[HN Gopher] Has electricity decoupled from natural gas prices in...
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Has electricity decoupled from natural gas prices in Germany?
Author : konschubert
Score : 63 points
Date : 2026-04-07 13:50 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (has-electricity-decoupled-yet.strommarktberatung.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (has-electricity-decoupled-yet.strommarktberatung.de)
| anovikov wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| konschubert wrote:
| 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?
| stevesimmons wrote:
| ... 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.
| konschubert wrote:
| That exists as well it's called PPA in the power market,
| a power purchase agreement.
|
| But ultimately, due to arbitrage, PPA prices will
| converge towards expected spot market prices.
| NoLinkToMe wrote:
| Germany is interconnected with other markets.
|
| Essentially it's not an isolated market, but part of a
| bigger whole.
|
| As an example imagine a village that constituted 1% of the
| population of a country. The village was 100% renewable,
| and the country was 0% renewable. If the village
| disconnected its grid, in isolation its prices would be
| dictated by its renewables. But if its connected, its
| renewables just get traded on a market with marginal
| prices. If a person elsewhere in the country has more
| expensive generation, they'll but your cheap renewables at
| their price level. Thus the village will experience high
| prices like everyone else.
|
| Now suppose Germany is that village in an interconnected EU
| market. Of course the numbers from my example are
| exaggerated, but the point remains: Germany's renewables
| aren't enough, if pricing is set at a much larger market,
| with fewer renewables.
|
| Today about 20% of Germany's electricity was exported.
| While only about 6% of its demand came from gas. In other
| words if Germany was disconnected, it'd have needed no gas,
| and thus prices would've been lower.
|
| Of course disconnecting isn't a good idea for other
| reasons, as on other days Germany imports. And Germany's
| ability to export its renewable excess generates
| significant revenues, creates incentives to build more
| renewables, and offsets emissions and pollution in other
| countries, too.
|
| But long story short, it'll take more for one part of the
| whole to go renewable. As the EU is generally transitioning
| towards renewables we see a decoupling happen.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's more of a political and tax decision than anything
| else.
| hobofan wrote:
| I'm not deep into electricity pricing dynamics, but based on
| my intuition, shouldn't that rather have a dampening effect
| on electrification, as the gap widens?
|
| High gas prices + gap is small -> Big opportunity to undercut
| via cheaper methods like solar -> attractive investment ->
| more new builds
|
| High gas prices + gap is wide and widening -> Smaller and
| smaller opportunity to invest in solar, as the market is
| already dominated by solar prices -> less attractive
| investment -> less new builds
|
| Am I missing something here?
| pjc50 wrote:
| High volatility -> Invest in storage.
|
| Occasional negative prices -> Invest in intermittent
| consuming applications.
| konschubert wrote:
| With electrification, I meant electrification of energy
| consumption.
| hobofan wrote:
| Ah, of course. Thanks for the clarification!
| wongarsu wrote:
| Note that "gas" in this context means natural gas, not gasoline
|
| As 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 wrote:
| > Note that "gas" in this context means natural gas, not
| gasoline
|
| Of course it does, why would anybody say "gas" when they are
| talking about a liquid? :p
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Note that "gas" in this context means natural gas, not
| gasoline
|
| What'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 wrote:
| Did you know that "Danishes" were... Austrian?
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Yes, we all know the French are right on this one by
| calling it "essence"
| wongarsu wrote:
| 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
| xigoi wrote:
| Also, they drive on a parkway and park on a driveway.
| triceratops wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > Because changing a name that's been in use for decades
| is very confusing and unnecessary
|
| Yeah, that never happens, not even with important
| national institutions or anything like that.
| triceratops wrote:
| Why do Germans and Dutch call gasoline "benzin"? It's
| clearly not benzene.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've made the gas natural in the title above. Thanks!
| snehk wrote:
| Has this benefitted the regular/average consumer?
|
| Nope. They pay more than they were with the "old" energy mix of
| more gas and nuclear.
|
| Telling people it could be worse isn't really something to be
| proud of.
|
| 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).
| erispoe wrote:
| I have dynamic pricing in Germany and the cost of electricity
| when to literally zero for a few hours today.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Seems like the regular consumers you refer to would be paying
| _even higher rates_ for gas and petrol if others weren't
| electrifying.
| onli wrote:
| 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.
| snehk wrote:
| > 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.
| fundatus wrote:
| Well, the electrons arriving in your home will the same as
| your neighbours, regardless of which supplier you choose.
