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Consumer electricity prices in Germany climb to record high: 45-80 Cents/kwh

• firebaze 5y ago
  Germany is acting kind of funny. Coal: bad (granted!). Gas: bad (even worse when from russia) (kind of granted). Nuclear: very very bad! (?). Solar: good, nimby. Wind: good, nimby. Electric cars: cool, must have. Additional energy requirements for electric cars? Wait, what? (https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/wirtschaft/wirtschaft-wachstumsprognose-altmaier-100.html https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/wirtschaft/wirtschaft-wachstu...) This is getting out of hand. I'm really interested in the upcoming years, and very glad I'm not personally affected if energy prices raise by a few hundred percent, and sad that I have to be glad about that.
  • 88840-8855 5y ago
    I think this is partially due to non-stable political leadership. The gas crisis could be eased by opening the valves for Russian gas - this was the plan of Merkel's CDU party. The new government has a strong green touch. For some reason, the Greens ended up in the foreign affairs ministry (instead of in the transportation ministry, which would have been an excellent fit but is just not as "fancy"). Now we have green foreign politics which lead to further tensions with Russia, no North Stream 2 gas, hence, the gas crisis will likely continue. Instead, "dirtier" LNG gas is imported from the US, but the Green Party made its point.
    • julienfr112 5y ago
      Non stable political leadership ? Wait, Germany, right ? Do you know Angela ?
    • belorn 5y ago
      The German plan was to invest and heavily subsidize the construction of renewables, wind and solar, since that was declared the cheapest way to generate power. Are you saying the actually plan by the CDU was all along to build a dependency on Russian gas, and only use renewables when the weather allowed it? That seems like a terrible plan and quite expensive. Why was that the plan?
      • cinntaile 5y ago
        Gas is a temporary measure until renewables can stand on its own. Maybe some plants will stick around forever because peakers are nice to have, but the dependency should reduce over time.
        • melling 5y ago
          We’ve been waiting decades for renewables Coal for electricity globally is at record highs. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/12/20/coal-fired-power-generation-set-to-hit-all-time-high-in-2021-iea.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/12/20/coal-fired-power-generat... it really appears that we aren’t going about this in an effective manner
• 88840-8855 5y ago
  A good article on that topic, unfortunately, only in German: https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/energiemarkt-wir-verlieren-unseren-gesamten-cashflow-strom-und-gaspreisrally-bringt-unternehmen-in-not/27909472.html https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/energiemark...
  • IiydAbITMvJkqKf 5y ago
    german and paywalled.
    • ismaildonmez 5y ago
      https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.handelsblatt.com%2Funternehmen%2Fenergie%2Fenergiemarkt-wir-verlieren-unseren-gesamten-cashflow-strom-und-gaspreisrally-bringt-unternehmen-in-not%2F27909472.html%3Fticket%3DST-9178992-AXUbZJl7BGBJIjtUPopZ-cas01.example.org https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.handelsblatt.com%2...
      • 88840-8855 5y ago
        OT: What a great website! THANKS FOR SHARING.
• frnkng 5y ago
  Hello, The spot market prices rised the whole year. But in December it fully went off rail. Nothing good will follow. Source: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/289437/umfrage/strompreis-am-epex-spotmarkt/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/289437/umfrag... https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_spot_market/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_spot_market/chart.ht... I’d like to know the exact reason for that massive increase. Is it undersupply? If yes why is no one doing arbitrage from other countries? Is it increased fuel cost coupled with little supply from renewables? Is it the shutdown of three nuclear power plants and the fact that a lot of base load must now be supplied from somewhere else? Where will it head to? My personal decision is as follows: I will now try to obtain a minor amount of land and build a pv array there hopefully in the scale of ~1MWp. This will cost less than 1M€ and I’m sure that I and my family can fully life of the earnings later in my life. Maybe I let some sheeps roaming around the property to cut down grass and move in a trailer next to the facility once my kids are larger. For sure I will get the biggest and most scary sheep dog one can find to keep strangers away then. Edit: with other words: I will get a solar farmer!
