15 ms·

Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

185 points by marc__1 5mo ago

alecco 5mo ago
> Damian Cortinas, chair of ENTSO-E’s board, told the Financial Times that “the issue is not about renewables” but about the grid’s ability to manage “fast voltage variations” that can destabilise the system. Unusual oscillations triggered a cascade of plant disconnections, and grid managers lost control. The real lesson is not that Spain has gone too far on wind and solar, YES THEY DID, they went as far as making nuclear power plants shut down due to negative prices so their reliable stable power wasn't a pacemaker anymore and it blew up in their faces. And this was a topic on TV shows with several experts alerting of this FOR MONTHS before the blackout. Sure, there are new technologies to stabilize solar and wind's fluctuating outputs but they are no just plug and play. Those are very, very complex systems that take years to set up properly. While there are nuclear power plants are just there collecting dust because the EU pressured Spain to make them unprofitable to maintain so they would be shut down. Luckily, the US-Israel-Iran war made the EU leadership turn and now they want nuclear. I hope it's not too late.
- jfernandezr 5mo ago
  Spain's blackout was exactly 1 year ago, no other blackouts since. And the mix of nuclear stayed almost the same. That was not a stabilization problem per-se, but the companies that had to do the stabilization just didn't although the were being paid for that. Please read the final report.
  - m101 5mo ago
    No blackout for a year: nothing to see here. People didn’t do what they said they’d do: No problem with the system it’s the people that didn’t do what they said they would do.
  - alecco 5mo ago
    The government refused to protect nuclear plants when prices went negative for a long time, so of course they were turned off because the companies were losing money. That was the obvious plan all along. And no more blackouts because now they are running nuclear 24/7 to keep things stable. And again, it's not completely Spain's government fault as it obviously came from the EU and their anti-nuclear stance.
    - crote 5mo ago
      Wait, so not giving unprofitable power plants subsidies to keep operating at a loss is "anti-nuclear"? And sure, it is a Really Good Idea to contract additional intertia to keep the grid stable. But why shouldn't that be done on the open market? Why pay a fortune for spinning a reactor's turbine at idle load when running a gas peaker plant's turbine at idle works just as well for a fraction of the price?
      - alecco 5mo ago
        You can run nuclear (or gas or whatever) at a minimum to keep the network stable. Read my comments. Solar and wind are very unstable and unless you have the latest generation hardware (costing hundreds of millions) you need some stable source.
    - otherme123 5mo ago
      Nuclear was working as usual the day of the blackout and the previous days. What does it even mean to "protect the nuclear"? Give them free money for the sake of it? They are already facilities being paid to keep the system in sync, or "protected" as you say, and they are paid very handsomely. But someone got greedy, it seems. For one year we had to hear that the blackout was to blame on the renewables, and now that the final report is out and places zero blame on the shoulders of the renewables, we couldn't read anything in the newspapers (electric sector is a main supporter of local press through ads or indirect ownership), or we have to read incredible bad blame redirects like "this is on the government for not protecting nuclear".
- aftbit 5mo ago
  I agree with you on a few points: 1. Stable power grids are much easier with a mix of generation sources that includes substantial rotating mass and baseload generators. 2. Nuclear is awesome from a climate change and energy security point of view, and it would be amazing if it were cheaper or more valued. When power was primarily generated by thermal plants with big rotating masses, we got frequency control implicitly from the inertia of those generators. When there was a demand spike, the generators handled the millisecond to few seconds regime just by their inertia, while the seconds to minutes regime was handled by plant control systems increasing throttles or starting more peaker plants. I disagree that renewables themselves are the problem. Cheap solar energy does not have to mean that we shut down all the uneconomical generation sources, nor does it mean that we cannot do FCAS with modern technology. Battery electric storage systems have actually eaten much of the FCAS market in the USA, where they can respond way more effectively and efficiently than other systems in the 1 to 10 second regime. By and large, we don't store solar energy for use overnight - we store it (or really any energy) for use in smoothing short demand spikes. I would love to see more nuclear, and more advanced nuclear. Modern designs are safe, effective, and amazingly capable. They just aren't as cheap as paving the world with solar cells or burning natural gas left over as a fracking byproduct.
