[HN Gopher] Consumer electricity prices in Germany climb to reco...
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Consumer electricity prices in Germany climb to record high: 45-80
Cents/kwh
I just got a letter from my electricity company. They are bankrupt
and I am now exposed to 80 cents / kwh as they immediately stop
supplying electricity. Here is a brief summary of the electricity
crisis in Germany: Consumer electricity prices in Germany climb to
a record high despite a warm winter. Not only mine, but several
other electricity providers have gone bankrupt in the past few
days. The price available to consumers is now 45-80 cents / kwh.
Many providers no longer accept new customers because they have to
recalculate their offers, so that consumers are exposed to the
"basic supply", which in many regions has reached 80 cents per kWh.
My plan now is to get a contract that I can cancel on a monthly
basis and I hope the situation improves. If you accept my
application, I will have to pay 65 cents per kWh from now on. The
bad news is: From January 1st, prices will continue to rise due to
an increased CO2 tax and the Greens have announced that they will
continue to increase this tax. However, I hope that the underlying
effect will improve and lead to an overall price reduction. At the
same time, 3 out of 6 nuclear power plants will be shut down on
December 31, 2021 - in 2 days. Since the Greens want to accelerate
the switch to electromobility, forecasts indicate that we have a
need for several new natural gas power plants in Germany.
Unfortunately, due to political tensions with Russia, Germany is
working closely with the United States to import LNG. Not only is
it more expensive, it is also dirty, because fracked gas has a
similar carbon footprint to coal and has a devastating
environmental impact. The solution is to buy electricity from
neighbors who are expanding their nuclear power plant capacity. I
am shocked and not prepared. Fortunately, I can pay for that, but I
can imagine that this will cause the prices of everyday goods to
rise - and lead to an erosion of our industrial competitiveness.
Author : 88840-8855
Score : 28 points
Date : 2021-12-29 20:48 UTC (2 hours ago)
| xxgreg wrote:
| The cause is a political battle with Putin over gas. Russia has
| traditionally used gas contracts with individual countries to buy
| political influence.
|
| Now the EU has a single gas market, and had upgraded pipelines to
| be used in reverse directions. For example, recently since gas
| transport from Russia to Poland was reduced, Germany has been
| exporting gas to Poland.
|
| Putin is testing Germany's new government and the EU leadership.
|
| More renewables, and using gas more efficiently, i.e better
| insulated buildings throughout the EU will solve this.
|
| New nuclear isn't going to happen much in the EU, and existing
| nuclear is only a small part of EU wide generation, and becoming
| increasingly unreliable. France has even higher electricity
| prices ATM due to nuclear outages.
|
| https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-ne...
| HMH wrote:
| > Putin is testing Germany's new government and the EU
| leadership.
|
| To me the current situation seems more self-inflicted than
| driven by Russia. Also it looks like Gazprom is fulfilling its
| contract with Poland [1]. If my assessment is inaccurate please
| point me to some material for reading.
|
| [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/power-prices-russia-gas-
| pgni...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Isn't the issue here that they're declining to sell extra?
| And energy companies normally contract for about half their
| customers need and buy the rest on the spot or near spot
| market?
| vanilla-almond wrote:
| Is there an energy price cap which offers some protection to
| German consumers? Or is this unlikely to help?
|
| Gas and electricy prices have risen across many European
| countries. In the UK, energy firms are warning that energy bills
| are likely to soar by 50% unless the UK government intervenes
| [1]. Already, over twenty energy companies in the UK have gone
| bust.
|
| [1] _Energy bills to soar 50% unless government intervenes,
| industry warns_ : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59760331
| Faaak wrote:
| Epex spot cap price is 3000EUR/MWh if my memory serves
| correctly
| HMH wrote:
| Meanwhile Germany is reexporting gas bought from Gazprom (at a
| relatively low price, much lower than now) to resell it at higher
| prices to other countries. The Yamal-Europe pipeline has been
| operating in reverse for days now and the gas is sent back to
| Poland [1, 2]. Seems like the Germans are paying for gas in
| Poland and Ukraine now.
|
| [1]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russian-gas-
| flow...
|
| [2]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russian-gas-
| flow...
| ismaildonmez wrote:
| > but I can imagine that this might drive an increase in prices
| for everyday goods
|
| Prices are already increasing since some months, with the
| "Ramschpreise" [0], expect even more increases.
|
| [0] https://www.dw.com/de/%C3%B6zdemir-gegen-
| ramschpreise-f%C3%B...
| frnkng wrote:
| Hello,
|
| The spot market prices rised the whole year. But in December it
| fully went off rail. Nothing good will follow.
|
| Source:
| https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/289437/umfrag...
|
| https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_spot_market/chart.ht...
|
| I'd like to know the exact reason for that massive increase. Is
| it undersupply? If yes why is no one doing arbitrage from other
| countries? Is it increased fuel cost coupled with little supply
| from renewables? Is it the shutdown of three nuclear power plants
| and the fact that a lot of base load must now be supplied from
| somewhere else?
