4 ms·

If the government giveth and then taketh away, those are just two sides of the same coin. Electricity providers in Germany can go bust at any time, and that's f

If the government giveth and then taketh away, those are just two sides of the same coin. Electricity providers in Germany can go bust at any time, and that's fine, there are hundreds of them. Our electricity bill is currently 60 a month (used to be 50), and we usually get a tiny bit paid back. Heating (warm water in general) is gas, but everything else is electric including cooking which we do daily. There was a price cap of 40c per kWh (or something like that) introduced recently, but other than that it's "what you pay for is what you get". A transparent system where you have the true price stimulates energy efficiency. People that want to waste energy are free to do so, but should not have the rest subsidize the behavior. There are dozens of tiny things that you can do every day that have no effect on your life, yet save a lot of energy and money: avoiding being straight up wasteful, e.g. leaving things on for no reason; paying attention to energy efficiency of the devices you buy and run; paying attention to what you do, e.g. when you boil an egg, put a lid on, boil the water and switch it off, it will keep boiling until it's ready since the stove is hot (this becomes mostly irrelevant with induction). On a level beyond that, is your fridge normal sized, or does it store food for three weeks, that you then buy with you gigantic car in a huge shop 15km away (and the shop is there because the land is cheaper, and the energy spent on having that system work is massively subsizidized). Etc. etc. A lot of things you think are tiny, but as a whole end up being significant. We spent a few months abroad a couple years ago, and there you'd get a note on your bill comparing your consumption to the same month the year before. We were routinely at 50% of the previous tenants.

pyrale 3y ago
> If the government giveth and then taketh away, those are just two sides of the same coin. The point is, just because the system works differently doesn't mean you can't do proper accounting of electricity costs. You just need to measure where it makes sense. And when you do this, well, power has been pretty cheap for a while in France. The claims about "french electricity funded by your taxes" doesn't really hold water when you realize that, in the last 20 years, EDF has been returning sizeable dividends to its shareholder most years. It's not really surprising when you do the math and realize that EDF has paid about €3-4bn per GW of installed capacity. > Our electricity bill is currently 60 a month With a low price of €0.2/kWh, that's about 10kWh per day. For 4. That's extremely low. Anyone working remotely can't hope to get that little used, for instance.
- locallost 3y ago
  The EDF is actually 65 billion in debt and the government started the process of its nationalization to make it 100% state owned last year. If various internet source are to be believed, France has a price of 22c per kWh for consumers. I checked the current averages in Germany and the price of electricity alone is around 25 kWh (and then taxes and distribution surcharges and various other costs go on top), despite the fact that wholesale prices in Germany have been drastically below that of France for at least a year now. How is this possible? It can only be that french prices are artificially low because the EDF is state owned. But back to my original statement - the real price will be paid one way or another, there is no free lunch. The additional irony of that is that prices in Germany and other European countries shot up last year because of electricity deficit partially caused by France's nuclear plants going belly up. Our consumption is a lot lower than that, we are almost always around 1500kWh per year, this was the case even as a household of 3. I sort of work remote, I have a shared office with 5 other people, and we spend less than 100kWh per month (we checked a few times since we moved in). So if you want you might add around 300-400kWh per year if two people were working remotely, but then again we would not have two fridges at home, and we already frequently work from home.
  - pyrale 3y ago
    > The EDF is actually 65 billion in debt That's irrelevant to electricity prices. Amazon made huge losses early in its history, but their unit costs were sound (ie they made money for every item they sold). Likewise, EDF makes money for every kWh they sell. Their debt is unrelated to their activity as an electricity producer. > France has a price of 22c per kWh for consumers. It's more like 20.5cts right now. A decade ago, it was 13cts [1], and EDF was profitable [2]. > despite the fact that wholesale prices in Germany have been drastically below that of France for at least a year now. EDF doesn't usually need to buy power on markets. They produce what they sell. This year, exceptionally, they needed to buy for two reasons: 1) some of their reactors were down, which hurt a bit. 2) the French government forced EDF to buy an extra 20 TWh on the markets at the worst moment (market price > 200€/MWh), and sell back this power to its competitors at 46€/MWh [3]. Do you understand how some losses showed up now? > The additional irony of that is that prices in Germany and other European countries shot up last year because of electricity deficit partially caused by France's nuclear plants going belly up. Yeah, well, you could also say that the prices were low for the last 20 years because France consistently exported power when its neighbours needed it. Or that Germany's (and other European countries') reliance on gas for power generation contributed heavily to European electricity markets' exposure to Russian gas squeeze. I guess the narrative you subscribe to depends on what you want to believe. > Our consumption is a lot lower than that, we are almost always around 1500kWh per year 4 kWh per day is pretty rad when it comes to optimizing power. Kudos for your efforts! I assume you have extremely recent appliances, considering an old fridge would be almost 1/4th of it. Would you have a breakdown of your electric uses and material age? [1]: https://prix-elec.com/tarifs/evolution/2013 https://prix-elec.com/tarifs/evolution/2013 [2]: https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/uploads/2013edfgroupresultats_transcript_vf_v2_0.pdf https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/uploads/2013edfgroupr... [3]: https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/edf-will-sell-extra-20-twh-nuclear-power-french-competitors-2022.html https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/edf-...

