Europe.
- matsemann 5y agoWonder if Einar Aas could have predicted it. He was top on the income lists every year (they are public in Norway). From trading electricity futures, he was seemingly very very good at it for years. But suddenly a big swing wiped out his entire fortune with a margin call. Almost bankrupting the Nasdaq insurance fund in the process. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17997823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17997823 It was argued much recently that connecting us with the rest of Europe through ACER would increase the prices since other markets would pay more. But that it would also lead to higher profits for those delivering the fixed costs part of the power bill, thus that part should be cheaper and it was supposed to even out somewhat.. ?
- squarefoot 5y agoI wonder how much of the huge new demand of energy can be attributed to cryptocurrencies mining. Does it have some significant impact compared to the rest?
- animex 5y agoI know Europe is well head of the world for EV adoption, I wonder if that's starting to impact the grid?
- chess_buster 5y agoIt soon will be, in a positive way: https://www.tesla.com/de_de/support/energy/tesla-software/autobidder https://www.tesla.com/de_de/support/energy/tesla-software/au...
- jjj3j3j3j3 5y agoEU could be described as a lightweight Soviet Union. A bit less communisms, less weapons, but still many similarities. Let's see how long will it take until a complete collapse. UK is already out...
- jjj3j3j3j3 5y agoEU is doomed
- jjj3j3j3j3 5y agoWill EU survive? I don't think so.
- jjj3j3j3j3 5y agoAmericans have much higher salaries, yet, gas prices are much much lower than in germany.
- jsudi 5y agoThat’s what it means for a country to be richer: you can buy more things with your salary
- tacobelllover99 5y agoI can not take anyone serious on green energy if they oppose nuclear energy.
- jillesvangurp 5y agoA few important things to realize: - There's a difference between consumer grid prices and the prices on the energy market. The former are stable and also include a lot of taxes. In most countries it is actually mostly taxes. The latter go up and down depending on who is able to supply. Consumer prices are of course affected but it's less dramatic when 25% of your rate becomes 40% more expensive. - There are no blackouts worth mentioning. It's not so much that there is a shortage as that there is price pressure on the existing supply because of raised cost. Mostly this boils down to gas cost going up recently for various geopolitical reasons. So, this is not like the situation in Texas earlier this year. Not at all. Nobody is sitting in the dark or freezing. - Europe has an interconnected grid; so prices are affected everywhere. Places with cheap over production are exporting to places with under production. Probably at a nice profit. Ironically, this raises prices locally as well. So e.g. Norway, which has an almost 100% renewable grid, sees a lot of lucrative demand for energy exports. So, prices go up locally as well. That's the energy market working. - Europe has peaker plants that burn gas or coal that are switched on when demand is high. That raises cost for producers, which gets reflected in energy pricing. These are plants that are normally not in operation because they are too expensive to operate at this point. - Gas is used for heating as well and winter is coming. Northern Europe is a bit cooler than usual so lots of places are probably already firing up their gas powered heating systems. That would increase demand and as mentioned, gas prices are high right now. - Solar is a substantial portion of the market at this point and the amount of light in September is going down. Also August was relatively cloudy. Solar being less effective in the dark seasons is neither unexpected nor unusual. The more solar we have, the bigger the price differences will be. Because when it is there, it is cheap. It's part of the reason lots of legacy plants are now peaker plants. We still need them but not all the time. So, the system is working. People suggesting that we need more coal, gas, or nuclear need to understand that those are the expensive options in the market right now. They are part of the problem, not the solution. They are the reason prices are high and unstable right now. Renewable energy on the other hand does not see raised cost; only increased profits. The issue is we don't have enough of it just yet. So, that's a nice incentive right there to get more of it. Particularly offshore wind seems like a nice option lately. The more we can rely on that, the more stable the prices are going to be because we'll no longer need the expensive alternatives. More offshore wind will help. More people with batteries in their house will help. More grid storage will help. Smarter pricing and metering will help.
