7 ms·

In a few minutes of Googling, I can't seem to find a decent time series of average German electricity prices (€ct/kWh) by month. What has the increase been? [1]

In a few minutes of Googling, I can't seem to find a decent time series of average German electricity prices (€ct/kWh) by month. What has the increase been? [1] reports 54% (!!!) increase since 2020. Why? [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/euro-zone-consumers-shock-power-bills-soar-2022-01-18/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/euro-zone-consumers-...

willcipriano 5y ago
They went from nuclear to coal and gas to be more green.[0] [0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2020/01/11/costs-of-germanys-nuclear-phase-out-are-substantial-new-paper-finds-but-there-is-little-appetite-for-a-rethink/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2020/01/11/costs...
- api 5y ago
  ... and now Russia is becoming belligerent and there's a chance they will be targeted with sanctions if they invade Ukraine, which would cause gas prices to explode. Some of this risk is probably being preemptively priced into the market via speculation on gas.
  - aurizon 5y ago
    There is a good chance that Ukraine will target these lines via valve and pumping station attacks as a form of resource denial to Russia. There are few alternate routes and the valves and pumping stations are not hardened. There are also many exposed runs that are vulnerable by shallow or even zero cover. Such damage would take a long time to repair, and large numbers of attack points that are hard to defend.
    - distances 5y ago
      I'm no geopolitics expert, but I find it exceedingly implausible that Ukraine would sabotage energy delivery to Central Europe, the assumed allies, just to cause a small income drop for Russia.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  Except that's not the case. But you already knew that. A side note in Sweden we had a 70% price hike and Sweden is nuclear and hydro.
  - in3d 5y ago
    This professor of energy policy thinks it is making a difference: “The end of nuclear power in Germany will likely push prices up even further, according to Sebastian Herold, a professor of energy policy at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences” (https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211231-germany-to-close-nuclear-reactors-despite-energy-crisis https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211231-germany-to-cl...) When you lose 25% of your 2011 energy producing capacity by closing many nuclear power plants, it’d be strange if there was no effect. The pollution increase is even more worrying after many new studies since then found negative effects on human health that we didn't know about earlier: https://www.heinz.cmu.edu/media/2020/January/study-examines-costs-closing-nuclear-plants-germany https://www.heinz.cmu.edu/media/2020/January/study-examines-...
  - zibzab 5y ago
    Swedish price hike is due to the German screw up. Even after closing some reactors (plus one more currently down due to some accident) Sweden is still producing 15% more than it needs. The price increase is due to increased international prices thanks to Germany, and Russia.
  - Ourgon 5y ago
    Electricity prices in Sweden have gone up due to two factors: - the "green" party "Miljöpartiet" ("Party for the environment") has forced the premature closure of half of the nuclear power plants, going so far as to replace the leadership of the state-owned power consortium "Vattenfall" when they refused to fall in line. They actually boast about closing those nuclear power plants, indicating the disconnect between their party's name and its goals. - Sweden has increased its exchange with other European power distribution networks which caused the higher prices on the European market to have a larger influence on local pricing. The country is divided into 4 pricing zones, the northernmost 2 of which have lower prices - closer to the price paid by all Swedes before deregulation and the introduction of the controlled market "Nord Pool" - than the rest. Have a look at the "control room" site for information on current pricing, electricity flows, power sources and more: https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/
beebob 5y ago
The basic electricity coverage that you are getting if you have no contract with any provider was around 74 €ct/kWh beginning of the year (maybe even 80 €ct, depending on where you live). But some are reducing that to around 54 €ct/kWh again, since it was just to cover the surge of new users that required them to buy energy for high prices. Having a proper contract with an energy provider it's currently around 46 €ct/kWh last I checked. Previous prices were around 31 €ct/kWh on average (seen them as low as 26 €ct/kWh). People that have ongoing contracts are the lucky ones currently.
- ftth_finland 5y ago
  That’s insane! If I were to sign a new contract right now in Finland I’d pay 8 cents per kWh. Including transfer fees and taxes that comes to less than 15 cents all in. And prices are extremely high right now over here. Normally you’d pay under 10 cents all in.
  - suction 5y ago
    Do you know if in Finland, those prices are subsidised in any way?
    - ftth_finland 5y ago
      No, these are market prices. We have no subsidized power in Finland.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      Note that Hetzner has a datacenter in Finland! Feeling lucky right now that I picked Helsinki DC for my own server.
  - entropie 5y ago
    Electricity was always quite expensive in germany. Right now for new contracts some pay like 80c/kwh.
  - throwaway2037 5y ago
erinnh 5y ago
