Germany Had So Much Renewable Energy That It Had To Pay People To Use Electricity (qz.com) 298
Quartz reports Germany produced so much renewable energy on Sunday, May 8, that commercial customers were being paid to consume electricity: "Thanks to a sunny and windy day, at one point around 1pm the country's solar, wind, hydro and biomass plants were supplying about 55 GW of the 63 GW being consumed, or 87%. Power prices actually went negative for several hours, meaning commercial customers were being paid to consume electricity." Many critics have argued that renewable energy will always have only a niche role in supplying power to consumers, given its daily peaks and troughs. With that said, Germany plans to hit 100% renewable energy by 2050. Denmark, for example, has already generated more electricity than the country consumes from its wind turbines. It now exports the surplus energy to Germany, Norway and Sweden.
This isn't new -- happens with fossil fuels also. (Score:3)
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You don't use electrons, you use an electric field. And electrons move very (very) slowly through a wire. I don't remember numbers, bu think it's on the order of cm/min. Not only that, but all the electrons you get, you give back again (if using alternating current).
Adding a generator to the grid keeps the field propped up (measured in volts).
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If it becomes a regular thing (Score:5, Informative)
Outside of pumping water to heights or using conventtional battery storage, there are NEW IDEAS [popularmechanics.com] emerging all the time.
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There are several ways to store excess electrical generation
How about using electrochemical cells [psu.edu] that require Electricity, CO2, and Water as input, and yield Hydrocarbon fuels such as Oil or Gasoline as output?
Then when you require electricity later, just burn the fuel.....
Re:If it becomes a regular thing (Score:4, Interesting)
This would require that the utility companies partner with companies like Tesla and the makers of various chargers to control the charging rate. I agree that this is a great idea but I wouldn't get my hopes up yet. With my car, a Tesla model S, the local utility (PG&E) could partner with Tesla and by knowing where all of the cars are they could control the time and rate each car charges at to balance the load. It would require a new setting in the car which is basically charge my car by a certain time. They could incentivize this with lower rates. Right now I charge from 11pm - 7am when the EV rate hits its lowest point, though at full power (20KW) my car is typically charged in an hour. I usually charge at half the rate (10KW) so there's a lot less loss in the wiring.
For utilities, the base load power stations are typically far more efficient than the peaker plants but they typically can't vary their output much. By doing things like staggering when cars charge and/or controlling the rate they charge it can shift more power to baseload generation by having a steady load. This requires either connected cars (like Tesla) or connected chargers.
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Vehicle-to-Grid has been discussed a lot [wikipedia.org]. There are a number of projects ongoing in a variety of countries.
During a mild Sunday, I'd hope so. (Score:3)
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Show me one plant where the fuel has been cleanly disposed of completely. We have vast amounts of fuel piling up with no way to make the stuff benign. It will be hanging around indefinitely. You can quote all you want of ways to recycle and reuse the fuel until it is benign, but so far that is all just talk and has not moved beyond the vaporware stage. I throw it in the same camp as Clean Coal technology.
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Dump it into the Mariana Trench (I see that is currently against international law).. shoot it into the sun.. actually *develop* the reuse of fuel systems.
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I was watching a documentary about that not too long ago. Well, tangentially related. See, the Australians don't want it back. They've got it, they mine it, and no you can't send it back when you're through with it. They had a politician who wanted to take it back ("We've got the bloody bush. Nobody goes there." - Not Verbatim) but no, nobody really liked that idea. The politician tried the bit about how they were kind of responsible for it but nobody was buying that either. He even tried the whole bit abou
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The"vast amount" of spent fuel can easily fit in a large room for all the waste generated over several decades.
Volume of nuclear waste (Score:5, Funny)
I was skeptical so I checked.
Apparently the US has about 250 tons of nuclear waste. That should indeed fit in a not very large room - you could fit in barrels in a 20x20 meter room.
