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Day ahead electricity prices for EU

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Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#201

Post by nixass »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #183
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have people considered battery trucks? I don't mean battery-powered trucks, but trucks full of batteries. It seems kind of silly when you can use hydrogen or natural gas in your trucks instead, but battery trucks may be the lowest-loss form of long-distance electricity transport.

Why not then just charge batteries where you need them and keep them at place for when the Sun goes to sleep? Why would you transport batteries around?

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#202

Post by Reason077 »

andrepd wrote: post #163
kwhitefoot wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sun is always shining somewhere. We need more interconnects.

Global power transfers don't work due to losses. The physics doesn't work out.

Tell that to the proposed EuroAsia link (Greece-Cyprus-Israel) [1], or the proposed Australia-Singapore link [2]. Interconnector are getting longer and longer with each new generation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroAsia_Interconnector

[2] https://www.powerengineeringint.com/smart-grid-td/td-infrast...

The electrical loss through HVDC cable is approximately 3% per 1000 km of cable, far less than with AC grids. The physics do work out, the only real barriers are economics and politics.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#203

Post by jillesvangurp »

Toutouxc wrote: post #110
locallost wrote: post #95

This is nothing. If you want to panic, check the futures markets for the next 2 quarters, especially France. So I think short term we are pretty screwed. But I think if you can produce electricity at 1/10 or even 1/20 of the price, wouldn't you be adding new capacity now? The only fast option are renewables, so my wild guess is that there will be so much new capacity added in the next years, the bottleneck will not b…

The thing about "short term screwed" is that in some countries the "screwed" is actually "people having to pay more than 100 % of their income for electricity". Theoretically, long term, this could all work out nicely and steer more people and governments towards renewables and decentralized generation, but the short term consequences are starting to look brutal.

I expect some major support programs will be put in place to address this. And it will probably involve a bit of money printing. No sane government is going to let its citizens deal with going bankrupt because of massively higher energy prices. So Germany, France, etc. will do whatever needs doing to prevent that.

The real problem will be industry having to shut down or minimize operations. They'll be the ones bearing the real cost. This winter will be brutal in terms of its economical impact on industry. The next one, countries will be better prepared. It's Russia that will be suffering the consequences long term. I doubt any country in Europe wants to ever be dependent on them again to the extent that they have in the past.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#204

Post by calaphos »

bjourne wrote: post #60

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.

Capacity has decreased - mainly due to a lot of french nuclear reactors offline for scheduled and (correlated) unscheduled maintenance. France went from Europe's largest exporter to largest importer of power this year. Add to that a dry summer woth historically low water levels in rivers, disrupting cooling as well as things like coal transport for power plants.

And natural gas, which usually covers the more elastic power demands is dramatically more expensive.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#205

Post by worldwideants »

andrepd wrote: post #163
kwhitefoot wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sun is always shining somewhere. We need more interconnects.

Global power transfers don't work due to losses. The physics doesn't work out.

Can I return this Tesla resonator or at least exchange it for the powerwall?

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#206

Post by thfuran »

qwertyuiop_ wrote: post #198
sph wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anybody explain why that is? Why a country that generates 99+% of its own electricity like UK is seeing price increases? Everybody blames the war, but AFAIK UK imports 1% of its gas from Russia, and its electricity is generated locally, so why are prices increasing? I would expect grain and wheat to increase 500%, not power.

It’s a self inflicted green transition with no back up plan or a plan

Are you saying things would've worked out better if Russian gas accounted for a higher percentage of eu energy before the sanctions?

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#207

Post by ohgodplsno »

legulere wrote: post #182
ohgodplsno wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Can they produce electricity though? Half their nuclear reactors are down.

Because of delayed checkups caused by COVID, and thanks to the independence of the ASN who could unilaterally stop the plants to fix unplanned corrosion. Most of them are starting to come back up, and 90% of usual production is planned to be back by December.

Or, said in other ways, it took an extremely rare event that lasted long enough to throw off plans that are made on the scale of years, in addition with a bit of bad luck, and lasts a few months. I'd say they damn well can produce electricity in normal times, yes. But indeed, their need to buy electricity is compounded by that.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#208

Post by vorpalhex »

andrepd wrote: post #155
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> electricity generation has not become more expensive A lot of generation in Europe is using gas, so it very much has. It's more or less a normal market experiencing a jump in price on inputs. If you can produce cheaper than the market price then you make lots of money. That's normal. The market is telling buyers to use less electricity and sellers to produce more. It's how markets work.

That is predicated on the rational market hypothesis: that all agents have perfect information, make perfectly rational decision, there is no market friction, and goods are perfectly elastic. Of course, neither of these assumptions are true in this case. Back in the real world, we can look at hard data. Margins for energy producers and retailers have increased massively in the latest quarter. Also, we know that marke…

1. You mean the efficient market hypothesis?

2. That does not apply here since we are talking cost/profit and not share price

> The efficient market hypothesis (EMH), alternatively known as the efficient market theory, is a hypothesis that states that share prices reflect all information and consistent alpha generation is impossible.

Nothing you say is about EMH. Nor does EMH predict that markets react only to "fundamentals", only in that shares reflect the whole set of information.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#209

Post by spaceman_2020 »

pojzon wrote: post #175
pveierland wrote: post #50

Current spot price in northern Norway is €10.16/MWh, while it is €745.08/MWh in southern Norway (73x the price), largely due to limitations in transport networks between the electricity zones. The price in the northern zone is so low that some hydro plants have stopped producing electricity as they would be losing money at the current price level. https://www.skandiaenergi.no/dagens-spotpriser/ Electricity Maps has a…

Ive tried to explain this issue to EVs fanatics, but nobody listens. Anytime you mention energy transmision issues - you get total backlash. We wasted EU money on pointless stuff while we could have upgraded our transit cables etc.

Germany’s obsession with solar and wind is absolutely baffling. It takes very little to know that Germany simply does not have the conditions for large scale solar.

Yet it was pushed so heavily in lieu of nuclear power. Absurd.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#210

Post by vorpalhex »

Ekaros wrote: post #147
rconti wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The true market failure is on demand side. Demand is what drives the price not the supply. With low enough demand the price just doesn't go very high.

Sure, you are free to be the first one to freeze to death this winter or melt during the summer.

I don't think anyone is meaningfully wasting electricity in Europe currently. Demand can't go to zero. Supply dropped significantly.

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