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

Post by ben_w » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

jhgb wrote: post #231

ben_w wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

> while lithium is in the category “rare Earths” No, it's not. Where did you get that from? Surely not from elementary school chemistry lessons, where you're taught that lithium is an alkali metal.

Post by kzrdude » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

omegalulw wrote: post #250

wonderwonder wrote: post #232

Didn't see it in the article but what % has consumer prices increased by? How do people survive inflation on food prices, massively inflated housing costs and now massive power increases while living on wages that have essentially not increased for a very long time?

The increase is in the first paragraph of the article.

Post by Symbiote » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #117

dan-robertson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French generation is ~70% nuclear (10% wind/solar) and German is ~10% (~40% wind/solar). Yet their prices track each other closely. So I think this explanation is too simplistic. Possibly there are large interconnects between the French and German grids levelling out wholesale prices, but my assumption is that they cannot carry enough power for this imagined scenario where nuclear makes a big difference.

There's no "French and German grids", most of EU is a single grid (see map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta... ) and there's no meaningful difference between "interconnects" linking France and Germany and power lines within France, though there are a bit fewer of them than internal lines. There are some limited interconnects linking continental EU with UK and Scandinavia with some trade ha…

Post by neuronic » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

in3d wrote: post #147

dan-robertson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French generation is ~70% nuclear (10% wind/solar) and German is ~10% (~40% wind/solar). Yet their prices track each other closely. So I think this explanation is too simplistic. Possibly there are large interconnects between the French and German grids levelling out wholesale prices, but my assumption is that they cannot carry enough power for this imagined scenario where nuclear makes a big difference.

It will go down to 0% in Germany in several months. Germany is shutting down its last six nuclear power plants and no new ones can be built. Italy, Switzerland and Belgium also want to shut down their nuclear power plants. Shameful, unscientific public opinion in Western Europe despite more people realizing the danger of global warming.

Post by bsd44 » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 6:58 PM UTC

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.