  - jonatron 5mo ago
    Old power station turbines can be repurposed as inertia services via a stability market. Example in the UK: https://www.neso.energy/news/deeside-power-station-begins-world-first-power-system-stability-contract-national-grid-eso https://www.neso.energy/news/deeside-power-station-begins-wo...
    - ZeroGravitas 5mo ago
      Batteries are sweeping stability markets wherever they are set up. They're simply cheaper and better at it.
      - jonatron 5mo ago
        I'm not sure this is true in the UK at least, which may be because the grid operator is conservative / cautious https://www.energy-storage.news/uk-grid-forming-batteries-miss-out-in-system-stability-tender-as-synchronous-condensers-gas-get-contracts/ https://www.energy-storage.news/uk-grid-forming-batteries-mi...
- ndr42 5mo ago
  No that's not the case: However, several officials and energy experts have rejected the idea that renewables are to blame. EU energy commissioner, Dan Jørgensen, stated that there was "nothing unusual" about the electricity mix at the time of the blackout, and that the outage was not due to a "specific source energy". [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackou...
- fundatus 5mo ago
  > made the EU leadership turn and now they want nuclear They don't _actually_ want nuclear, luckily it's just lip service. Because it doesn't solve the problem surfaced by the US-Israel-Iran war: You'd still be dependent on other countries for your (nuclear) fuel needs.
  - madspindel 5mo ago
    > You'd still be dependent on other countries for your (nuclear) fuel needs. Like Canada and in the future also Sweden? Two really hostile countries to be dependent on.
    - crote 5mo ago
      Sure, if you ignore the fact that Kazakhstan supplies about half of the world's uranium. Canada accounts for only 10%, and Sweden currently produces zero due to its extremely poor ore quality. The most promising additional uranium source is Australia. But if Europe wants security it should be sourcing it domestically - which just isn't going to happen.
  - citrin_ru 5mo ago
    Dependency on nuclear fuel is less of a problem because you don't need to re-fuel a station often. Lack of gas creates a much more urgent problem.
- nxh76 5mo ago
  Also worth tracking whether consumption is increasing. Rebound Effect can kick in - when energy prices fall most people use more energy, produce/consume more junk, use more heat/cooling etc. Its like dealing with very low interest rates. It can produce a whole lot of brainless behaviour.
  - crote 5mo ago
    Some countries are already (accidentally) solving this problem. The problem there is that they can't upgrade the grid fast enough at the neighborhood level. Combine that with residential electricity contracts where you pay the spot market price, and suddenly you've got a whole bunch of people who want to source or drain electricity at the same time, with a total capacity which far exceeds what their local grid is physically capable of. The solution is to change a grid connection fee which depends on the peak load, where drawing/supplying a steady 1kW during the day is significantly cheaper than doing 12kW for 2 hours and 0kW for 22 hours. You're incentivized to spread out your load, so you are less likely to fall for needless consumption of "free" electricity.
- otherme123 5mo ago
  > And this was a topic on TV shows with several experts alerting of this FOR MONTHS before the blackout. "Experts" that now are being proved wrong. In Spain we have a good share of "experts" that are practically hired by the electric industry to parrot their interests in TV and other media for months or even years. Half politicians end their career either in Iberdrola or Endesa or Naturgy, the other half in some bank.
PaulKeeble 5mo ago
The past few years has also had Solar continuing to decrease in price so its increasingly going to be the primary choice. On top of that battery prices have been plummeting too so that now Solar + battery is cheaper than other options like Nuclear and especially Gas. Most of the EU will be running on Wind and Solar in the coming years, its a change that is now rapidly occuring based entirely on the rare economics. Solar and Wind are half the price of anything else.
