German wholesale power prices hit record above 300 euros on supply worries, Dec. 21, 2021

[NNadir]

EUROPE POWER-German power prices hit record above 300 euros on supply worries

FRANKFURT, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Europe's wholesale power benchmark jumped above 300 euros a megawatt hour (MWh) for the first time on Tuesday to a new record, driven by concerns about winter gas availability for power stations amid low renewable and nuclear output.

German baseload power for 2022 delivery TRDEBYZ2 traded 20.1% higher at 305 euros ($343.46) at 1510 GMT while the equivalent French 2022 TRFR0BYZ2 contract gained 25.6% to hit a new high of 399.5 euros.

German quarterly contracts through to first quarter 2023 were at, or near, records and so were annual German contracts up to 2026 and French quarters 1, 2, 3 and 4 and its 2023 contract.

Gas prices set highs as Russia's Yamal-Europe gas pipeline started shipping gas in reverse mode eastward to Poland, stoking supply fears.NG/GB

Prices of power, gas, carbon and coal interact with each other, although each market can also respond differently to local capacity availabilities, macroeconomic and geopolitical factors, and oil.O/REL/NOR...

This works out to about 340 USD/MWh, or 0.34/kwh wholesale.

A typical refrigerator runs at about 500 W, meaning running a refrigerator would cost, at wholesale prices about $40/day, $1200/month.

[DFW]

1. There is a miscalculation there somewhere

If running a refrigerator cost $1200 a month, over half of Germany could no longer afford one. Electricity is expensive right now, but NO ONE is paying $14,400 a year to run a refrigerator.

[msongs]

2. criminal scammer speculators trading in fear to fleece people. typical nt

[Pachamama]

3. Your math is way off...

Not sure where you are getting your figures but even if Germans are paying 2 1/2 times more for power right now, the refrigerators don’t use that much more power that would cost them 100 times more annually.

[NNadir]

5. Yes, thank you, I totally misestimated the power demand of a refrigerator.

It was a quick fire off just before bedtime and I confused the maximum power demand with actual power demand.

This almost makes me a "renewables will save us" dummy since they wish to represent the theoretical maximun power output of wind turbines as if the wind never stopped or slowed.

I checked my own power bill for November, and learned that if I lived in that dangerous natural gas and coal dependent hellhole Germany, my electric bill would have been about $450 for the month.

I can afford that, but my heart breaks for those who can't. So called "renewable energy," is another way the rich screw the poor.

I use electric space heaters on ocassion. About 30% of NJs electricity is nuclear, even after the unfortunate closure of Oyster Creek

That's more than double what I paid, and it probably reflects the German cost of redundancy. New Jersey's cost of electricity is sure to rise, as the industrialization of our offshore ecosystem to put wind turbines there has been announced.

[Pachamama]

8. "Natural Gas and coal dependent hellhole Germany"

WTF…

Either you forgot your Sarcasm emoji or not only is your math way off but so is your knowledge about Germany and another quickly fired off post.

Not only is Germany not a “hellhole”, but it is one of the most actively progressive countries in working towards energy renewables and climate change protections. The amount of wind and solar generation and energy efficiency along with great public transportation.

[NNadir]

9. They will be burning coal and gas this winter to keep their lights on.

Everybody in the world who's paying attention to the news knows that.

French electricity typically runs less than 50-60 grams of CO2 per kwh. It's that high only because the French foolishly installed some wind turbines and thus needs a little redundant natural gas when the wind isn't blowing.

It takes about 30 seconds for anyone to Google Germany's CO2 emissions per kwh. France is an order of magnitude lower.

The German policy is that nuclear energy is "too dangerous " but climate change isn't.

That's an obscene and wholly ignorant statement.

Numbers are numbers not fantasies. Numbers don't lie.

[Pachamama]

10. German policy is that climate change isn't dangerous?

Im making obscene and ignorant statements?

As someone who was raised in Germany and lived half my life there and even currently, I would be laughing at this statement at this absurd statement, especially as the Green Party just won more seats in the Bundestag and that I know where the German citizens and the German Government stands on the importance of climate change and the need to care for the environment.

To be lectured by someone who is from New Jersey and that numbers don’t lie when you couldn’t even do math from the moment you posted the OP and trying to claim Germans are having to pay $1200 a month for electricity (when the average German’s rent is less than that) says all that needs to be said.

[NNadir]

11. Yes. They dump dangerous fossil fuel waste directly into the planetary atmosphere in search...

Last edited Wed Jan 5, 2022, 03:42 AM - Edit history (1)

...of an absurd fantasy that doesn't work.

I made a mistake, late at night, for which I apologized. If that makes me stupid, in your mind, it really doesn't matter to me at all.

My Journal on this website speaks for itself.

Rather than make a personal attack on me, you could have looked at something called "data," but in general, anti-nukes retreat from data rather than face reality.

The data, in real time, for carbon emissions in every damned country in Europe is here: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE

As of this writing, accessed at 1:22A EST, 1/5/22, Germany's carbon impact for electricity is 281 grams of CO2/kwh; France's, 51 grams/kwh.

If you take out some time from jumping all over me to actually look at data - in which you seem disinterested - you will see that Germany is 5.5 times worse than France's as of this writing. Moreover, when the wind isn't blowing, Germany imports electricity from Poland as well as France.

