Green Electricity Germany vs Sweden

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--See below link for an in depth series of 3 articles from Der Spiegel about Germany's Renewable Electricty effort and a comparison to Sweden's, wherein Sweden appears to be getting the best of it.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288-2.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288-3.html

--I would particularly like to hear from anyone from Sweden or Germany, who know more about this.

“The main difference for the history of the world if I had been shot rather than Kennedy, is that Onassis probably wouldn't have married Mrs Khrushchev.”
Nikita Sergeyevich Krushchev 1894 - 1971

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[XynxNet]

The situation in germany is bizzar.
There is a broad consensus pro renewable energy within the german people.
But there are billion dollar companies from the conventional energy sector, the automotiv industry and the heavy industry which are strongly against any change.
Their money together with our general tendency towards centralistic government controlled aproaches ensures that every move towards renewal energies is suptly and systematically sabotaged by our big political parties.

The sad thing is, that in a narrow and egoistic way of thinking, our decision makers don't even need to worry about renewal energy because germany sits on enough coal reserves for the next 400 years. So there is no real economic pressure towards renewable energy, just a moral one from the people.

In consequence our strongest party, the conservatives, anounced a big change in its energy politics towards renewable energy, did nothing and was furthermore the only party who wrote nothing about this topic in its party manifest for the elections last month. Go figure...

[nctnico]

AFAIK the problem in Germany is that there is no connection between the north and mid-west (Rhur area) to transport the green electricity made in the north towards the industrial zone in the mid-west. Now the green energy is dumped onto the Danish and Dutch electricity grids for free. Thank you German tax payers for giving us free electricity!

[Rufus]

There is a broad consensus pro renewable energy within the german people.

There is a broad consensus pro motherhood and apple pie too.

[johansen]

AFAIK the problem in Germany is that there is no connection between the north and mid-west (Rhur area) to transport the green electricity made in the north towards the industrial zone in the mid-west. Now the green energy is dumped onto the Danish and Dutch electricity grids for free. Thank you German tax payers for giving us free electricity!

are they really getting the power for free? since its wind and solar they can't contract out a guaranteed delivery anyway, so for the machines to be running is a waste of time. given that most governments on this planet can't do math its no supprise they pull money out of tax payer's wallets to finance 30 cents per kilowatt power and sell it back to them at 10 cents.

as a general rule: without subsidies it makes no sense to build wind turbines unless the power is worth 20-30 cents per kilowatt hour.
solar at 1$ per watt is cost effective at household power rates* if you can figure no maintenance cost and 10 years of operation.
*which are 2-3 times industry power rates.

Germany is home to ABB if i'm not mistaken.. they should make abb an offer they can't refuse for a modern hvdc link between those two areas, if its too far to push the power then it sounds like they aren't even connected together.

reading the article i'm a bit disturbed.. it sounds like the base rate is 5-7 cents per kilowatt hour? if that's the case that's cheaper than it is in the pacific northwest. i think our base rate is 9 usd cents for the first 600 kwh/month, and then 11 after that for residential customers.

300,000 households per year getting their power turned off at that rate sounds like there is a very high flat monthly fee which is what some electrical co-ops do in the States as well. reduce the monthly fee to something more reasonable, fewer people won't get their power turned off.. and they will also lose the reconnection fee of 100 euros.. which is higher than it is in the states.

i think i see what is going on here....

[XynxNet]

Consumers pay 26-29 cents per kwh + a connection fee of ~60€ per year. Industry pays ~ 8-10 cents per kwh.

Those 300.000 disconnected people have various reason. Energy prices are just one of them. I think a more important one is the economic shift towards low paid jobs during the last decade.

Our grid is indeed a big problem. Although it is very robust, its constructed for big centralized power plants in our industry regions. Unfornunatly our wind turbines are in the costal region were knowbody needs lots of electricity and which are only lightly connected with the grid. Now nowbody wants to pay for new grid parts. Our big energy providers still have their big power plants and no interest in competition, wind turbine owners are not united and don't have enough money and the government doesn't want to pay. Furthermore towns and citys along the prospected grid routes don't want them through their area if constructed as aerial hv grid.

