4 ms·

Here is an analysis from Germany: Quarter-hourly spot prices compared to the share of renewable energy generation in total generation. A higher share of renewab

by boshomi 28d ago

Here is an analysis from Germany: Quarter-hourly spot prices compared to the share of renewable energy generation in total generation. A higher share of renewables puts massive downward pressure on the spot market electricity price. https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/price_scatter/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&bzn=DE-LU&renewable_share_of_generation=1 https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/price_scatter/chart.ht... Since price elasticity for electricity is very high, the market cap decreases by approximately €150,000 for every additional GWh of renewable energy production. A single additional offshore wind turbine with an annual output of 60 GWh reduces the combined revenue of all electricity producers by about €9 million per year that it is in operation. Blocking wind power and solar projects only serves to secure the profits of monopolists and oligopolists in the electricity market, but causes massive harm to the economy.

High-Five 28d ago
Good link. Germany is the case where it works cleanly — more renewables, lower price, lower carbon, all moving the same direction.
- leonidasrup 28d ago
  No amount of solar panels will generate electricity without sun light. Also the amount sun light can shrink quite a lot in winter months at high latitudes and under cloud cover. No amount of wind turbines will generate electricity without wind, or to be more precise: Cut-in speed: 3–4 m/s (12–15 km/h) to begin spinning and producing power. Cut-out / Stop speed: Above 25 m/s (90 km/h) where brakes are applied to prevent mechanical damage Germany has to have backups, currently quite expensive, for all this times of missing renewables production.
  - flaburgan 28d ago
    I think the point is, if you can decide when to consume electricity then you will do it when it's the cheapest, so let's put the cheapest when the low carbon sources are available. So the website is taking into account that renewables are not always available, that's exactly its point. And the backup source for Germany is the nuclear electricity from France. The grid is at the European scale.
  - boshomi 28d ago
    The apparent volatility of electricity generation from a single wind turbine is negligible, because what counts is the wind and PV output over large areas. Due to regular weather fronts, electricity output from wind and PV in Europe is surprisingly stable; when there is less sunshine, there is more wind. In 2025, for example, the weekly electricity output from wind and solar PV was 14.0 TWh, with no week falling below 10.5 TWh. If more wind power were installed in Eastern Europe, the curves would flatten out even further. https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&c=EU&interval=week&legendItems=lw3w1&week=-1&partsum=0&year=2025 https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&...
    - BenoitP 28d ago
      Took your link, changed de to en, reduced granularity weekly to daily. It looks way more spiky: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=EU&interval=day&legendItems=lw3w1&partsum=0&year=2025 https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&... Also, both wind and solar (especially solar) change vastly under a sub-daily aggregation.
    - leonidasrup 28d ago
      Yes, single wind turbine is negligible, what counts is the wind and PV output over extremely large areas because weather fronts are correlated over hundreds of km. Of course night/day cycle is correlated over whole Europe with few hours shift. So in 100% renewables Europe scenario, you have build multiples of renewable production in each region. You build enough renewables in Western Europe to power the whole Europe, you build enough renewables in Central Europe to power the whole Europe and you build enough renewables in Eastern Europe to power the whole Europe and build electric grid to transfer 2/3s of electricity produced in each region into other regions. Can it be done? Yes, but it will be very expensive. Many renewable energy modelers often ignore realities and costs of physical electric grid and model whole continent as copper plate which can transfer infinite amount of electricity from each to point to any other point. For more realistic scenarios German government is looking into power-to-gas energy storage systems, where you convert renewable electricity to hydrogen, ammonia or ethanol and store it underground. There are also plans to import large part of these gases/liquids from other countries, so no energy independence in the future. https://www.bundeswirtschaftsministerium.de/Redaktion/EN/Pressemitteilungen/2024/07/20240724-import-strategy-hydrogen.html https://www.bundeswirtschaftsministerium.de/Redaktion/EN/Pre... https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-revise-hydrogen-subsidies-increase-focus-imports-official https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-revise-hydrogen...
jstimpfle 28d ago
This is interesting, but now explain why Germany has both the highest electricity prices in Europe as well as a relatively high CO2 footprint from electricity? Germany is buying not only nuclear but also coal energy from neighbouring countries. Will this be fixed at some point or is the German model not actually as good as you imply?
- throwaway473825 28d ago
  The main reason why electricity is expensive in Germany is because it's taxed to oblivion. Even when wholesale prices are negative, electricity costs about three times as much as gas. Now you might ask why electricity is taxed to oblivion. Some don't like nuclear or coal. Some prefer oil or gas. In the end, there's a majority that wants electricity to be expensive.
  - jstimpfle 28d ago
    I was under the impression that the taxes are going into infrastructure and grants for renewable energies, meaning those energy prices are maybe way higher than advertised. Funny thing is we are constantly being told how cheap reneweables are to produce but apparently there are other costs involved.
    - jstimpfle 28d ago
      FTR and for the inevitable downvoters, I am not a fan of fossil energy. I am merely a fan of well presented arguments, and downvotes aren't that.
    - holgerschurig 27d ago
      Well, that impression is wrong. The german word for "Taxes" is "Steuer". And they go to one of the 3 levels of our government: Federal level, the 16 states, municipalities / communes. And yes, we pay VAT (19%) and electricty tax (0.0205 € / kWh). But we also pay other things, like Konzessionsabgabe, KWKG-Umlage, AbN and Offshore-Netzumlage. They have various reasons: AbN is used to make electricity artificially cheaper for ecenomically important companies that have a high usage of electricity. So this doesn't go to government, it's no tax. KWKG (Kraft-Wärme-Kopplungs-Gesetz) is payed to keep the oil and gas power plants in operation. We now have so much renewable energy, they it wouldn't be economically feasible to operate them -- they have quite low duty cycles these days. They are however important for the quality of the whole network. So this doesn't go to government, it's no tax. Konzessionsabgabe could perhaps counted as tax. The lines of the electric grid go over public property. Or they use the area below the pedestrian sidewalks. And so they have to pay for it. So this doesn't go to government, it's no tax, more a rent. Offshore-Netzumlage is because we have sooooo much electric wind power in the north and baltic sea, but most bigger industry is in the south. It is used to pay for the new electric trasses. So this doesn't go to government, it's no tax. Also, electric power in Germany is both cheap and expensive. The internal price is often cheap. But the price to end-customers is often expensive. One part of that is that many end-customers don't switch their electricity power. In history, we had local power distributors, often in the hand of the city or the county. But since perhaps 20 years one can now just select anyone, whoever has the lowest price. However, the majority of the germans stay (due to lazyness?) with their local providers. Which are usually on the more costly side. Source so far: https://strom-report.com/strompreis-zusammensetzung/ https://strom-report.com/strompreis-zusammensetzung/ Also we should not forget that Germany has one of the best electric grids in Germany. We can take the SAIDI and compare electric grids of regions or countries. And in Europe, Germany has the lowest SAIDI of all large industrial countries. Some have a lower SAIDI, but they are tiny-states. So, what is SAIDI? The System Average Interuption Duration Index --- or how long per year and customer the power is out. And here we're better than e.g. Austria, France, Belgium, Sweden ... but also MUCH better than the USA, which seem to have exceptional shaggy electric grids. So price is one thing... but that you can depend on the electric power in Germany, but maybe not abroad, is another thing. Source for SAIDI: Germany and english language Wikipedia, Bundesnetzagentur
BenoitP 28d ago
It'd be really great if wind turbines across Germany were producing at uncorrelated times. Let's look at the wind right now: uniform wind across Germany: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/09/04/1200Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-348.66,46.32,2614 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/09/04/1200Z/wind/surface/... Let's look at the wind earlier: uniformly no wind across Germany: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/09/02/0000Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-348.50,48.23,2614 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/09/02/0000Z/wind/surface/... Hmmmm.

