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Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs?

economist.com

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Re: Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs?

#101

Post by lbriner »

mem0r1 wrote: post #6

Not building new nuclear power plants in the last 30 years was a major mistake, in terms of energy supply security as well as CO2 emissions.

They are also enormously expensive to construct and don't scale down. You can build a single wind turbine for what, $100K? Even a basic nuclear power plant is now around $50B, which is a large chunk of change to take away from taxpayers leaving even less money to research more renewable/sustainable alternatives.

I do think that a better policy decision over the past 30 years would be to be more strict on building regulations to ensure good levels of insulation at construction time, which is much cheaper than retro-fitting. Also making sure it is done properly, I've seen plenty of builds where a few sections of insulation are missing because the builder ran out and no-one really checked.

Re: Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs?

#102

Post by jabl »

mhandley wrote: post #10

The strike price for nuclear power from Hinkley Point C when it becomes operational will be £92.50/MWh. This has received a lot of criticism for being too high. With current wholesale rates at £385/MWh, suddenly Hinkley Point C doesn't look so expensive any more.

Well, the price for HPC is very expensive. The stupid thing is that by structuring the subsidy in a smarter way the UK could have gotten it at half the price. I've seen no reason why they did it how they did except adherence to some ideological dogma. Or putting my conspiracy glasses on, maybe some politically well-connected bankers in London made off like robbers at the expense of the public at large.

Re: Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs?

#103

Post by lbriner »

kragen wrote: post #53
mdp2021 wrote: post #3

I do not quite understand why countries with large production such as France, which I remembered exported an interesting amount, seem to be hit severely (+50%). I thought they should have suffered less the unfortunate conjuncture.

Maybe French generators are free to export their production to those who are willing to pay higher prices, rather than selling it domestically, just as LNG exporters are free to export their LNG to China instead of France if the Chinese can pay more. In that case, energy shortages in Germany would raise prices in France.

In an energy market, contracts are signed for months an/or years. If France thinks it has plenty of gas supply, it can agree to sell electricity capacity to other countries, when the gas goes away, they can't just cancel the contracts.

Re: Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs?

#104

Post by lbriner »

hanoz wrote: post #57

Several UK domestic energy suppliers are now on the verge of bankruptcy it seems, and seeking emergency loans from the government. At this time of year almost all of their customers will be many hundreds of pounds in credit with them. That money is supposed to be protected, but still it's a bit of a worry.

Some have already gone bust. I don't think the concern is the credit money, the problem is getting moved to another provider and instantly paying a higher rate than before.

Re: Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs?

#105

Post by [deleted] »

roenxi wrote: post #50
Arnt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, if you want: Not building twice as many (wind/anything) was a major mistake. Nuclear power plants fail sometimes, just like the wind fails. In 2016 almost a third of the plants in France were offline at the same time, some for planned maintenance, some unplanned, and the peak prices were higher than now. All these things are fixable by overbuilding enough. There's nothing special or magic about nuclear.

> There's nothing special or magic about nuclear. Apart from the technology, safety profile and generally being the cleanest source of energy ever discovered. And being able to stockpile enormous amounts of energy in a small heap if necessary ^^. And if we could just convince people to accept it only causing say, half as much damage as coal it would be ridiculously cheap too. These appallingly high safety standards a…

[deleted]

Re: Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs?

#106

Post by pjmlp »

dan-robertson wrote: post #84
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including the ability to develop sails that allow taking advantage of Wind in the opposing direction. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateen

What is the relevance of sailing upwind to the doldrums (where there was little wind) or to trade winds (which reasonably consistently blew in the same direction as the trade)? Even the article you linked suggested that early modern sailors would change to a square rigging once they got out of the changing winds of the Mediterranean. So clearly there were some advantages to square rigs (perhaps they could be made lar…

Like polyglot development nowadays, naturally the best ones wouldn't bet their ship in a single technology.

Re: Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs?

