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Germany’s solar power suppliers are destabilizing big power companies.
- anizan 14y agoGerman energy prices are like 2$ KW/h or one of the most expensive in the world. Its not hard to disrupt that when put in context
- tobiasu 14y agoThe price is around 0.30E/kWh or less for consumers...
- anizan 14y agoyour right i must be confusing it with LCOE for nuclear
- claudius 14y ago0.30 €/kWh already? Does that include only green energy? Three years ago I paid about 0.17-21€/kWh, though the supplier included nuclear as well as fossil energy.
- tobiasu 14y agoThat was only a rough number, more like a reasonable (upper) limit. As you probably know prices vary depending on volume, energy "source", supplier etc.
- claudius 14y agoWell, $2/kWh is also an upper limit ;) - I simply didn’t expect anything remotely in this region, for me, a kWh is still about 20 cents or roughly 1/3 less than this upper limit.
- philipp-de 14y agoI use naturstrom.de They only supply energy from renewable energy sources and their current rate is 25,75 cent (euro) per kw/h See https://www.naturstrom.de/unser-strom/privatkunden/unser-angebot/ https://www.naturstrom.de/unser-strom/privatkunden/unser-ang...
- mtgx 14y agoWho cares? That's what disruptive innovations do. They destabilize and mostly eliminate the incumbents. The future is everyone having their own energy source at home, fully decentralized, without the need for "power companies". I'm thinking even beyond solar here, although solar will definitely be the majority of this in the next few decades.
- claudius 14y ago> Until researchers can find a way to store energy at a large scale, coal and nuclear plants—which can’t simply be switched on and off at will—must be kept running to guarantee a steady stream of electricity when the sun isn’t shining. This is simply wrong – natural gas plants can already be switched off and on in a matter of minutes to secure appropriate supplies in case the sun isn’t shining anywhere AND there is no wind whatsoever. There is absolutely no need for nuclear or even coal plants as a ‘steady stream of electricity’ (though fusion is still pretty cool :)).
- vellum 14y ago>natural gas plants can already be switched off and on They can be, but unless the government steps in to subsidize them, it's not very profitable. Due to low gas prices, a lot of European gas plants are being shut down. http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-12/europe-gas-carnage-shown-by-eon-closing-3-year-old-plant-energy.html http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-12/europe-gas-carna...
- DanBC 14y agoThis is really confusing. I'm constantly told that prices for gas[1] are high (partly because of various shenanigans in Europe and Russia) and that there's a dash for gas. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-21913374 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-21913374) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21903837 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21903837) [1] Natural gas, not petrol.
- arethuza 14y agoThat says it's closing due to low electricity prices not low gas prices.
- velodrome 14y agoThe real problem is the battery. It is not improving as fast as everything else...
- yessql 14y agoSMA, a big German inverter company, shows the daily amount of PV generated in the country. Today, they hit nearly 18 GW. I'll bet they have at least one 30 GW day this year, once the sun finally comes out. http://www.sma.de/en/company/pv-electricity-produced-in-germany.html http://www.sma.de/en/company/pv-electricity-produced-in-germ...
- chazchaz101 14y agoIf this is really such a large problem for the companies, they should switch to setting rates based on real-time availability rather than traditional peak hours.