I do suspect that putting that much nuclear material in one room is a bad idea.. ;)
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I think so. You can see the live statistics for Denmark here:
http://energinet.dk/EN/El/Side... [energinet.dk]
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very cold
Heating is very rarely done with electricity. So what is the question?
windless day ... depending on point on the planet it is possible. However: not on land mass
Germany is formed like an "L" upside down. A bar going from east to west on top and a vertical bar at the west/center side down. Both bars are about 1000km long.
How can one be so stupid to believe that such a country has no wind? It is (nearly) physically impossible to have an area larger than 100km x 100km without wind. Note the (nearly)
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Re: During a mild Sunday, I'd hope so. (Score:2)
It is. Berlin might be an exception
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Re:During a mild Sunday, I'd hope so. (Score:4, Informative)
Heating is very rarely done with electricity. So what is the question?
Electric heating is the overwhelmingly most common form of heating in Northern Europe.
When I moved to the US almost a generation ago, I was surprised that few homes had electric heating, and even fewer (like none) had floor heating cables. Not even in the bathrooms (but then again, American bathrooms seldom are wet rooms anyhow, so no need to heat the tiles that aren't there).
And I'm likewise amazed that after all these years, this is still the case. Heck, most houses don't even have thermopane windows with vacuum or noble gases. Many don't even have double glass windows.
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Most heating in Northern Europe is natural gas. Some areas have geothermal or waste heat, but for the most part it's natural gas via central heating.
Electric heaters are only used much here central heating doesn't make sense (southern Europe) and for portable heaters.
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And I'm likewise amazed that after all these years, this is still the case. Heck, most houses don't even have thermopane windows with vacuum or noble gases. Many don't even have double glass windows.
Flag as Inappropriate
About ten years back I looked into this. I wanted to buy standard, minimum specifications european windows. Turns out they are available in America, but as special order, since they are way better than what you can pick up at Home Depot off the shelf.
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The EU has an extensive network of high voltage DC lines for distributing power over thousands of kilometres with minimal loss.
Germany copes just fine on those extremely rare occasions (less than once a year) when there is low wind and solar over the entire country during peak demand periods. It's been replacing older fossil fuel power plants with newer, cleaner ones that crucially can scale their output over a much bigger range and much more quickly to handle this. Storage is coming online too.
Re:During a mild Sunday, I'd hope so. (Score:4, Informative)
Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
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The "selling" at a negative rate doesn't happen very often, so relying on that mechanism to encourage battery charging or other storage means isn't going to be viable .. short of rigging the mechanism
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The "selling" at a negative rate doesn't happen very often, so relying on that mechanism to encourage battery charging or other storage means isn't going to be viable .. short of rigging the mechanism
Yeah I don't see battery packs for the sake of storing it actually working out. But I do see the potential for opportunistic charging of EVs. We know that in order for them to be popular, the max range must be well beyond the daily commute. But that doesn't mean people need the fully charged all the time, if you know monday-friday you're just going to work and picking up a few groceries maybe you say anything over 40% is okay, charge it up to 80% if you can do it cheaply but otherwise don't bother. Throw in
Doesn't have to be negative (Score:2)
It doesn't often go negative, but it regularly drops to low rates at peak solar times. So long as someone can buy low and sell high, there's a profit to be made. If that's enough to cover costs, including capital, there's a business opportunity.
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Win for all, and great for the environment.
Not for the end user of that electricity who gets to pay an average of almost double the rate of several neighbors of Germany (such as France and Poland).
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No, I want energy to be handled in a manner that reflects true costs, and encourages energy storage.
Good. Luck. With. That.
Unpredictable production is a bad thing (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a problem, not a good thing. Wind and solar production should have been throttled to prevent dumping more power on the grid than demanded rather than paying companies to burn off the energy.
The only way renewables work is if the power is used locally to reduce/level demand or as preferred peaking generation (with sufficient idle nat-gas backups to cover the worst peak). The only time prices should go negative is in the rare occasion that the demand dips below the base (nuclear/hydro/coal) generation. And in that case, wind and solar shouldn't be putting any power into the grid.
Re:Unpredictable production is a bad thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Wind and solar production should have been throttled to prevent dumping more power on the grid than demanded rather than paying companies to burn off the energy.