by boshomi 28d ago

High-Five 28d ago

Good link. Germany is the case where it works cleanly — more renewables, lower price, lower carbon, all moving the same direction.

leonidasrup 28d ago
No amount of solar panels will generate electricity without sun light. Also the amount sun light can shrink quite a lot in winter months at high latitudes and under cloud cover. No amount of wind turbines will generate electricity without wind, or to be more precise: Cut-in speed: 3–4 m/s (12–15 km/h) to begin spinning and producing power. Cut-out / Stop speed: Above 25 m/s (90 km/h) where brakes are applied to prevent mechanical damage Germany has to have backups, currently quite expensive, for all this times of missing renewables production.
- flaburgan 28d ago
  I think the point is, if you can decide when to consume electricity then you will do it when it's the cheapest, so let's put the cheapest when the low carbon sources are available. So the website is taking into account that renewables are not always available, that's exactly its point. And the backup source for Germany is the nuclear electricity from France. The grid is at the European scale.
- boshomi 28d ago
  The apparent volatility of electricity generation from a single wind turbine is negligible, because what counts is the wind and PV output over large areas. Due to regular weather fronts, electricity output from wind and PV in Europe is surprisingly stable; when there is less sunshine, there is more wind. In 2025, for example, the weekly electricity output from wind and solar PV was 14.0 TWh, with no week falling below 10.5 TWh. If more wind power were installed in Eastern Europe, the curves would flatten out even further. https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&c=EU&interval=week&legendItems=lw3w1&week=-1&partsum=0&year=2025 https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&...
  - BenoitP 28d ago
    Took your link, changed de to en, reduced granularity weekly to daily. It looks way more spiky: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=EU&interval=day&legendItems=lw3w1&partsum=0&year=2025 https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&... Also, both wind and solar (especially solar) change vastly under a sub-daily aggregation.
  - leonidasrup 28d ago
    Yes, single wind turbine is negligible, what counts is the wind and PV output over extremely large areas because weather fronts are correlated over hundreds of km. Of course night/day cycle is correlated over whole Europe with few hours shift. So in 100% renewables Europe scenario, you have build multiples of renewable production in each region. You build enough renewables in Western Europe to power the whole Europe, you build enough renewables in Central Europe to power the whole Europe and you build enough renewables in Eastern Europe to power the whole Europe and build electric grid to transfer 2/3s of electricity produced in each region into other regions. Can it be done? Yes, but it will be very expensive. Many renewable energy modelers often ignore realities and costs of physical electric grid and model whole continent as copper plate which can transfer infinite amount of electricity from each to point to any other point. For more realistic scenarios German government is looking into power-to-gas energy storage systems, where you convert renewable electricity to hydrogen, ammonia or ethanol and store it underground. There are also plans to import large part of these gases/liquids from other countries, so no energy independence in the future. https://www.bundeswirtschaftsministerium.de/Redaktion/EN/Pressemitteilungen/2024/07/20240724-import-strategy-hydrogen.html https://www.bundeswirtschaftsministerium.de/Redaktion/EN/Pre... https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-revise-hydrogen-subsidies-increase-focus-imports-official https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-revise-hydrogen...