| But by choosing a different supplier you can steer which
| energy sources will be used to feed that grid, so it still
| makes a difference, just not exactly where you live.
| konschubert wrote:
| The whole point of this website is to show that the price of
| electricity is year-to-date 22% cheaper than it would be in a
| gas-dominated grid without renewables.
|
| So I don't know where you're getting the "No" from?
|
| You could argue that maybe investing all those subsidies into
| nuclear would have been cheaper, but that would have had a lot
| of path dependencies that simply did not pan out in Europe.
| adjejmxbdjdn wrote:
| 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?
| vrganj wrote:
| 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.
| azan_ wrote:
| 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.
| onli wrote:
| 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.
| azan_ wrote:
| 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).
| exe34 wrote:
| How much solar/wind can you really install in the area
| covered by a nuclear station?
| lxgr wrote:
| That's not the problem; Germany has enough space to build
| solar and wind capacity to satisfy its consumption - on
| average. The problem is storage.
| happosai wrote:
| Most definitely not true. Maybe enough area to cover
| current electric usage, but to truly decarbonize society
| a lot more renewable energy is needed - for transport,
| heating, iron industry, chemical industries, fetilizers
| etc. Massive amounts of electricity is needed unless you
| export your industries to china.
| lxgr wrote:
| Why not? Germany's total energy consumption is estimated
| to be around 1-2 TWh/y. This could be generated by
| photovoltaics covering less than 5% of its land surface.
|
| There are significant problems around rolling out that
| much capacity quickly enough, and I also don't think
| nuclear should have been shut down that hastily, but I
| don't think "only nuclear can cover long-term energy
| needs" is true in any way.
| happosai wrote:
| Wtf are your numbers from, but they are wrong. It's over
| 2200TWh per year. And it you truly want to be renewable,
| the numbers go up. Upcycling waste to plastics or using
| hydrogen to make steel is more energy intensive than
| using fossil fuels.
| https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/indicator-final-energy-
| con...
| lxgr wrote:
| Germany uses "," as the decimal separator.
| fundatus wrote:
| Levelized Cost of Energy for Germany's existing nuclear fleet
| was roughly 13ct/kwh.[1] The averaged costs (YTD) from the
| linked article currently stands at 9.71 ct/kwh. So nuclear in
| the mix would have increased the costs.
|
| [1]
| https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/877586/4e4dce913c3d88...
| BenoitP wrote:
| LCOE is good for marginal cost (eg: one more solar panel),
| but fails dramatically at evaluating systemic costs.
|
| A nuclear reactor moves the entire market down, including the
| costs to the consumer when he buys solar energy.
|
| Here is a UN document explaining it: https://unece.org/sites/
| default/files/2025-09/GECES-21_2025_...
| kccqzy wrote:
| 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 given how accidents like Chernobyl
| or Three Mile Island are etched into the public mind.
| brazzy wrote:
| And that is _very much_ a good thing.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| No it's not. Our nuclear standards are so high that they
| have caused _more_ radiation to be released because of
| demand shifting to coal.
| sod wrote:
| 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_Plan
| t_...>
| GaggiX wrote:
| Much better idea to just buy oil and gas from Russia /s
| croes wrote:
| Better than nuclear power plants getting hit by drones.
|
| We will have Chernobyl longer than dependency on Russian
| oil and gas
| wewxjfq wrote:
| Merit order pricing and the fact that you need fossil peakers
| will make the price effect completely negligible to consumers.
| You are comparing the MWh price of slightly more efficient
| fossil power plants to slightly less efficient fossil power
| plants.
| shafyy wrote:
| It's widely accepted that sunsetting nuclear energy had a
| positive impact on the deployment of renewables, and
| consequently on the longer term energy prices. It was one of
| the better energy policy (and environmental, and security)
| decisions Germany has made in the recent past.
| croes wrote:
| 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.
| LinXitoW wrote:
| 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?
| yanis_t wrote:
| I suppose you can just compare it to France
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/3mo/daily?signal=electri...
| cycomanic wrote:
| Higher
| qubex wrote:
| My quant mind is sprained by the implied volatility around the
| mean.
| konschubert wrote:
| sorry, can you elaborate? I am happy to fix it or add a caveat
| comment to the methodology section.
| wongarsu wrote:
| It is incredibly volatile. Spot prices in the day-ahead auction
| for tomorrow are between -39EUR/MWh and 201EUR/MWh. And that's
| a pretty normal amount of volatility for this time of year
|
| https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_spot_market/chart.ht...
| konschubert wrote:
| We need more batteries for sure.