That would mean the potential extra energy is wasted. So what is the point? It is far better to have the "free energy" used for something purposeful like e.g. an aluminium recycling plant.
The only time prices should go negative is in the rare occasion that the demand dips below the base
The demand can not dip "below the base", that precisely is the reason why it is called "base load".
Your ideas are nonsense. You simply fail to grasp that negative prices are a good thing and not a bad thing (*facepalm*)
And in that case, wind and solar shouldn't be putting any power into the grid.
Wow, how idiotic. So it is better to burn coal or uranium? Why? What is wrong with ramping down conventional pants when we have a surplus on solar and wind?
Renewable energy can work. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just another illustration that the people who claim that renewable energy can never supply nearly all of our energy needs are wrong. It's mostly just a matter of building out the infrastructure which takes time. Our current power system wasn't built overnight either.
Re:Renewable energy can work. (Score:4, Informative)
But at what price? Germany pays three times the price for power that the US does.
I don't really want a $1,200 power bill, thank you very much.
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Which country are you living in? The US averages $0.10/KWH and Germany Averages $0.15/KWH. Where I am in Florida it is $0.12/KWH.
But, thanks for playing, and exaggerating.
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Which country are you living in? The US averages $0.10/KWH and Germany Averages $0.15/KWH.
No it doesn't...
The US averages 12 cents per KWh.
Germany averages 33 cents per KWh.
A dozen different web sites support that, from Wikipedia on down.
Re:Renewable energy can work. (Score:5, Informative)
You cannot get a $0.15/kWh power plan in Germany for private homes, only for large industrial plants.
The cheapest price (by kWh) I can get for my German home is 0.23€ ($0.26) / kWh plus 60€ ($69) per year, so it's 0.25€ ($0.28) / kWh in total.
Latest statistics say the average price for private customers is 0.28€ / kWh:
http://de.statista.com/statist... [statista.com]
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Price fixing. When a law says "shall not charge more than xx/unit", the suppliers turn to the customers and say "we'd love to charge you less, but the law states we have got to charge you xx/unit".
Switching from the historical local supplier (actually RWE using the name of the old city-run supplier) to a 100% renewable start-up saved me a bit of money in the first year as there was a special offer to switch. Then it was just 10% cheaper than the old supplier. I have now just moved to France, using locally g
Re:Renewable energy can work. (Score:4, Informative)
Germany residential rate averages 0.30 EUR/kWh, not 0.15. 0.15 EUR is industrial rate, it is something like 0.06 USD in the US.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s... [europa.eu]
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Dumbshit, German users don't pay three times the price of energy. Also, please learn the difference between energy and power.
http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2014... [kqed.org]
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The data in your link is from 2011. As I said in another reply to you I found more than 1 source that said in 2015 the average German price was 15.22 cents per kWh.
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No one in Germany has a $1200 power bill.
I told you that now a few dozen times. My power bill for electricity is something like $50. Most families pay around $100. Why? Because we use much much much less power than you.
I also explained: power prices are two or three parts!
Base cost (including metering cost)
Grid fees
and fee per kWh
As the base cost and grid costs are factored into the kWh price our prices look artificial expensive, while they are not particular higher than your costs.
I pay like $300 a year fo
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No one in Germany has a $1200 power bill.
That is actually likely a false statement. Someone in Germany does. YOU might not, but someone does.
I told you that now a few dozen times.
You can tell me anything you like, I have stopped listening to you because I don't believe you know what you're talking about.
You aren't going to convince me otherwise, too many of your prior posts have been completely and totally wrong.
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That is actually likely a false statement. Someone in Germany does. YOU might not, but someone does.
Not as a private household. You would need a small castle for that and on top of that an unwise use of energy, e.g. leaving lots of rooms with light on.
You aren't going to convince me otherwise, too many of your prior posts have been completely and totally wrong. Very unlikely, especially if it was regarding energy.
Re:Renewable energy can work. (Score:5, Insightful)
But at what price? Germany pays three times the price for power that the US does.
I don't really want a $1,200 power bill, thank you very much.
