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Day ahead electricity prices for EU

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Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#341

Post by ClumsyPilot »

origin_path wrote: post #304
mytailorisrich wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is that since production costs are stable, as long as they set a price that covers actual costs then this price control does not actually cost them money, only potential profits, so it is sustainable.

It leads to shortages instead as people find ways to arbitrage the price - buy French nuclear power cheap then export it for profit. Fundamentally you can have high prices, shortages or you can disconnect France from the rest of the European grid but you cannot just have cheaper prices in France.

This is absurd in several levels - you can't move electricity in a box, there are only a few interconnects, all of them regulatable and controllable, they can only move like 15% of tital supply and prices are different for business and for home use.

And nothing you've said seems to have relevance to shortages

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#342

Post by raverbashing »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #316
raverbashing wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, right now, solar is 20% of the electricity on the grid in Germany. Wind is 15% (per the electrictymaps app) Sure it would be better if it was a sunnier place, still...

You should see how much they’ve invested in solar to hit that mark, and how much capacity is being unutilized

Top utilization of solar was approximately 25% of the installed base today

At the same time, 49% of nuclear in France is being used today and 62% of nuclear in the UK

So, it's "bad" but not everything is used 100% all the time

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#343

Post by PeterisP »

zionic wrote: post #313
pojzon wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m just exhausted from arguing with the electrically illiterate. HVDC makes transmission from state to state trivial at almost no loss. We should have a national HVDC grid so that a breeze in Texas might power a toaster in Connecticut. Instead we have another $XX Billion for Ukraine. Another $13B here for a new carrier we’ll never need etc etc. So much waste everywhere while fundamental problems go unsolved.

It's not a matter of cost, there's no political desire for a national HVDC grid so that a breeze in Texas might power a toaster in Connecticut - Texas has explicitly refused connecting to the rest of the country for many years.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#344

Post by guerby »

mantas wrote: post #74
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter what magic plan anyone comes up with it would take years to implement. Nuclear, more insulation, hydrogen, new gas fields. It's almost winter already.

More insulation is double edge sword. I moved into a super-energy-efficient house here in north/east Europe. Heating in winter is damn cheap. But retention works in summer too… so I had to get air conditioner :( And electrical ventilation is a must all year round to get air fresh, keep module at bay ant not loose energy living with open windows. Energy saving in bottom line will be abysmal :(

You're probably missing thermal mass in the house. Comes with bio-sourced insulating material, but usually not with rock/glass whool or polystyrene & the like.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#345

Post by anticristi »

origin_path wrote: post #301
locallost wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we agree here. I'm not trying to minimize the impact. Factories will shut down, leading to job loses, shortages which will again cause inflation etc. But we can't change that anymore. What we can do is build more capacity.

There is obviously another option that people don't want to point out - start buying Russian gas again. The idea they're resisting to sell it is wrong. There's a whole pipeline lying idle ready to go the moment sanctions are lifted. People are acting like this is a natural crisis. It's not, it's an artificial one created by political choices. This will lead to political extremism as voters realize they are freezing o…

> start buying Russian gas again

I'm afraid Europe bought a one-way ticket. Dependence on Russian energy is no longer a hypothetical issue, but a demonstrated concern. Freezing is not great, but giving the thermostat back to Putin is worse.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#346

Post by bjourne »

merely-unlikely wrote: post #294
bjourne wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Price is a function of supply and demand. Supply was massively reduced by sanctions and war, so price goes up, simple as that. But this is not true. Price is a function of whatever price the seller sets. Look at the actual circumstances rather than on mathematical models with no bearing on reality.

> Price is a function of whatever price the seller sets. Only if customers are willing to buy at that price. Which is only true now because there are no cheaper competitors to turn to, which in turn is because the entire system is operating at capacity. Over time the high prices incentivizes bringing more power generation and transport online, which is exactly what we are seeing - new/reopened nuclear, coal, and nat…

Yes, of course there are no cheaper alternatives to turn to. The European electricity market is dominated by a small number of giants which essentially have no competition and does not compete with each other. It's not different from the housing market. Housing isn't freakishly expensive because it has become too expensive to build houses. It is because those who control the market have figured out how to screw over people who need a home to live in (which is almost everyone).

It was the European Commission that designed the integrated electricity market because it was believed that a free market would guarantee low electricity prices for everyone. It seems very naive to believe that this system will function better in the future. For the energy giants it is more profitable to limit supply and jack up prices than to build more capacity.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#347

Post by marcinzm »

foxhill wrote: post #319
zionic wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That gasoline wouldn’t be an energy source, it’d be an extremely crappy battery. Far better to just send the power via grid to an EV @95% then toss 60% or more of it to make a gallon of gas

it’s a more practical solution for right now though. we can’t expect the world to switch its entire infrastructure overnight, or even quickly. yes, the rich nations might get a head start, but they represent such a small fraction of emissions.

>yes, the rich nations might get a head start, but they represent such a small fraction of emissions.

Not really for automotive emissions. The US alone accounts for almost half the world's road CO2 emissions.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#348

Post by PeterisP »

bitL wrote: post #103
dmw_ng wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That very much sounds like you're calling for the collapse of the integrated european energy market. This is not meant as an attack on you, just an observation that these nationalistic calls will continue growing louder from every part of the continent, and it is not even September yet. Already Norway has publicly commented on the possibility of rationing exports. We have yet to even scratch the surface of the effect…

During the time of energy crisis why would the integrated energy market be the highest priority? Is it more important to trade, or to keep economy running utilizing whatever local advantages available?

There is an energy crisis across all regions of Europe; disrupting trade may help some places but hurt others much more and would make it worse in aggregate, so EU treaties prohibit that.

I mean, whenever electricity is being exported at high cost, that high cost is an indication that this other place has it even worse; and blocking trade would make electricity cheaper at the exporting place, but cause a larger spike (and possibly even blackouts with the associated economic disruption) at the importing place and also remove the economic incentives to increase surplus production at places who can do it cheaper than others.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#349

Post by yywwbbn »

PeterisP wrote: post #311
xvedejas wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gasoline has much more energy density per weight than batteries, and we truck that around all the time.

Right. That’s one reasons why transporting electricity by truck is a terrible idea.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#350

Post by chrisseaton »

grandmczeb wrote: post #322
chrisseaton wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn’t true. Most countries don’t have regular residential streets with power lines up in the air.

The fires are mostly caused by large transmission lines outside of urban areas, not local lines on residential streets.

For example https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/10/15/pg... - these are normally buried elsewhere.
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