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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.
| ozlikethewizard wrote:
| 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.
| shafyy wrote:
| My understanding is that it's the same here in Germany. From
| the website
|
| > _What does "decoupled" mean? In a gas-dominated electricity
| market, the marginal generator setting the price is almost
| always a gas-fired power plant (CCGT). That means electricity
| prices are structurally linked to gas prices -- when gas rises,
| electricity rises with it. Decoupling happens when enough zero-
| marginal-cost renewable generation (wind, solar) pushes gas off
| the margin for enough hours that the annual average electricity
| price no longer tracks gas._
| konschubert wrote:
| 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.
| paulhallett wrote:
| 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/
| konschubert wrote:
| In Germany, the price for the 17:00 product today is about 11
| Euro, which is NOT the price implied by gas. No gas plant can
| run at this price.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The price of gas is -PS9.26/MWh? (from that link!)
| happosai wrote:
| Marginal pricing is not specific to electricity in UK, that's
| just how commodities end up priced.
|
| Saudis pump oil at cost of $10 per barrel. Will they sell it to
| you at $10? Nope. The average oil price? Nope.
|
| Saudis will sell the barrel at the highest price people are
| willing to pay - the marginal price. So if the most expensive
| oil needed to match the global oil demand is some super
| expensive arctic oil project, the oil will be priced according
| the marginal cost of that project even if only 1% is needed.
| konschubert wrote:
| Yea. The merit order bidding method just reflects the natural
| pricing of any commodity market.
| NoLinkToMe wrote:
| Same as in Germany actually.
|
| It's true that even 2% of usage being gas, means 100% of the
| demand pays the gas price.
|
| But (!) that's only true for the spot market at that particular
| point in the day. And that changes all the time.
|
| Example: if you use zero gas for 80% of the day, and use just
| 10% gas for remaining 20% of the day, then that day gas was
| just 2% of total demand, like we said earlier. But it's not
| true that gas prices dictated 100% of the price that day.
|
| After all, gas prices dictated only 20% of the day's prices.
| The remaining part of the day there was no gas demand, and thus
| it did not dictate the price. And that happens more and more
| often.
|
| The more renewables + storage are built out, the more time of
| the day that gas is displaced, not used and thus not part of
| the price mechanism.
|
| Second, if the market pays at the gas price, the renewables
| reap all the profits (because their costs are far below the gas
| price). This incentivizes further renewable capacity build-out,
| eventually displacing gas entirely. This incentive structure
| pushes the market the fastest towards lowest-cost generation,
| which is renewable nowadays.
|
| edit: terrific 15m explanation on spot pricing:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Paun0siu67o
| morphle wrote:
| This energy scam has been going on for more than 30 years in
| Europe and the UK.
|
| The former Economic minister and professor Yanis Varoufakis
| explains [1].
|
| My Fiberhood cooperative has a solution: the Enernet smart grid
| where you pay $0.01 per kWh. We wire up one in three houses or
| more in a neighborhood with power routers. People buy and sell
| only solar electricity from panels in the neighborhood, from
| batteries and from every ev charging station on every parking
| spot in the neighborhood and from every parked ev. Each
| participating house saves $2000 to $5000 per year for 30 years or
| more[2]. You also get free 25 Gbps internet. You heat your house
| with a heatpump or cool the house with an ice storage ac powered
| only by solar. If the cooperative makes any money the share the
| profit with all the members or they vote to buy more solar panels
| and batteries. The cooperative gives loans to houses that can not
| afford their own panels.
|
| [1] Best version with info graffics
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3bo-s_OY4Q or
|
| Longer version
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NicE0-N9ux0&list=TLPQMDcwNDI...
| or
|
| short version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaHepQyE37Q
|
| [2] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Merik-
| Voswinkel/publica...