- happosai 5mo ago
  Not most of EU but geographically large and diverse and low-latitude countries will. Spain has winds from three different sea areas and is known sunny, so they are in a good position.
  - joe_mamba 5mo ago
    Well that' doesn't always scan. Austria has a lot of wind, sun and hydro so its energy prices should be in line with Sweden, Norway, Denmark amongst the cheapest in Europe, and yet it's routinely amongst the more expensive in the EU.
    - ZeroGravitas 5mo ago
      Trading across borders seems to be a part of this story. If your local price is high you can import, if it's low you can export. If you're at the end of a grid and/or your transmission capacity is limited your price has the possibility to go higher or lower without that damping mechanism. Electricitymaps has a pricing layer which seems to show central Europe moving in sync when I randomly check it: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes?signal=electricity-price https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes?sig...
      - joe_mamba 5mo ago
        So energy in Spain is cheap because they produce a lot but can't sell a lot easily, and Austria/Central Europe is expensive because they sell their domestic energy too easily? If this is what you meant, then it sounds like an argument against free trade, if it means you keep ending up with the short stick.
pyrale 5mo ago
The author's point is that Spain's electricity is very cheap compared to other European countries thanks to its great electricity mix, etc. The reality is that Spain's electricity is cheap because it is relatively insulated from Europe's core network, because its interconnections with other countries are limited. In financial words, there is a spread with the rest of Europe because the ways to arbitrage that spread are extremely limited. If Spain was located near Germany and well interconnected, their prices would look like Germany's. And while cheap energy is pictured by op as a good thing, Spain understands very well that higher prices are good for its renewables industry, and is pressing for more interconnections[1]. The overall tone of the article feels like the author is here to extoll the virtues of renewables. [1]: https://www.ft.com/content/8e94079c-585f-11e4-b331-00144feab7de?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/8e94079c-585f-11e4-b331-00144feab...
- miohtama 5mo ago
  Hmm. Everyone should just disconnect Germany, let them freeze, and enjoy cheap electricity?
  - noprocrasted 5mo ago
    Then you'd have people run extension cords across the border and selling their cheap electricity at inflated prices to their freezing neighbor.
  - pyrale 5mo ago
    That's not my point. My point is that the price spread between EU electricity markets speaks more to the availability of interconnections than to the virtues of one country's electricity mix. The article gets to that conclusion because that's what it was looking for. The one question the article leaves open, but which is pretty relevant, is the question about who should pays for stability services to the grid.
    - watwut 5mo ago
      Absent interconnectivity, the spread of the price is literally virtues of the electricity mix. With interconnectivity, those virtues are less visible in local prices. They would be visible in earnings.
mono442 5mo ago
The reality is that expensive electricity in the EU is by design. The EU ETS imposes heavy taxes on fossil fuels (and they are set to increase even more), which in turn causes the price of electricity to rise. Fully renewable electricity generation is still a long way off, so this will continue for a long time. But it is entirely a self-imposed political problem and could easily be fixed by getting rid of the EU ETS or capping the price of emissions at a more reasonable level.
- throawayonthe 5mo ago
  why would you do that
- gman83 5mo ago
  Yeah, crippling Europe in the long term for short term gain might not be the best idea - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/15/critical-atlantic-current-significantly-more-likely-to-collapse-than-thought https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/15/critical...
  - wolvoleo 5mo ago
    It's for long term gain. Energy independence, combating climate change which will cost more to mitigate than the energy costs.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
- m463 5mo ago
  It seems many markets have punitive pricing on electricity, california being one egregious example. In most places, if you buy more of something, you are a good customer, it is usually more economical to sell to you and you get a discount. In california people who use more kilowatts, pay more.