  • mk81 5y ago
  • jpalomaki 5y ago
    There's only limited transmission capacity between countries and sometimes also within countries. If I rememberg right, Germany for example is struggling with the transmission capacity between north and south and sometimes must route the electricity through neighboring countries.
• squarefoot 5y ago
  Outlaw cryptocurrencies: problem solved.
  • bequanna 5y ago
    As far as I can tell, these prices are not being caused by some jump in demand but rather a combination of several supply problems.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • inglor_cz 5y ago
    Also, outlaw freezing and windless days.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • Peanuts99 5y ago
    Nobody is mining cryptocurrency in countries with high energy prices.
    • mapmap 5y ago
      But crypto mining puts a floor on prices. If sunny day noon prices were able to go significantly negative, it would make the economics of storage better.
  • squarefoot 5y ago
    I hoped the one liner was enough to illustrate my point. Here is it explained: Pretty much everything electric has become more efficient during the last say 10-15 years: powerful LEDs instead of early LEDs or even CCFLs, more efficient motors in vehicles (in some models engines and wheels being the same thing for instance), bigger integration in chips bringing to more computing power per watt and less wasted power etc. So in theory (in theory) keeping the work demand steady, we should have had less demand for energy, which of course can't be the case because of continuous development in many fields (which indeed is a good thing), so an increase in energy demand would be always expected and normal. But why 3-4 years ago we weren't talking about it with this urgency and suddenly we have such a spike in demand now, especially now when, due to the pandemic, some industries still run at reduced pace? (chip shortage anyone?) What changed in the last 3-4 years? For what I can see in my absolutely insufficient experience and knowledge (and hoping to be proven wrong), two things became widespread: AI and cryptocurrecies, and both require some serious computing power. AI, however, is still confined in research labs or at some specific companies or few experimenters while the cryptocurrency trend is absolutely booming, with everyone and their horse wanting to set up their mining farm to make money. Just look at what the market offers: https://m.bitmain.com/ https://m.bitmain.com/ Look at the power consumption of these things, and keep in mind that they're intended to be kept on 24/7, in the thousands at each mining farm, and mining farms are sprouting pretty much everywhere. Again, look at the power consumption and multiply it by the thousands, then again by the thousands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9J0NdV0u9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9J0NdV0u9k https://hothardware.com/news/a-look-inside-a-massive-rtx-3070-mining-farm-may-trigger-you https://hothardware.com/news/a-look-inside-a-massive-rtx-307... https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/future-fintech-signs-agreement-to-build-cryptocurrency-mining-farm-in-the-us-301447134.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/future-fintech-sign... Some are also set up illegally, where the energy costs are still low. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/12/22/bitcoin-miners-exploiting-cheap-electricity-siberian-cryptocurrency/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/12/22/bitcoin-mi... And some also by clueless people who set up less efficient used ones snatched off Ebay and kept on 24/7 where they think they can waste electricity. Old cryptomining hardware prices in fact drop very fast for being less and less efficient with time wrt value produced, but their energy demand has been always the same. https://www.minerupdate.com/news/trending-news/antminer-s9-drops-91-in-value-in-a-little-over-a-year https://www.minerupdate.com/news/trending-news/antminer-s9-d... https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?&_nkw=antminer https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?&_nkw=antminer Keep in mind that mining becomes harder and harder with time, so the demand for more and more energy and resources allocated to this field isn't going away anytime soon. It simply is never going to stop. That's what happened during the last 3-4 years, and the solution to the energy shortage isn't to produce more but to waste less. And extremely strong regulation, or complete banning if not possible otherwise, of cryptocurrencies is the only way to achieve that in my very humble opinion. I don't care at all about downvotes, but please accompany them with solid arguments that prove me wrong, if there's any.
