Discussion
azan_: I wonder what prices would they have if they did not implement sunsetting of nuclear energy. Has to be the worst energy policy decision ever.
anovikov: Nice! This is the first time i see anyone providing a quantitative answer to this. When the effect becomes more pronounced, it will hopefully remove political barriers for renewable electricity.
konschubert: Yes!A widening gap between electricity cost and gas cost (and fuel cost) will be THE main driver of electrification! Installing a heat pump will be a no-brainer, driving an electric car will be a no brainer.This can only happen once electricity decouples from gas prices - but that requires lots of renewables in the mix!
anovikov: Quite frankly, Germany already has a lot of renewables in the mix. Why did it take so long for the effect to appear and why is it still so modest? What should be renewables share be (vs ~60% today), for complete decoupling?
snehk: Has this benefitted the regular consumer?No!I personally now have solar panels on the roof and a heat pump so we only use electricity and don't rely on gas. Germany's strategy is really beneficial to households like my own. Unless you're relatively well off or on benefits, you're losing big time. The costs are constantly increasing with people telling others to just take money (you don't have) to install some solar panels on the house (you don't own) or buy an electric car (you can't afford).
konschubert: You need quarter-hours where renewables set the price for power. That's only happening now that renewables have reached sufficient penetration of the market. And it will get more as batteries come online.In a commodity market, the price is always set by the most expensive producer that is still able to sell. That's natural - why would I sell my apples cheaper than the other farmer if you need so many apples that you have to by from both of us?
fundatus: [delayed]
onli: No. Nuclear energy was at the same time very expensive and only a very small percentage of the energy production. Sunsetting the old plants had no negative impact at all on electricity prices, to the contrary, insofar as it made space for more green energy.
onli: If my electricity prices are no longer linked to gas prices, I can have cheaper electricity - my provider only produces green energy. But in the past raising gas prices would have also raised my prices, regardless. So yes, regular consumers can profit from this.
exe34: How much solar/wind can you really install in the area covered by a nuclear station?
qubex: My quant mind is sprained by the implied volatility around the mean.
konschubert: sorry, can you elaborate? I am happy to fix it or add a caveat comment to the methodology section.
wongarsu: Note that "gas" in this context means natural gas, not gasolineAs noted in the methodology below, they are measuring the gas-implied level as the marginal running costs of a combined-cycle gas turbine plant: the price of the natural gas necessary to generate a given amount of electricity, plus the cost of the necessary carbon credits to burn that natural gas. Then they compare that to the actual electricity price
lxgr: > Note that "gas" in this context means natural gas, not gasolineOf course it does, why would anybody say "gas" when they are talking about a liquid? :p
azan_: Compare emissions between France and Germany during dunkelflaute. Germany is frequently at the Polish levels of emissions and Poland is famous for huge emissions. Sunsetting would make sense if they could already generate enough green electricity even in bad conditions, which was not and is not the case. It was purely political decision - Germany wanted to be European hub for distributing gas from Russia (that's why tried to convince others than gas is somehow green energy).
morphle: This energy scam has been going on for more than 30 years. The former Economic minister and professer Yanis Varoufakis explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3bo-s_OY4Q
sod: In a pieceful world, sure. But then there is this [1]. Don't blame the player, blame the game.[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant_...>
GaggiX: Much better idea to just buy oil and gas from Russia /s
croes: Better than nuclear power plants getting hit by drones.We will have Chernobyl longer than dependency on Russian oil and gas
vrganj: What if the whole point of the strategy was to incentivize households to become more like yours?An energy transition isn't just some big centralized state planned enterprise. It's also the sum of people putting up their own solar (on the balcony if they're renters!) etc.An 800W plug-in solar system for your balcony can be had for 200 euros these days, breakeven is super quick.
ozlikethewizard: Good for the Germans, in the UK we use marginal cost pricing, so consumers pay for the highest costing output regardless of how much if any they use. Means even if we get gas down to 1% well still be paying gas prices.
paulhallett: The irony is at the time of me writing this; gas is down to 4.6%[^1] and renewables are a whopping 88.5% and yep - the cost is based on the 4.6% of gas.^1 https://grid.iamkate.com/
snehk: > my provider only produces green energy. But in the past raising gas prices would have also raised my prices, regardless. So yes, regular consumers can profit from this.It's one single grid. You get coal, nuclear, wind, solar, and everything else. If you buy from a provider, you get that mix.
konschubert: It's the same in Germany.The reason why power prices can still decouple: Because there are more and more quarter-hours where gas plants are NOT setting the price and the marginal cost is set by renewables.The same is happening in the UK.> , so consumers pay for the highest costing output regardless of how much if any they use.No, if no Gas is needed (!) for power production in any quarter-hour, the price is not set by gas.PS: Emphasis on needed. Gas plants may still be running at a loss for whatever reason (heat coupling, special contracts), but if they are not needed to provide the power, they will have to bid at a loss, and then they will not be able to drive the price.*
croes: You know that nuclear energy was heavily subsidized?And they still don’t have a long term storage but therefore rotting barrels with nuclear waste in the interim storage facility Asse which have to be retrieved. Cost estimate around 14 billion Euros.
kccqzy: Although nuclear energy produces no carbon emissions, it is simply not price competitive with solar and wind in the western world. A culture of safety above all else made nuclear not price competitive. And it would be political suicide for regulators to relax safety.
brazzy: And that is very much a good thing.
adjejmxbdjdn: Clearly it has relative to what prices would have been if it was gas powered only.Do you have any reason to believe the methodology in the linked page is wrong?
