Record Wind Power Levels Trigger Energy Price Fall Across Europe 226
New submitter Forty Two Tenfold writes "Electricity prices across Europe dropped last month as mild temperatures, strong winds and stormy weather produced wind power records in Germany, France and the UK, according to data released by Platts. The price decline was more marked in Germany, where the average day-ahead baseload price in December fell 10% month over month to €35.71/MWh. On a daily basis, December was a month of extremes for Germany, with day-ahead base prices closing on December 10 and 11 at less than €60/MWh – the highest over-the-counter levels seen all year – only to fall to its lowest level December 24 to €0.50/MWh."
On a more pragmatic note: so what? (Score:2)
day base price consumer price (Score:4, Informative)
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Given the track record of UK power companies they will probably try and fiddle it so works out as a price increase to consumers. If there was any justice those running these companies should be looking at serious time behind bars for what they have been up to, Hollywood accounting and manipulating the wholesale prices to justify increasing household bills. As it is they will be allowed to retire to their huge piles in the home counties with probably a knighthood or some such to keep them cosy.
OB: Yeah but.... (Score:5, Funny)
Also, North American wind is like TOTALLY different from European wind.
Re:OB: Yeah but.... (Score:4, Funny)
In the southern states where they eat more fibre it's not so different.
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In the southern states where they eat more fibre it's not so different.
Agreed. Texas is the state that produces most of such power. [wikipedia.org]
The oil companies research into corn and bean based fuels failed to constipate our progress. They were full of hot air.
Tex-Mex energy sensibilities have the obvious influence when considering breaking wind power in the face of opposition.
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European wind uses the metric system. COMPLETELY incompatible.
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Over the long-term, certain areas of North America are conducive to wind or solar. Certain areas of Europe are conducive to wind or (to a lesser extent) solar. You should never pick a solution because it's popular or trendy or because it works (worked) somewhere else (especially if only for a brief while). You should pick it because it makes the most sense for you
Actually... negative prices! (Score:3)
According to this article:
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/1/10/energy-markets/negative-spin-europes-amazing-electricity-prices [businessspectator.com.au]
"Over the Christmas holiday, which typically causes a drop in energy demand, wholesale electricity prices in Germany, the Nordic region, the Czech Republic and Slovakia turned negative on excessive renewable energy production and mild weather."
On December 24, 2013, when industrial and business power demand dropped sharply, the price of German power for intra-day delivery fell to an average of -€35.45 per megawatt-hour between 0000 and 0600 in the morning, touching lows of -€62.03/MWh halfway through that period.
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What does that really mean? They will PAY the customers to use electricity?? I don't understand.
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Re:Actually... negative prices! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the producers will pay you to use (more) electricity, happens when the cost of stopping and restarting a power-plant is high and demand is low.
http://www.epexspot.com/en/company-info/basics_of_the_power_market/negative_prices [epexspot.com]
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So when industry shut off for christmas, prices went through the floor.
I suppose same would happen with a fossil plant they couldn't spool down either.
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Long term eco friendly storage (Score:3)
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There are others on the solar thermal side - molten salts or high pressure steam that lasts all night.
However most of the requests for this sort of thing come from a simplistic non
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Some options being used are to pump water into a reservoir where it can later be used to generate hydroelectric, or store the energy as kinetic by spinning a 4000 KG cylinder up to 11,500 rpm (a flywheel). GE is now shipping their wind turbines with batteries so that they can store energy if the price goes low. If the state has a working energy market you could make a living by buying when the price is low (storing the energy) and selling back when the price is high.
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When the energy was traded it very likely did not go to waste but got stored in pumped storages or an aluminium/steel plant ran an extra shift.
Headline wrong twice (Score:2)
Need for storage technology (Score:2)
The price fell because of a surplus that probably wasn’t being fully consumed. I wonder what kind of energy storage solutions they have. Batteries have substantial energy loss between charge and discharge, and supercapacitors aren’t cheap or super enough.
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Better storage solutions are on the way but will take a decade at least to be viable on the commercial scale.
