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Day ahead electricity prices for EU

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Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#551
post #522
post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This link is only about LNG, i.e. natural gas in its liquid form. I suspect that's why Germany is missing from the chart altogether. In any case, it does not show the whole picture.

What is missing? Germany doesn't have LNG terminals, so obviously they're not on there. LNG is regasified to export to Germany through European countries that do have LNG terminals. Much of the increased LNG import is going to Germany. I'm not sure where you're expecting natural gas in gaseous state to come from. It's generally transported in LNG form unless there's a pipeline (like between Germany and Russia). There…

You said "we're currently importing far more gas that we did before the war", but gave a link that only covers gas imports in LNG form, not in gaseous form. So, it doesn't include the Nord Stream, Yamal–Europe and other pipelines.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and automotive emissions account for ~10% of all CO2 emissions. 20% if you want to include all transport (e.g. sea shipping, planes, etc.) there’s been a lot of media attention on how individuals need to make an effort to beat climate change, but the reality is that industry is the only sector able to make a meaningful impact.

10% is huge though.

Exactly. If we could cut global emissions by even 10%, it would make a pretty meaningful dent in climate change. Unfortunately, as of now, global emissions are still rising!

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#553
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is to say that it's determined by both the supply and demand side: if the price were lower there would be people willing to buy at that price but not enough to sell them, and if it were higher there would presumably be people willing to sell at that price but not enough buyers. It is, in some fairly fundamental sense, the actual market price of electricity at that point in time.

Yes but renewables & nuclear suppliers would be willing to deliver for a lot less money. The question I answered was, why is it so expensive when we don't use so much gas. The price however gets set by the most expensive supplier. As soon as you need to use gas to deliver electricity, the price skyrockets.

> The price however gets set by the most expensive supplier.

Because that's how the auction works, but it's misleading, it's the cheapest supplier that can deliver the final GW hour required to satisfy the projected load. Other multiparty auctions with a volume requirement work the same way.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#554
post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do send out the study. The fact that you're talking about stimulus checks means either you or them are talking about the US, which couldn't be farther in how it handled the pandemic from the EU, which is the topic of the discussion. There are no checks here, we aren't stuck in the past. And all was handled at another layer by preventing layoffs by covering payroll and other expenses for companies instead of allowing layoffs and then sending checks through the mail like it's the 1950s.

And yes, the delayed spending and the some extra money will result in inflation, of course. But the impact from the prices of all sorts of crucial raw materials is probably much higher.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#555
post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you don't need global. just connecting the eu together has significantly strengthened their grid.

EU countries are actually interconnected, but when it's night in Berlin it's also night in Paris, Lisbon, Madrid, Rome, ... so all EU p.v. do not produce, while the whole EU keep consuming. So no, if you want a world that run on p.v. you need a global grid to harvest enough energy AND I doubt even if such monster can be done in a snap and work flawlessly that we can even harvest enough power at ground level. Harvesti…

> doubt even if such monster can be done in a snap and work flawlessly that we can even harvest enough power at ground level.

While it would take a while to build a global power grid, we have the capacity to produce approximately ten thousand times our current global power usage from ground-level PV.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#556
post #555
post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU countries are actually interconnected, but when it's night in Berlin it's also night in Paris, Lisbon, Madrid, Rome, ... so all EU p.v. do not produce, while the whole EU keep consuming. So no, if you want a world that run on p.v. you need a global grid to harvest enough energy AND I doubt even if such monster can be done in a snap and work flawlessly that we can even harvest enough power at ground level. Harvesti…

> doubt even if such monster can be done in a snap and work flawlessly that we can even harvest enough power at ground level. While it would take a while to build a global power grid, we have the capacity to produce approximately ten thousand times our current global power usage from ground-level PV.

> we have the capacity to produce approximately ten thousand times our current global power usage from ground-level PV.

I'm a bit skeptical, but in any case consider a thing: we need to count an initial construction BUT also a regular substitution of old modules, managing their disposal (witch actually is just shred and bury in most cases) and in doing so we need to count the life cycle: if we construct something slowly things reach EOL in small batches so we can keep a regular production since the initial demand is not hyper-big and the future substitution rate start BEFORE the initial demand finished and keep a slow rate. If we are quick:

- we need a monster production to satisfy the demand

- then the demand drops equally sharply and you get hyper-big factories who do almost nothing

- the the demand skyrocket again

If you think it's theoretical see actual Italy: a gazillion of CA infra was built quickly in few years after WWII, now are en equal batch EOL... There is a reason, more than one, why almost any big project end up badly while most small succeed...

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#557
post #537
post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why, although I prefer a global power grid, I suspect storage is going to be the main solution to energy being wanted in a different time or place than it is generated.

If we can have it of course, it's a godsend. BUT we can't. I have a small lithium storage, I see how fast it get depleted and how quick performance degrade. In 8-9 years I expect it will be just rubbish. If I compute how it's produced, how much energy, pollution, it need to exists brand new in my home, and how so far we can't recycle... We have some effective storage, like pumped hydro, yes, but we have them where we…

> In 8-9 years I expect it will be just rubbish.

Sounds about right.

> If I compute how it's produced, how much energy, pollution, it need to exists brand new in my home, and how so far we can't recycle...

Recycling is possible — even the absolute dumbest way I can imagine, which is grind the battery into dust and put that dust into the process used to separate rocks into their constituent elements, is still better than mining the actual rocks you'd otherwise get them from.

Recycling facilities better than that necessarily only scale to whatever battery quantity existed x years ago.

But also, the pollution mostly comes from energy, so making the grid greener makes the batteries greener which makes the grid greener etc.

However, you're missing one of the cheapest storage systems: hydrogen. The round-trip efficiency isn't great, but given how cheap PV is, this isn't bad enough to be a problem.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#558
post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The water is never too hot to cool the reactors, it's too hot to release back into the river, for environmental reasons. Evaporative cooling solves that problem, but then you "lose" water, which is never great in a heat wave. A nuclear plant using sea water never stops due to heat waves, because it can dilute any amount of hot water.

The water can get too hot and/or short in supply to cool the nuclear plant. It's not magic, it's a machine with design limits that extreme weather events can push up against. It also can pollute rivers and kill fish before it gets to that level. Sea cooled reactors have issues with jellyfish. Having said that, the EU needs more gas in winter when it's cold, so doing the maintenance/refueling in the summer makes sense…

You forgot storage or massive long distance transportation that nuclear future does not require, but solar/wind future does. That changes the "cheaper and better" to "there is no cheap solution, we need both solar/wind and nuclear".

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#559
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fall of Ukraine will mean the beginning of the new Soviet Union (but even _more_ evil), and most probably a world war, so it should be prevented at all costs possible. Not event to mention that the invasion is plainly evil, and should be repealed.

> new Soviet Union

Any reason to think this? Did Soviet Union form by Russia invading and conquering another country? No, it was a result of fall of the Russian empire and the Russian civil war.

The conditions now are very different. Fall of Ukraine would mean political win for Putin and his acolytes, maybe another invasion later on. But Soviet Union? More like stronger Russia, a revert to the Russian Empire.

Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU

#560
post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But retention works in summer too… so I had to get air conditioner It's the opposite. Insulation protects you from heat as well. That's why refrigerators are very much insulated.

Insulation protects only so long till it heats up. Then it keeps the heat inside.

No, that's just thermal mass and it's zero-sum.

That's why you need aircon. Removing insulation doesn't magically make your home cooler.

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