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Germany's electrical prices are mostly in line with it's neighbours, not super high. If a company makes good usage of batteries, they could actually have quite

Germany's electrical prices are mostly in line with it's neighbours, not super high. If a company makes good usage of batteries, they could actually have quite low prices since the electrical price undergoes huge swings throughout the day. All spring through fall the spot price goes to or near zero at midday almost daily. Throughout the winter, wind is a bit more random but causes spells of high prices and spells of low prices. The main thing causing electrical usage prices to be high in Germany is grid charges for the gigantic grid infrastructure buildout. Germany's electrical grid is one of the most resilient and interconnected in the world, and it's rapidly being upgraded to accommodate the huge build-out of wind, solar, and batteries that is underway. I agree that the government should probably shoulder more of these grid-costs to take some burden off of major industrial users.

umpalumpaaa 2mo ago
Even if prices were in line with Germanys neighbors, that does not mean a lot. Germanys industry is notoriously energy hungry. Germany is home of the biggest chemical companies in the world and they need easy access to gas, oil, electricity etc. Also the car industry is obviously still big. And so on. Most countries in the world lost their industrial base during the last 20-40 years but Germany kept it for the most part because of several factors. But this means that the average company in Germany needs easier and cheaper access to energy and raw materials than other average companies in other countries
- eigenspace 2mo ago
  I was just pointing out that the claim that it has abnormally high energy prices among developed nations isn't quite true. I do agree though, that even just having 'normal' energy prices for a developed nation makes it very hard to be an industrial powerhouse. IMO the only way forward is for Germany to build more energy infrastructure. Most importantly, we need more solar wind and batteries, but we also need upgrades to gas peaker plants, and more long-distance HVDC connections to neighbouring countries to better smooth out variations in weather that are inherent to intermittent renewables. Doubling down on fossil fuels won't bring down Germany's energy costs.
  - hunterpayne 2mo ago
    How is closing your nuclear plants working out for you? Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet. Germany has one of the dirtiest grids in the world and the dirtiest grid in the developed world. And for reference, a single NPP makes roughly 600 GW hours of power a month. Germany closed down about 15 NPPs which would make several times as much power as the solar PV in the article. More than enough to power everyone's ACs.
    - bryanlarsen 2mo ago
      15 * 600 GWh < 12B KWh. It'd be even worse if the nukes would be shut down due to lack of cooling water.
    - eigenspace 2mo ago
      Wow, impressive velocity of bullshit claims, but I guess one has to grade on a curve, this is Hacker News of course. > Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet. Renewables are replacing coal and nuclear simultaneously. Coal usage was consistently dropping before and has continued to consistently drop after the nuclear phase out. I agree if coal was banned before nuclear, the new renewable capacity added could have done more to replace a huge source of emissions faster. It was a failure of education, media, and political will that Germany phased out nuclear before coal. > Germany has one of the dirtiest grids in the world and the dirtiest grid in the developed world. Germany's grid is on average cleaner than the USA, Japan, South Korea and Australia's grids. It's only dirty by western european standards, not by the standards of developed countries. Certainly not by world standards. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly Germany is also on a better decarbonization trajectory than any of those countries other than Australia. > And for reference, a single NPP makes roughly 600 GW hours of power a month. Germany closed down about 15 NPPs which would make several times as much power as the solar PV in the article. More than enough to power everyone's ACs. Those 15 NPPs were not putting out anywhere near your claimed number. July 2017: 5.3 TWh July 2018: 6.1 TWh Julu 2019: 5.4 TWh July 2020: 4.2 TWh July 2021: 5.5 TWh July 2022: 2.9 TWh Calculated using API data from https://www.energy-charts.info https://www.energy-charts.info which gives the electricity mix on any given time or day as it evolves every 15 minute interval.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- Barrin92 2mo ago
  >Germany is home of the biggest chemical companies in the world Some of them are worth keeping but also some of them actually should go. Close to where I used to live in Düsseldorf there was a plastic bottle factory that employed 500 some people and it only continued to be open because it was apparently impossible to let anyone go, the entire thing was long uneconomic. Mind you even here in Germany our economy is 70% services, the bulk of the employment happens in the Mittelstand. The number of highly energy intensive companies is quite small. Reducing energy prices is good for consumers but more important are structural reforms. We have to good an education and too high a wage level to keep people working in plastic bottle factories. It actually made sense that some of those jobs left the US 30 years ago.
  - umpalumpaaa 2mo ago
    The number of big companies in that energy hungry sector is big compared to other countries. And it’s good that Germany managed to keep this industry going. Also those big companies fuel much of what the Mittelstand does. Please lookup biggest chemical companies in the world and you will see that Germany is well represented. It’s just unnecessary to let that industry “go”. If it dies in Germany and flourishes in let’s say China the climate has not won anything but Germany lost an entire industry. This mix (big industrial companies, lots of smaller mittelstand companies paired with a big services sector) is what makes Germany so uniquely resilient. This is the biggest potential problem for Germany. Reducing resilience, giving up stability
KellyCriterion 2mo ago
-- If a company makes good usage of batteries, they could actually have quite low prices since the electrical price undergoes huge swings throughout the day -- Either, you are not from Germany or your example is a clear MBA-101-Bobo-Textbook example :-D
woodpanel 2mo ago
> Germany's electrical prices are mostly in line with it's neighbours PL: ~21ct/kWh LX: ~20ct/kWh AT: ~19ct/kWh NL: ~19ct/kWh BE: ~17ct/kWh FR: ~16ct/kWh DK: ~9ct/kWh Germany: 23ct/kWh (or: about 25% higher than the EU average)[0] Of course Germany "is mostly in line" if your ideology depends on it. [0] https://cubeconcepts.de/en/europes-industrial-electricity-prices-2024/ https://cubeconcepts.de/en/europes-industrial-electricity-pr...
- hunterpayne 2mo ago
  For reference, that's about 4x the worldwide average electricity price.
  - woodpanel 2mo ago
    Exactly. I'm starting to wonder how much higher our neighbors' prices are thanks to our excessive excess-energy emergency-dumping during green-energy peaks. How much of that "EU average" is "Germany as a cost externality for its neighbouring energy grids"?
    - mono442 2mo ago
      Electricity is expensive in the EU because of the EU ETS.
    - uecker 2mo ago
      How does "emergency-dumping" create cost to neighbors? But what you miss is that most of the EU now has a lot of renewables.
      - woodpanel 2mo ago
        dude. you need infrastructure to have your grid deal with the sudden spikes and sudden drops for it to not go up in flames. why do you think those German excess energy dumps regulary end up having negative prices? Because Germany at some point willingly pays its neighbors for not having its own grid black out.