  - Rygian 5mo ago
    Punitive pricing is a great thing. The less energy you spend to deliver value, the better for everyone.
TheGuyWhoCodes 5mo ago
Spain is one of the largest buyers of Russian LNG [1], even doubled in March compared to February 2026 and has been linked to servicing "shadow fleet" tankers carrying Russian oil [2]. Moral bankruptcy. [1] https://cepa.org/article/spains-baffling-russian-gas-addiction/ https://cepa.org/article/spains-baffling-russian-gas-addicti... [2] https://kyivindependent.com/spain-escorts-shadow-fleet-vessel-sanctioned-for-carrying-russian-oil-reuters-reports/ https://kyivindependent.com/spain-escorts-shadow-fleet-vesse...
- znort_ 5mo ago
  bs. all of the eu is doing this. the top importer is hungary, then france. and that's the official figures, not counting imports "rerouted" through other countries. regardless of inflamed speeches eu simply cannot operate without that energy. should have thought about that before starting a war with russia. best of lucks!
  - oezi 5mo ago
    Ha, Europe didn't start the war and seems like Russia is only able to export half of what they used to despite re-routing much to China and India. https://energyandcleanair.org/january-2026-monthly-analysis-of-russian-fossil-fuel-exports-and-sanctions/ https://energyandcleanair.org/january-2026-monthly-analysis-...
  - distances 5mo ago
    EU is gradually stopping all energy purchases from Russia. Long term contracts for LNG purchases stop end of this year, pipeline gas late next year. Oil imports from Russia are planned to come to end late next year, too. The days of Russian energy exports to EU are basically permanently over, and will not be reinstated even after the war has ended.
sunk1st 5mo ago
Maybe it's cheap compared to other European countries but that doesn't mean it's cheap. Electricity in Spain is expensive.
- znort_ 5mo ago
  it's in the article: wholesale energy price is among the cheapest in eu, but retail price to residents (including tolls, fees and taxes) is well over eu average. tells you something about spain ...
  - cbmuser 5mo ago
    Might be because the article doesn’t tell you the whole story.
  - BonitaPersona 5mo ago
    So the article is not telling the whole story. Wonder why they may have hyper-focused on only a part of the whole story.
    - zejn 5mo ago
      It is, but you have to read it and you need some degree of prior knowledge to understand it correctly, as with everything.
iamkrazy 5mo ago
Shhhh.... Don't let Sam Altman find out.
hokkos 5mo ago
Jan Rosenow doesn't know what he is talking about, power markets are not only day ahead market, but there are a lot of other maturities, CAL27 is higher in Spain than France or the Nordics. https://www.eex.com/en/market-data/market-data-hub https://www.eex.com/en/market-data/market-data-hub
- cbmuser 5mo ago
  Well, it’s HN. People love to spread articles that push renewables. In the meantime, France has the cleanest and cheapest electricity among the large countries in Europe.
- zejn 5mo ago
  That's some serious cherrypicking. Where CAL27 low is either limited interconnectors (Nordics and Spain) or major nuclear (France). The other countries have CAL27 over 80 eur.
gregwebs 5mo ago
I think Spain is showing that majority renewables can work, if you are willing to work through the pain. Someone needs to lead the way and figure out how to make it work, so I am glad they are doing it. I do think this article and most information is focused on cheer-leading rather than telling it like it is. This title of the article is misleading. Spain is one of the cheapest power generation markets, but In the article it states "Spanish households pay above the EU average". Then the reason is stated "Other system costs are rising. The flip side of getting energy cheap is paying more elsewhere to keep the system stable.". Spain of course also had a blackout and the article states "every country in Europe needs to modernise how it handles voltage stability". I believe that's code for "its harder to manager power transmission grids with renewables". I have been told by a power engineer that read the report on the blackout that the authors are going out of their way not to explicitly blame renewables, but these things that caused the blackout are bigger issues now due to the switch to renewables. But it makes sense for Spain to continue down this path and not pollute with coal or rely on other countries for gas imports.
j16sdiz 5mo ago
Power grid is the limiting factor, not power plant. Transporting energy can cost more than generating them.