Using EVs for V2G might arrive sooner but you'll need a lot of them. But even so-so batteries are more efficient than the best coal plants.
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If they were smart they would have a large resivoir built to hold several million gallons. use the excess energy to pump water up to fill the resivoir. Then you can simply store that water for a very long time until a surge demand is needed, then run the water back through turbines to generate power when it is needed.
At least that is how we do it here in the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant [wikipedia.org]
This type of article never tells the whole story (Score:5, Informative)
We have a serious problem with subsidized renewable energy , as has Spain , or Germany ( but these are rich and in Portugal we live in a severe crisis).
When there is too much wind and hydro generation, prices in the energy market fall, BUT producers of renewable energy ( exluindo large hydro ) receive the same guaranteed rate ( feed-in tariff). As these producers have priority in the system all energy produced by them have to be bought, even if there is much cheaper energy in the market (gas, nuclear, oil, etc), even if it's free as has happened several times in the past (in Germany last year energy price at one day was negative) we have to buy the subsidized energy !
So actually what happens when there is too much wind and rain
To get an idea of prices paid to subsidized energy, here I leave these two pictures:
Annual change in average cost per type of energy: http://i.imgur.com/MFaPFRZ.png [imgur.com]
Annual changes in the average cost of energy subsidized vs. average market cost: http://i.imgur.com/OFn71pI.png [imgur.com]
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Yes, that's how a subsidy works... Your government believes the long-term benefits of renewables are worth a (hopefully modest) short-term electrical price increase to incentivize the investment in building and installing them. If that has changed, the government should review the rule, and perhaps modify or change it.
Once the t
Wholesale prices (Score:4, Informative)
These are wholesale prices. Once you add in VAT and the EU's subsidy taxes the actual retail prices are quite a bit higher.
The prices also vary quite a bit from country to country, and within countries.
http://energy.globaldata.com/media-center/press-releases/power-and-resources/europe-paying-more-for-electricity-than-us-states-globaldata-consultant-with-dramatic-differences-seen-between-countries [globaldata.com]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/10/27/berlins-ballooning-electricity-rates-become-highest-in-europe/ [forbes.com]
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These are wholesale prices. Once you add in VAT and the EU's subsidy taxes the actual retail prices are quite a bit higher.
The prices also vary quite a bit from country to country, and within countries.
http://energy.globaldata.com/media-center/press-releases/power-and-resources/europe-paying-more-for-electricity-than-us-states-globaldata-consultant-with-dramatic-differences-seen-between-countries [globaldata.com]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/10/27/berlins-ballooning-electricity-rates-become-highest-in-europe/ [forbes.com]
It's not just about prices ... from that Forbes article:
An overwhelming majority – some 84% – of the more than 1,000 Germans interviewed for a recent survey expressed support for Germany’s plan to shift the lion’s share of the nation’s electricity supply to renewable energy over the next decade.
What gives? How has such a radical energy policy remained so popular in the face of rising costs?
Take John Farrell’s recent treatment of the subject in Renewable Energy World:
Support for Germany’s renewable energy quest isn’t about cost of energy, but about the opportunity to own a slice of the energy system . . . Nearly half of the country’s 63,000 megawatts of wind and solar power is owned locally, and these energy owners care as much about the persistence of renewable energy they own as they do about the energy bill they pay. Not only do these German energy owners reduce their own net cost of energy, every dollar diverted from a distant multinational utility company multiplies throughout their local economy . . . Three-quarters of Germans want to maintain a focus on ‘citizen-managed, decentralized renewable energy.’
Germany (Score:4, Interesting)
On a daily basis, December was a month of extremes for Germany, with day-ahead base prices closing on December 10 and 11 at less than â60/MWh â" the highest over-the-counter levels seen all year â" only to fall to its lowest level December 24 to â0.50/MWh.
What you really must know there is that these low costs are not passed on to the customer. On the contrary, energy prices for private users have been constantly rising for years.