[nctnico]

And in the NL the owners of coal and gas based power plants are complaining they can't make any money so they won't invest in green energy. Actually a brand new power plant got dismantled and the turbines got sold to China 

[zapta]

When it come to low carbon electricity production in Europe, France is the clear winner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France

[mamalala]

are they really getting the power for free?

Not only that, sometimes they get even some money on top of it.

The problem is that they made some very stupid decission here in Germany when they introduced the EEG (the law governing renewable energy). Firts, there is a 20 year feed-in tarrif guarantee. That means that the owner/operator gets a fixed rate throughout these 20 years. Next, the grid operarors _must_ feed in those renewables first. Now, every customer (with some industries exempt from that) have to pay the "EEG Umlage" for every kWh they use. The amount is calculated from the difference between what the energy would normally cost (higher price) and what it actually costs on the energy stock market EEX (lower price).

However, when solar and wind is producing a lot of energy, we have too much compared to what the current demand is. That sometimes causes the price on the EEX to go _negative_. Yes, that's right: Not only have we to give away that energy for free, but also have to pay money to whoever takes it.

Needless to say that there are no provisions in place that require the producers of renewable energy to participate in the extension of the grid, building of storage systems, or the likes. Oh, and in case you think that's already silly: imagine you have a wind farm. Now there is too much energy available and not enough folks who it could be exported to. So they _can_ disconnect your windfarm from the grid. However, you would still get paid for the energy that you could have fed into the grid....

What's really silly is how many proponents complain and attack the big electricity companies and grid operators for not extending the grid and/or building storage solutions. Why the heck should they? They built the grid to accomodate their fleet of generating stations (they were the same companies usually, but were forced to split up between generating and grid operation, so on paper they are now two different entities, while in reality they are still the same). They are already forced to feed in and buy the electricity generated from renewables at a ridiculously high price. Why should they spend even more money to accomodate a system that has no benefit for them, is not operated by them nor have any say in how the growth of the renewables will proceed? It's simply none of their business.

In my opinion it has to be the responsibility of the producers of renewable energy to see that they get sufficient storage and grid capacity. it is _their_ energy production, after all. Instead they blindly installed more and more generating capacity and only know notice that, well, wind and solar are intermittent and would need storage and better grid capacity. But why care about that, if you can rake in lots of money due to 20 year guaranteed feed in tarrifs that are way above market value.

Simply stopping that now doesn't help much either, since it would only stop that for systems that are built and put into operation now. But there are still the old system that would have thos guaranteed tariffs for up to 20 years into the future from now.

Greetings,

Chris

[mamalala]

You don't give it away for free though, other countries pay you for it. There is an EU wide rate and you are obliged to sell on the open market. We have the same thing in the UK, so even if we fracked all that shale gas the price wouldn't go down like it has in the US because we are obliged to offer it at the market rate to all EU members.

And exactly that is not true. The spot price at the EEX sometimes goes negative for Germany. In 2012 we had 15 days with a negative price. Basically, in the recent years we always had days with a negative price. The "Bundesnetzagentur" (the German authority watching over the market) saw itself forced to set a cap for the negative price that can be reached, between -150 and -350 Euro per MWh.


You can visit eex.com and sift through the tables there yourself to verify that.

It is sad but true. On some days we pay other countries to take our electricity. And that is a problem caused by the EEG due to it forcing the grid operaters to always have to feed in renewables no matter what.

Greetings,

Chris

Edit: For example, see this chart: http://www.eex.com/en/Market%20Data/Trading%20Data/Power/Hour%20Contracts%20|%20Spot%20Hourly%20Auction/Hour%20Contracts%20Chart%20|%20Spot%20Hourly%20Auction/spot-hours-chart/2013-10-18/PHELIX/-/1y. Note the dip to below -50€ in december 2012. And the dip to almost -25€ in June 2013. And this is PHELIX, which combines Germany and Austria.

