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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

#181

Post by ahartmetz »

tormeh wrote: post #180
ahartmetz wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try it, I find it rather pleasant. When I was in an office with per-room AC settings, I liked 27°C (shorts or light pants + T-shirt or short-sleeved shirt). When I was in Asia, I noticed that the setting was commonly 27°C. It seems to be only North America where "let's show nature who's boss" AC settings are common.

27 is really bad when it's constant. I lived like this for long periods of time (top floor + evening sun) and it's exhausting. 25 is fine.

27 with air conditioning is different. It's less humid and usually the air is also noticeably moving.

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

#182

Post by pyrale »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #158
XorNot wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the market is being driven negative then it means there's an oversupply. Which means overall the price of electricity is higher then it should be - negative prices have to be compensated by higher positive prices at other times, and reduce the return on capital to build new power infrastructure of all sorts. Turning off productive solar panels is wasting power.

The negative price can also be thought of as paying people to use the productive solar panels rather than turn them off, it's a two sided market that drives demand to times of clean and cheap energy, which lowers costs for everyone.

That market-maximalist strategy isn’t producing price reductions in Europe so far.

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

#183

Post by zejn »

mbid wrote: post #177
zejn wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> similar as in Sweden -- which has 4 bidding zones.

What's the point? Sweden has lots of potential for long-term energy storage as hydro power, which makes wind power viable. Northern Germany is mostly flat and there's not even close to enough storage capacity (on the order of ~weeks) to make a wind powered grid economically competitive.

The point is apparently being missed.

There has been a long standing request to split Germany into multiple price zones[1], because Germany as a single zone does not adequately match the underlying network transmission limitations and there have been multiple occasions where power flowed through neighboring zones, which in turn required both network upgrades[2] in the zones neighboring Germany and expensive redispatch[3] in the south Germany. Industry in the south of Germany fights this back as this would mean the energy prices in the south would rise (and drop in the north), as when the transmission lines are congested, the prices start to diverge.

Keeping Germany a single zone is essentially a subsidy to Bavarian industry. The industry fights this so hard that it has basically become an energy insider joke.

[1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/grid-operators-recommen...

[2] https://www.pse.pl/web/pse-eng/news/news/-/asset_publisher/6...

[3] https://www.ffe.de/en/projects/potential-for-reducing-redisp...

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

#184

Post by pydry »

laurencerowe wrote: post #63
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Small modular mass produced reactors have been tried for about 30-40 years without any real progress on making them cheap.

This isnt for a lack of investment either.

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

#185

Post by pydry »

empiricus wrote: post #95
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Europe was spending 200 billions / year on gas from russia. I imagine they could try to build 100 reactors for that price, but it would take a couple of years I imagine...

Gas is dispatchable. You can treat it like a huge battery. Nuclear power not only isnt a substitute for gas, it needs gas as a backup and to mediate supply and demand.

Gas is also waaaay cheaper than equivalent amounts of nuclear power - like 3x cheaper.

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

#186

Post by gregorygoc »

mbid wrote: post #142
zejn wrote: post #135

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.

Germany has high energy costs, but back in 2010s they didn’t because they had access to cheap Russian gas.

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

#187

Post by mhh__ »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #172
mhh__ wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recent piece in critic magazine by Chris bayliss for example.

Oh I see where you've gone wrong then: https://www.desmog.com/2026/04/28/reform-donor-jeremy-hoskin... > A major right-wing political funder has dramatically increased his fossil fuel investments this year, DeSmog can reveal. > Jeremy Hosking, who owns the hedge fund Hosking Partners, donated £1.7 million to Reform UK between 2019 and 2024. The party, led by Nigel Farage, campaigns to scrap the UK’s flagship 2050 net…

Do you have any substantial counterargument beyond "you aren't allowed to think that"?

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

#188

Post by ZeroGravitas »

mhh__ wrote: post #187
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I see where you've gone wrong then: https://www.desmog.com/2026/04/28/reform-donor-jeremy-hoskin... > A major right-wing political funder has dramatically increased his fossil fuel investments this year, DeSmog can reveal. > Jeremy Hosking, who owns the hedge fund Hosking Partners, donated £1.7 million to Reform UK between 2019 and 2024. The party, led by Nigel Farage, campaigns to scrap the UK’s flagship 2050 net…

Do you have any substantial counterargument beyond "you aren't allowed to think that"?

No, I'm hereby banning you from reading obviously biased sources of partisan information that has been repeatedly proven false by logic, reason and experience.

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

#189

Post by gregorygoc »

zejn wrote: post #183
mbid wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point? Sweden has lots of potential for long-term energy storage as hydro power, which makes wind power viable. Northern Germany is mostly flat and there's not even close to enough storage capacity (on the order of ~weeks) to make a wind powered grid economically competitive.

The point is apparently being missed. There has been a long standing request to split Germany into multiple price zones[1], because Germany as a single zone does not adequately match the underlying network transmission limitations and there have been multiple occasions where power flowed through neighboring zones, which in turn required both network upgrades[2] in the zones neighboring Germany and expensive redispatc…

If someone had guts (not the current governments) they would split the Germany into zones and all the Bavarian whining about “ugliness” would fade rather quickly when the prices went up.

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

#190

Post by happosai »

joe_mamba wrote: post #15
happosai wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not most of EU but geographically large and diverse and low-latitude countries will. Spain has winds from three different sea areas and is known sunny, so they are in a good position.

Well that' doesn't always scan. Austria has a lot of wind, sun and hydro so its energy prices should be in line with Sweden, Norway, Denmark amongst the cheapest in Europe, and yet it's routinely amongst the more expensive in the EU.

Austria could be there but they would need to build oversupply of solar, wind and (pumped) hydro to saturate the export grid lines. And currently Austria isn't building renewables at scale. I think there is a strong NIMBY movement so the best places to build wind and pumped hydro are blocked...
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