Why? Because our corrupt bullshit non-government has passed laws that exempt the - wait for it - biggest industrial users of energy from taxes. Which, of course, means that the rest of us have to pay their share.
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Oh, yeah, I forgot the most important thing: Our wholly-owned politicians and the stupid media which for some reason believes people whose job it is to lie, swindle and bullshit, are making the renewable energies - whose unexpected success is causing these wholesale price drops - responsible for the rising consumer prices.
Private Speculation? (Score:2)
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Well, that is allowed ...
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Yes, they are. The energy "stock" exchange is an open market, like any other.
In europe this is a good thing.... in the usa..... (Score:2)
Here in the USA they would start talking about how the poor poor billionaires that own these power companies need government bailouts because of falling electricity prices.
Oh woe is the Robber Baron, for his massive fortunes are not growing fast enough. We the people must help this poor destitute billionaire..
Re:bfd (Score:5, Insightful)
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More than half of my power comes from domestic hydro, wind, and landfill gas sources, with the rest most likely produced from nuclear and domestic sourced coal and natural gas.
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Other than Hawaii almost all US electric generation is from domestic sources since oil is WAY too expensive on a $/BTU basis to compete with coal and natural gas, it's much better used for transportation and for feedstock for the petrochemical industries (plastics, cosmetics, medicine, textiles, etc).
Re:bfd (Score:5, Interesting)
Although wind power does not contribute to global warming through greenhouse gas emission, it does extract kinetic energy from the atmosphere and therefore may alter global climate even at continental scales [pnas.org]
It may be the lesser of evils compared to some other supplemental energy options but it isn't perfect- and it isn't a good candidate for base load
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Wind is a perfect candidate for base load.
'Zero' running costs, e.g.
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Except it can't guarantee a continuous base load, so there goes its suitability.
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Ofc it can be guaranteed, or what you think how germany is using wind power as base power? By magic?
Did it ever happen that a region that had a wind prognosis of lets say 40km/h to 60km/h suddenly had ZERO wind? Or significantly less then 40km/h?
Don't know how good the weather reports in your country are, but in europe they are very reliable (after all the atmosphere found no trick yet to trick out the scientists on so simple stuff as a 24h wind forecast.)
And as the other poster pointed out: germany is not
Re:bfd (Score:4, Informative)
Wind is a perfect candidate for base load.
I don't think you know what that word means...
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There are two different definitions of 'base load' in common use:
- In one definition, the base load is the minimum amount of power that must be provided at any given time and situation. Ideally, every utility will be able to meet its base load requirements even if all the variable load sources (wind, solar, etc) are simultaneously unavailable. Base Load generation facilities are power plants that can reasonably be expected to be available at any time for as long as is needed -- coal and gas powered power
Re:bfd (Score:4, Informative)
Both of your definitions are no "definitions". :D
They are layman interpretations of the true definition
Baseload: the amount of load you always feed into the grid, regardless of demand. That means even at night when your "demand" is only roughly 30% of the peak, you still feed the typical 40% "base load" into the grid, it is used to fill up pumped storages. Traditionally -- as you explain correctly -- done with cheap plants that run nearly at 100% *all the time*. With the side effect that those plants are also relatively slow in load following
There are two problem areas here:
- Using the first definition, a utility must be able to somehow satisfy maximum demand even if major variable supplies are unavailable.
That is wrong. As *base laod* is not used for *maxiumum demand* but only for far less then half of the *maximum*, the rest is done with load following and peak plants.
- Using the second definition, base load sources must be given priority lest the owners lose money. If utility owners routinely lose money, there will be no new utilities built, and possibly no maintenance of existing facilities. The problem is that most power sources are base load sources under this definition, thus everyone must have priority.
That is not true as well. As modern *base load* plants are similar quick in demand change and adaption as normal load following plants. In fact they are the same thing. It is only a planning decision which plants you use for base load tomorrow
If I know I will have enough wind tomorrow I will plan today how much of that wind power I consider base load.
Base load is not actually needed (Score:2)
Base load is a limited way of thinking about things.