|
| Where will it head to? My personal decision is as follows: I will
| now try to obtain a minor amount of land and build a pv array
| there hopefully in the scale of ~1MWp. This will cost less than
| 1MEUR and I'm sure that I and my family can fully life of the
| earnings later in my life. Maybe I let some sheeps roaming around
| the property to cut down grass and move in a trailer next to the
| facility once my kids are larger. For sure I will get the biggest
| and most scary sheep dog one can find to keep strangers away
| then.
|
| Edit: with other words: I will get a solar farmer!
| jpalomaki wrote:
| There's only limited transmission capacity between countries
| and sometimes also within countries.
|
| If I rememberg right, Germany for example is struggling with
| the transmission capacity between north and south and sometimes
| must route the electricity through neighboring countries.
| fy20 wrote:
| It's the same in other countries too. My electricity is based on
| the Nord Pool prices, and a few days this month it has gone above
| 40c/kWh [0]. This time last year it was around 5c/kWh. (The
| amount I pay is higher as I need to pay another ~10c/kWh for
| network fees)
|
| We'd really like you to bring Nord Stream 2 online sometime soon
| kkthxbye.
|
| [0]https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/Market-data1/#/nordic/table
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > starting 1st of Jan the prices will increase even further due
| to an increased CO2 tax and the Green Party has announced to
| further push this tax up
|
| > At the same time, 3 of 6 nuclear power plants will be shut down
| on 31st December 2021 - in 2 days. As the Green Party does want
| to accelerate the transition to e-mobility, projections show that
| we have a demand for several new natural gas power plants in
| Germany.
|
| Wait, so they are raising "green" taxes to... shut down and
| decommision carbon neutral nuclear power and instead build
| natural gas plants that will pump out tons of CO2 in the
| atmosphere.
|
| Did I read that corectly?
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| Right. But there is one more point. We also plan to build coal-
| fired power plants, which are cleaner in terms of the total
| cost of ownership, decommission coal plants, build new gas-
| fired power plants, run them for only a few years, and then
| shut them down.
|
| Energy policy in Germany is strange, expensive and a threat to
| the industrial competitiveness.
| firebaze wrote:
| Germany is acting kind of funny. Coal: bad (granted!). Gas: bad
| (even worse when from russia) (kind of granted). Nuclear: very
| very bad! (?). Solar: good, nimby. Wind: good, nimby.
|
| Electric cars: cool, must have. Additional energy requirements
| for electric cars? Wait, what?
| (https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/wirtschaft/wirtschaft-wachstu...)
|
| This is getting out of hand. I'm really interested in the
| upcoming years, and very glad I'm not personally affected if
| energy prices raise by a few hundred percent, and sad that I have
| to be glad about that.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| I think this is partially due to non-stable political
| leadership. The gas crisis could be eased by opening the valves
| for Russian gas - this was the plan of Merkel's CDU party. The
| new government has a strong green touch. For some reason, the
| Greens ended up in the foreign affairs ministry (instead of in
| the transportation ministry, which would have been an excellent
| fit but is just not as "fancy"). Now we have green foreign
| politics which lead to further tensions with Russia, no North
| Stream 2 gas, hence, the gas crisis will likely continue.
| Instead, "dirtier" LNG gas is imported from the US, but the
| Green Party made its point.
| julienfr112 wrote:
| Non stable political leadership ? Wait, Germany, right ? Do
| you know Angela ?
| belorn wrote:
| The German plan was to invest and heavily subsidize the
| construction of renewables, wind and solar, since that was
| declared the cheapest way to generate power. Are you saying
| the actually plan by the CDU was all along to build a
| dependency on Russian gas, and only use renewables when the
| weather allowed it?
|
| That seems like a terrible plan and quite expensive. Why was
| that the plan?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Few major Western parties are as ossified as the CDU. The
| fact that they have been pushed out of goverment after
| spending 16 years under a single leader there(!) does not
| mean that German politics suffers from instability.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| A good article on that topic, unfortunately, only in German:
| https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/energiemark...
| IiydAbITMvJkqKf wrote:
| german and paywalled.
| ismaildonmez wrote:
| https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.handelsblatt.com%2.
| ..
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| OT: What a great website! THANKS FOR SHARING.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| My provider (Grunwelt - Stromio) went bust several days ago as
| well, and didn't even notice customers yet, I heard about it on
| Twitter. I expect prices to rise significantly in the coming
| years as more nuclear power plants go offline. Germany really has
| the dumbest energy strategy of all countries in Europe.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| What is the Grundversorung (basic electricity services) price
| in your area?
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| 34 Cent / kWh
| squarefoot wrote:
| Outlaw cryptocurrencies: problem solved.
| bequanna wrote:
| As far as I can tell, these prices are not being caused by some
| jump in demand but rather a combination of several supply
| problems.
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Also, outlaw freezing and windless days.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-12-29 23:01 UTC)