141–150 of 206 posts
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 ...
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Don’t underestimate the corrupt politics of some countries, especially Germany. There are individuals actively working against the global cost curve and trying to misallocate the capital to gas at the large scale. Katherine Reiche is the primary example. She’s pushing for building as much capacity for gas plants as possible, instead of choosing battery storage as the cheapest option.
Ha, yes, a lot of deniers/delayers are going on about how Germany "wasted" billion on renewables, when in fact they had a booming solar industry, which got nuked by politicians, who changed the policies, as can be seen in 39C3 video "Recharge your batteries with us". Was the subsidy system which was in effect in 2010's unsustainable? I think so, yeah. But the changed policies resulted in companies producing solar goi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ha, yes, a lot of deniers/delayers are going on about how Germany "wasted" billion on renewables, when in fact they had a booming solar industry, which got nuked by politicians, who changed the policies, as can be seen in 39C3 video "Recharge your batteries with us". Was the subsidy system which was in effect in 2010's unsustainable? I think so, yeah. But the changed policies resulted in companies producing solar goi…
Solar panel production is extremely energy intensive. Germany has one of the highest energy costs in the world. So there was no way for Germany to maintain a competitive solar panel industry.
Jan Rosenow doesn't know what he is talking about, power markets are not only day ahead market, but there are a lot of other maturities, CAL27 is higher in Spain than France or the Nordics. https://www.eex.com/en/market-data/market-data-hub
Where CAL27 low is either limited interconnectors (Nordics and Spain) or major nuclear (France). The other countries have CAL27 over 80 eur.
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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 ...
So the article is not telling the whole story. Wonder why they may have hyper-focused on only a part of the whole story.
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This is a lesson in how electricity isn't really a commodity e.g. it's very very difficult to send some electrons from one side of the world to another.
It is actually very easy to move electrons. I only need to get on an aeroplane to move a lot of electrons around.
Just to illustrate the scale costs of energy moved in the form of natural gas:
Nord Stream 1 + Nord Stream 2 with combined capacity of the four pipes is 110 billion cubic metres per annum (3.9 trillion cubic feet per annum) of natural gas.
Calorific Value of Natural Gas from 34 to 52 MJ/m3
https://met.com/en/media/energy-insight/calorific-value-of-n...
So energy per annum for NS1+NS2 is between 3.74^18 J and 5.72^18 J. The maximal power throughput of NS1+NS2 is then between 118GW and 181 GW.
"According to Gazprom, the costs of the onshore pipelines in Russia and Germany were around €6 billion. The offshore section of the project cost €8.8 billion."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_1#Costs_and_financ...
So the cost is about $123M per GW of capacity.
For comparison: the Biscay Gulf electricity interconnection
https://cinea.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/cef-energy-bisca...
"The EPC contracts will cover two high-voltage direct current (HVDC) links (each with a capacity of 1000 MW, amounting to approximately 1600 km of HVDC submarine and land cables), the two converter stations and the civil works associated with the land cables."
2000 MW capacity with cost of EUR 2.85 billion gives:
1425M Eur per GW of capacity
Of-course the projects have been build decades apart so inflation plays a big role and Nord Stream pipelines are currently damaged.
The author's point is that Spain's electricity is very cheap compared to other European countries thanks to its great electricity mix, etc. The reality is that Spain's electricity is cheap because it is relatively insulated from Europe's core network, because its interconnections with other countries are limited. In financial words, there is a spread with the rest of Europe because the ways to arbitrage that spread a…
This is an interesting point about energy market balancing but it has causality backwards. Spain simply has a better energy mix than Germany, no matter how big the spread between the countries is as a function of interconnectedness.
"Global horizontal irradiation (GHI, measured in kWh/m /day), the long-term amount of solar resource available on a horizontal surface on Earth."
German average 2.978 kWh/m2
Spain average 4.575 kWh/m2
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This is an interesting point about energy market balancing but it has causality backwards. Spain simply has a better energy mix than Germany, no matter how big the spread between the countries is as a function of interconnectedness.
Spain also has pretty sensible legislation that is somewhat green. For large public areas the lowest allowed AC setting is 27°C / 81°F. Where-as in America you'll go to a mall and it'll be 65°F. https://www.catalannews.com/politics/item/spain-limits-air-c... Probably doesn't make a ton of difference. But I found that very respectable. It made me hopeful they have other basic green sensibilities.
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Old power station turbines can be repurposed as inertia services via a stability market. Example in the UK: https://www.neso.energy/news/deeside-power-station-begins-wo...
Batteries are sweeping stability markets wherever they are set up. They're simply cheaper and better at it.
Every major renewable grid has installed additional intertia to avoid blackouts.
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Spain also has pretty sensible legislation that is somewhat green. For large public areas the lowest allowed AC setting is 27°C / 81°F. Where-as in America you'll go to a mall and it'll be 65°F. https://www.catalannews.com/politics/item/spain-limits-air-c... Probably doesn't make a ton of difference. But I found that very respectable. It made me hopeful they have other basic green sensibilities.
It will make a real difference if you're at the gym or in a very crowded place though.