Really, a more generic model is that you need to follow the power usage curve. That's the only thing that matters. If you think about it that way, nuclear and big coal plants aren't too great either because it tends to be uneconomical to ramp the production up and down. For nuclear, you need to be operating as close to 24x7 you can get to recoup the capital costs.
This more generic way of thinking about things also allows us to see that even in base load sc
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The job of a good power system is to make sure you have capacity that can relatively quickly ramp up production to fill in the gaps, e.g. hydro power or gas plants, or perhaps in the future some sort of grid-level storage. Wind power is compatible with this model. That's why it, despite your remark, actually works just fine in practice.
You cannot ramp wind up and down all the time, so I wouldn't call it entirely compatible with that model. It certainly can fit in the model at the appropriate levels. I agree with the future storage, if that is ever economically viable it would be a game changer.
Re:bfd (Score:5, Informative)
Not sure what you are thinking or if you're confused about units, etc. but ... /MWh which is close to the euro 35 ($47) price in TFA.
A quick search of US Wholesale prices shows a range of $31 to $71 for last year with highest prices in the Northeast. California was $42
So... price for this wind power is on par with US wholesale prices for all (coal, hydro, NG, etc.) averaged together... not really 3x.
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Yes, but at the retail level subsidies are charged to the end user.
Not sure the wholesale price accurately reflects the complete picture.
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Not sure the wholesale price accurately reflects the complete picture.
Soaring energy bills in the UK is little short of a crisis but with little correlation to the wholesale cost of the energy, I the prices here don't fall at all.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/nov/16/energy-prices-rise [theguardian.com]
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The price decline was more marked in Germany, where the average day-ahead baseload price in December fell 10% month over month to €35.71/MWh. On a daily basis, December was a month of extremes for Germany, with day-ahead base prices closing on December 10 and 11 at less than €60/MWh – the highest over-the-counter levels seen all year – only to fall to its lowest level December 24 to €0.50/MWh.
Re:bfd (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure what you are thinking or if you're confused about units, etc.
I'm pretty sure the poster was dividing 35.71 by 1000 to get KWh price and getting .3571 rather than .03571. Then they said "47 cents per KWh!? That's 3X our residential price!". Fairly simple, and easy, mistake to make when working with with one set that scales by 1000 (kilo, mega, giga, etc.) and another item that scales by 100 (dollars to cents).
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So... price for this wind power is on par with US wholesale prices for all (coal, hydro, NG, etc.) averaged together... not really 3x.
TFA says nothing about the price of wind power. Only that increased supply (vs demand) has caused prices to drop.
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Re:bfd (Score:5, Informative)
That's not just not exactly cheap, that's 3x the cost of power here in California
I think you need a new calculator. 35.71 euros is about $49. That is less than 5 cents/kWhr. Where in California are you getting a kWh for one third of a nickel?
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Wholesale vs retail.
Distribution charges add $0.07-0.12/kWh. I think that includes the markup on wholesale prices as well.
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In California, at least, I'm pretty sure there is no markup on wholesale prices. Utilities get a regulated fixed profit based on distribution charges.
Re:bfd (Score:5, Informative)
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In 2014, as a regular German citizen I have to pay about 0.3 € per kWh, which is about $409.8 per MWh. Combined with all the other living costs here, I can guarantee you that it doesn't feel like "almost free" at all.
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Re:bfd (Score:5, Interesting)
€35.71/MWh from the generator is not exactly cheap by US experience.
The cheapest electricity in the USA today is in Kentucky (coal country) where it goes for about 6 cents/kWh. That is about $60/MWh, which is considerably more than 35 euros. I live in California, and I pay from 12 to 30 cents per kWh ($120 to $300 per MWh) depending on usage tier.
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In Oregon I'm paying 5 cents for the electricity, and another 6 cents for delivery, with transparent markup (public utility)
One problem with comparing the prices is that there are different types of contracts; wind we get on fixed contracts, where it is very cheap because the capacity is purchased in advanced. Any coal power we get is off the spot market, where it is vastly more expensive than wind, hydro, or nuclear.
