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Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

janrosenow.substack.com

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Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#61

Post by bot403 »

ricardobayes wrote: post #23
badpun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would it cost to build out batteries which cover entire continent's electricy needs for say three weeks (as there can be 2-3 week lulls of no wind and no sun in Europe in the winter)? Cause that sounds like a lot of batteries. Not to mention, if a freak 4 week lull occurs, we'll go back to Middle Ages for a week.

Solar still produces even in overcast conditions, during the day. If it's light/medium overcast, most of which Germany usually is it still produces 50-80% of nominal. It only really doesn't produce anything at night or when it snows.

Yes this is one thing that surprised me owning solar. Some days its pretty cloudy and I can still get 2kw or so from my 7kw max.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#62

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

mhh__ wrote: post #36
PaulKeeble wrote: post #7

The past few years has also had Solar continuing to decrease in price so its increasingly going to be the primary choice. On top of that battery prices have been plummeting too so that now Solar + battery is cheaper than other options like Nuclear and especially Gas. Most of the EU will be running on Wind and Solar in the coming years, its a change that is now rapidly occuring based entirely on the rare economics. So…

You have to think about these things as a portfolio rather than just by minimum price. If you have a steel mill for example you need to be able to basically guarantee a certain level of energy production to run it viably because the risk of there not being any power during adverse weather is enough to make it unviable (you can't just turn these things off). This is the reason why gas and nuclear probably aren't going…

If you need predictable price buy futures.

If they increase in price then firm production is stimulated to build to meet the gap.

https://www.next-kraftwerke.com/knowledge/futures-market

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#63

Post by laurencerowe »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #25
empiricus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So sad we could not apply economy of scale for nuclear... The main reason solar and batteries are so cheap is economy of scale.

I don’t think we have really tried. At least not in the last couple of decades.

The problem is that nuclear reactors are huge so you're never going to build that many of them compared to wind turbines (thousands) or solar panels (millions).

France plans to build a series of six reactors for its EPR2 programme with each reactor scheduled for completion 1-2 years apart, but that is only expected to reduce costs by 30% compared to the (hugely expensive) EPR.

Small modular reactors hope to improve things but it's far from clear they will end up any cheaper. Historically making reactors bigger makes them more efficient. The Rolls Royce SMR is just under 1/3rd of the size of the EPR so even if successful any cost reductions are not likely to be dramatic.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#64

Post by wolvoleo »

gman83 wrote: post #50
mono442 wrote: post #48

The reality is that expensive electricity in the EU is by design. The EU ETS imposes heavy taxes on fossil fuels (and they are set to increase even more), which in turn causes the price of electricity to rise. Fully renewable electricity generation is still a long way off, so this will continue for a long time. But it is entirely a self-imposed political problem and could easily be fixed by getting rid of the EU ETS…

Yeah, crippling Europe in the long term for short term gain might not be the best idea - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/15/critical...

It's for long term gain. Energy independence, combating climate change which will cost more to mitigate than the energy costs.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#65

Post by victorbjorklund »

mhh__ wrote: post #39
miohtama wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Everyone should just disconnect Germany, let them freeze, and enjoy cheap electricity?

normally when you buy electricity it costs money!

Many times negative spot prices.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#66

Post by Rygian »

m463 wrote: post #53
mono442 wrote: post #48

The reality is that expensive electricity in the EU is by design. The EU ETS imposes heavy taxes on fossil fuels (and they are set to increase even more), which in turn causes the price of electricity to rise. Fully renewable electricity generation is still a long way off, so this will continue for a long time. But it is entirely a self-imposed political problem and could easily be fixed by getting rid of the EU ETS…

It seems many markets have punitive pricing on electricity, california being one egregious example. In most places, if you buy more of something, you are a good customer, it is usually more economical to sell to you and you get a discount. In california people who use more kilowatts, pay more.

Punitive pricing is a great thing.

The less energy you spend to deliver value, the better for everyone.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#67

Post by znort_ »

sunk1st wrote: post #58

Maybe it's cheap compared to other European countries but that doesn't mean it's cheap. Electricity in Spain is expensive.

it's in the article: wholesale energy price is among the cheapest in eu, but retail price to residents (including tolls, fees and taxes) is well over eu average. tells you something about spain ...

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#68

Post by bryanlarsen »

pyrale wrote: post #46
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But all commodities are like this. It is actually pretty easy to send some electrons great distances, or heck at least it's a well understood, solved problem. It's just that those interconnections haven't been built yet. Heck, oil is probably the "default" example of what a commodity is, but we're now all acutely aware of what happens when moving that oil from one place to another becomes exceedingly difficult.

> or heck at least it's a well understood, solved problem. It is not. As a case in my point, Spain had a blackout last year (and I completely believe they are competent professionals - the task is just hard ). > It's just that those interconnections haven't been built yet. They haven't been built because the grid isn't just a technical problem. It's also a socioeconomic problem, and adding new interconnections would…

Hard is relative. Sure, it's hard, but it's a lot simpler problem than something like being able to consume tropical fruit in a temperate country in the middle of winter.

The difference of course is that the invisible hand of the market gets that fruit into grocery stores. For various relatively good reasons, power is driven by very visible hands.

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#69

Post by znort_ »

TheGuyWhoCodes wrote: post #54

Spain is one of the largest buyers of Russian LNG [1], even doubled in March compared to February 2026 and has been linked to servicing "shadow fleet" tankers carrying Russian oil [2]. Moral bankruptcy. [1] https://cepa.org/article/spains-baffling-russian-gas-addicti... [2] https://kyivindependent.com/spain-escorts-shadow-fleet-vesse...

bs. all of the eu is doing this. the top importer is hungary, then france. and that's the official figures, not counting imports "rerouted" through other countries.

regardless of inflamed speeches eu simply cannot operate without that energy. should have thought about that before starting a war with russia. best of lucks!

Re: Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

#70

Post by laurencerowe »

pydry wrote: post #20
badpun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would it cost to build out batteries which cover entire continent's electricy needs for say three weeks (as there can be 2-3 week lulls of no wind and no sun in Europe in the winter)? Cause that sounds like a lot of batteries. Not to mention, if a freak 4 week lull occurs, we'll go back to Middle Ages for a week.

You would likely get to 97% green energy first with 5-8 hours of storage: https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g... (for Australia it is 5, for other countries it might be 8) Once you get to that "nice to have" problem of what to do about the remaining 3% of power needs it would probably make most sense to synthesize and store gas (methane/hydrogen) from electricity when solar and wind is overpr…

It might not be quite that good in less sunny countries. Similar modest overbuilding of wind and solar in Denmark is simulated to get to about 90% with 12h of storage. This is still good enough though.

https://xcancel.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1565923581246091264

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