[HN Gopher] Exchange electricity prices in France go through the...
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Exchange electricity prices in France go through the roof
Author : nanope
Score : 90 points
Date : 2022-04-04 17:04 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| rektide wrote:
| weather demand related, is one comment.
|
| im interestes to hear more about the French Republic paying
| some.of the cost. do consumers just see a reduced rate on their
| bills, or is it clear that the state paid some of their bill? is
| thhe state blanketly paying out the same amount per use for
| everyone & every company, subsidizing by use, or are there limits
| or preconditions that apply?
| pjerem wrote:
| Electricity providers can choose their prices but EDF, which is
| the only state owned provider, must have at least one offering
| with prices fixed by the law.
|
| Usually, this offering is overpriced but nowadays, it's the
| cheapest way to get electricity.
|
| So EDF, as a company, is currently, technically, taking the
| loss. But the French state is the main shareholder of EDF and
| can inject capital with public money into EDF if needed.
|
| Other electricity providers are just loosing customers. But in
| France, electricity providers are not electricity producers,
| they are just intermediates between the consumer and the
| producer, so they can die and I don't care. At least, EDF is
| state owned, main producer, main provider and the means of
| production (nuclear plants) have all been paid by public money.
| merpnderp wrote:
| What would Germany's energy prices be if they'd transitioned away
| from cheap Russian natgas starting back in 2014? What will they
| be if Russia shuts down exports tomorrow?
|
| France is in a much better position.
| nanope wrote:
| Obviously not? Just because France doesn't buy natural gas
| themselves, they import so much electricity based on natural
| gas from its neighbors. So they are defacto dependent on
| natural gas as they can't supply electricity enough with
| nuclear and are thus in such much much worse energy political
| situation as prices will continue to surge.
| complexworld wrote:
| Do you have a source for this information?
|
| This is what I found "In 2020, France exported a total of
| nearly 78 terawatt hours of electricity. Meanwhile,
| electricity imports to France amounted to nearly 35 terawatt
| hours in total that year."
|
| Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1279015/france-
| electrici...
| merb wrote:
| nuclear is only useful for base load you cant shutdown a
| reactor in hours, thats why france imports a lot of gas
| (the same goes for germany, its the fastest way to scale
| energy, burn more gas, its even easier than with coal.)
| Shadonototra wrote:
| price of electricity in france is indexed on the price of gas
| because germany kept crying
|
| that's why the price skyrocketed, if i remember correctly,
| they'll get rid it
| [deleted]
| cinntaile wrote:
| The wholesale electricity price in the EU is calculated the
| same everywhere as far as I know. It's the cost for the most
| expensive energy source that was needed to meet demand.
| marbu wrote:
| About 1/2 of nuclear power plants in France are down because of
| maintenance and/or repairs[1][2]:
|
| > France's nuclear fleet has been hit by unprecedented outages
| this winter with half of its 56 reactors currently unavailable.
|
| This is happening in a country where most people use electric
| heating[3] while the temperatures dropped a bit recently (minimal
| temperatures are mostly below zero centigrade, while max. doesn't
| go over 10 C)[4]. Moreover the ongoing Russian war doesn't
| exactly help here.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/edf-extend-civaux-
| nuc... [2] https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/market-
| insigh... [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1086485/types-
| heater-hou... [4]
| https://www.weatheronline.co.uk/weather/maps/forecastmaps?LA...
| rurban wrote:
| nuclear vs wind energy maybe. just look at it. which do you think
| is 30x cheaper?
|
| the more interesting question is why the oil and water-energy
| exporter Norway got so much more expensive domestic energy prizes
| since it joined the European energy market.
| IMTDb wrote:
| How much does renewable energy cost on a windless November
| night, when I need to heat my home and cook my dinner ?
| pydry wrote:
| A bit less than nuclear energy if there's a good mix of
| pumped storage + wind + solar.
|
| It all gets built _way_ quicker too. No 15 year lead times
| setting up solar panel farms can be done in 6 months. Pumped
| storage projects can be done in a couple of years. Each small
| scale quick and cheap project takes a chunk out of our
| reliance on natgas.
|
| People way underestimate just how fantastically expensive
| nuclear power is and how unviable it is without lavish
| subsidies that other renewables dont need.
|
| It'll keep getting built in countries with nuclear arsenals
| though coz it _can_ share some of those costs. Thats
| ultimately why we get barraged with so much pro nuclear power
| propaganda. It aint about reliability, it 's about the
| military industrial complex foisting costs off on to rate and
| taxpayers.
|
| Obviously when Iran does this we _are_ made aware of how
| _awful_ and _wrong_ it is but it 's greenwashed under the
| carpet 100% of the rest of the time.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Does that cost figure for wind include storage? If not, then
| you're comparing apples to oranges.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| I know it is tiring to see this comment. But, the cost of
| nuclear power quoted everywhere does NOT include the cost of
| safely handling the waste from it for hundreds of years right?