In Kentucky, their coal power is cheap not because coal is cheaper, but because they're get
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Such ripoffs are why solar photovoltaics are very popular where I live despite being an expensive way to generate electricity. Cutting out the middleman becomes worth it when the middleman gets very greedy.
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The Greens TKO The Fossils!
Greens:1
Fossils:0
Until the wind dies :D
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We have one of the largest nuke plants in the world (Bruce nuclear, #2) but all they do is buy super-expensive wind and sign long term contracts to do so as well.
When the NIMBY people complained they forced the wind generators anyhow.
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Nuclear is baseload and quickly loses efficiency if you try to ramp it up and down and makes up most of Ontario's energy production. Wind's nameplate capacity in Ontario is under 2GW and they also have plenty of hydro & gas.
In 5 years of tracking the output from IESO [ieso.ca] I can't recall nuclear falling below 9.5GW.
Yes, the wind farms have "must-take" but if they are not producing, they don't get a penny.
Ontario has tried several times to price out building 2 new nuke plants and every time the bill gets much
Re:Uh, that's a huge spread (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Uh, that's a huge spread (Score:5, Interesting)
wind doesn't vary on a minute by minute basis, though. Perhaps we don't need batteries, so much as we need a way to communicate pricing signals to the consumers.
If I had a device that I could set price points to, say, start a load of laundry or run the refrigerator compressor, or hold off on the AC when a price transmitted by the power company is high or low, I could make my own demand follow the actual supply more closely.
Just because I might have a few big-power needs, doesn't mean I can't be flexible with when they are executed, if I have some way of knowing when a good time is.
I would want the information to be a price that I choose, though, rather than the "smart metering" I've seen elsewhere where the device allows the power company to decide when your devices run. If I'm picking, I can override, for instance if I'm going to an interview in a few hours and just noticed I need to wash a suit or something.
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well there is dual rate metering, commonly known as Economy 7 in the UK. You just get charged less for electricity during the night when demand is at its lowest.
Unfortunately they charge you more for metering it, even thou its pretty much just a relay which switches metering clocks at set times.
It's fairly easy to be power efficient these days. The annoying thing is its not the unit rate that makes much of a difference to my bills but the standing charge levys and other fee's. doubling my electricity use w
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wind doesn't vary on a minute by minute basis, though.
I think perhaps you need to get outside of the basement occasionally and actually experience this wind phenomenon.
Re:Uh, that's a huge spread (Score:5, Interesting)
A better solution may be the development of longer term energy storage and batteries
An even better solution is to pass through the fluctuation in the wholesale prices directly to the consumers. This will stimulate a demand for appliances that are "price aware". So refrigerators, freezers, and AC will pre-chill when power is cheap and coast when it is not. Water heaters, clothes dryers, etc. will disconnect their heating elements when prices surge. Instead of only trying to smooth the supply, we should try to change the demand to meet the supply, and market prices are the best way to achieve that.
Re:Uh, that's a huge spread (Score:4, Insightful)
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Obviously, one would need to know the forecast prices for at least some period of time in the future and use that to find the compromise in convenience and price when running said appliance.
Obviously you may not want to wait for prices to drop in certain cases.
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This is already in the works.
This is what smart meters an smart grids are for.
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That is one of the problems with wind and solar: they are unpredictable. Free markets cannot "smooth it out" for consumers
Free markets can, if the grids can. It's the infrastructure that needs a large scale upgrade. Just because we can't do it yet doesn't mean that it's technically impossible.
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On a daily basis, December was a month of extremes for Germany, with day-ahead base prices closing on December 10 and 11 at less than €60/MWh – the highest over-the-counter levels seen all year – only to fall to its lowest level December 24 to €0.50/MWh.
I have seen a nice bumper sticker before: Solar and wind are allright, but nuke's do it all night.
I agree with this sentiment. Shame Germany is phasing out nuclear [huffingtonpost.com] in favor of coal.