185 points by marc__1 5mo ago

> Damian Cortinas, chair of ENTSO-E’s board, told the Financial Times that “the issue is not about renewables” but about the grid’s ability to manage “fast voltage variations” that can destabilise the system. Unusual oscillations triggered a cascade of plant disconnections, and grid managers lost control. The real lesson is not that Spain has gone too far on wind and solar, YES THEY DID, they went as far as making nuclear power plants shut down due to negative prices so their reliable stable power wasn't a pacemaker anymore and it blew up in their faces. And this was a topic on TV shows with several experts alerting of this FOR MONTHS before the blackout. Sure, there are new technologies to stabilize solar and wind's fluctuating outputs but they are no just plug and play. Those are very, very complex systems that take years to set up properly. While there are nuclear power plants are just there collecting dust because the EU pressured Spain to make them unprofitable to maintain so they would be shut down. Luckily, the US-Israel-Iran war made the EU leadership turn and now they want nuclear. I hope it's not too late.

jfernandezr 5mo ago
Spain's blackout was exactly 1 year ago, no other blackouts since. And the mix of nuclear stayed almost the same. That was not a stabilization problem per-se, but the companies that had to do the stabilization just didn't although the were being paid for that. Please read the final report.
- m101 5mo ago
  No blackout for a year: nothing to see here. People didn’t do what they said they’d do: No problem with the system it’s the people that didn’t do what they said they would do.
- alecco 5mo ago
  The government refused to protect nuclear plants when prices went negative for a long time, so of course they were turned off because the companies were losing money. That was the obvious plan all along. And no more blackouts because now they are running nuclear 24/7 to keep things stable. And again, it's not completely Spain's government fault as it obviously came from the EU and their anti-nuclear stance.
  - crote 5mo ago
    Wait, so not giving unprofitable power plants subsidies to keep operating at a loss is "anti-nuclear"? And sure, it is a Really Good Idea to contract additional intertia to keep the grid stable. But why shouldn't that be done on the open market? Why pay a fortune for spinning a reactor's turbine at idle load when running a gas peaker plant's turbine at idle works just as well for a fraction of the price?
    - alecco 5mo ago
      You can run nuclear (or gas or whatever) at a minimum to keep the network stable. Read my comments. Solar and wind are very unstable and unless you have the latest generation hardware (costing hundreds of millions) you need some stable source.
  - otherme123 5mo ago
    Nuclear was working as usual the day of the blackout and the previous days. What does it even mean to "protect the nuclear"? Give them free money for the sake of it? They are already facilities being paid to keep the system in sync, or "protected" as you say, and they are paid very handsomely. But someone got greedy, it seems. For one year we had to hear that the blackout was to blame on the renewables, and now that the final report is out and places zero blame on the shoulders of the renewables, we couldn't read anything in the newspapers (electric sector is a main supporter of local press through ads or indirect ownership), or we have to read incredible bad blame redirects like "this is on the government for not protecting nuclear".
aftbit 5mo ago
I agree with you on a few points: 1. Stable power grids are much easier with a mix of generation sources that includes substantial rotating mass and baseload generators. 