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Day ahead electricity prices for EU

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Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#541

Post by iso1631 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #515
iso1631 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU could have invested in solar in Greece, Italy and Spain and Cyprus and interconnects further north, and likewise offshore wind in Denmark, pumped storage in Sweden, Austria and Greece But it failed in securing energy resilience. I hope it has learned its lesson.

The EU (meaning both the individual countries and together as the EU) did all these things. They could and should have done more, but generally have been world leaders in this.

After a solid start everything stalled around 10 years ago -- once Russia saw the threat and hooked europe on cheap gas.

Growth in Solar in Spain was negligible for 6 years from 2013 to 2019.

Italy likewise increased less than 10%

Greece has hardly any solar, with nothing built from 2013 until this year. That plant cost 130m for 350m kWh a year - that's 4c/kWh over 10 years, plus operating costs.

Painfully slow delivery that was needlessly stalled for financial reasons

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#542

Post by synotna2 »

Fiahil wrote: post #453
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.

> The "electricity crisis" is a crisis for European consumers Well. I don't know where you live, but I'm not paying more than last year. I read about soaring prices being an issue in the UK. Prices, here, in France are fixed twice a year by the energy commission. Right now, residential electricity increased by 4% last February and remained unchanged at the start of August. So it means that whatever is happening in th…

Fortunately you are being in part subsidised thanks to EDFs profits in other countries :)

You very seriously need to check out news or Twitter from any other Western European country

If what was happening in UK happened in France, Paris would have been burnt to the ground months ago

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#543

Post by synotna2 »

origin_path wrote: post #290
mytailorisrich wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the country. Certainly this applies to a country like France that produces most of its electricity through nuclear, which they are in the process of fully nationalising. This gives them a lot of leeway to control prices without actually costing them anything.

Of course it costs them! Nationalisation just means the losses of the nuclear industry are born by the taxpayer, which will surface in worse services in other areas.

At least with nationalisation it's not only the losses that are socialized, right?

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#544

Post by pclmulqdq »

sofixa wrote: post #519
pclmulqdq wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those schemes are responsible for tremendous inflation which is part of the reason why energy prices are high compared to incomes today. There is no free lunch.

They might have contributed, a bit (all they did was replace income from salaries with equivalent income in unemployment money, and cover some enterprise's expenses; the only monetary difference was coming from those who used to spend a lot of money going out to bars and stuff, who couldn't anymore), but let's not kid ourselves. The main reason for the booming inflation is Russia's invasion of Ukraine and resulting b…

Several prominent economists at Harvard looked at inflation in countries that did and didn't send out stimulus checks. The numbers ranged from 4% to 8%, with stimulus checks strongly correlating with higher inflation. The math disagrees: there was going to be high inflation due to the pandemic and the Ukraine war, but stimulus policies accounted for the majority of the damage.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#545

Post by ZeroGravitas »

iso1631 wrote: post #541
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU (meaning both the individual countries and together as the EU) did all these things. They could and should have done more, but generally have been world leaders in this.

After a solid start everything stalled around 10 years ago -- once Russia saw the threat and hooked europe on cheap gas. Growth in Solar in Spain was negligible for 6 years from 2013 to 2019. Italy likewise increased less than 10% Greece has hardly any solar, with nothing built from 2013 until this year. That plant cost 130m for 350m kWh a year - that's 4c/kWh over 10 years, plus operating costs. Painfully slow deliv…

I don't think it was financial reasons (or at least not in the sense that it was costing the country as a whole money).

The fossil fuel industry spent Billions on propaganda. Politicians had the option of fighting that, or using it to become more popular and so get rich.

This cost their countries Billions more than they ever earned. They're still doing it, but they might wake up soon. Still a total waste of time, energy and money though.

> That, in combination with the downward pressure on wholesale electricity prices, threatened the finances of the major utilities. Particularly hard hit were the 26 GW of natural gas-fired combined cycle (GFCC) plants built after 2000 in anticipation of substantial growth in Spain’s electricity demand, making gas the single largest source of installed capacity. This brand new fleet saw its overall load factor drop from around 50 percent in the mid-2000s to below 20 percent in 2011 and then continue to fall, almost to single digits in 2014

> As a result of these developments, the promotion of renewable power went, in just a few years, from enjoying broad public support, or at least tolerance, to facing substantial opposition. Particularly outspoken in their criticism were large electricity consumers and the major utilities, whose returns on investment in non-renewable generating capacity was being put at risk (Linares and Labandeira 2013). These various pressures in turn prompted similar policy responses by successive governments led by different parties.

https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=110...