- lenkite 5y agoFalling wind power is likely one major culprit https://www.reuters.com/article/europe-electricity-idUSL8N2K92WW https://www.reuters.com/article/europe-electricity-idUSL8N2K...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- em3rgent0rdr 5y agohttps://archive.vn/pPk6l https://archive.vn/pPk6l
- jsilence 5y agoIn the process of moving the mobility towards electrically powered vehicles all of Europe is going to need a lot more capacity. So all the disscussions about the hence and forth between France and Germany are quite moot.
- sk2020 5y agoI think the more likely outcome is that personal and commercial travel will just be illegal for people outside of political leadership. The mineral resources to replace all vehicles with EVs don’t exist. Sort of Holodomor repeated as farce.
- chess_buster 5y agoThe mineral resources to replace all vehicles with EVs, in fact, do exist.
- sk2020 5y agoUSGS states there are 7M tons of Cobalt reserves in the world. An EV battery needs about 15lbs of Cobalt. That means, in a fantasy scenario of perfect recovery of all known Cobalt, we have 930M batteries which last, maybe 100K miles. That means we get to replace, in a fantasy scenario, 2/3 of the world’s vehicles once. Then that number declines with recycling efficiency, which appears to optimistically be about 75% recovery. So no, and state-imposed poverty (lots of examples) seems much more likely than a successful extraterrestrial mining industry (no examples).
- wonderwonder 5y agoDidn't see it in the article but what % has consumer prices increased by? How do people survive inflation on food prices, massively inflated housing costs and now massive power increases while living on wages that have essentially not increased for a very long time?
- omegalulw 5y agoThe increase is in the first paragraph of the article.
- kzrdude 5y agoI think it was a question of general consumer prices - food, clothes, etc
- wonderwonder 5y agoPretty sure that was the wholesale price.
- monkeydust 5y agoI am in the UK. I pay roughly 20c down and get 5c up for excess solar per kWh. I really want to see an regulatory and technical environment where I can trade my excess with my neighbors at mid. Sure I could store excess but can't justify the battery cost at present. This type of trading, as I understand, is happening in places like Australia.
- teekert 5y agoI'm in the Netherlands, if I fix my prices for a year now (I just finished my last year contract, usage: 4200kWh and 1200 m3 gas), they go up about 33% (135 to about 180 eur/month). It's a lot, but hardly eye-watering.. yet. 2 year contracts go up less (about 22%). Not sure what to do now. It's like the stock market but it's forced onto everybody. Btw, I see gasoline is now 1.99 eur/litre at many stations along the highway, yet I've never seen the 2 eur mark crossed! It's like they are really reluctant to do that.
- madjam002 5y agoWith electric prices in U.K. going north of £0.25/kWh I’m seriously considering whether solar panels are worth the investment
- stavros 5y agoOof, I see a lot of infighting in this thread over whether nuclear or wind/solar is better. It's so sad to see proponents of renewables fight amongst themselves while we keep burning fossil fuels. Can we agree to build as much nuclear AND renewables as we can first, and then fight over which ones to keep after fossil fuels are dead?
- pfdietz 5y agoNuclear and renewables don't play well together. It really is an antagonist relationship for fundamental reasons.
- andai 5y agoWould anyone happen to know what those reasons are?
- thehappypm 5y agoThere’s only so many dollars that can be spent on energy infrastructure. A dollar spent today on wind and solar gets you a megawatt next year. A dollar spent today on nuclear gets you 100 megawatts, but in a decade. Nobody wants to spend $2.
- spartanatreyu 5y agoNot spending the $2 is the real problem. Getting the $2 in the first place isn't an issue if you have a healthy tax system. If you don't have a healthy tax system then that is the real problem. Not energy production.
- thehappypm 5y agoHealthy taxation involves spending $1 when $1 is appropriate. Not $2 or $0.50.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Woodi 5y agoDidn't googled it but what about lighting catching ? Any technology trying this ? And yes, I know it's hard, not everyone can catch it into the bottle ;) - it brakes everything connected before breakers even notice. But looks like it's free and no waste to store for thousands years.