As others pointed out Germany doesn't pay 3 times what we pay in the USA but they do pay a bit more. But the real question here is how much is it going to cost you in 20 or 30 years when the effects of AGW really start kicking in and we're spending big money on trying to adapt. Are you really saving anything in the long run by hanging on to your cheap power now?
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As others pointed out Germany doesn't pay 3 times what we pay in the USA but they do pay a bit more.
Sigh... yes they do, multiple web sites on the Internet over and over say they do...
A few people on a message board trying to defend it doesn't make it so...
Average US price per KWh is 12 cents.
Average German price per KWh is 33 cents.
That is triple, the math doesn't lie...
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Ok, maybe so from your sources but I searched for "electricity prices in Germany" and found more than one source that said German electricity was around 15.22 cents per kWh in 2015 and the prices are dropping a little. Try this link. [statista.com]
My main point was this:
But the real question here is how much is it going to cost you in 20 or 30 years when the effects of AGW really start kicking in and we're spending big money on trying to adapt. Are you really saving anything in the long run by hanging on to your cheap power now?
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One source says that, a dozen more say 30+ cents, including Wikipedia which is sourced...
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Plus the lost opportunity to develop all this tech, and thus get all the patents on it and build up skills and knowledge. When other countries are transitioning they will be paying Germany.
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Apparently you only pay more if you are a citizen. As a company you get paid to use power.
Supply/Demand (Score:2)
I'm waiting until there's so much oil being produced that they pay me to accept a barrel or two.
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Well (Score:3)
it does come at a price to have that much renewable energy. We have among the highest prices in the world for electricity in Denmark. 75% of the price are taxes. Now they are talking about lowering the price by 10% by cutting some of those "green" taxes. But since the money has to come from somewhere, they are just putting that on income taxes instead.
Local businesses are happy because they don't get to pay anymore, consumers are happy because that are too stupid to have listened to the part that their income tax are going up, they just say "oh great lower price for electricity".
Anybody want to point out solar has stalled? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Yield grew 6.5% last year; somewhat less than the year before, but don't you think a single year of lower growth is a little too soon to declare it "stuck"?
biomass plants (Score:4, Interesting)
biomass plants Those plants are 'dispatch able' just like any other conventional plants.
Power prices actually went negative for several hours, meaning commercial customers were being paid to consume electricity.
That means basically only other power companies and not "random commercial customers". Considering that that happened on a sunday it is not as spectacularly as it seems.
On a sunday you have e.g. only a little bit more than 50% load of e.g. a mid week day peak load.
If prices go negative usually another power company is "buying" the power to fill up pumped storages. During weekdays however also steel or aluminium recycling plants are on standby to wait for such opportunities.
And its still a failure... (Score:2, Interesting)
So, with a capacity factor of ~20% that means that the wind farms are a feel good effort to green wash the natural gas peaker plants and the 45% coal base production spewing carbon and radioactive waste into the atmosphere that actually provides the vast majority of the energy.
Two decades of aggressive government programs to install solar and wind and the carbon reductions are hardly noticeable. I suspect if the idiots screaming renewables woke up and realized that their solution isn't solving anything and
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The best way to reduce birth rates and prevent overpopulation in third-world countries is to increase equality and average income.
Like ontario canada. (Score:2)
But you know. They pay other provinces and countries to take our power. And jack the customers prices to the highest in north america all in the name of GREEN RENEWABLE power.
We use less power and they cry they arent making enough so they jack our rates. We use more power and they jack our rates to make us use less. I and the rest of the province have some choice words for Green energy bullshit right now.
Can someone explain why it ever goes negative? (Score:2)
I don't understand it going negative. Why can't they just vent it? Why can't they shut it down or just disconnect the line? Hydro is easy to turn off but even solar and wind has ways to turn them off for maintenance. Barring that, just throwing a tarp over the solar would block out the sun. Heck, even running it to a nearby tank and boiling water would make more sense than paying someone to consume it. What exactly is gained by paying someone to take it versus venting it somehow?
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That's strange, because there are a hell of a lot of extremely competent engineers here in Denmark, who disagree quite strongly with your "conclusion".