2. Nuclear is awesome from a climate change and energy security point of view, and it would be amazing if it were cheaper or more valued. When power was primarily generated by thermal plants with big rotating masses, we got frequency control implicitly from the inertia of those generators. When there was a demand spike, the generators handled the millisecond to few seconds regime just by their inertia, while the seconds to minutes regime was handled by plant control systems increasing throttles or starting more peaker plants. I disagree that renewables themselves are the problem. Cheap solar energy does not have to mean that we shut down all the uneconomical generation sources, nor does it mean that we cannot do FCAS with modern technology. Battery electric storage systems have actually eaten much of the FCAS market in the USA, where they can respond way more effectively and efficiently than other systems in the 1 to 10 second regime. By and large, we don't store solar energy for use overnight - we store it (or really any energy) for use in smoothing short demand spikes. I would love to see more nuclear, and more advanced nuclear. Modern designs are safe, effective, and amazingly capable. They just aren't as cheap as paving the world with solar cells or burning natural gas left over as a fracking byproduct.
- jonatron 5mo ago
  Old power station turbines can be repurposed as inertia services via a stability market. Example in the UK: https://www.neso.energy/news/deeside-power-station-begins-world-first-power-system-stability-contract-national-grid-eso https://www.neso.energy/news/deeside-power-station-begins-wo...
  - ZeroGravitas 5mo ago
    Batteries are sweeping stability markets wherever they are set up. They're simply cheaper and better at it.
    - jonatron 5mo ago
      I'm not sure this is true in the UK at least, which may be because the grid operator is conservative / cautious https://www.energy-storage.news/uk-grid-forming-batteries-miss-out-in-system-stability-tender-as-synchronous-condensers-gas-get-contracts/ https://www.energy-storage.news/uk-grid-forming-batteries-mi...
ndr42 5mo ago
No that's not the case: However, several officials and energy experts have rejected the idea that renewables are to blame. EU energy commissioner, Dan Jørgensen, stated that there was "nothing unusual" about the electricity mix at the time of the blackout, and that the outage was not due to a "specific source energy". [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackou...
fundatus 5mo ago
> made the EU leadership turn and now they want nuclear They don't _actually_ want nuclear, luckily it's just lip service. Because it doesn't solve the problem surfaced by the US-Israel-Iran war: You'd still be dependent on other countries for your (nuclear) fuel needs.
- madspindel 5mo ago
  > You'd still be dependent on other countries for your (nuclear) fuel needs. Like Canada and in the future also Sweden? Two really hostile countries to be dependent on.
  - crote 5mo ago
    Sure, if you ignore the fact that Kazakhstan supplies about half of the world's uranium. Canada accounts for only 10%, and Sweden currently produces zero due to its extremely poor ore quality. The most promising additional uranium source is Australia. But if Europe wants security it should be sourcing it domestically - which just isn't going to happen.
- citrin_ru 5mo ago
  Dependency on nuclear fuel is less of a problem because you don't need to re-fuel a station often. Lack of gas creates a much more urgent problem.
nxh76 5mo ago
Also worth tracking whether consumption is increasing. Rebound Effect can kick in - when energy prices fall most people use more energy, produce/consume more junk, use more heat/cooling etc. Its like dealing with very low interest rates. It can produce a whole lot of brainless behaviour.
- crote 5mo ago
  Some countries are already (accidentally) solving this problem. The problem there is that they can't upgrade the grid fast enough at the neighborhood level. Combine that with residential electricity contracts where you pay the spot market price, and suddenly you've got a whole bunch of people who want to source or drain electricity at the same time, with a total capacity which far exceeds what their local grid is physically capable of. The solution is to change a grid connection fee which depends on the peak load, where drawing/supplying a steady 1kW during the day is significantly cheaper than doing 12kW for 2 hours and 0kW for 22 hours. You're incentivized to spread out your load, so you are less likely to fall for needless consumption of "free" electricity.
otherme123 5mo ago
> And this was a topic on TV shows with several experts alerting of this FOR MONTHS before the blackout. "Experts" that now are being proved wrong. In Spain we have a good share of "experts" that are practically hired by the electric industry to parrot their interests in TV and other media for months or even years. Half politicians end their career either in Iberdrola or Endesa or Naturgy, the other half in some bank.