• vanilla-almond 5y ago
  Is there an energy price cap which offers some protection to German consumers? Or is this unlikely to help? Gas and electricy prices have risen across many European countries. In the UK, energy firms are warning that energy bills are likely to soar by 50% unless the UK government intervenes [1]. Already, over twenty energy companies in the UK have gone bust. [1] Energy bills to soar 50% unless government intervenes, industry warns: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59760331 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59760331
  • Faaak 5y ago
    Epex spot cap price is 3000€/MWh if my memory serves correctly
• ismaildonmez 5y ago
  > but I can imagine that this might drive an increase in prices for everyday goods Prices are already increasing since some months, with the "Ramschpreise" [0], expect even more increases. [0] https://www.dw.com/de/%C3%B6zdemir-gegen-ramschpreise-f%C3%BCr-lebensmittel/a-60257511 https://www.dw.com/de/%C3%B6zdemir-gegen-ramschpreise-f%C3%B...
• 908B64B197 5y ago
  > starting 1st of Jan the prices will increase even further due to an increased CO2 tax and the Green Party has announced to further push this tax up > At the same time, 3 of 6 nuclear power plants will be shut down on 31st December 2021 - in 2 days. As the Green Party does want to accelerate the transition to e-mobility, projections show that we have a demand for several new natural gas power plants in Germany. Wait, so they are raising "green" taxes to... shut down and decommision carbon neutral nuclear power and instead build natural gas plants that will pump out tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. Did I read that corectly?
  • 88840-8855 5y ago
    Right. But there is one more point. We also plan to build coal-fired power plants, which are cleaner in terms of the total cost of ownership, decommission coal plants, build new gas-fired power plants, run them for only a few years, and then shut them down. Energy policy in Germany is strange, expensive and a threat to the industrial competitiveness.
    • rad_gruchalski 5y ago
      Yup. And instead of working on reducing electricity prices they will bump diesel prices by €0.18/litre so it all “looks better”.
      • londons_explore 5y ago
        At very high electricity prices, just running your own diesel generator and disconnecting from the grid makes sense.
        • rad_gruchalski 5y ago
          Apparently it ain’t easy to put 5k litre diesel tank in a garden in Germany.
• fy20 5y ago
  It's the same in other countries too. My electricity is based on the Nord Pool prices, and a few days this month it has gone above 40c/kWh [0]. This time last year it was around 5c/kWh. (The amount I pay is higher as I need to pay another ~10c/kWh for network fees) We'd really like you to bring Nord Stream 2 online sometime soon kkthxbye. [0]https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/Market-data1/#/nordic/table https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/Market-data1/#/nordic/table
• ThePhysicist 5y ago
  My provider (Grünwelt - Stromio) went bust several days ago as well, and didn't even notice customers yet, I heard about it on Twitter. I expect prices to rise significantly in the coming years as more nuclear power plants go offline. Germany really has the dumbest energy strategy of all countries in Europe.
  • 88840-8855 5y ago
    What is the Grundversorung (basic electricity services) price in your area?
    • ThePhysicist 5y ago
      34 Cent / kWh
• xxgreg 5y ago
  The cause is a political battle with Putin over gas. Russia has traditionally used gas contracts with individual countries to buy political influence. Now the EU has a single gas market, and had upgraded pipelines to be used in reverse directions. For example, recently since gas transport from Russia to Poland was reduced, Germany has been exporting gas to Poland. Putin is testing Germany's new government and the EU leadership. More renewables, and using gas more efficiently, i.e better insulated buildings throughout the EU will solve this. New nuclear isn't going to happen much in the EU, and existing nuclear is only a small part of EU wide generation, and becoming increasingly unreliable. France has even higher electricity prices ATM due to nuclear outages. https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/122121-europes-energy-crisis-deepens-as-gas-rally-pushes-power-to-unprecedented-highs https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-ne...