You may not be a capitalist if... (Score:2)
If you are shown a demand curve sloping downward and you call it witchcraft, you may not be a capitalist.
I live in Germany... (Score:5, Informative)
This a problem, not a good thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
The article sounds as if it is a good thing that Germany has to pay people to use electricity. Actually it is exactly this problem that sets the upper limit to how much renewable energy can be used in a modern economy with current technology. The market correctly valued that the power produced by renewable sources had negative value, yet the producers of renewable energy were paid exactly the same feed-in tariff as they get on a cold windless evening. Doubling renewable energy production will not result in doubling the amount of electricity usefully used by Germany over the course of a year. It will be dumped somewhere in the system. Germany must solve the engineering problems required to efficiently store and recover vast amounts of energy as well as building more renewable energy generating systems to reach its goals.
I'm totally surprised that this is not a major topic of discourse in a country with such a large body of technical talent.
Time to change your car (Score:5, Insightful)
Now imagine you had an electric car parked up outside, with some big ass batteries in it, plugged in and storing that surplus energy.
As if surplus power is a problem?
It isn't, we just haven't moved forward quickly enough and away from fossil fuels.
The Greens laid the path, Angela Merkel walked it. (Score:2)
I consider news like this trés cool. Albeit percentages being usually low the Green Party has a solid standing in Germany and especially with my generation, and for good reasons too. However, that it came about for a majority holding conservative politician and party such as Merkel and the great coalition of CDU & SPD to make the call on moving out of nuclear fission was the missing piece in the puzzle. Sentiment towards fission was getting less enthusiastic throughout the decades and Fukushima Dai
It happens every day (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is a graph of electricity prices where I live for the current day: http://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/Data/Price-and-Demand/Price-and-Demand-Graphs/Current-Dispatch-Interval-Price-and-Demand-Graph-QLD [aemo.com.au]. Note the red line (whole sale price) drops off the bottom graph in the small hours of the morning. It's negative.
At least were I live it has nothing to do with renewables (the sun ain't shining at that time after all). Oddly it is because coal plants suffer the same problem renewables - they can't control the power quickly. No one is using power at the coal plants are producing at 3 AM so there is an oversupply, and it's costs more to shut the plant down for the hour or so than it does to pay people to find ways to use it.
This happens just about every fucking day! How is this news?
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It is not always sunny and windy across the entire continent
This would be an option in the US if we had a modern electrical grid
Just ask Congress where funding for the superconducting electrical grid upgrade is at...
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Re:Thats really cheap (Score:4, Informative)
Problem is that it only happens on a few days a year when the sun is high in the sky, the days are long, and the wind is also blowing. Moreover, the reason that the price of electricity goes to zero (or below) is that no one really wants it at any price. In short, generation capacity is overbuilt. Why is it overbuilt? Because subsidies for renewable energy in Germany are poorly structured and do not go to zero when the wholesale price for electricity goes to zero. Who pays for the subsidies? Why the ratepayers of course.
Is there a lesson here for the US and other countries? You bet there is. But it isn't that renewable energy is dirt cheap. It's that one better be careful how one structures renewable energy subsidies (if any) because if one does not, one's electric bill is going to to include a surcharge to pay the Warren Buffetts, Koch brothers, T Boone Pickens et.al. for generating electricity that no want needs or wants.
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The private sector paid for brand new transmission lines from West Texas, where the wind and sun is, to Dallas/Ft Worth.
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Re:Thats really cheap (Score:5, Informative)
How does Denmark push its electricity to its neighbours Germany, Norway or Sweden, when they are doing the same?
Because the wind doesn't always blow everywhere at once, but it is always blowing somewhere. Wind energy is more reliable when it is geographically dispersed, so one region's peaks can fill another region's troughs.
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In Europe the electrical grid is connected between the countries. It's also on a day to day basis so one day it flows in one direction and another day in the other.
Only thing you can be sure of is that in Denmark the wind almost always blows, and if it doesn't then it's probably sunny.