PaulKeeble 5mo ago

The past few years has also had Solar continuing to decrease in price so its increasingly going to be the primary choice. On top of that battery prices have been plummeting too so that now Solar + battery is cheaper than other options like Nuclear and especially Gas. Most of the EU will be running on Wind and Solar in the coming years, its a change that is now rapidly occuring based entirely on the rare economics. Solar and Wind are half the price of anything else.

happosai 5mo ago
Not most of EU but geographically large and diverse and low-latitude countries will. Spain has winds from three different sea areas and is known sunny, so they are in a good position.
- joe_mamba 5mo ago
  Well that' doesn't always scan. Austria has a lot of wind, sun and hydro so its energy prices should be in line with Sweden, Norway, Denmark amongst the cheapest in Europe, and yet it's routinely amongst the more expensive in the EU.
  - ZeroGravitas 5mo ago
    Trading across borders seems to be a part of this story. If your local price is high you can import, if it's low you can export. If you're at the end of a grid and/or your transmission capacity is limited your price has the possibility to go higher or lower without that damping mechanism. Electricitymaps has a pricing layer which seems to show central Europe moving in sync when I randomly check it: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes?signal=electricity-price https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes?sig...
    - joe_mamba 5mo ago
      So energy in Spain is cheap because they produce a lot but can't sell a lot easily, and Austria/Central Europe is expensive because they sell their domestic energy too easily? If this is what you meant, then it sounds like an argument against free trade, if it means you keep ending up with the short stick.

pyrale 5mo ago

The author's point is that Spain's electricity is very cheap compared to other European countries thanks to its great electricity mix, etc. The reality is that Spain's electricity is cheap because it is relatively insulated from Europe's core network, because its interconnections with other countries are limited. In financial words, there is a spread with the rest of Europe because the ways to arbitrage that spread are extremely limited. If Spain was located near Germany and well interconnected, their prices would look like Germany's. And while cheap energy is pictured by op as a good thing, Spain understands very well that higher prices are good for its renewables industry, and is pressing for more interconnections[1]. The overall tone of the article feels like the author is here to extoll the virtues of renewables. [1]: https://www.ft.com/content/8e94079c-585f-11e4-b331-00144feab7de?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/8e94079c-585f-11e4-b331-00144feab...

miohtama 5mo ago
Hmm. Everyone should just disconnect Germany, let them freeze, and enjoy cheap electricity?
- noprocrasted 5mo ago
  Then you'd have people run extension cords across the border and selling their cheap electricity at inflated prices to their freezing neighbor.
- pyrale 5mo ago
  That's not my point. My point is that the price spread between EU electricity markets speaks more to the availability of interconnections than to the virtues of one country's electricity mix. The article gets to that conclusion because that's what it was looking for. The one question the article leaves open, but which is pretty relevant, is the question about who should pays for stability services to the grid.
  - watwut 5mo ago
    Absent interconnectivity, the spread of the price is literally virtues of the electricity mix. With interconnectivity, those virtues are less visible in local prices. They would be visible in earnings.

mono442 5mo ago

The reality is that expensive electricity in the EU is by design. The EU ETS imposes heavy taxes on fossil fuels (and they are set to increase even more), which in turn causes the price of electricity to rise. Fully renewable electricity generation is still a long way off, so this will continue for a long time. But it is entirely a self-imposed political problem and could easily be fixed by getting rid of the EU ETS or capping the price of emissions at a more reasonable level.

throawayonthe 5mo ago
why would you do that
gman83 5mo ago
Yeah, crippling Europe in the long term for short term gain might not be the best idea - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/15/critical-atlantic-current-significantly-more-likely-to-collapse-than-thought https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/15/critical...
- wolvoleo 5mo ago
  It's for long term gain. Energy independence, combating climate change which will cost more to mitigate than the energy costs.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
m463 5mo ago
It seems many markets have punitive pricing on electricity, california being one egregious example. In most places, if you buy more of something, you are a good customer, it is usually more economical to sell to you and you get a discount. In california people who use more kilowatts, pay more.
- Rygian 5mo ago
  Punitive pricing is a great thing. The less energy you spend to deliver value, the better for everyone.