  • HMH 5y ago
    > Putin is testing Germany's new government and the EU leadership. To me the current situation seems more self-inflicted than driven by Russia. Also it looks like Gazprom is fulfilling its contract with Poland [1]. If my assessment is inaccurate please point me to some material for reading. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/power-prices-russia-gas-pgnig-idUSL8N2T61O6 https://www.reuters.com/article/power-prices-russia-gas-pgni...
    • LatteLazy 5y ago
      Isn't the issue here that they're declining to sell extra? And energy companies normally contract for about half their customers need and buy the rest on the spot or near spot market?
      • rad_gruchalski 5y ago
        Why would they sell extra when Germany is selling Russian gas to Poland and Ukraine and turning a profit? I have the same source as this comment from this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29730855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29730855
• HMH 5y ago
  Meanwhile Germany is reexporting gas bought from Gazprom (at a relatively low price, much lower than now) to resell it at higher prices to other countries. The Yamal-Europe pipeline has been operating in reverse for days now and the gas is sent back to Poland [1, 2]. Seems like the Germans are paying for gas in Poland and Ukraine now. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russian-gas-flows-via-yamal-europe-pipeline-reversed-6th-day-2021-12-26/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russian-gas-flow... [2]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russian-gas-flows-via-yamal-europe-pipeline-reversed-3rd-day-2021-12-23/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russian-gas-flow...
• morpheuskafka 5y ago
  > Many providers no longer accept new customers because they have to recalculate their offers, so that consumers are exposed to the "basic supply", which in many regions has reached 80 cents per kWh. So this is like a system where the lines are shared and the provider you choose only affects the price you pay, not the actual delivery? (like it was in Texas with the companies like Griddy during the Texas energy crisis last year).
• robomartin 5y ago
  What is happening --and will continue to happen world-wide-- is that the unscientific madness that "save the planet" and "fight climate change" have become are starting to collide with physics and reality. Take electric vehicles as an example. I don't know of a single nation that will not have to more than double energy production capacity in order to fully convert all vehicles to electric power and abandon fossil fuels. This isn't conjecture, the need for massive amounts of additional energy is a matter of simple physics calculations anyone with basic high school math and physics can follow. The US alone will need somewhere in the range of 900 to 1400 GW to go fully electric. For context, that's equivalent to over a thousand new 1 GW class nuclear power plants. As for saving the planet. Well, we can't. There's nothing whatsoever we can do to materially modify the CO2 curve within any reasonable human time scale. This is a planetary scale effect that requires tens of thousands of years to achieve somewhere close to a 100 ppm reduction in atmospheric CO2 concentration. In this context, CO2 taxes are beyond useless. They are ridiculous. They do absolutely nothing other than cause economic harm. And yet, given these realities, people support truly dumb ideas, like shutting down nuclear power plants (or not building lots more of them) as well as other silly stuff that can never and will never pass basic physics analysis. Sadly, it's an "emperor has no clothes" scenario that might just take a massive failure before people and politicians finally understand they are making the wrong decisions. I have devoted a non trivial amount of time going deep into these topics in order to be able to separate fact from fiction. I discuss the topic and provide data when the opportunity arises. I just don't know what to do any more. When it comes to this topic, scientists are in fear of swimming against the currents created by politicians, zealots and the indoctrinated. And people allow themselves to be swept into the madness generated as a result. Some of what you see out there is virtually indistinguishable from a cult. A perfect example of this being what they did to Greta Thunberg, an innocent girl indoctrinated to use her for a cause without caring one bit that she was made to live in real fear because she was made to believe the end of the world is approaching within her lifetime. Shameful. Criminal. We have somehow managed to replace reason with delusion.