To give a more detailed picture than simply saying "nuclear gone, coal&gas usage up": - Plan was to increase wind/solar electricity by massive amounts while phasing out old nuclear power stations over twenty years - Plan was hampered by various political parties and lots of nimby's (one conservative state basically outlawed new wind power stations) - Hence basically nowhere close enough new green electricity generation, while still phasing out nuclear over the last twenty years. - Prices were shifted around so that private persons had to directly pay for the small amount of subsidies for green electricity, while subsidies for coal/gas were kept the same and paid for via general taxes - This cost was not paid by companies, hence the total amount was put on the shoulders of private persons - This all lead to this year where gas/fuel prices went up massively everywhere, so electricity prices went up as well. This isnt a uniquely German problem. This is the case in the whole of Europe.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  > Plan was hampered by various political parties and lots of nimby's (one conservative state basically outlawed new wind power stations) NIMBY for wind is expected behavior, they should really not base future electricity market predictions on ideal scenario's. The opposition was there from the start and it would of course increase once the easy locations have wind installed on them.
  - erinnh 5y ago
    It went so far that some electricity lines carrying power between states have had massive year-long hold-ups because of problems of where to actually put them due to nimby's.
- masta 5y ago
  One of the main problems is the market design for electricity in Europe. It uses a merit order based pricing model. Simplified version: - Everyone lists how much power they can produce at which marginal price (Renewables = 0c/kWh, Nuclear/Lignite = 4-8c/kWh, Gas peaker = very much based on the current gas prices) - Offers get sorted by marginal price. - Buyers put in the amount of power they want to buy. - The transaction (which is always a 1h timeslot) is resolved by adding up all buyers and take all offers from the list, till demand is fulfilled. - The price of the last kWh bought, will determine the price for everyone. So, as soon as a single gas power plant is required to fulfill demand, the whole market price is going up. With the extreme rise in gas-prices, due to Russia playing games with the gas-market, The average market prices have gone up. Especially Nuclear and Lignite plants are very happy about the current situation, as they make much more money due to market mechanisms. While lots of renewables drive the prices down (as they are usually valued at zero due to feed-in tariff regulations). Another issue is, France has multiple nuclear reactors in unplanned maintenance due to failures. Their fleet is missing more than 10% of their capacity, while most of France is heating with direct electricity heating (not even heat pumps). Result: The electricity market is in a massive crunch right now in Europe, electricity prices are driven by natural gas prices. And there we've got a huge dependency on Russia. .... And Russia is arguing that all Europe needs to do is certifying their new pipeline (Nordstream2), which comes with massive geopolitical problems attached to it.
samwillis 5y ago
Statista have wholesale price data from January 2019 to October 2021 Increase from a low of 17.05 Euros per megawatt hour in April 2020 to 128.34 in October 2021: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267541/germany-monthly-wholesale-electricity-price/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267541/germany-monthly-... Even if you go with a more conservative average before the increase of 40 Euro, its an increase of 220%! If you are stuck behind paywall: https://imgur.com/a/HfpD2Pp https://imgur.com/a/HfpD2Pp
normaler 5y ago
just as one data point: my current energy provider increased it like this (prices in Euro Cents) Energy: 27.85 ct/kWh --> 40,7 ct/kWh Gas: 5,71 ct/kWh --> 19,87 ct/kWh I am already in the process of ugprading appliances and decided against building a second home server I was planning.
nosianu 5y ago
My local city-owned provider ("Stadtwerke" as the general term; I'm in a large city in Bavaria) and my contract details are Less than 1.400 kWh / year Price 30,27 ct / kWh Base price 89,28 € / year Online-Bonus 10,00 € / year More than 1.400 kWh / year Price 27,92 ct / kWh Base price 122,52 € / year Online-Bonus 20,00 € / year I took the standard package and never shopped around. I'm using around this 1400 threshold. It was >1600 before I switched the energy-guzzling graphics card for a minimal one (I don't play games and videos are the only thing utilizing it a bit, on the 32 inch screen). Apart from the PC and 32 inch monitor an Italian all-metal and heat-radiating portafilter espresso maker (with E61 brew group, whose 1961 design did not care about energy efficiency, unfortunately) is the largest contributor to my bill. Lighting is negligible, heating is for the whole apartment building and gas-powered.
- PinguTS 5y ago
  Looks like we share the same city even as I am not in that city anymore but still serviced by the same company directly and not as a reseller.
- NanoCoaster 5y ago
  If you don't mind me asking, which city? I'm in Regensburg and recently got moved to my munincipal provider because my former provider closed shop and it's looking...bleak. We're talking ~60+ct / kWh.
  - nosianu 5y ago
    N-Ergie, Nürnberg (Nuremberg) https://www.n-ergie.de https://www.n-ergie.de
    - NanoCoaster 5y ago
      Thanks, very interesting. Should've stayed in Nürnberg, I suppose :)
      - PinguTS 5y ago
chokma 5y ago
My provider has increased the price by ~27%, to 39¢ / kWh. Best offer from electricity price comparison sites is 44¢/kWh, so I guess I will stay with them. People using electricity startups / discount providers (both gas / electricity) have seen them go into insolvency. They are automatically supplied by the base providers who run the networks in their region. New prices are up to 1€/kWh on the high end. This is less a problem due to shutting down nuclear plants or the CO2 tax, but rather due to the energy market being de-regulated to casino style capitalism (meaning many more investors / companies being allowed to make a quick buck on the end user's expense). edit: another reason for high energy prices: the former government has decided that wind energy farms require 1km distance from the nearest settlement (compared to less than half that for a coal-driven power plant...). Also NIMBYism prevents the building of desperately needed north->south electricity lines which could transport energy from wind farms to where its needed.
mschuster91 5y ago