umpalumpaaa 2mo ago

Even if prices were in line with Germanys neighbors, that does not mean a lot. Germanys industry is notoriously energy hungry. Germany is home of the biggest chemical companies in the world and they need easy access to gas, oil, electricity etc. Also the car industry is obviously still big. And so on. Most countries in the world lost their industrial base during the last 20-40 years but Germany kept it for the most part because of several factors. But this means that the average company in Germany needs easier and cheaper access to energy and raw materials than other average companies in other countries

eigenspace 2mo ago
I was just pointing out that the claim that it has abnormally high energy prices among developed nations isn't quite true. I do agree though, that even just having 'normal' energy prices for a developed nation makes it very hard to be an industrial powerhouse. IMO the only way forward is for Germany to build more energy infrastructure. Most importantly, we need more solar wind and batteries, but we also need upgrades to gas peaker plants, and more long-distance HVDC connections to neighbouring countries to better smooth out variations in weather that are inherent to intermittent renewables. Doubling down on fossil fuels won't bring down Germany's energy costs.
- hunterpayne 2mo ago
  How is closing your nuclear plants working out for you? Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet. Germany has one of the dirtiest grids in the world and the dirtiest grid in the developed world. And for reference, a single NPP makes roughly 600 GW hours of power a month. Germany closed down about 15 NPPs which would make several times as much power as the solar PV in the article. More than enough to power everyone's ACs.
  - bryanlarsen 2mo ago
    15 * 600 GWh < 12B KWh. It'd be even worse if the nukes would be shut down due to lack of cooling water.
  - eigenspace 2mo ago
    Wow, impressive velocity of bullshit claims, but I guess one has to grade on a curve, this is Hacker News of course. > Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet. Renewables are replacing coal and nuclear simultaneously. Coal usage was consistently dropping before and has continued to consistently drop after the nuclear phase out. I agree if coal was banned before nuclear, the new renewable capacity added could have done more to replace a huge source of emissions faster. It was a failure of education, media, and political will that Germany phased out nuclear before coal. > Germany has one of the dirtiest grids in the world and the dirtiest grid in the developed world. Germany's grid is on average cleaner than the USA, Japan, South Korea and Australia's grids. It's only dirty by western european standards, not by the standards of developed countries. Certainly not by world standards. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly Germany is also on a better decarbonization trajectory than any of those countries other than Australia. > And for reference, a single NPP makes roughly 600 GW hours of power a month. Germany closed down about 15 NPPs which would make several times as much power as the solar PV in the article. More than enough to power everyone's ACs. Those 15 NPPs were not putting out anywhere near your claimed number. July 2017: 5.3 TWh July 2018: 6.1 TWh Julu 2019: 5.4 TWh July 2020: 4.2 TWh July 2021: 5.5 TWh July 2022: 2.9 TWh Calculated using API data from https://www.energy-charts.info https://www.energy-charts.info which gives the electricity mix on any given time or day as it evolves every 15 minute interval.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
Barrin92 2mo ago
>Germany is home of the biggest chemical companies in the world Some of them are worth keeping but also some of them actually should go. Close to where I used to live in Düsseldorf there was a plastic bottle factory that employed 500 some people and it only continued to be open because it was apparently impossible to let anyone go, the entire thing was long uneconomic. Mind you even here in Germany our economy is 70% services, the bulk of the employment happens in the Mittelstand. The number of highly energy intensive companies is quite small. Reducing energy prices is good for consumers but more important are structural reforms. We have to good an education and too high a wage level to keep people working in plastic bottle factories. It actually made sense that some of those jobs left the US 30 years ago.
- umpalumpaaa 2mo ago
  The number of big companies in that energy hungry sector is big compared to other countries. And it’s good that Germany managed to keep this industry going. Also those big companies fuel much of what the Mittelstand does. Please lookup biggest chemical companies in the world and you will see that Germany is well represented. It’s just unnecessary to let that industry “go”. If it dies in Germany and flourishes in let’s say China the climate has not won anything but Germany lost an entire industry. This mix (big industrial companies, lots of smaller mittelstand companies paired with a big services sector) is what makes Germany so uniquely resilient. This is the biggest potential problem for Germany. Reducing resilience, giving up stability

KellyCriterion 2mo ago

-- If a company makes good usage of batteries, they could actually have quite low prices since the electrical price undergoes huge swings throughout the day -- Either, you are not from Germany or your example is a clear MBA-101-Bobo-Textbook example :-D

woodpanel 2mo ago

> Germany's electrical prices are mostly in line with it's neighbours PL: ~21ct/kWh LX: ~20ct/kWh AT: ~19ct/kWh NL: ~19ct/kWh BE: ~17ct/kWh FR: ~16ct/kWh DK: ~9ct/kWh Germany: 23ct/kWh (or: about 25% higher than the EU average)[0] Of course Germany "is mostly in line" if your ideology depends on it. [0] https://cubeconcepts.de/en/europes-industrial-electricity-prices-2024/ https://cubeconcepts.de/en/europes-industrial-electricity-pr...

hunterpayne 2mo ago
For reference, that's about 4x the worldwide average electricity price.
- woodpanel 2mo ago
  Exactly. I'm starting to wonder how much higher our neighbors' prices are thanks to our excessive excess-energy emergency-dumping during green-energy peaks. How much of that "EU average" is "Germany as a cost externality for its neighbouring energy grids"?
  - mono442 2mo ago
    Electricity is expensive in the EU because of the EU ETS.
  - uecker 2mo ago
    How does "emergency-dumping" create cost to neighbors? But what you miss is that most of the EU now has a lot of renewables.
    - woodpanel 2mo ago
      dude. you need infrastructure to have your grid deal with the sudden spikes and sudden drops for it to not go up in flames. why do you think those German excess energy dumps regulary end up having negative prices? Because Germany at some point willingly pays its neighbors for not having its own grid black out.