[johansen]

When it come to low carbon electricity production in Europe, France is the clear winner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France

yeah, as long as you don't ask where they dump the fuel (hint: the Atlantic ocean) (what's worse, if due to bad weather the ships didn't make it to the dump site, they would dump the fuel along the way, because it was a hazard to the ships crew)

And exactly that is not true. The spot price at the EEX sometimes goes negative for Germany. In 2012 we had 15 days with a negative price. Basically, in the recent years we always had days with a negative price. The "Bundesnetzagentur" (the German authority watching over the market) saw itself forced to set a cap for the negative price that can be reached, between -150 and -350 Euro per MWh.

thank you, this doesn't really surprise me.

Consumers pay 26-29 cents per kwh + a connection fee of ~60€ per year. Industry pays ~ 8-10 cents per kwh.

that makes a lot more sense and being in euros that is on the order of 3 times the price we pay in the States.
electricity being that costly i would expect a much higher percentage of Germans to invest in solar.
someone on fieldlines dot com recently bought solar panels at 85 cents per watt...
what he figures is china is subsidizing solar to the point they are the cheapest in the world, everyone else will go broke, and then they will jack prices back up to cover the cost of the previous decade's subsidies.

[Marco]

the automotiv industry and the heavy industry which are strongly against any change.

I think Audi is doing good work with e-gas. Methane is not an ideal fuel for small vehicles, less of a problem for trucks, because of energy density (can only keep it liquid cryogenically, best you can do for a vehicle is compress it). Better than hydrogen though.

This is the way forward ... in my opinion. Fuel is the perfect long term energy storage ... if we can do the conversion efficiently enough and cheaply enough then we just need to pull Marocco into the EU and fill their part of the Sahara with PV panels and we're golden.

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

I think Audi is doing good work with e-gas. Methane is not an ideal fuel for small vehicles, less of a problem for trucks, because of energy density (can only keep it liquid cryogenically, best you can do for a vehicle is compress it). Better than hydrogen though.
This is the way forward ... in my opinion. Fuel is the perfect long term energy storage ... if we can do the conversion efficiently enough and cheaply enough then we just need to pull Marocco into the EU and fill their part of the Sahara with PV panels and we're golden.

--Chevy is introducing a dual fueled Impala and Ford is introducing a dual fueled F150, see the next two links.

http://www.autonews.com/article/20131016/OEM05/131019907/gm-to-offer-dual-fuel-impala-in-wager-on-natural-gas

http://www.gizmag.com/2014-ford-f-150-cng/28633/

--As for the Impala, only the market can determine, but my guess is that there will be sufficient sales for profitability. Dual fueled trucks are seeing increased use, especially by the fracking companies, needless to say. If you have natural gas running to your house, this may an attractive option. These companies are already using re-purposed gas turbines from retired helicopters to power on site generators. Not cheap but cheaper than ICE powered generation. Natural gas produces at least 20% less CO2, for those who care, and in many countries does not need to be imported. What with an estimated 20 trillion dollar petroleum and natural gas field being developed in and around Coober Pedy, not only will Australia become a net exporter, rather than importer, our friends down under may soon have the option of driving a dual fuel vehicle. See link below.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/trillion-shale-oil-find-surrounding-coober-pedy-can-fuel-australia/story-e6frea83-1226560401043

"Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people."
William Claude Dukenfield, W. C. Fields 1880 - 1946

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[mamalala]

And exactly that is not true. The spot price at the EEX sometimes goes negative for Germany. In 2012 we had 15 days with a negative price. Basically, in the recent years we always had days with a negative price. The "Bundesnetzagentur" (the German authority watching over the market) saw itself forced to set a cap for the negative price that can be reached, between -150 and -350 Euro per MWh.