For one, we have had a new carbon tax since then (which also drove up the prices for petrol) and a couple old nuclear plants shut down. The really important thing however is geopolitics and rabid capitalism colliding badly. Basically, for a very long time it was usual business practice of utilities to go for long-term contracts for natural gas and electricity itself... but nowadays, the market has shifted towards spot price contracts, which are usually cheaper. Under "normal" conditions, that would not have been a problem... but when market conditions dramatically change, everyone on a spot contract is pretty much fucked. Additionally, dynamic capacity ("Regelenergie") exploded in price for the same reasons [1], and that dynamic capacity which is needed to balance out unstable renewables (solar/wind) has to be paid for by all the consumers, further contributing to price hikes. We do have regulations in place to prevent consumers from being on the hook for thousands of dollars like in that Texas power crunch, but nevertheless a couple of "discounter utilities" had to cease operating and a whole lot of others were forced to rapidly hike prices. The result of that was that the local utilities, which by law have to cover for such situations ("Grundversorgung"), were hit with an onslaught of new customers that they hadn't bought supply contracts for... meaning they had to raise the prices, too. It's an all-around clusterfuck. The fact that our government was in a transition phase until mid of December didn't help either, and expensive energy is actually what the Greens want as an incentive for people and companies to save power - whereas the Social Democrats focus on how the crisis affects poor people (pretty badly!) and the Liberal Democrats only care about the economy aka their large donors. So it's not like actual solutions are going to crop up... sigh. [1]: https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/energie-blog/steigende-preise-regelenergiemarkt-regelleistung https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/energie-blog/steigende-preise...
- kmlx 5y ago
  > but when market conditions dramatically change, everyone on a spot contract is pretty much fucked. hedging is the solution. without it expect bankruptcies.
est31 5y ago
You can use this website to get a graph: http://www.bricklebrit.com/stromboerse_leipzig.html http://www.bricklebrit.com/stromboerse_leipzig.html You have to enter the date and so on. I have done it for the Jan 20 2021 to Jan 20 2022 range and obtained this deeplink: http://www.bricklebrit.com/cgi-bin/spotmarktpreise.pl?VONDTE=2021-1-20&BISDTE=2022-1-20&BASE=1&PEAK=0&OFFPEAK=0&200TageLinie=1&VONH=-1&BISH=-1&NAVG=0&ZUFALL=0.4379063620055561 http://www.bricklebrit.com/cgi-bin/spotmarktpreise.pl?VONDTE... Indeed there has been a massive explosion at the wholesale markets for energy. Up to a 10 fold increase! This challenge put a lot of smaller energy providers into a bad situation, especially those who would obtain most of their electricity through the exchanges instead of their own infrastructure or longer term contractual arrangements. They could only sell energy at the lower prices and had to buy at extremely high prices. So they mass terminated the contracts of their customers (otherwise they would probably have went bankrupt). In Germany, this doesn't mean that people are without electricity though, as a so called "basic provider" kicks in, who is always the electricity provider with the most customers in a given area. Per regulation, that provider has to take you as customer if they want to or not. Of course these providers are in the same buying situation as the smaller ones, so have to buy the energy at those inflated prices. To get back those costs, they have often doubled or even tripled their end customer prices, but only for new customers, that is, those customers that got dumped on them by the smaller providers and those who were the cause of having to buy new electricity. For the electric customers this led to a market split in two: first the customers who did not get dumped, still the vast majority of people. For them, there was barely an increase. Second the customers who did get dumped and now have to pay the extremely inflated prices. Some people claim this is unfair, but at the same time, the main reason for people to switch away from the basic provider is to use cheaper prices (outside of people who want to buy "green" energy), so it's not that unfair that it's these people have to shoulder the costs if the market is directed against their favour for a while. https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/news/unternehmen-verbraucher/id_91428852/energiekrise-neukunden-schock-strom-und-gas-werden-bis-zu-400-prozent-teurer.html https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/news/unternehmen-verbrauche...
lm28469 5y ago
They're getting out of nuclear and it turns out wind/sun kind of sucks because they can't store the energy nor produce it on demand. Their two last nuclear reactors (max output 4GW) often produce more than their entire sun+wind system (max output 122GW) https://mobile.twitter.com/fmbreon/status/1480589479714959363 https://mobile.twitter.com/fmbreon/status/148058947971495936... The day I saw this twitt I passed by a large windmill farm close to Berlin and not a single one of them was spinning... so we end up buying gas from Putin It has to be the dumbest energy long term plan I've heard about, and it's purely motivated by ideology, looks like they don't want to understand the reality of modern energy issues. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
- hardolaf 5y ago
  My Power Systems course in college back in 2014 used Germany as an example of how not to handle energy policy due to the brain-dead decision to get rid of perfectly fine and functional nuclear plants. The professor also had us produce high quality white papers and present them to the class, and receive mock peer reviews on our work showing how terrible renewables are as a "solution" compared. That wasn't his stated goal, but it was the conclusion that 107 out of 107 people in the class independently came to after a review of the relevant academic research. The only sustainable long-term solution for baseload is nuclear fission for at least the next 50-60 years barring any massive breakthroughs in nuclear fusion. Every single other option is a massive disaster ecologically and economically.