#107

Post by jabl »

dan-robertson wrote: post #84
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including the ability to develop sails that allow taking advantage of Wind in the opposing direction. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateen

What is the relevance of sailing upwind to the doldrums (where there was little wind) or to trade winds (which reasonably consistently blew in the same direction as the trade)? Even the article you linked suggested that early modern sailors would change to a square rigging once they got out of the changing winds of the Mediterranean. So clearly there were some advantages to square rigs (perhaps they could be made lar…

> So clearly there were some advantages to square rigs

They are generally considered to be more efficient in a following wind. Also an accidental gybe with a large fore-and-aft rigged sail can be a very dangerous affair.

Re: Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs?

#108

Post by ben_w »

tjansen wrote: post #82
ben_w wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is not even technology that would scale up enough to store a country's power for weeks or at least a few days. Don’t mistake a manufacturing limit for a tech scaling limit. While it may take decades to get there, batteries could do that; in the mean time, intercontinental HVDC connections could substitute for some of that storage (not all the storage all at once unless mining increases, but certainly plausibl…

I guess a manufacturing limit is bad enough. The global battery production is expected to reach 2063 GWh/year by 2028 [0]. That wouldn't be enough to store China's electricity consumption for a single hour. The production would need an increase by several orders of magnitude. Are there enough raw materials for this? How much waste would there be, given the limited lifespan of those batteries? What about a no-wind sce…

> The production would need an increase by several orders of magnitude.

Yes, but that doesn’t itself seem like an implausible economic shift given how large the existing fossil fuel sector is.

Challenging, sure — perhaps it is politically impossible, I wouldn’t know as I’m not at all politically astute — but physically it seems fine.

> Are there enough raw materials for this?

That part at least is fine. Earth is big, and while lithium is in the category “rare Earths”, it isn’t all that rare compared to what we need, and even if it was lithium isn’t even the only option for storage.

One of the things suggested in your [2] was long-distance HVDC to different weather zones, and Scandinavian (hydro? I’m unclear) storage. In principle we could also do antipodal HVDC (different time zone for day/night, different hemisphere for summer/winter), though on a previous thread I was encouraged to do the maths and realised the EU collectively would use a 1m^2 cross section conductor for current HVDC designs (if you wanted 100% substitution rather than it being merely part of the solution), and this will take quite a long time to mine at current rates.

> How much waste would there be, given the limited lifespan of those batteries?

No idea, but the current alternatives are “set lots of it on fire” (fossil fuels) and “bury a tiny quantity of extraordinarily dangerous stuff in scary artwork for geological timescales” (nuclear), and all it has to do is beat those.

IIRC the end-of-life batteries can be processed back into their raw material more easily than can the rocks we start with for fresh batteries.

Re: Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs?

#109

Post by bcrosby95 »

adrianN wrote: post #14
mem0r1 wrote: post #6

Not building new nuclear power plants in the last 30 years was a major mistake, in terms of energy supply security as well as CO2 emissions.

But also in terms of cost? Nuclear power plants are not exactly cheap.

At this point nuclear is the most expensive per mw. And the vast majority of that expense is upfront. So almost no one wants to invest in these things because they're incredibly risky.

Re: Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs?

#110

Post by _ph_ »

tjansen wrote: post #58
Arnt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, if you want: Not building twice as many (wind/anything) was a major mistake. Nuclear power plants fail sometimes, just like the wind fails. In 2016 almost a third of the plants in France were offline at the same time, some for planned maintenance, some unplanned, and the peak prices were higher than now. All these things are fixable by overbuilding enough. There's nothing special or magic about nuclear.

You can't compare 1/3rd of all plants being down with the volatility of wind power. On November 3, 2015, German wind power generated only 0.2 GW. Its power rating at that time was over 40 GW. How do you want to compensate for that?

By having other power sources as well. Starting with offshore wind, then of course, solar cells. Build up more storage (both biological gas and synthetic gas, water, batteries), strengthen the European networks. The chance is very good that on windless days in Germany, there will be quite a bit of wind in France. Same with solar. A 1 GW DC line to Norway was put into operation just recently. And of course, we can keep all those gas power plants in reserve for those few days per year when nothing other is sufficient. The goal should first be, not requiring them to run on a day to day basis.
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