_ink_: For me personally it did not. I was a happy Tibber costumer until recently, meaning I was charged the quarterly hour spot price per kWh. The Iran War let to a significant jump in the price during the hours when renewables were low. I switched back to a traditional fixed price per kWh plan because of the high gas prices.
embedding-shape: > Note that "gas" in this context means natural gas, not gasolineWhat's up with Americans consistently calling things "wrong" like this? "Gas" isn't even the right state of matter for the subject, nor is "football" actually a sport where the ball is mostly for the foot, almost like things are intentionally named bad.
vrganj: Did you know that "Danishes" were... Austrian?
LinXitoW: Do you mean the nuclear power that the free market companies very explicitly said wasn't worth doing? That one? Why are we pleading the government to use a horrendously expensive technology that even the free market hates?
pjc50: Would be good to have more than a one sentence explanation of what you mean, but this is a result of low storage. In the oil market, if prices are too volatile you just stick it in a tank until they stabilize. You only get negative prices if all the storage is full, which happened to WTI once.
xigoi: Also, they drive on a parkway and park on a driveway.
yanis_t: I suppose you can just compare it to France https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/3mo/daily?signal=electri...
konschubert: People seem to have trouble understanding how commodity markets naturally price their goods but the whole point of this website is to show that electricity prices are finally decoupling.
stevesimmons: ... because you may have signed a longer term contract that might in turn guarantee offtake from you rather than the other farmer?This marginal price is only for the spot market right? So the key question is more what % of the mix is spot vs longer term. And thus what the overall impact is on total blended price.
SAI_Peregrinus: What's up with the British calling refined gasoline "petrol"? It's not even an abbreviation for the word, it's a totally different material? You don't go calling refined aluminium "bauxite", but you do call gasoline "petrol".We're both wrong. It's a liquid at room temperature, and it's called not petroleum.
whynotmaybe: Yes, we all know the French are right on this one by calling it "essence"
fundatus: [delayed]
formerly_proven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0wK6s-6cbo
wongarsu: Seems cromulent to me. One of the common meanings of essence is "a product of distillation" (compare e.g. essential oils - oils won through steam distillation). And gasoline is won through fancy distillation
triceratops: "Gas" is short for "gasoline" which means "gas oil". That is a perfectly cromulent name for a liquid."Football" is a different game in the US because it arrived there from England in the 19th century when carrying the ball was allowed. In England the sport eventually split into distinct sports: association football (aka soccer) and rugby. In America they evolved the game independently but didn't change the name.Hope that clears it up.
embedding-shape: > but didn't change the name.That's the part that don't make no sense, so no, still very unclear why Americans keeps insisting on calling things the wrong names :)
triceratops: Because changing a name that's been in use for decades is very confusing and unnecessary. A rose by another name etc.The full names of the two rugby codes are "rugby union football" and "rugby league football". So Americans aren't alone in their cavalier use of the word "football".See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_rules_football
embedding-shape: > Because changing a name that's been in use for decades is very confusing and unnecessaryYeah, that never happens, not even with important national institutions or anything like that.
pjc50: Is this a thing that people can actually sign up to, or is it vaporware? Varoufakis says a lot of things that aren't necessarily true.
fiberhood: You can sign up by becoming a member of the Fiberhood cooperative for free. Send an email to Fiberhood at icloud dot com. We must have your address and map location link or Google map address code so we can draw maps and make a website for your neighborhood to sign up and form an Enernet.We will do a small survey and put up a detailed map of your neighborhood (like openstreetmap, see the slide in this talk [1]). We hand out door to door flyers and organise a weekend barbeque neighborhood party where everyone can come see how the cable between neighbours goes roof-to-roof, window-to-window or garden-to-garden between power routers. See our cost price bifacial solar panels and the large batteries.We find that within a few weeks a few hundred people signed up for the cooperative and we start installing the first 10 houses. Most people invest in solar panels and batteries at wholesale prices installed by volunteers. Others get a loan to pay for this. You wind up getting payed for the panels you bought or paying around 1 dollar cent per kWh, saving a few thousand dollars per years for decades.In the US the Rocky Mountain Institute and its founder Amory Lovins describes this as 'grid defection' and it happens on a large scale now.Fiberhood has cooperatives forming all around the world, both rural and urban: Ukraine, Peru (near Iquitos by the Indian tribe on the Amazon River Bank, Southern Spain, Slovenia, Finland, The Netherlands, Australia.[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbqKClBwFwI&t=5574s
morphle: The Fiberhood planner maps are in the first slides in the first minute of the video. We used to have an interactive zooming map of Fiberhoods for every house in the Netherlands online but now we only have them available for Fiberhood members because of privacy rules. On the maps you can see where the batteries, solar panels and power routers are located in a Fiberhood version of Google Streetview.
toomuchtodo: Sounds like Fiberhood is adjacent to https://solarunitedneighbors.org/ ?