Re:Thats really cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thats really cheap (Score:4, Informative)
That graph is the averaged over a long period. One of the issues with solar and wind power is that they tend to be very bursty, wind in particular. The power output from a wind turbine is proportional to the third power of the wind speed. If you have an hour of wind that's double the normal speed, then you're generating eight times as much power from the wind generators as normal for that hour. Most other power plants can't reduce capacity instantly to compensate so for short bursts there is a lot more power being generated than is being consumed. In some cases, it's cheaper to produce the waste power than to start decoupling things from the grid and spilling the power somewhere (ideally into storage, sometimes just as waste heat), so you end up paying people to consume the power, because it costs more to stop producing it.
Most consumers don't see this, because we buy power indirectly but some big industrial consumers have contracts that allow them to get direct access to the spot price and consume power when it's very cheap. The idea behind a smart grid is to allow everyone to benefit from this kind of thing. For example, having your fridge run its compressor when the cost of power drops very close to zero.
Re:Thats really cheap (Score:4, Informative)
The consumer pays through higher taxation. Nuclear is heavily subsidised in France isn't it. In fact the sector is almost wholly owned by the government.
Nuclear is indeed subsidized in France, just like renewable energy is in Germany through artificially high costs for residential consumers (added tax). The German city where I lived for 10 years until last month has 99.99% of its energy supply (and the supply of its county) coming from dams that have been operating for decades and had been paid through a mix of city taxes and citizen investments. Yet, we were also paying the extra tax to encourage the switch to renewable energy, which was then used to put solar panels and windmills that didn't even register as a blip in the energy mix of the city. Probably because the now privatized operator wasn't using those to supply the city, but selling the energy somewhere else. In France, I'm getting my electricity through a local supplier using biomass... I'm paying less than half of German prices at peak time, but slightly more than half of German prices off peak time.
For taxation, it depends in which tax bracket you are... for a single person:
German tax rates:
French tax rates:
Germany taxes are lower if you earn between 26 791 and 52 153 a year, it is unfortunate for most of my ex neighborhood that they were mostly in the bracket where Germany is more expensive, below 26791 a year. Most of my new neighborhood is in the same bracket and pay less taxes. In my tax bracket, there is a less than 1% difference in the effective tax rate (in favor of Germany) but that is still below what I save through utilities, services, price of real estate and interest rates on the house credit. It's also a theoretical saving as I am paying my income tax in Luxembourg where my effective tax rate is a whole 11% lower than what it would theoretically be in Germany (theoretically, because my gross salary would also be lower in Germany).
Another big difference in taxation between the two country is property taxes, I'm paying roughly the same amount of property taxes in France as I was paying in Germany. My property in France is way bigger than the one I had in Germany. In France, the property tax includes things like garbage disposal, water treatment and TV tax. Garbage disposal and water treatment have been privatized in Germany, so you have to pay extra money on top of the property tax. As I lived in the suburbs of the city in Germany, I wasn't actually getting any of the services I was supposed to receive through my property taxes (library, maintained roads, ...).
I was paying a pet tax in Germany, which doesn't exist in France, and gets very expensive if you have more than 1 dog. I'm getting far better network connectivity options in France even tho I moved to the middle of the sticks and I lived in the suburbs of a decent sized city in Germany. Road tax in Germany is to be paid every year, it is a once-off in France when you register the vehicle. As a trade-off, in France, I would have to pay to use toll roads (highways I use maybe once or twice a year). The car road-worthiness check in France is half the price of the same check in Germany.
All in all, France is a cheaper option for me.
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You don't control the sun and wind, you just deal with it when it's available. But it's rarely available simultaneously in all locations so the current flows forth and back.
Hydroelectric power is useful as a counter-balance to the variations in wind and solar.
Not sure where you got the "Classic sovietstyle central planning at work" from.
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Not sure where you got the "Classic sovietstyle central planning at work" from.
It's classic central planning. Top down decision-making based on dubious ideological goals with little to no regard for the consequences.