Sure, but my point was that you don't give the excess away for free, other countries still have to pay for it.

Am i writing in chinese, or what? No, we do not only give it away for free, wee give them money on top of it! There is sometimes so much energy produced that the excess we produce is "sold" for a negative price. That means we give them the electricity _plus_ money on top of it. What is so hard to understand about it? I even gave you a link to a more general graph that shows that. If you sift through the data for germany's exports only, you will find even more days with a negative price instead of only the two dips in that combined graph.

Again: The renewables in Germany sometimes so much energy that we have to pay others too take it. And the german consumers have to pay for that through the EEG.

Got it now?

Greetings,

Chris

[johansen]

http://www.solarblvd.com/Solar-Panels-&-Systems-Solar-Panels-By-The-Pallet/c1_250/p2575/Lightway-Solar-230-Watt-24-Volt-Solar-Panel-P1650---10-pcs./product_info.html

65 cents a watt plus shipping.

[mamalala]

Am i writing in chinese, or what? No, we do not only give it away for free, wee give them money on top of it! There is sometimes so much energy produced that the excess we produce is "sold" for a negative price. That means we give them the electricity _plus_ money on top of it. What is so hard to understand about it?

kay, calm down man. I understand you, it's you that isn't understanding me. What I'm saying is that even though the price does go negative IN GERMANY when that electricity is exported it can't be sold at the negative price. EU rules don't allow that as it would distort the market, especially since the reason it goes negative is in large part due to massive government subsidy of renewable energy.

Can you link to those rules then? Because currently we do indeed give money to those who "buy" at negative prices. And just as information: the EU has already ruled long ago (in 2001 with the "Preussenelektra" ruling, i think) that what they do here with the EEG is _not_ a subsidy. As such, any rules that focus on stuff about subsidies does not apply here.

Yes, i know it's crazy. But it is what it is. The cheaper electricity becomes on the "market" due to the renewables, the more the end customers have to pay to to the EEG and the grid usage fees. All the while the most vocal proponents shout "but sun and wind don't send a bill!". The politics here made gross mistakes in the implementation of an otherwise good idea.

And not to forget that they excluded big industries from paying any EEG or grid usage costs at all. And the limit that an industry has to reach in power consumption, to fall under that exemption, has even been lowered recently, so that even more companies get exempt. That means that those who use the grid the most, and use most electricity, contribute exactly nothing at all, while the regular end customers have to pay that difference as well.

But at least those exemptions are now reconsidered by the EU, since those probably do indeed fall under rather unlawful subdisdies.

Greetings,

Chris

[madires]

The problems are:
- Goverment has overdone promoting and subsidizing green power (more expensive kWh and solar cell war).
- The 4 large power companies run coal and nuclear plants which can't be switched on/off whithin minutes.
- Wind parks and solar cells don't generate steady power. There are good tools to predict the power but just for a short timeframe.
- It's a tough job to keep the grid stable with classic power plants and increasing green power. It makes sense to build some fast acting plants (gas) and switch off some classic plants. But no power company would invest a lot of money for stand-by plants.
- The power grid is designed to distribute power from the large plants to the customers but not as transit network. The grid companies haven't invested much into a migration of the grid towards distribution and transit. There's a fingerpointing game right now. Companies are blaming the government for slow approvals and people for disliking new transmission lines. The companies started very late to redesign the grid and there are solutions to upgrade transmission lines. Also the grid companies dislike to invest much money if they can make money just by maintaining the old grid. The goverment has created a chaos and wasn't able the manage the whole transition.
- The issues above create huge power overproductions from time to time and totaly absurd negative prices to get rid of the power to keep the grid stable.

I believe that the best solution is to build a European grid supporting transit and distribution. A larger grid allows a better/easier balancing between classic and green power, especially with the mix how power is generated in the different countries. For example the northern countries got a lot of hydroelectric power plants which can be switched on/off quite fast. But we also have to find a way to compensate power companies for running stand-by plants.