I do not approve of New Jersey's climate policies, and in my state I fight against subsidies for so called "renewable energy" and against the planned destruction of our offshore ecosystem to convert into an industrial park for wind turbines that will landfill 25 years after they are constructed. For most of my tenure in this state, more than 50% of our electricity was generated cleanly, by nuclear energy. Oyster Creek closed, meaning that New Jersey is probably as contemptuous of climate change as is Germany. Wind turbines and solar cells are nothing more than lipstick on the dangerous natural gas pig.

There are, regrettably, people in New Jersey who have embraced the German foolishness.

Here's some other data that I posted, for anyone who is interested in data, as opposed for applauding the German failure to address climate change, embracing rote indifference, chanting trote defenses of the indefensible etc: Roundup of the Weekly Readings at the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory in 2021.

We spent on this planet, as noted in references therein, 3.2633 trillion dollars on so called "renewable energy" between 2004 and 2019, with the result that the second derivative with respect to time of carbon dioxide concentrations has accelerated from 1.80 ppm/year^2 to 2.45 ppm/year^2 in just 19 years.

I keep track, and I know the German policy hasn't worked, isn't working and won't work to address climate change

If I'm too stupid for you, I couldn't care less. I don't whine. I think.

[Pachamama]

12. The only one making insults has been you

You have throughout this absurd thread been making mistake mathematical mistakes, insulting commentary and statements about Germany and pushing your opinion as you then try to gaslight me.

I didn’t attack you personally nor call you stupid - I don’t need to say a word. You speak very clearly of who you are.

[NNadir]

13. OK then. Irrespective of our lack of respect for one another, Germany has been over 350gCO2 and...

reached 400 g of CO2 for a long stretch, from burning coal for electrical power supplies today.

You wanted me to praise Germany, which I decline to do, having called it a gas and coal dependent hellhole.

The dependency on coal and gas part is a fact. Facts matter. The designation that it is a hellhole is an opinion that I offer, since I consider any country that replaces nuclear energy with coal to be just that, a hellhole.

I consider nitpicking about a calculation era made late at night, which I corrected, mentioned in the context used as less than flattering, a sort of "kill the messenger" remark, thus, again in context, to be a personal remark. You need to repeat reference to my calculation error apparently again.

I'm sure, that you have never made an error in your life in writing, but I think you are in error when you deny that Germany depends on coal and natural gas. One doesn't have to be very literate about energy to know that. In fact, Nature, a scientific journal I read regularly commenting on the retirement of Angela Merkel, by noting that she did effectively nothing to address climate change, and her country after her departure is getting worse, not better. (I commented on the Nature opinion piece here: Nature Editorial Bemoans the Departure of the Scientist/Politician Merkel, With Some Caveats.) The editorial refers explicitly to the issue of climate change as a failure on Merkel's part.

Nature features errata in many issues, by the way for scientific papers in which errors are made. Getting published in Nature is fairly prestigious, but yes, scientists publishing in Nature make mistakes.

The question is why you felt the need to mention my error twice. If it's not stupid to make calculational errors, what, exactly did you mean to imply by mentioning it?

If I said that running a refrigerator in the gas and coal dependent hellhole Germany was $5,000,000/day, would that have proved that Germany hasn't been burning coal and gas today?

I also note that object to me living in New Jersey. I love it here, actually, although our energy policies are becoming questionable. I walk the streets where Einstein walked, where Von Neumann walked, where Turing walked, where Toni Morrison walked, where three of this year's Nobel Laureates walk. We have a great deal of intellectual power in this state, even though our stated energy policy, ripping the shit out of our coastal benthic ecosystem to install an industrial wind turbine plant that will be garbage before today's infants leave college is stupid.

You are free to wiggle around and deny my impression of what you did and didn't say, but it doesn't matter, does it? I'm not going to dick around with someone who feels the need to defend Germany's energy policies. I really have a hard time wanting to engage a defense of a country that was putting out more than 350 g CO2 all day, while its neighboring country, where the carbon dioxide released per kwh didn't rise beyond 90 g/kwh all day. France has been generating the bulk of their electricity in this way for more than three decades. I've been to Paris many times; I failed to see anyone dying from radiation sickness.

However, coal kills people not during accidents, but whenever it operates, because air pollution kills people, continuously, about 7 million people per year. Then there's climate change.

Germany is arguing with the rest of Europe that nuclear energy is "too dangerous," and since it burns coal in lieu of using the perfectly operable nuclear plants it has, the statement is a lie, since its neighboring country, which it has invaded three times in history, operates nuclear plants safely and without losses of life. Let me repeat: The statement is a lie. It's the equivalent of announcing that the January 6 attacks were tourism.

The German energy policy is detestable, because numbers don't lie.

Nuclear energy saves lives.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

Have a nice evening.

[Finishline42]

4. I believe you are off by a factor of 100

500 watts x 24 x 30 = 360 kWh. x .34/hWh = $122.4

edited to add:

The first reaction to high prices would be use less which is what most Europeans do. High gasoline prices means most use public transportation - trains instead of cars and planes.

High electricity prices means most middle class Germans have smaller fridges.

[hunter]

6. Modern American-style refrigerators consume about 1.5 to 2 kilowatt hours a day.

European-style refrigerators may be smaller and better insulated, using less.

30 days X 1.5 kWhrs/day X .34 euros/kWhrs = 15 euros a month.

These refrigerators consume 500 watts when the compressor is running, but the compressor only runs a few hours each day.

The Big Lie in Germany is that high electricity costs, which are a consequence of their failed renewable energy experiment, are offloaded to residential, retail, and small business users.

Big industry (e.g. Volkswagen) gets the dirty power cheap.

[NNadir]

7. Yes. I corrected my error in response to another post.