  • nostrademons 5y ago
    Fossil fuels aren't exactly doing better. Crude oil is at $66 [1], after hitting a high of $177.80 in June 2008 and spending the first half of the 2010s above $100 (compare: ~$25 throughout the 1960s, and ~$35 throughout the late 80s and 90s). Coal is up about 10x since the early 1970s [2]. Both of these are inflation-adjusted. What's really happening is that the "developed world" consisted of about 400M people in 1990, and it now consists of about 4B. You can't bring a few billion people out of poverty and give them Western standards of living without dramatically increasing energy usage. Doesn't matter if it's fossil fuels or renewables. Renewables at least have the advantage of being, well, renewable. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-cha... [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPS051 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPS051
• ab_testing 5y ago
  Sorry I am out of the loop on this but why is Germany shutting down nuclear plants when they have gas shortages from Russia and no domestic production. Shouldn’t they first secure the gas supply before deciding to shut down nuclear plants ?
  • pydry 5y ago
    It was planned a long time ago. Broadly speaking it was to avoid the kind of shock $1 trillion nuclear cleanup bill Japan was suddenly hit with.
    • febed 5y ago
      Wikipedia says it’s 1 trillion yen not $.
      • natmaka 5y ago
        $470 to $660 billion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Costs_of_the_cleanup_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Cos...
        • cosmodisk 5y ago
          That's a staggering sum,even for Japan. I wonder if anyone has a source that explains in more detail where exactly the money gets spent.
      • pydry 5y ago
        https://redgreenandblue.org/2019/04/18/final-cost-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-approach-1-trillion/ https://redgreenandblue.org/2019/04/18/final-cost-fukushima-...
  • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Most of those plants were built in the 70s and 80s and would need to be re-qualified soon probably with lots of pricey upgrades and/or rebuilds. Besides the fear over nuclear waste (not well founded IMHO), there are huge capital costs to also consider that are much more concrete concerns that make even the non environmentalists blink. So in this decision, it’s easy to get the left and right together.
• hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
  in Australia, we have so much wind and solar that prices are going down. I looked up a off grid solar and for about $5000 AUD I could provide all my meager needs and pay it off in 5 years compared to grid power
• Proven 5y ago
  [dead]
• eucryphia 5y ago
  Yes, that’s the plan from the start, to reduce population living standards. It’s Green policy worldwide. You didn’t know?
  • bigodbiel 5y ago
    It’s worse than that! It’s anti-poor. Every major “green” law affects the poor more than any other group. Single use plastic utensils ban? It isn’t the rich needing to eat on the go! Punitive personal transport tax? The poor will need to rely even more on unreliable public transportation. Reliance on renewable energy sources? More expensive electricity. And so much more. Covid only exacerbated this gap, in every dimension from education to international travel. And the normalization of it will only make it harder for things to return to pre-covid normal.
    • burntoutfire 5y ago
      > Single use plastic utensils ban? It isn’t the rich needing to eat on the go! On the contrary, the truly poor people can't afford to eat on the go, but rather cook at home. If you can afford to pay someone else to cook for you on a regular basis, you're not doing that bad.
    • imtringued 5y ago
      The cost of renewable energy hasn't exploded recently. It's the fossil fuels that are expensive and unreliable today.