willcipriano 5y ago

They went from nuclear to coal and gas to be more green.[0] [0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2020/01/11/costs-of-germanys-nuclear-phase-out-are-substantial-new-paper-finds-but-there-is-little-appetite-for-a-rethink/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2020/01/11/costs...

api 5y ago
... and now Russia is becoming belligerent and there's a chance they will be targeted with sanctions if they invade Ukraine, which would cause gas prices to explode. Some of this risk is probably being preemptively priced into the market via speculation on gas.
- aurizon 5y ago
  There is a good chance that Ukraine will target these lines via valve and pumping station attacks as a form of resource denial to Russia. There are few alternate routes and the valves and pumping stations are not hardened. There are also many exposed runs that are vulnerable by shallow or even zero cover. Such damage would take a long time to repair, and large numbers of attack points that are hard to defend.
  - distances 5y ago
    I'm no geopolitics expert, but I find it exceedingly implausible that Ukraine would sabotage energy delivery to Central Europe, the assumed allies, just to cause a small income drop for Russia.
cycomanic 5y ago
Except that's not the case. But you already knew that. A side note in Sweden we had a 70% price hike and Sweden is nuclear and hydro.
- in3d 5y ago
  This professor of energy policy thinks it is making a difference: “The end of nuclear power in Germany will likely push prices up even further, according to Sebastian Herold, a professor of energy policy at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences” (https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211231-germany-to-close-nuclear-reactors-despite-energy-crisis https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211231-germany-to-cl...) When you lose 25% of your 2011 energy producing capacity by closing many nuclear power plants, it’d be strange if there was no effect. The pollution increase is even more worrying after many new studies since then found negative effects on human health that we didn't know about earlier: https://www.heinz.cmu.edu/media/2020/January/study-examines-costs-closing-nuclear-plants-germany https://www.heinz.cmu.edu/media/2020/January/study-examines-...
- zibzab 5y ago
  Swedish price hike is due to the German screw up. Even after closing some reactors (plus one more currently down due to some accident) Sweden is still producing 15% more than it needs. The price increase is due to increased international prices thanks to Germany, and Russia.
- Ourgon 5y ago
  Electricity prices in Sweden have gone up due to two factors: - the "green" party "Miljöpartiet" ("Party for the environment") has forced the premature closure of half of the nuclear power plants, going so far as to replace the leadership of the state-owned power consortium "Vattenfall" when they refused to fall in line. They actually boast about closing those nuclear power plants, indicating the disconnect between their party's name and its goals. - Sweden has increased its exchange with other European power distribution networks which caused the higher prices on the European market to have a larger influence on local pricing. The country is divided into 4 pricing zones, the northernmost 2 of which have lower prices - closer to the price paid by all Swedes before deregulation and the introduction of the controlled market "Nord Pool" - than the rest. Have a look at the "control room" site for information on current pricing, electricity flows, power sources and more: https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/