| Until it is included it is like Saudi Arabia claiming that oil
| is the best thing in the world because it costs EUR1/barrel
| because they only need to factor the cost of digging for it.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Nuclear power strike prices usually do include much of the
| long term costs, and money has to be committed into a trust
| (or some similar scheme) as part of getting approval in the
| first place.
|
| And it would be more like Saudi Arabia claiming that oil only
| costs $100 per barrel because they don't need to pay for
| pollution remediation, healthcare costs, spill cleanup and
| their share of all climate change effects from the time they
| sold the oil until the time that oil's effects have been
| removed from the system. Which they don't.
| renox wrote:
| > Nuclear power strike prices usually do include much of
| the long term costs
|
| In theory yes, but given that they aren't able to predict
| correctly the cost of building a nuclear station, I don't
| see why we should trust them on predicting the real cost of
| dismantling them..
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| It's very easy to accurately predict the building costs
| of a nuclear reactor.
|
| The overruns you're talking about come from politicians
| showing up halfway through the project and changing the
| rules to show their voters that they are involved
| renox wrote:
| In France the new nuclear reactors have been plagued by
| hardware issue, delays.. So no, it isn't 'easy' to
| predict the building costs, it's easy only when you're
| replicating an already existing reactor and only if it
| was built recently!
| pydry wrote:
| Or insurance. If another fukushima strikes it's taxpayers
| on the hook for the $800 billion cleanup bill.
|
| Makes all the propaganda about how _safe_ it truly is ring
| a bit hollow when they dont pay for their own damn
| insurance.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| The Fukushima cleanup, unique in history and resulting
| from radically unlikely natural disasters, cost less than
| half what the fuel it replaced that decade would have
|
| This is without considering the cost of climate change or
| all those prevented deaths
| pydry wrote:
| Every nuclear disaster is unique yet nobody is willing to
| bet on any of them being the last. Fukushima was also
| unique in that it caused coal usage to skyrocket in Japan
| - a problem Germany is not currently suffering from.
|
| To me, the way to prove that something ISNT safe is to
| shout loudly about how safe it is and to absolutely
| refuse to shoulder the costs of anything going wrong.
|
| This is what the nuclear industry does and the government
| backs them.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| Digging miles into the ground with a 4 story mechanized oil
| rig is much more complicated than putting some dirt into a
| barrel and walking past it with a Geiger counter monthly,
| buddy
| guerby wrote:
| Real time data for France electricity generation:
|
| https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix
|
| Import/exports are here:
|
| https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electrici...
|
| Yesterday France imported between 6 and 10 GW, a lot from Germany
| belorn wrote:
| France (One year graph): https://www.epexspot.com/en/market-
| data?market_area=FR&tradi...
|
| Germany (One year graph): https://www.epexspot.com/en/market-
| data?market_area=DE-LU&tr...
|
| Now for some extra fun, overlay this with graphs over CO2
| emissions.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > Now for some extra fun, overlay this with graphs over CO2
| emissions.
|
| Some other fun: Overlay this with a graph of nuclear waste
| production.
| realusername wrote:
| I'll take that any day over CO2 emissions, thank you
| nicolaslem wrote:
| Pick your poison, the former is one of the biggest threats to
| humanity right now, the latter is a footnote in our list of
| problems.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| France produces ~2kg of nuclear waste per person per year
| [1]. Most of that waste is recycled into fuel.
|
| 1. https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-
| radio...
| belorn wrote:
| The point of a graph is to illustrate a number that fluctuate
| and changes over time. Nuclear waste production does not.
|
| We could graph how much money Germany is funding the Russian
| military by buying gas, coal and oil. We could also graph how
| much radioactive particels get released into the environment
| through fossil fuel combustion. However both would just
| correlate directly with how much fossil fuel they consume
| which would then follow the graph of CO2 emissions. One line
| is plenty enough to describe all those things without having
| to be too explicit about the trade offs being made in Germany
| compared to France.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > The point of a graph is to illustrate a number that
| fluctuate and changes over time. Nuclear waste production
| does not.
|
| I would expect that more nuclear waste is produced when
| more nuclear energy is produced and less waste when less
| energy is produced. Isn't that a fluctuation?
| belorn wrote:
| Since nuclear plants generally operate at full capacity
| all the time you won't get changes in how much energy is
| produced. The linked graphs above are how much the market
| price is at specific locations, not how much energy get
| produced.
|
| The European energy market price is determined by changes
| in supply (wind and solar being the main contributors for
| fluctuations, followed by water supplies), demand for
| energy, and prices for fossil fuel. If gas prices goes
| up, the price for energy on the market goes up. If cheap
| wind is flooding the market, prices goes down. As can be
| read by the graphs, since the European energy market is
| connected those changes occur simultanious in both
| Germany and France. However, there is an additional
| transport cost and thus prices can be a bit different.