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Germany is not phasing out nuclear in favour of coal, but in favour of wind.
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Load following nuclear plants are possible and many designs (such as the PBMR) are intended to follow load. This is patently false
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He said 'short term' ... that means for me in hours or less.
Current reactors don't do that. If you power a reactor a bit down it gets difficult to power it up again, due to different characteristics of moderation (waste products).
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Wind and solar is predictable enough or which part of the articles day ahead price did you not get?
Do you really think if the weather report for tomorrow predicts my plant will yield 1.134GW that the actual variation makes me any trouble? Or that I accidentally will only produce half of it?
Consumers don't see these fluctuations (Score:3, Interesting)
The ones affected are the companies that actually own power plants to generate power and sell it to the utility companies, as they are the ones who see their earnings fluctuate between $0.50/MWh to $60/MWh.
And guess what? These market conditions make it hard to impossible to make a profit out of modern clean gas-fired power plants. I kno
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Then those old coal plants should be closed if they can't be brought up to modern emissions standards.
China has a mandate that ALL coal plants have until Summer 2014 to meet the tougher standards that took effect in Jan 2012 or shut down.
Of course, it'll have to be enforced to have teeth but given the terrible smog over major cities of the past few years, I think this will be taken seriously.
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Then those old coal plants should be closed if they can't be brought up to modern emissions standards.
China has a mandate that ALL coal plants have until Summer 2014 to meet the tougher standards that took effect in Jan 2012 or shut down.
Of course, it'll have to be enforced to have teeth but given the terrible smog over major cities of the past few years, I think this will be taken seriously.
Based on what? Their glorious record to date?
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If the new ones are built according to strict standards like Passivhaus, that would be a huge improvement.
You don't want too many being built with new concrete as that's a huge source of CO2 emissions.
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A lot of that is because the EU imports gas either in liquid form or from Russia. This makes it far more costly than in the US which is experiencing a glut right now.
Because the US has so much gas, there is no demand for coal and coal prices have crashed. That crash in coal prices is causing the construction of new coal plants in Europe because their gas price is not competitive, and they have a great deal of demand to meet with the shutdown of nuclear in Germany.
European electricity costs to the end user a
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European electricity costs to the end user are generally 50% higher than the US because of a 19% VAT and subsidy charges for wind and solar.
You are almost right, but it can be a little more complex, as most EU countries have multiple VAT rates for different products or service. For instance, France's VAT on electricity is 5.5% for subscription, and 20% for usage per kWh
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Actually, most nuclear plants in Germany are still running. There was no demand change from banning nuclear so far.
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They are producing energy. ... why do write such nonsense? 18% - 22% of daily energy production is nuclear IIRC.
Tzz
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDQQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ise.fraunhofer.de%2Fen%2Fdownloads-englisch%2Fpdf-files-englisch%2Fnews%2Felectricity-production-from-solar-and-wind-in-germany-in-2013.pdf&ei=utjSUtDeNon9ygOLmoG4Ag&usg=AFQjCNFYBEBDQ-GV6MRMdv8dR9mn1DW6Rg&sig2=M6KdG7PO99PADeMWVVhsNQ&bvm=bv.59 [google.com]
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They based this off of American laws. we NEVER have utility price drops.
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Well the EPA does what it can to make sure the poor cant heat themselves here in the USA. Wood stoves are currently under battle as polluters. Even though the Rocket mass heater burns so completely that very little comes out of the chimney.
IF you outlaw heating systems that people can gather the fuel themselves for, you lock them into more of a slavery system.
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Pumped storage is great in theory. In practice, it's got some problems -- including, but not limited to -- inefficiency, lack of suitable sites, and evironmental issues from constantly fluctuating water levels. But the BIG problem is the huge amount of water that has to be moved to buffer energy to meet the electricity needs a modern industrial society on low wind days.
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Now can we stop bitching about global warming? See, it's not all bad.
Can we stop bitching about cancer? See, it's not all bad -- now I can smoke cigarettes through the hole in my neck!