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Sounds like Fiberhood is adjacent to
| https://solarunitedneighbors.org/ ?
| morphle wrote:
| Yes and no, not really. There are many smart grids and
| more not-so smart grids around the world, but only a few
| are non-commercial or owned by the members.
|
| Fiberhood is unique in that we have our own Enernet power
| routers (a software controlled multi-port bidirectional
| AC-DC-DC inverter peer to peer network) that can share
| large amounts of DC current, has special power
| aggregation to enable megawatt EV chargers in every
| house, battery nano-inverters that make cheap batteries
| last up to 20000 charge/discharge cycles, integrate
| (free) discarded solar panels and has a range of software
| defined networking options including 4 x 25 Gbps internet
| ports per house. Most smart grids are just a different
| meter and payment scheme, not a radical rewiring of the
| entire electricity system in the neighborhood without a
| commercial company or government controlling what
| citizens pay. Other smart grids raise the cost of grid
| defection, Fiberhood tech makes it possible to have
| abundant redundant solar energy at its cost price $0.01
| per kWh, many times cheaper than national AC grid pricing
| anywhere in the world. The tech was made to prevent
| making money on energy but incentivize solving the
| climate crises by making Solar by far the cheapest
| option. Stop almost all carbon and methane greenhouse gas
| emissions by going 100% solar.
| morphle wrote:
| 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.
| morphle wrote:
| Please give some proof of Varoufakis lying. I always check
| what he claims in his books and talks and I never spotted a
| lie. I also check Saul Griffith and Amory Lovins talks, books
| and papers on factual errors and never spotten one in two
| decades.
| konschubert wrote:
| 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.
|
| edit: I didn't watch the videos, I don't have time first watch
| a video and then to dissect bullshit from truth.
| fiberhood wrote:
| But the solar electricity is still overpriced and taxed.
| People pay several times more for solar electricity from the
| grid than what they get if they sell to the grid.
| michael_j_x wrote:
| If you are selling to the grid, there is probably over-
| supply. Prices are driven by supply and demand. If you want
| to avoid selling at lower prices and buying at higher, try
| and get a battery. Check ecoflow to get an idea of the
| costs.
| fiberhood wrote:
| Ecoflow is a good example of overpriced American tech. I
| payed $1500 for a 2 kWh battery. Our Fiberhood coop sells
| a 16kWh battery for $1800. Prices in China are lower
| still.
| antonkochubey wrote:
| Ecoflow is overpriced crap for people who have no idea
| what ESS systems are like and so just buy a terrible
| product from a powerbank manufacturer.
| konschubert wrote:
| That's because that's how the grid is paid for.
|
| Maybe a max-capacity price would be better for household
| grid connections, but that doesn't change the fact that the
| grid needs to be paid for.
| Arnt wrote:
| The price for grid power ought to be somewhat higher than
| the the grid operator(s) pay at the place where the power
| is delivered into the grid plus their own costs for running
| the actual grid. So what do you think is a fair price for
| building/maintaining/running the grid?
|
| The grid is a nationwide electrical circuit with
| requirements to connect to most buildings, and with
| demanding uptime and safety requirements. How much ought
| building and maintaining that to cost?
| NoLinkToMe wrote:
| It's not overpriced. If it was, the grid operator would be
| raking in massive profits because they're selling way above
| cost. In reality grid operators have small margins, this
| indicates there is no overpricing.
|
| Do you get paid less for power fed to the grid than power
| sold at retail? Yes. Because they're different things. You
| get say 5 cents for a kWh fed back to the grid, while you
| pay more like 25c. But guess what? Wholesalers also get 5
| cents to sell to the grid. It's just that there's an
| additional 20 cents in grid operation and taxes for a
| retail price.
|
| Taxes you can't avoid, it's not a 'scam'. It's money you
| pay that goes into public funds and returns to the public,
| and is spent by people you can vote to elect to represent
| you.
|
| Grid costs also aren't a scam, they're just a cost of doing
| business. Again, profit margins are small, so they're
| pricing based on cost, not based on scam.
|
| And it's all entirely optional. You can just install
| batteries yourself. You can do whatever you want. You don't
| have to use the grid. But surprise surprise, there's no
| reason to think that a small network is on average cheaper
| than a big network. The bigger the network the easier it is
| to share storage capacity and offload excesses from one
| place to another. It's the reason most states and countries
| try to build interconnectors to even build international
| grids, and why islands like Cyprus that don't interconnect
| and have small markets have the highest electricity prices.
| It's why anyone who builds a home and has the choice to
| connect to an available grid or not, does so. And why land
| and homes in locations without grid-access are valued less,
| because they're more expensive to set-up.
| gib444 wrote:
| We don't care. We want cheaper electric like other countries
| and want our politicians to make it happen
|
| Blah blah contracts blah markets blah always an excuse in the
| UK for why everything is more expensive than other countries
|
| Is there a wall in the way? Tear it down. Make it happen
|
| God we demand so little of our politicians in reality
| _ink_ wrote:
| 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.
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