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I just cross-checked the source and the claim by one of their members of parliament was the price was 0.25CZK/MWh which is ~0.01EUR/MWh in fact.
This suggests that either the MP is incorrect, or they were misquoted, or some sort of accounting shenanigans are going on (infrastructure costs already paid for, etc.)
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All energy problem reduce to problems of energy transportation. We have a huge fusion reactor in the sky. The challenge is capture and transit. The problem is not incidental; it's fundamental.
A huge fusion reactor in the sky that isn't available in the evening or when it's cloudy.
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> why nobody is doing anything about it > I've read somewhere Before wondering why someone, somewhere is not doing something, confirm that the thing is actually happening in the first place.
EDF, the French electricity provider is able to produce electricity at about 20€/MWh. It is forced to sell it to leeches (read: "competition"), up to 100TWh, at 42€/MWh through a mechanism called ARENH. Should they need this 100TWh (and they do), they are forced to buy it at current market prices, or anywhere between 530 and 715€/MWh. The "competition" are resellers that have not installed a single MW of production,…
Wonder why the EU hasn’t stepped in with rationing and price controls. This is price gouging to the detriment of its citizens.
A functioning market will provide the motivation to search, find and finance solutions instead.
I've read somewhere that Czechs (day ahead price of 463EUR/MWh) produce electricity at 0.1EUR/MWh, then sell it to an exchange in Germany and buy it back for the "market" price. Somebody over there is getting extremely rich for no reason and I am wondering why nobody is doing anything about it...
Assuming that these statements are entirely true (sibling comments suggest otherwise), then "somebody over there" had the foresight or luck to install generating capacity ahead of tremendous demand. If they hadn't done so, someone else might be getting even-more rich (per kWhr) by charging higher prices across an even wider geography.
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A huge fusion reactor in the sky that isn't available in the evening or when it's cloudy.
Does this matter if we could transport electricity from somewhere not cloudy or evening ... -y?
Remember that, while prices have soared, electricity generation has not become more expensive. The "electricity crisis" is a crisis for European consumers but a massive windfall for producers. This is a market failure - not an electricity failure.
It's not a market failure. Markets are not supposed to keep a steady profit margin regardless of demand. Production cannot be scaled up and down infinitely and immediately. The price is a market signal. The fact that production cannot be immediately scaled to serve the customer demand and bring prices (and therefore profits) back down to a "normal" level is not a market failure either; it's simply a physical reality.
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Not Czech but how it works here: * I choose energy provider x * Friend has bought a part of those remote solar plants and also connected to provider x * Friend sells his surplus energy to provider x at low price * Provider x can now sell the power to: a) His customers (me), and make next to nothing b) Sell it to the international grid and make bank, then proceed to buy energy for me at going rates making me foot the…
>Friend sells his surplus energy to provider x at low price Sorry if this is a dumb question but why can't he sell at the going rate for international grid?
So in essence, because they can't get it there.
Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE: https://energy-charts.info/index.html?l=en&c=DE
and European Energy Exchange AG: https://www.eex.com/en/
At the current electricity prices, break even point for household PV installations even in coldish climate (Latvia, Eastern Europe) is on the order of 3-4 years without subsidies. Granted, it does not solve the problem that the energy I'll spend in the fall/winter has to come from somewhere but financially it is at the very least closer to being balanced out. Also, this is in a country, where the net metering system…
Or, at night also? Solar is all fun and games until the sun goes down and your grid needs to not collapse.
So, even in winter you'd be able to squeeze some kilowatt hours out of a few solar panels. Just install more of them until you have enough to charge up your batteries during the darkest part of the winter and you are good to go. Maybe add some wind to diversify.
For heating there are thermal storage solutions that use cheap materials like sand or basalt. Charge in the summer, heat in the winter. All you need is some pipes, mass, insulation and a way to dump energy in the system. There are various prototype systems operational already and they work as advertised. You might wonder about the cost of a silo of locally sourced sand. I'd say it's probably going to be dirt cheap.
EV batteries are going to be great for balancing the grid. Vehicle to grid charge connectors are already being standardized and multiple vehicles that support that are being produced already. Millions on the road in the next few years. Twh of power. A very tempting target for would be virtual power plant companies. Like Tesla.
The main challenge with wind and solar is bridging the few weeks a year where production of both may drop dramatically in the winter for more than a day. The combination of no wind, low sun and little amount of sun hours, and overcast skies is kind of deadly. In northern Europe that might last as long as a month. The rest of the year there is going to be either or both enough solar and wind.
Mostly the real challenge the rest of the time is actually what to do with the growing amounts of excess power. Plenty of answers to that but it's not a fully resolved issue. Mostly current wind operators seem to regularly disable their wind mills by weather-vaning them instead. They're not broken, they've been turned off because they are producing more than needed.
We're going to end up with way more power than what we need. People are installing solar panels on their roof that generate much more power than they need, even when aggregated over time. The current crisis is actually going to result in even more people doing that. This poses a serious challenge for energy produces still dumb enough to depend on burning fossil fuels. Most of the time they'll be selling at a loss or completely shutting down operations. And a few weeks a year they suddenly have to deliver a little bit of power. Not a great business to be in.