| The negative energy prices also seems to effect those
| more closely to the plants with excess energy, rather
| than transporting the excess energy across the European
| continent.
|
| The actually cost at any specific location is then
| determined by the energy market price (see above) and
| transport distance between the energy production point
| and energy consumption point.
|
| A graph over nuclear waste would have no correlation with
| the market price. At most one would see a slightly more
| volatile market price when nuclear energy production is
| low, and a slightly more stable market price when the
| production is high, but one would need to have a pretty
| fancy graphical design in order to confer that knowledge
| in a graph.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > A graph over nuclear waste would have no correlation
| with the market price. At most one would see a slightly
| more volatile market price when nuclear energy production
| is low, and a slightly more stable market price when the
| production is high, but one would need to have a pretty
| fancy graphical design in order to confer that knowledge
| in a graph.
|
| Does the market price correlate really better with CO2
| emissions? Does the price drop between 21 Dec and 31 Dec
| from ~430/515 EUR/MWh to ~12/23 EUR/MWh mean that CO2
| emissions of energy production dropped by 95% at the same
| time?
| merb wrote:
| btw. gas imports for france and germany from russia are
| probably the same.
| belorn wrote:
| You are right to a degree. In reality gas and oil get put
| into reserves which acts as buffers for the actually
| consumption of the fossil fuels. During periods of good
| wind/solar weather, the buffers start to fill up, and
| when demand for fossil fuel energy rises the buffers get
| emptied.
|
| There is however the ability to increase/decrease imports
| when needed by adding more transport trucks or reduce the
| flow in the pipe lines.
|
| A graph over CO2 emissions is thus more useful in this
| context since they follow the actually consumption of
| gas/oil/coal, and has a direct connection with the market
| price for which the above graphs represent.
| merb wrote:
| well germany uses less gas for energy, but more for
| heating and overall way way more coal. of course france
| has less co2 emissions. coal is even worse than gas which
| favors france by a big margin.
|
| in a best of case scenario we would not use either of
| coal,gas,nuclear oil or any other fossil technology, but
| we are far from it, but i'm pretty sure europe is closer
| than most other countries/states/etc.
| Archelaos wrote:
| To put some numbers on the table, in 2018 (I could not
| find more recent data) the values of CO2 emissions in
| metric tons per capita were as follows:[1]
| France 5.0 Germany 9.1
|
| For comparison: India 1.9 EU 8.6
| China 8.0 Japan 9.4 Russia 12.1 United
| States 16.1 Canada 16.1 Australia 16.8
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ca
| rbon_di...
| bigbizisverywyz wrote:
| Why is Australia so high? I doubt they need much heating,
| but is cooling so expensive?
| regpertom wrote:
| Having a squiz at the first page of results on that
| question, seems like it's a per capita thing of being a
| large country with few people. Also, "including exports",
| which means all the coal etc and thing they export to
| China etc is being counted. I don't want to say it's an
| accounting trick but it feels like an accounting trick.
| 7% of global fossil fuel exports counted against 0.3% of
| the worlds population (8bill vs 27mill). Is it also
| counted against the importing country when they use it?
| Because that feels like double counting.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| Which kind of nuclear waste are we talking about? VLLW? LLW?
| ILW? HLW?
| Tagbert wrote:
| Uh... the scary kind? /s
|
| A lot of people don't really know much about waste from
| reactors other than that it is "bad".
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| It's stupid to fret about nuclear waste.
|
| All plants, worldwide over all human history, for 20% of the
| power production of the entire planet, 100% green, have
| produced less than one half of one football field of barrels.
|
| We can stop climate change on one field of barrels every 31
| years
|
| Thanks to mining byproducts, nuclear produces less and lower
| level radioactive waste than solar or wind
|
| Zero humans in history have died from nuclear waste
|
| It's just something scared people say to sound like they know
| something important
| tucosan wrote:
| In the meantime, a barebones crew operates Chernobyl
| infrastructure, while the sacrophagus was shelled by
| Russian troops.
|
| Europes nuclear power Zaporizhzhia plant is surrounded by
| Russian troops and sustained damage:
|
| > At 11:28pm local time on the 3 March 2022, a column of 10
| Russian armored vehicles and two tanks cautiously
| approached the Power Plant.[18][19][20] The action
| commenced at 12:48am on the 4 March when Ukraine forces
| fired anti tank missiles and Russian forces responded with
| a variety of weapons, including rocket-propelled
| grenades.[19] During approximately two hours of heavy
| fighting a fire broke out in a training facility outside of
| the main complex, which was extinguished by 6:20am,[21][22]
| though other sections surrounding the plant sustained
| damage.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Enerhodar
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