pyrale 3y ago

> If the government giveth and then taketh away, those are just two sides of the same coin. The point is, just because the system works differently doesn't mean you can't do proper accounting of electricity costs. You just need to measure where it makes sense. And when you do this, well, power has been pretty cheap for a while in France. The claims about "french electricity funded by your taxes" doesn't really hold water when you realize that, in the last 20 years, EDF has been returning sizeable dividends to its shareholder most years. It's not really surprising when you do the math and realize that EDF has paid about €3-4bn per GW of installed capacity. > Our electricity bill is currently 60 a month With a low price of €0.2/kWh, that's about 10kWh per day. For 4. That's extremely low. Anyone working remotely can't hope to get that little used, for instance.

locallost 3y ago
The EDF is actually 65 billion in debt and the government started the process of its nationalization to make it 100% state owned last year. If various internet source are to be believed, France has a price of 22c per kWh for consumers. I checked the current averages in Germany and the price of electricity alone is around 25 kWh (and then taxes and distribution surcharges and various other costs go on top), despite the fact that wholesale prices in Germany have been drastically below that of France for at least a year now. How is this possible? It can only be that french prices are artificially low because the EDF is state owned. But back to my original statement - the real price will be paid one way or another, there is no free lunch. The additional irony of that is that prices in Germany and other European countries shot up last year because of electricity deficit partially caused by France's nuclear plants going belly up. Our consumption is a lot lower than that, we are almost always around 1500kWh per year, this was the case even as a household of 3. I sort of work remote, I have a shared office with 5 other people, and we spend less than 100kWh per month (we checked a few times since we moved in). So if you want you might add around 300-400kWh per year if two people were working remotely, but then again we would not have two fridges at home, and we already frequently work from home.
- pyrale 3y ago
  > The EDF is actually 65 billion in debt That's irrelevant to electricity prices. Amazon made huge losses early in its history, but their unit costs were sound (ie they made money for every item they sold). Likewise, EDF makes money for every kWh they sell. Their debt is unrelated to their activity as an electricity producer. > France has a price of 22c per kWh for consumers. It's more like 20.5cts right now. A decade ago, it was 13cts [1], and EDF was profitable [2]. > despite the fact that wholesale prices in Germany have been drastically below that of France for at least a year now. EDF doesn't usually need to buy power on markets. They produce what they sell. This year, exceptionally, they needed to buy for two reasons: 1) some of their reactors were down, which hurt a bit. 2) the French government forced EDF to buy an extra 20 TWh on the markets at the worst moment (market price > 200€/MWh), and sell back this power to its competitors at 46€/MWh [3]. Do you understand how some losses showed up now? > The additional irony of that is that prices in Germany and other European countries shot up last year because of electricity deficit partially caused by France's nuclear plants going belly up. Yeah, well, you could also say that the prices were low for the last 20 years because France consistently exported power when its neighbours needed it. Or that Germany's (and other European countries') reliance on gas for power generation contributed heavily to European electricity markets' exposure to Russian gas squeeze. I guess the narrative you subscribe to depends on what you want to believe. > Our consumption is a lot lower than that, we are almost always around 1500kWh per year 4 kWh per day is pretty rad when it comes to optimizing power. Kudos for your efforts! I assume you have extremely recent appliances, considering an old fridge would be almost 1/4th of it. Would you have a breakdown of your electric uses and material age? [1]: https://prix-elec.com/tarifs/evolution/2013 https://prix-elec.com/tarifs/evolution/2013 [2]: https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/uploads/2013edfgroupresultats_transcript_vf_v2_0.pdf https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/uploads/2013edfgroupr... [3]: https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/edf-will-sell-extra-20-twh-nuclear-power-french-competitors-2022.html https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/edf-...