beebob 5y ago

The basic electricity coverage that you are getting if you have no contract with any provider was around 74 €ct/kWh beginning of the year (maybe even 80 €ct, depending on where you live). But some are reducing that to around 54 €ct/kWh again, since it was just to cover the surge of new users that required them to buy energy for high prices. Having a proper contract with an energy provider it's currently around 46 €ct/kWh last I checked. Previous prices were around 31 €ct/kWh on average (seen them as low as 26 €ct/kWh). People that have ongoing contracts are the lucky ones currently.

ftth_finland 5y ago
That’s insane! If I were to sign a new contract right now in Finland I’d pay 8 cents per kWh. Including transfer fees and taxes that comes to less than 15 cents all in. And prices are extremely high right now over here. Normally you’d pay under 10 cents all in.
- suction 5y ago
  Do you know if in Finland, those prices are subsidised in any way?
  - ftth_finland 5y ago
    No, these are market prices. We have no subsidized power in Finland.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Note that Hetzner has a datacenter in Finland! Feeling lucky right now that I picked Helsinki DC for my own server.
- entropie 5y ago
  Electricity was always quite expensive in germany. Right now for new contracts some pay like 80c/kwh.
- throwaway2037 5y ago

erinnh 5y ago

To give a more detailed picture than simply saying "nuclear gone, coal&gas usage up": - Plan was to increase wind/solar electricity by massive amounts while phasing out old nuclear power stations over twenty years - Plan was hampered by various political parties and lots of nimby's (one conservative state basically outlawed new wind power stations) - Hence basically nowhere close enough new green electricity generation, while still phasing out nuclear over the last twenty years. - Prices were shifted around so that private persons had to directly pay for the small amount of subsidies for green electricity, while subsidies for coal/gas were kept the same and paid for via general taxes - This cost was not paid by companies, hence the total amount was put on the shoulders of private persons - This all lead to this year where gas/fuel prices went up massively everywhere, so electricity prices went up as well. This isnt a uniquely German problem. This is the case in the whole of Europe.

cinntaile 5y ago
> Plan was hampered by various political parties and lots of nimby's (one conservative state basically outlawed new wind power stations) NIMBY for wind is expected behavior, they should really not base future electricity market predictions on ideal scenario's. The opposition was there from the start and it would of course increase once the easy locations have wind installed on them.
- erinnh 5y ago
  It went so far that some electricity lines carrying power between states have had massive year-long hold-ups because of problems of where to actually put them due to nimby's.
masta 5y ago
One of the main problems is the market design for electricity in Europe. It uses a merit order based pricing model. Simplified version: - Everyone lists how much power they can produce at which marginal price (Renewables = 0c/kWh, Nuclear/Lignite = 4-8c/kWh, Gas peaker = very much based on the current gas prices) - Offers get sorted by marginal price. - Buyers put in the amount of power they want to buy. - The transaction (which is always a 1h timeslot) is resolved by adding up all buyers and take all offers from the list, till demand is fulfilled. - The price of the last kWh bought, will determine the price for everyone. So, as soon as a single gas power plant is required to fulfill demand, the whole market price is going up. With the extreme rise in gas-prices, due to Russia playing games with the gas-market, The average market prices have gone up. Especially Nuclear and Lignite plants are very happy about the current situation, as they make much more money due to market mechanisms. While lots of renewables drive the prices down (as they are usually valued at zero due to feed-in tariff regulations). Another issue is, France has multiple nuclear reactors in unplanned maintenance due to failures. Their fleet is missing more than 10% of their capacity, while most of France is heating with direct electricity heating (not even heat pumps). Result: The electricity market is in a massive crunch right now in Europe, electricity prices are driven by natural gas prices. And there we've got a huge dependency on Russia. .... And Russia is arguing that all Europe needs to do is certifying their new pipeline (Nordstream2), which comes with massive geopolitical problems attached to it.