• movetheworld 5y ago
  NOT true at all. I pay <30 Cent/kwh The real question is: who benefits from this kind of "news"? (some dude from Germany)
  • 88840-8855 5y ago
    Why are you lying? I checked large cities, small cities and even the largest companies: Colgone: https://www.rheinenergie.com/de/privatkunden/strom___erdgas/strom/oekostrom/oekostrom.html https://www.rheinenergie.com/de/privatkunden/strom___erdgas/... "Due to the current developments in the energy market, we are currently revising our current tariffs and offers. For this reason, our tariff calculator is temporarily unavailable. Customers of other suppliers who are affected by insolvency / delivery cessation are automatically supplied with us as part of the so-called replacement supply at fixed conditions. " Hamburg: https://www.hamburgenergie.de/oekostrom/unsere-stromtarife/#c1689 https://www.hamburgenergie.de/oekostrom/unsere-stromtarife/#... 40 Cents per kwh; price was updated 3 weeks ago, website mentions that update of price is expected after New Year EON (largest German electricity supplier, all Germany): https://www.eon.de/de/pk/strom/stromanbieter/guenstiger-stromanbieter.html https://www.eon.de/de/pk/strom/stromanbieter/guenstiger-stro... Price: 65,66 Cents per kwh Small city "Meerbusch", next to Düsseldorf: https://stadtwerke-meerbusch.de/strom/strompreise-und-tarife/grundversorgung-strom/ https://stadtwerke-meerbusch.de/strom/strompreise-und-tarife... "80,22 Cent/kWh"
    • KolpaO 5y ago
      [flagged]
  • luckylion 5y ago
    That's likely because you have a running contract that's not up for price-adjustments. New contracts are significantly higher than 30cent/kwh. The same argument could be made for rents in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg. "I've been living here for thirty years in this apartment and the stories about 20€/sqm are just lies".
• Archien 5y ago
  You are paying this because you switched to one of the cheapest power delivery companies to safe money and they miscalculated shit. My energy provider does not have this problem. It's not only the greens who force electric cars btw. The last political party was not the green. Otherwise I'm slight lost on what your point is you are trying to make on hn as a German on local power market?
• bigodbiel 5y ago
  Short “Russian” natgas, and long renewables. CDU began this game, but the Greens are going overdrive.
• aristofun 5y ago
  Speaking of poor unprofessional management and histeria around "green" energy, ignoring some fundamental physics and economic laws :(
• jollybean 5y ago
  "However, I hope that the underlying effect will improve and lead to an overall price reduction." This will never happen under the Greens, and probably not under any other government coalition either. Prices that governments charge do not go down. They don't unwind projects, they create them. That is the underlying systematic force that people should understand: while ostensibly their job is to provide services, the pragmatic reality is, everyone in that systems wants more money, more power, and they have innumerable interesting ideas for how to spend more money, hire more people. Without the sobering reality of competition to establish true cost of capital, then it's just very easy to assume 'spending/investment creates' value - and the system grows. There is a simple reality to your spike in Energy prices, which is total mismanagement of energy policy. You are literally 'paying the price'. That is the 'cost' of whatever it is the objectives really are.
• adverbly 5y ago
  How much of this is tax? Obviously tax needs to come from somewhere, and I'd be happier paying that tax during energy consumption than on my pay cheque as I'd rather be incentivized to consume less of a good which has a socially negative side effect than to produce less. I'm sure there are other ways of looking at it though, and again I have no much idea of how much of this is due to taxes.
  • 88840-8855 5y ago
    In Germany you pay roughly 52% tax on the electricity price.
• sambucini 5y ago
  yo, i work in the energy industry. it's not quite as terrifying as it looks. energy retailers typically sell electricity to end users at a fixed price. prudent retailers _hedge_ this exposure, i.e. they buy the electricity on wholesale markets that they promised to delivery to you at a fixed price, in order to reduce their risk to wholesale prices going up. wholesale price went up (A LOT) which drove many retailers across europe into bankruptcy, but well - they didnt hedge so well.. if you want a proxy for retail electricty prices is worth checking the wholesale markets, you can do that yourself on EEX's website: https://www.eex.com/en/market-data/power/futures https://www.eex.com/en/market-data/power/futures you'll see the following prices for trading day 2021-12-29: Year 2022 settled at 225EUR/MWh or 22.5c/Kwh -- which is admittedly crazy high. But year 2023 settled at 128 EUR and the following years below 100 EUR. This is plausible as we the high prices we have now provide a strong incentive to build new electricity generating facilities in the future. and wind and pv are already profitable at prices 50-80 EUR/MWh without extra subsidies. lastly: there are still enough retailers selling you power at prices below what your retailer wants to charge you, check https://verivox.de/ https://verivox.de/ or the likes for alternatives