jstimpfle 28d ago

This is interesting, but now explain why Germany has both the highest electricity prices in Europe as well as a relatively high CO2 footprint from electricity? Germany is buying not only nuclear but also coal energy from neighbouring countries. Will this be fixed at some point or is the German model not actually as good as you imply?

throwaway473825 28d ago
The main reason why electricity is expensive in Germany is because it's taxed to oblivion. Even when wholesale prices are negative, electricity costs about three times as much as gas. Now you might ask why electricity is taxed to oblivion. Some don't like nuclear or coal. Some prefer oil or gas. In the end, there's a majority that wants electricity to be expensive.
- jstimpfle 28d ago
  I was under the impression that the taxes are going into infrastructure and grants for renewable energies, meaning those energy prices are maybe way higher than advertised. Funny thing is we are constantly being told how cheap reneweables are to produce but apparently there are other costs involved.
  - jstimpfle 28d ago
    FTR and for the inevitable downvoters, I am not a fan of fossil energy. I am merely a fan of well presented arguments, and downvotes aren't that.
  - holgerschurig 27d ago
    Well, that impression is wrong. The german word for "Taxes" is "Steuer". And they go to one of the 3 levels of our government: Federal level, the 16 states, municipalities / communes. And yes, we pay VAT (19%) and electricty tax (0.0205 € / kWh). But we also pay other things, like Konzessionsabgabe, KWKG-Umlage, AbN and Offshore-Netzumlage. They have various reasons: AbN is used to make electricity artificially cheaper for ecenomically important companies that have a high usage of electricity. So this doesn't go to government, it's no tax. KWKG (Kraft-Wärme-Kopplungs-Gesetz) is payed to keep the oil and gas power plants in operation. We now have so much renewable energy, they it wouldn't be economically feasible to operate them -- they have quite low duty cycles these days. They are however important for the quality of the whole network. So this doesn't go to government, it's no tax. Konzessionsabgabe could perhaps counted as tax. The lines of the electric grid go over public property. Or they use the area below the pedestrian sidewalks. And so they have to pay for it. So this doesn't go to government, it's no tax, more a rent. Offshore-Netzumlage is because we have sooooo much electric wind power in the north and baltic sea, but most bigger industry is in the south. It is used to pay for the new electric trasses. So this doesn't go to government, it's no tax. Also, electric power in Germany is both cheap and expensive. The internal price is often cheap. But the price to end-customers is often expensive. One part of that is that many end-customers don't switch their electricity power. In history, we had local power distributors, often in the hand of the city or the county. But since perhaps 20 years one can now just select anyone, whoever has the lowest price. However, the majority of the germans stay (due to lazyness?) with their local providers. Which are usually on the more costly side. Source so far: https://strom-report.com/strompreis-zusammensetzung/ https://strom-report.com/strompreis-zusammensetzung/ Also we should not forget that Germany has one of the best electric grids in Germany. We can take the SAIDI and compare electric grids of regions or countries. And in Europe, Germany has the lowest SAIDI of all large industrial countries. Some have a lower SAIDI, but they are tiny-states. So, what is SAIDI? The System Average Interuption Duration Index --- or how long per year and customer the power is out. And here we're better than e.g. Austria, France, Belgium, Sweden ... but also MUCH better than the USA, which seem to have exceptional shaggy electric grids. So price is one thing... but that you can depend on the electric power in Germany, but maybe not abroad, is another thing. Source for SAIDI: Germany and english language Wikipedia, Bundesnetzagentur

BenoitP 28d ago

It'd be really great if wind turbines across Germany were producing at uncorrelated times. Let's look at the wind right now: uniform wind across Germany: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/09/04/1200Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-348.66,46.32,2614 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/09/04/1200Z/wind/surface/... Let's look at the wind earlier: uniformly no wind across Germany: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/09/02/0000Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-348.50,48.23,2614 https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/09/02/0000Z/wind/surface/... Hmmmm.