Comment by boshomi

2 days ago

Here is an analysis from Germany: Quarter-hourly spot prices compared to the share of renewable energy generation in total generation. A higher share of renewables puts massive downward pressure on the spot market electricity price.

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/price_scatter/chart.ht...

Since price elasticity for electricity is very high, the market cap decreases by approximately €150,000 for every additional GWh of renewable energy production. A single additional offshore wind turbine with an annual output of 60 GWh reduces the combined revenue of all electricity producers by about €9 million per year that it is in operation.

Blocking wind power and solar projects only serves to secure the profits of monopolists and oligopolists in the electricity market, but causes massive harm to the economy.

23 comments

boshomi

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High-Five  2 days ago

Good link. Germany is the case where it works cleanly — more renewables, lower price, lower carbon, all moving the same direction.

  • leonidasrup  2 days ago

    No amount of solar panels will generate electricity without sun light. Also the amount sun light can shrink quite a lot in winter months at high latitudes and under cloud cover.

    No amount of wind turbines will generate electricity without wind, or to be more precise:

    Cut-in speed: 3–4 m/s (12–15 km/h) to begin spinning and producing power.

    Cut-out / Stop speed: Above 25 m/s (90 km/h) where brakes are applied to prevent mechanical damage

    Germany has to have backups, currently quite expensive, for all this times of missing renewables production.

    • boshomi  2 days ago

      The apparent volatility of electricity generation from a single wind turbine is negligible, because what counts is the wind and PV output over large areas. Due to regular weather fronts, electricity output from wind and PV in Europe is surprisingly stable; when there is less sunshine, there is more wind. In 2025, for example, the weekly electricity output from wind and solar PV was 14.0 TWh, with no week falling below 10.5 TWh. If more wind power were installed in Eastern Europe, the curves would flatten out even further.

      https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&...

      5 replies →

    • flaburgan  2 days ago

      I think the point is, if you can decide when to consume electricity then you will do it when it's the cheapest, so let's put the cheapest when the low carbon sources are available. So the website is taking into account that renewables are not always available, that's exactly its point.

      And the backup source for Germany is the nuclear electricity from France. The grid is at the European scale.

jstimpfle  2 days ago

This is interesting, but now explain why Germany has both the highest electricity prices in Europe as well as a relatively high CO2 footprint from electricity? Germany is buying not only nuclear but also coal energy from neighbouring countries.

Will this be fixed at some point or is the German model not actually as good as you imply?

  • throwaway473825  2 days ago

    The main reason why electricity is expensive in Germany is because it's taxed to oblivion. Even when wholesale prices are negative, electricity costs about three times as much as gas.

    Now you might ask why electricity is taxed to oblivion. Some don't like nuclear or coal. Some prefer oil or gas. In the end, there's a majority that wants electricity to be expensive.

    • jstimpfle  2 days ago

      I was under the impression that the taxes are going into infrastructure and grants for renewable energies, meaning those energy prices are maybe way higher than advertised. Funny thing is we are constantly being told how cheap reneweables are to produce but apparently there are other costs involved.

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  • tialaramex  2 days ago

    All of Germany's neighbours, from which it buys electricity, are decarbonising so yes obviously it inevitably gets "fixed at some point".

    Germany's wholesale prices are similar to many other European countries, the worst is easily Ireland because of their geography, small, northern, coastal, they often need to import power, and that import has to come from Britain, which is between them and the continent, so their prices will almost always be higher than Britain's already not-great prices - we're obviously not going to sell the Irish £89 per MWh electricity and then charge our own users £119 per MWh for the same product.

    • jstimpfle  2 days ago

      What I am saying is that those spot prices may not represent all of the reneweables' marginal costs. Question is, will the end consumer prices ever go down, and by how much?

      3 replies →