As it should be, false headline. (Score:5, Informative)
It certainly is, if you look at the graph in the article you will easily see that there wasnt a particularly high amount of renewable energy being generated - this price
jump looks far more like someones pricing algorithm glitching than any actual market movement - there is little difference in the previous and subsequent pattern,
and the price certainly did not jump there. I would make an educated guess looking at the graphs that someone had a shutdown delay on a system and that may
have glitched the market a touch, causing a reaction in the algorithmic pricing models.
Yet another case of sensational headlines trying to sell a non-story.
The headline really should read 'German spot-price for energy collapses for no obvious reason, another algorithmic realtime pricing glitch?' or similar.
But you have to bait the clicks somehow apparently, so much for journalistic standards..
Re:As it should be, false headline. (Score:5, Informative)
Look again, they were producing above consumption already, then renewable energy jumped to what looks like the point that they couldn't drop conventional generation any lower without shutting down base load (expensive and takes a good while to recover from).
They very likely hit a discontinuity in the pricing algorithm at that point, but it appears quite reasonable that they were in an overproduction situation and needed to dump supply.
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Re:As it should be, false headline. (Score:5, Informative)
This is a common misconception. You would think that you should be able to just have the generators running and producing power and just have it go nowhere. The end consumer just plugs in their computer and starts up, so it _looks_ like it is a infinitely scalable source of power, and it doesn't really matter if you are running it or not. In practice, there has to be a careful balance between the amount of energy produced and the energy consumed. Too little power being generated and you get brownouts / the voltage drops. Too much power and you have too high voltage / exploding transformers.
The time scale for balancing is on the order of seconds. They do this by having a variety of different sources of power, including base load (coal, nuclear for example) and quick response (some hydro, gas turbine) and pushing / pulling power from other locations that either have too much or too little, or having pumped hydro storage, or having some consumers that have power needs that you can control. Renewable power is one part of the power equation, and in some ways it is good (since it peaks approximately during peak power needed) and in some ways it is bad (you can't control it or demand more when you want more).
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Three words: giant tesla coil
That should take care of any excess energy. Just don't stand too close! :-)
Re:As it should be, false headline. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think it's a glitch. It looks rather typical of this kind of dynamical systems.
When the gap between the red curve and the green area goes below a certain threshold, that means that you have an excess of power that has to be dissipated otherwise the generator breaks. The optimal price is fairly easy to compute in that case : it's minus the total cost of the repair in case of not seeling the electricity. That means you are willing to pay somebody to take your electricity as much as it would cost you to repair your system in case nobody buys, but no more.
I think this is also a feature of the decentralized nature of renewables. Not all producers are able to dissipate all their energy because it depends on local (local climate, local network, local consumption, etc) and global variables (global production, global network, global consumption, etc), which makes everything barely predictable.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The details are that it was about the lowest demand point of the entire year, and coincidentally a very good solar and wind day overall. It lasted for a brief moment, and just a few hours later, renewables were back down to less than 50%. You won't see the headline when renewables are at the low point.
This is from the most recent historical generation data in Germany (Fraunhofer Institute)
(Total Production = Production from Solar, Wind, and Conventional)
Max Solar Day = 212 GWh (65 GWh wind). Total = 1211 G
Re:My B.S. meter is in the red (Score:5, Informative)
You do have to consider that Germany's power prices are about two to three times as high as in the U.S and have risen 30% in the last decade (20c/kWh to 30c/kWh). Tesla harnessed some really cheap renewable energy in the early 1900's and it's still going, stable regardless of the weather. I pay 8c/kWh for primarily 'renewable' energy from (Niagara Falls) and it's relatively cheap to maintain as well.
Please also note the graph in the article. That looks more like a trading issue/glitch (energy gets traded much like stock on a stock market) because the actual power generation was higher later on without a massive dip.
Re: (Score:2)
"Please also note the graph in the article. That looks more like a trading issue/glitch (energy gets traded much like stock on a stock market) because the actual power generation was higher later on without a massive dip."
The dip happened on a sunday, whereas the "non-dip" was on a weekday (monday 9th). Since power consumption is much higher on weekdays than on sundays, maybe that's why the prices didn't dip?