samwillis 5y ago

Statista have wholesale price data from January 2019 to October 2021 Increase from a low of 17.05 Euros per megawatt hour in April 2020 to 128.34 in October 2021: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267541/germany-monthly-wholesale-electricity-price/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267541/germany-monthly-... Even if you go with a more conservative average before the increase of 40 Euro, its an increase of 220%! If you are stuck behind paywall: https://imgur.com/a/HfpD2Pp https://imgur.com/a/HfpD2Pp

normaler 5y ago

just as one data point: my current energy provider increased it like this (prices in Euro Cents) Energy: 27.85 ct/kWh --> 40,7 ct/kWh Gas: 5,71 ct/kWh --> 19,87 ct/kWh I am already in the process of ugprading appliances and decided against building a second home server I was planning.

nosianu 5y ago

My local city-owned provider ("Stadtwerke" as the general term; I'm in a large city in Bavaria) and my contract details are Less than 1.400 kWh / year Price 30,27 ct / kWh Base price 89,28 € / year Online-Bonus 10,00 € / year More than 1.400 kWh / year Price 27,92 ct / kWh Base price 122,52 € / year Online-Bonus 20,00 € / year I took the standard package and never shopped around. I'm using around this 1400 threshold. It was >1600 before I switched the energy-guzzling graphics card for a minimal one (I don't play games and videos are the only thing utilizing it a bit, on the 32 inch screen). Apart from the PC and 32 inch monitor an Italian all-metal and heat-radiating portafilter espresso maker (with E61 brew group, whose 1961 design did not care about energy efficiency, unfortunately) is the largest contributor to my bill. Lighting is negligible, heating is for the whole apartment building and gas-powered.

PinguTS 5y ago
Looks like we share the same city even as I am not in that city anymore but still serviced by the same company directly and not as a reseller.
NanoCoaster 5y ago
If you don't mind me asking, which city? I'm in Regensburg and recently got moved to my munincipal provider because my former provider closed shop and it's looking...bleak. We're talking ~60+ct / kWh.
- nosianu 5y ago
  N-Ergie, Nürnberg (Nuremberg) https://www.n-ergie.de https://www.n-ergie.de
  - NanoCoaster 5y ago
    Thanks, very interesting. Should've stayed in Nürnberg, I suppose :)
    - PinguTS 5y ago

chokma 5y ago

My provider has increased the price by ~27%, to 39¢ / kWh. Best offer from electricity price comparison sites is 44¢/kWh, so I guess I will stay with them. People using electricity startups / discount providers (both gas / electricity) have seen them go into insolvency. They are automatically supplied by the base providers who run the networks in their region. New prices are up to 1€/kWh on the high end. This is less a problem due to shutting down nuclear plants or the CO2 tax, but rather due to the energy market being de-regulated to casino style capitalism (meaning many more investors / companies being allowed to make a quick buck on the end user's expense). edit: another reason for high energy prices: the former government has decided that wind energy farms require 1km distance from the nearest settlement (compared to less than half that for a coal-driven power plant...). Also NIMBYism prevents the building of desperately needed north->south electricity lines which could transport energy from wind farms to where its needed.

mschuster91 5y ago

For one, we have had a new carbon tax since then (which also drove up the prices for petrol) and a couple old nuclear plants shut down. The really important thing however is geopolitics and rabid capitalism colliding badly. Basically, for a very long time it was usual business practice of utilities to go for long-term contracts for natural gas and electricity itself... but nowadays, the market has shifted towards spot price contracts, which are usually cheaper. Under "normal" conditions, that would not have been a problem... but when market conditions dramatically change, everyone on a spot contract is pretty much fucked. Additionally, dynamic capacity ("Regelenergie") exploded in price for the same reasons [1], and that dynamic capacity which is needed to balance out unstable renewables (solar/wind) has to be paid for by all the consumers, further contributing to price hikes. We do have regulations in place to prevent consumers from being on the hook for thousands of dollars like in that Texas power crunch, but nevertheless a couple of "discounter utilities" had to cease operating and a whole lot of others were forced to rapidly hike prices. The result of that was that the local utilities, which by law have to cover for such situations ("Grundversorgung"), were hit with an onslaught of new customers that they hadn't bought supply contracts for... meaning they had to raise the prices, too. It's an all-around clusterfuck. The fact that our government was in a transition phase until mid of December didn't help either, and expensive energy is actually what the Greens want as an incentive for people and companies to save power - whereas the Social Democrats focus on how the crisis affects poor people (pretty badly!) and the Liberal Democrats only care about the economy aka their large donors. So it's not like actual solutions are going to crop up... sigh. [1]: https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/energie-blog/steigende-preise-regelenergiemarkt-regelleistung https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/energie-blog/steigende-preise...

