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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?

#301

Post by chess_buster »

sk2020 wrote: post #229
jsilence wrote: post #216

In the process of moving the mobility towards electrically powered vehicles all of Europe is going to need a lot more capacity. So all the disscussions about the hence and forth between France and Germany are quite moot.

I think the more likely outcome is that personal and commercial travel will just be illegal for people outside of political leadership. The mineral resources to replace all vehicles with EVs don’t exist. Sort of Holodomor repeated as farce.

The mineral resources to replace all vehicles with EVs, in fact, do exist.

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

#303

Post by chess_buster »

avtolik wrote: post #268
anticodon wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Russian and I do not consider myself "oppressed". Stop living in your bubble of fake news.

Opressed or not, you are a troll. I scrolled through your history here and most of your messages are political BS. A lot of it - lies.

Thanks for your service.

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

#304

Post by hiram112 »

JPKab wrote: post #168
legulere wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Just out of curiosity, assuming your internal batteries are charged to the max (e.g. after a sunny day), about how long can you go if it starts snowing or is very cloudy, before you need to start pumping in natural gas?

Maybe my understanding of how it all works using your own solar panel and the neighborhood's gas lines is too simplistic, though, to answer.

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

#305

Post by hiram112 »

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.

While I understand the fear of nuclear, especially in Europe where Chernobyl took place, I find it kind of silly that countries like Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, etc are shutting down THEIR nukes, while bordering France (and other countries) who aren't shutting them down.

Do they imagine that the radiation / fallout from their neighbor's catastrophe would respect national borders?

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

#306

Post by wrycoder »

jeffbee wrote: post #175
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #60

For the UK it's a tripple whammy right now: high gas prices, a fire at an interchange to France and with Brexit they left the EU’s internal energy market. As a result the prices for electricity are skyrocketing at certain times of the day. That's what weekend pricing looked yesterday: https://i.imgur.com/U275C5r.png

I mean, £1/kWh is pretty high, but it's not totally outrageous and it appears to have been capped by some kind of regulatory limit. 42¢/kWh is the standard retail price in California during peak demand hours, and that's not a huge difference.

I pay $0.13USD per KWh in NH for electrical energy.

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

#307

Post by teekert »

I'm in the Netherlands, if I fix my prices for a year now (I just finished my last year contract, usage: 4200kWh and 1200 m3 gas), they go up about 33% (135 to about 180 eur/month). It's a lot, but hardly eye-watering.. yet. 2 year contracts go up less (about 22%). Not sure what to do now. It's like the stock market but it's forced onto everybody.

Btw, I see gasoline is now 1.99 eur/litre at many stations along the highway, yet I've never seen the 2 eur mark crossed! It's like they are really reluctant to do that.

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

#308

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ben_w wrote: post #251
jhgb wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

News articles that want to dismiss renewables seem to often call it that. You’re right, of course. I’m not a chemist and it shows.

Also worth noting that "rare earths" aren't rare (nor are they earths), that's just their name.

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

#309

Post by frostburg »

hiram112 wrote: post #305
in3d wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While I understand the fear of nuclear, especially in Europe where Chernobyl took place, I find it kind of silly that countries like Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, etc are shutting down THEIR nukes, while bordering France (and other countries) who aren't shutting them down. Do they imagine that the radiation / fallout from their neighbor's catastrophe would respect national borders?

It was and is idiotic populism.

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

#310

Post by ephbit »

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…

> ... appallingly high safety standards are expensive.

Not an expert on probability/statistics ... but wouldn't lower safety standards have meant, not 1 Tschernobyl and 1 Fukushima but most probably like say 10 such events in the last 30 years?

Yeah no, something tells me that having lower than "appallingly high safety standards" isn't a deal I'd want. Not at all.

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