Day ahead electricity prices for EU • Hacker News Board

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#251

Post by Sevii » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

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…

No you would only add capacity if you thought the long term trends supported it. Building large power generation facilities is expensive and takes time. If prices go back to normal in the spring those new builds could end up as massive money losers.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#252

Post by intothemild » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 4:04 PM UTC

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…

As someone in Oslo... This makes me super jealous.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#253

Post by sofixa » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

bushbaba wrote: post #140

Wonder why the EU hasn’t stepped in with rationing and price controls. This is price gouging to the detriment of its citizens.

Some countries have, e.g. France.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#254

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #142

google234123 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge fusion reactor in the sky that isn't available in the evening or when it's cloudy.

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

Where is the space mirror?

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#255

Post by bob1029 » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 4:11 PM UTC

I'm starting to have flashbacks to Griddy and the $9,000/MWh wholesale pricing I had to dance around in Feb 2021. The novelty of accounting for small appliance usage in dollars per hour wore off pretty quickly for me.

I was able to get my sustained electricity consumption under ~800w (including central furnace blower) after some extreme compromises. Only had to pay about a thousand dollars for that incident. I know of people on Griddy who had 5 figure bills that month.

In retrospect, I think variable rates are the ultimate solution to these problems. I am not usually very price sensitive, but $9/KWh is a monster rate if you aren't paying attention. I was forced to adjust my behavior to accommodate the available supply.

For better or worse, we still can't store electricity at scale in most markets, so forcing the consumer behavior may be the next best option.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#256

Post by boshomi » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #215

jakewins wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also significant capacity loss from plants unable to run in droughts, since they rely on cooling water that has now dried up. Nukes reliant on Loire valley water are currently curtailing production.

> Nukes reliant on Loire valley water are currently curtailing production. That's old information, the Loire is back up to normal levels after the last two weeks of rain, so nuclear power plants should be operating as before.

Production continues to fall so far: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=FR&...

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#257

Post by logicchains » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #217

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.

But that just moves the question. Why has natural gas become more expensive when it has not become more expensive to produce? Furthermore, only 15% of Germany's power production comes from natural gas ( https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... ) and the market price has "only" tripled in the last year ( https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/08/25/europes-gas-pr... ) while electricity prices h…

>Why has natural gas become more expensive when it has not become more expensive to produce?

Price is a function of supply and demand. Supply was massively reduced by sanctions and war, so price goes up, simple as that.

>This is price gouging.

If electricity producers had enough pricing power to set the price to whatever they wanted without competition they'd already have done so years ago. Again, price is a function of supply and demand, cost of production is only one component.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#258

Post by bostik » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #238

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In an ideal world countries like Spain and Greece invest in solar but they're completely incompetent. So you get the absurd situation that the Netherlands is European leader in solar energy lol. Most densely populated country in Europe has solar parks for fuck sake.

From what I've read, in Spain there was for a long time (may still be?) pretty effective/expensive legislation against installing solar panels anywhere. Reason? Regulatory capture, with energy companies lobbying hard against anything that might weaken their position or profiteering opportunities.

I wouldn't call that necessarily incompetence. Corruption and cronyism, yes.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#259

Post by anticristi » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

fest wrote: post #58

bitL wrote: post #4

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...

Some politicians in Latvia are using the same rhetoric: our hydro plants have a production cost of 0.1x/MWh, but nordpool price is xMWh. Somebody is stuffing their pockets!! What they don't say is: some of our hydro plants are being maintained and the rest are capable of generating a fraction of country's needs. Sure, some of the money goes to small privately owned plants, but the most goes to large state-owned plant…

I was starting to wonder the same. Are prices essentially going up, filling state coffers, so that politicians can promise subsidies to voters? What a weird way to make cash flow.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#260

Post by 323 » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

xvedejas wrote: post #191

pclmulqdq wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Without thinking too hard about the efficiency, it's clearly just not a _safe_ proposition with our current best (most energy-dense per weight) batteries.

There are regular train/truck transports with much more dangerous and volatile chemicals than lithium.