kmlx 5y ago
> but when market conditions dramatically change, everyone on a spot contract is pretty much fucked. hedging is the solution. without it expect bankruptcies.

est31 5y ago

You can use this website to get a graph: http://www.bricklebrit.com/stromboerse_leipzig.html http://www.bricklebrit.com/stromboerse_leipzig.html You have to enter the date and so on. I have done it for the Jan 20 2021 to Jan 20 2022 range and obtained this deeplink: http://www.bricklebrit.com/cgi-bin/spotmarktpreise.pl?VONDTE=2021-1-20&BISDTE=2022-1-20&BASE=1&PEAK=0&OFFPEAK=0&200TageLinie=1&VONH=-1&BISH=-1&NAVG=0&ZUFALL=0.4379063620055561 http://www.bricklebrit.com/cgi-bin/spotmarktpreise.pl?VONDTE... Indeed there has been a massive explosion at the wholesale markets for energy. Up to a 10 fold increase! This challenge put a lot of smaller energy providers into a bad situation, especially those who would obtain most of their electricity through the exchanges instead of their own infrastructure or longer term contractual arrangements. They could only sell energy at the lower prices and had to buy at extremely high prices. So they mass terminated the contracts of their customers (otherwise they would probably have went bankrupt). In Germany, this doesn't mean that people are without electricity though, as a so called "basic provider" kicks in, who is always the electricity provider with the most customers in a given area. Per regulation, that provider has to take you as customer if they want to or not. Of course these providers are in the same buying situation as the smaller ones, so have to buy the energy at those inflated prices. To get back those costs, they have often doubled or even tripled their end customer prices, but only for new customers, that is, those customers that got dumped on them by the smaller providers and those who were the cause of having to buy new electricity. For the electric customers this led to a market split in two: first the customers who did not get dumped, still the vast majority of people. For them, there was barely an increase. Second the customers who did get dumped and now have to pay the extremely inflated prices. Some people claim this is unfair, but at the same time, the main reason for people to switch away from the basic provider is to use cheaper prices (outside of people who want to buy "green" energy), so it's not that unfair that it's these people have to shoulder the costs if the market is directed against their favour for a while. https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/news/unternehmen-verbraucher/id_91428852/energiekrise-neukunden-schock-strom-und-gas-werden-bis-zu-400-prozent-teurer.html https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/news/unternehmen-verbrauche...

lm28469 5y ago

They're getting out of nuclear and it turns out wind/sun kind of sucks because they can't store the energy nor produce it on demand. Their two last nuclear reactors (max output 4GW) often produce more than their entire sun+wind system (max output 122GW) https://mobile.twitter.com/fmbreon/status/1480589479714959363 https://mobile.twitter.com/fmbreon/status/148058947971495936... The day I saw this twitt I passed by a large windmill farm close to Berlin and not a single one of them was spinning... so we end up buying gas from Putin It has to be the dumbest energy long term plan I've heard about, and it's purely motivated by ideology, looks like they don't want to understand the reality of modern energy issues. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

hardolaf 5y ago
My Power Systems course in college back in 2014 used Germany as an example of how not to handle energy policy due to the brain-dead decision to get rid of perfectly fine and functional nuclear plants. The professor also had us produce high quality white papers and present them to the class, and receive mock peer reviews on our work showing how terrible renewables are as a "solution" compared. That wasn't his stated goal, but it was the conclusion that 107 out of 107 people in the class independently came to after a review of the relevant academic research. The only sustainable long-term solution for baseload is nuclear fission for at least the next 50-60 years barring any massive breakthroughs in nuclear fusion. Every single other option is a massive disaster ecologically and economically.