Why has the price of electricity in Europe reached record highs? • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by calcifer » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

shakow wrote: post #111

lbriner wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reg…

> You can build a single wind turbine for what, $100K? Even a basic nuclear power plant is now around $50B A modern wind turbine will typically feature a 20 years lifetime and cost a few million dollars to produce a handful of MWs. On the other hand, we see nuclear power plants happily going over 50 years of service while producing power in the magnitude of a few GWs -- and they do not cost $50B to build, but somewhe…

> they do not cost $50B to build, but somewhere in the ballpark of a few $B

Which reactors are those? Hinkley Point C in the UK is £22.9 billion so far and is years away from completion. Likewise, Olkiluoto Unit 3 in Finland is up to €11 billion so far and also years from completion.

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

#162

Post by cbmuser » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #122

shakow wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can build a single wind turbine for what, $100K? Even a basic nuclear power plant is now around $50B A modern wind turbine will typically feature a 20 years lifetime and cost a few million dollars to produce a handful of MWs. On the other hand, we see nuclear power plants happily going over 50 years of service while producing power in the magnitude of a few GWs -- and they do not cost $50B to build, but somewhe…

Nuclear is just as bad in terms of following demand the capacity factor is at best 90% but involves weeks of downtime for refueling etc. Worse the economics only work out when production is kept close to 100% when available limiting adoption in a wider electric grid. France dealt with sub 70% capacity factors even with massive exports that’s roughly a 0.9/0.7 = 30% price hike per kWh. You can use batteries to level o…

All nuclear power plants in Germany are capable to be operated in load-follow mode, see:

> https://www.ktg.org/ktg-wAssets/docs/fg-bet-rph-lastfolgebet...

Also, nuclear power was never subsidized in Germany:

> https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/14/080/1408084.pdf (page 16, answer 27)

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

#163

Post by KingOfCoders » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

cbmuser wrote: post #152

fundatus wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be, but in total Germany is a net exporter of electricity.

That’s irrelevant since Germany is often exporting electricity at cheap or even negative prices. The net value also doesn’t buy you anything if you have to import electricity due to lack of local production. France can self-supply itself with electricity.

But it can't self supply with Kiwis. Whereas Isreal is self suffient on Kiwis but not on cars.

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

#164

Post by nradov » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #123

Arnt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either, since the income should justify the investment: One wants nuclear plant operators to have plenty of income, so as not to be tempted to save on maintenance. I agree entirely with the hubris argument. And it's a harsh one, because if an organisation claims to be more competent than the Japanese and and safety-minded too, why can't it persuade an insurer to sell it liability insurance on normal commercial terms,…

> if an organisation claims to be more competent than the Japanese and and safety-minded too, why can't it persuade an insurer to sell it liability insurance on normal commercial terms, at a justifiable price? It's because nobody else buys that amount of insurance. A hundred billion dollar insurance policy has significant risks and costs to the insurer completely independent of the actual risk of a claim. For one thi…

That's why huge insurance policies are typically syndicated across multiple insurers with reinsurance companies taking on part of the risk.

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

#165

Post by cbmuser » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #125

lbriner wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reg…

If you have gigawatt-sized gaps to fill in non-fossil generation, then it doesn't matter that something doesn't scale down, it's a problem if something doesn't scale up. It doesn't matter how much a single wind turbine costs, it matters how much a gigawatt of wind turbines costs and where you will place all of them.

Exactly. Cheap wind and solar electricity is useless if it isn’t produced on-demand.

It still blows my mind that so many have such a hard time grasping such a simple and fundamental concept.

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

#166

Post by cbmuser » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

legulere wrote: post #32

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.

That doesn’t make sense. Building new nuclear plants is among the most expensive forms of electricity generation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

That’s only when you compare the levelized costs of electricity and ignore the huge system costs of volatile renewables.

You don’t gain anything from cheap wind power if it’s not available when you actually need it.

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

#167

Post by vagrantJin » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #92

throwaway894345 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have the lithium/etc reserves to meet the storage needs for the entire planet? Nuclear is proven and if we claim to believe that climate change is an existential threat I don’t know why we would pin all our hopes on solar and wind and some to-be-discovered storage solution. To be clear, I’m not against solar and wind—on the contrary, I want a diverse clean energy portfolio. But wasting time emitting while we pr…

> Do we have the lithium/etc reserves to meet the storage needs for the entire planet? Yes. There are basically so many different chemistries (and non-chemical storage methods) that the important question is “which type should we prefer” rather than “can we even do it”.

Yeah, I don't think it's an either or science decision any more than its likely a business-cum-political situation.

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

#168

Post by JPKab » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

legulere wrote: post #156

cbmuser wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is supplying electricity to all of its neighbors and they’re trading in the same market. Thus, if electricity is scarse and expensive across Europe, French wholesale prices rise as well. FWIW, the French government forces EDF to sell the electricity to its national competitors at a fixed price of around 50 Euro/MWh, IIRC.

Germany is a net-exporter of electricity https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

"Net exporter" doesn't really matter for the specific conversation at hand.

A better way to quantify grid health would be to identify periods of peak demand across northwestern/central Europe, and then tally who is selling power to whom at those inflated prices.

I have solar panels on my home, as do most of the homes in my neighborhood. However, we recently had to have a natural gas substation built adjacent to the community to deal with the demand surges coinciding with supply disruptions (every time it snows).

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

#169

Post by cbmuser » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #109

adrianN wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fixed priced negotiated for Hinkley Point C is something like 90 GBP per MWh for the next 35 years.

The market spot price in the UK is at 150-200 GBP per MWh now.

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

#170

Post by Retric » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

shakow wrote: post #154

Retric wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is a net exporter of electricity to France 13.7TWh in 2017. But they trade a lot of power back and forth. https://www.agora-energiewende.de/fileadmin/Projekte/2018/Ja...

They are a net exporter because they have to sell their wind/solar power for cheap when they have too much of it, but are then forced to buy nuclear/hydro power from their neighbors when their coal power plants are not enough to compensate the ramp-up in demand and/or the lack of wind/sun. France could be electrically self-sufficient, Germany couldn't -- whether they would depend on FR/BE/NL/... being irrelevant.

France exports a lot of nuclear power on nights and weekends while importing power during peak demand. Their actually further from self sufficiency.

It gets more complicated on a euro per kWh basis as Frances nuclear is much more expensive so economically their losing money even if it looks better in terms of cash flows.