So prices went down, country made money, big interests lost money, specifically natural gas wasn't being burnt enough for their liking, renewables got paused for a while.

Russia (and several other authorotarian regimes) benefitted, but it was mostly Spanish people conning other Spanish people for money.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#546

Post by AshamedCaptain »

mk89 wrote: post #481
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you know who is in charge in Germany? The greens ... No ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundestag

The greens are part of the current government, I wonder what's not clear about the previous message?

The greens have approximately 14% of the vote and 16% of the seats of the legislative, and are a minority partner in the executive. It does seem quite a stretch to say "they are in charge of Germany".

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#547

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #525
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a result the market is very dysfunctional. You're stating that without evidence, but the kind of auctions that the electricity market requires are similar to opening auctions for stocks. Would you claim they're very dysfunctional?

The kind of trades that are currently happening in Europe for electricity are removed from the reality on the ground. You can look through this Twitter thread for some good commentary on what is happening: https://twitter.com/yakutsavas/status/1563529006997450752?s=...

Probably, but that's evidence of a free market in operation, craziness happens sometimes but it sorts itself out. There is a massive supply squeeze, these things are to be bound to happen.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#548

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

seydor wrote: post #531
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The marginal price of any good is the cost to produce one additional unit of that good. That applies to electricity too. Saying "the highest cost available at any moment sets the price for everyone" is misleading, it's also the lowest marginal price required to satisfy the total load required to supply the market.

i meant that in the EU wholesale market , everyone gets the marginal price. It is not the cost of an additional unit, a mwh of renewables is practically free (if paid-as-bid) but gets paid as natgas (because it gets paid-as-cleared)

Yeah but that's how the market pricing works, it's a function of the auction process. Everyone pays the price required to satisfy the demand. See stock opening and closing auctions for a similar process. It feels odd that sellers get the higher price but it makes sense ultimately.

The margin price in that market is the marginal cost of a GW hour by for the last GW that satisfies the load required (demand).

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#549

Post by mk89 »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #546
mk89 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The greens are part of the current government, I wonder what's not clear about the previous message?

The greens have approximately 14% of the vote and 16% of the seats of the legislative, and are a minority partner in the executive. It does seem quite a stretch to say "they are in charge of Germany".

They have 118/416 seats of the current government, which is more than 16%, and that's what actually matters. If SPD and FDP tomorrow want to bring nuclear energy back, good luck doing that on such a controversial topic (if nobody else in the parliament backs you up).

One way or another, they are in charge and they can make things happen or not.

Clearly, my "in charge" is absolutely not the same as in dictatorships or similar, but always in a democratic context.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#550

Post by AshamedCaptain »

mk89 wrote: post #549
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The greens have approximately 14% of the vote and 16% of the seats of the legislative, and are a minority partner in the executive. It does seem quite a stretch to say "they are in charge of Germany".

They have 118/416 seats of the current government, which is more than 16%, and that's what actually matters. If SPD and FDP tomorrow want to bring nuclear energy back, good luck doing that on such a controversial topic (if nobody else in the parliament backs you up). One way or another, they are in charge and they can make things happen or not. Clearly, my "in charge" is absolutely not the same as in dictatorships or…

> They have 118/416 seats of the current government

That is exactly what makes them a minority partner.

> and that's what actually matters

No, it does not in a democracy. It's still 16% of the legislative body.

> but always in a democratic context.

I would really like to know which democratic context translates 14% of the vote into "in charge of the country". They _may_ have more influence in the executive than the opposition parties, depending on the details of the coalition, but it is still a long stretch to claim "in charge" of the government much less of the country. A coalition is in charge of the executive branch, of which the greens are not the majority by any metric.

> If SPD and FDP tomorrow want to bring nuclear energy back

If a majority of the voters (or at least 50%+1 of the seats in the legislative body) want to bring nuclear energy back tomorrow, let me know how the greens are going to stop them.

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