TheGuyWhoCodes 5mo ago

Spain is one of the largest buyers of Russian LNG [1], even doubled in March compared to February 2026 and has been linked to servicing "shadow fleet" tankers carrying Russian oil [2]. Moral bankruptcy. [1] https://cepa.org/article/spains-baffling-russian-gas-addiction/ https://cepa.org/article/spains-baffling-russian-gas-addicti... [2] https://kyivindependent.com/spain-escorts-shadow-fleet-vessel-sanctioned-for-carrying-russian-oil-reuters-reports/ https://kyivindependent.com/spain-escorts-shadow-fleet-vesse...

znort_ 5mo ago
bs. all of the eu is doing this. the top importer is hungary, then france. and that's the official figures, not counting imports "rerouted" through other countries. regardless of inflamed speeches eu simply cannot operate without that energy. should have thought about that before starting a war with russia. best of lucks!
- oezi 5mo ago
  Ha, Europe didn't start the war and seems like Russia is only able to export half of what they used to despite re-routing much to China and India. https://energyandcleanair.org/january-2026-monthly-analysis-of-russian-fossil-fuel-exports-and-sanctions/ https://energyandcleanair.org/january-2026-monthly-analysis-...
- distances 5mo ago
  EU is gradually stopping all energy purchases from Russia. Long term contracts for LNG purchases stop end of this year, pipeline gas late next year. Oil imports from Russia are planned to come to end late next year, too. The days of Russian energy exports to EU are basically permanently over, and will not be reinstated even after the war has ended.

sunk1st 5mo ago

Maybe it's cheap compared to other European countries but that doesn't mean it's cheap. Electricity in Spain is expensive.

znort_ 5mo ago
it's in the article: wholesale energy price is among the cheapest in eu, but retail price to residents (including tolls, fees and taxes) is well over eu average. tells you something about spain ...
- cbmuser 5mo ago
  Might be because the article doesn’t tell you the whole story.
- BonitaPersona 5mo ago
  So the article is not telling the whole story. Wonder why they may have hyper-focused on only a part of the whole story.
  - zejn 5mo ago
    It is, but you have to read it and you need some degree of prior knowledge to understand it correctly, as with everything.

iamkrazy 5mo ago

Shhhh.... Don't let Sam Altman find out.

hokkos 5mo ago

Jan Rosenow doesn't know what he is talking about, power markets are not only day ahead market, but there are a lot of other maturities, CAL27 is higher in Spain than France or the Nordics. https://www.eex.com/en/market-data/market-data-hub https://www.eex.com/en/market-data/market-data-hub

cbmuser 5mo ago
Well, it’s HN. People love to spread articles that push renewables. In the meantime, France has the cleanest and cheapest electricity among the large countries in Europe.
zejn 5mo ago
That's some serious cherrypicking. Where CAL27 low is either limited interconnectors (Nordics and Spain) or major nuclear (France). The other countries have CAL27 over 80 eur.

gregwebs 5mo ago

I think Spain is showing that majority renewables can work, if you are willing to work through the pain. Someone needs to lead the way and figure out how to make it work, so I am glad they are doing it. I do think this article and most information is focused on cheer-leading rather than telling it like it is. This title of the article is misleading. Spain is one of the cheapest power generation markets, but In the article it states "Spanish households pay above the EU average". Then the reason is stated "Other system costs are rising. The flip side of getting energy cheap is paying more elsewhere to keep the system stable.". Spain of course also had a blackout and the article states "every country in Europe needs to modernise how it handles voltage stability". I believe that's code for "its harder to manager power transmission grids with renewables". I have been told by a power engineer that read the report on the blackout that the authors are going out of their way not to explicitly blame renewables, but these things that caused the blackout are bigger issues now due to the switch to renewables. But it makes sense for Spain to continue down this path and not pollute with coal or rely on other countries for gas imports.

j16sdiz 5mo ago

Power grid is the limiting factor, not power plant. Transporting energy can cost more than generating them.