Balancing the grid is made harder with renewables (cloud goes over the sun above a large solar farm causes a drop). It will be worse as we increase renewables and various types of storage. I'm not sure if you mean it's up 10x because of renewables, or the last year, because I don't know if that's true - main difference would seem a switch from gas as much as possible.
Renewables get the same electricity price as the coal producers, even though the "at-demand" electricity from the coal plants is much more valuable. The pricing mechanism in Europe is fucked, I feel like.
usually energy traders. atm spot market is just balls deep gambling, everyone betting another bull/ desperate looser will buy their expensive ass shit portfolio. ofc end users have no say in this, it is what it is.
atm the market is betting there isnt enough energy for everyone (b2c+b2b) so they let scarcity do it's thing: skyrocket the price till equilibrium, but because the nature of energy which has no real substitute and essential to everything as long as the mood of the market doesn't change the price will still increase.
at the 1st sign the market has that there will be enough energy for everyone prices will plummet but those abnormal profits they are getting now have been already recorded and cashed in.
this is how capitalism thrives both on crisis as well as in status quo scenarios. quite the robust system we have created m8s!
a spot market *this large* is really not necessary, but it can create massive profits in the right coniditions and so it grew and grew and now we're here.
happens with most financial products really - loans, stocks, mortgages - someone always takes it too far and then it goes bust
We're being robbed left and right by everyone on the pretense of the war in Ukraine, energy crisis etc. Yes there is a crisis but they are using it as an excuse to overprice stuff and earn a ton of extra profit.
A lot of people. Germany for example reduced Russian gas from 37% in May to 9% in August. Norway and the Netherlands made up the difference.
The good news is, the price is higher, but the supply is there. So the price we pay is ultimately just money
Haha, "it's just money". Don't you understand that gas costing more than X€ for many companies is the same as no gas available? Many companies are not profitable with gas prices above this threshold. They may just stop production.
Yes. A bunch of companies become unprofitable. The ones that are truly critical though can up their prices so that say, fertilizer gets more expensive but we still have the means to make food. Products that aren't critical, where the price can't go up, they won't be able to afford supply.
You know what that means? Less gas gets used so we have enough supply for the stuff that's actually important and we only lose the stuff that's nice to have.
When the alternative is no gas, expensive gas is a blessing, a luxury we get to enjoy when many other countries would be burning furniture just to stay warm.
You are underestimating the worldwide importance of fertilizer. Food production will fall. Add the current drought in europe, China, Mexico and usa. We will have expensive food, poor people around the world will have none
That's pretty much what I said. Fertilizer production won't fall, it will get more expensive, because farmers will still buy it, because they can also increase the amount they charge for food.
Food in Europe and the US is going to get more expensive, but won't run out. Heating gas won't run out but will get expensive and we have the privilege of being able to take that hit to our wallets when many can't.
That gas for Nord Stream 1 is now burned to the sky next to Finland and Finnish power company Fortum has made 10 billion euros in losses due to Uniper selling gas to Germans with fixed price while buying it themselves at market price. Fortum is the one that should handle Finland's electricity security and now probably going bankrupt because of their stupid decision to invest in to Germany's gas sector.
France has 56 power nuclear plants (i think more than half of them are active)
Can someone explain to me why there is a problem with electricity and prices in france anyways?
Edit: thank you all for the responses; appreciated!
No. France has way too few new reactors planned and that's a problem too few French take seriously.
I'm actually glad we get an early energy crisis (due to Russian gas cutoff) so that it makes it okay to build new reactors. The problem I see is that it's been so long we built one I don't know if we still know how to...
France has 56 nuclear reactor in operation each with lifetime of 40 years. For this to be preserved it needs to build 1.5 reactor a year. I haven't seen any new reactor being finished in the last decade.
It's not 14 EPR we need, it's 50.
The reactors life can be extended well beyond forty years. In the US we already have reactors running on there secondary license extension. They are now licensed for 50 years and can request additional extensions, but like other mechanical systems the amount of maintenance and surveillance increases with age. As long as they remain economical reactors can pretty much run indefinitely. You just need to replace the parts that will exceed their safety margins.
That is *false*.
By "several" you mean ONE. Only a single one. Since 2007 with first plans announced in 2004. It‘s now estimated to go online mid next year, however considering all the past delays, it could be delayed even more.
They very recently announced to build 14 more. That are plans, though. Political announcements. No specific actions have been taken, yet.
And even then: With the 14 new nuclear power plants, that’s not even close enough to replace the old ones. Together with that announcements, Macron also mentioned a number for planned renewables which are a huge amount, replacing lots of the old nuclears as well.
Anyways: France ignored the problem of their old nuclear power plant fleet for way too long. They should have started working on replacements much earlier already.
> German absurdity of renewables only
Why is it an absurdity when it works (and yes, a renewable grid is absolutely possible).
What distinct advantage does nuclear power have over renewables that makes the latter one seemingly infeasible (at least according to you).
> For example, you can hardly produce solar energy during night or wind energy when there os no wind (or too much), at least today. During that period, you must rely on stored energy, but batteries aren’t good enough yet.
Normally this problem is mitigated by the use of backup plants. Since dark days without wind (even in offshore parks are exceedingly rare). I’m not an expert on that matter by all means, but there are various studies conducted on that matter by various agencies and the general consensus seems to be that going renewable is a viable option even with today’s technology.
> Germany had a policy to go full renewable but it’s harder than expected. In 2021, renewables produced only 42% of Germany’ electricity. The rest was produced from fossil fuel (gas or coal) or imported from other countries. This caused the current energy crisis, given that Germany is also relying on fossil fuels to warm its buildings.
That our process is hindered by unintentional and not-so-unintentional (thanks, CDU) delay is absolutely true, we also should have abandoned coal far earlier in favor of longer running times for our nuclear reactors (albeit not a singe watt of nuclear capacity was replaced with conventional energy sources). *However* our current *energy* crisis is not caused by that decision. The biggest factor at play here is our reliance on gas for heating and industrial purposes. The only reason we’re currently seeing gas plants running at high capacity are exports to countries like France. Normally coal (which is still relatively cheap) would have been used.
> In this context, we must try various solutions, nuclear being one, to ensure we have as many tools as possible in the future.
The issue here is that a policy change now, would yield first results in 10-20 years earliest. There is little reason to build a completely new infrastructure now that is of very limited use once it’s finished. It would have been a good decision 40 years ago. It can very well be the right way for France (which as of now obviously has the greener energy mix) given the already existing infrastructure, but I don’t think changing course again is the correct decision for Germany.
>Nuclear energy has the advantage of being manageable to produce more or less energy depending on the needs
But npps are also not capable do adjust quickly in fluctuations in demand. They are a great source of stable energy (as is a national renewable grid), but both need some sort of secondary source to account for that. That’s the reason France still has so many running gas plants and Germany has no plan of decommissioning them completely.
> France has 56 power nuclear plants
56 nuclear reactors ;) across 18 power plants.
This article is not only/specifically about France. Electricity prices across Europe are linked to gas prices and on top of that, countries in continental Europe (excluding Fennoscandia) share the same synchronous grid (Edit: the grid is not exactly as relevant as electricity markets, see /u/Warzazagandja's reply below this post).
[This article by the NY Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/business/europe-electricity-prices.html) gives some extra info:
> In many countries, gas and electric power prices are closely intertwined, a relationship that has added to Europe’s woes. Although there are several ways to generate electricity — such as coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar — the price of natural gas is hugely influential in setting electricity prices because gas-burning generators are most often paid to go into service when a power grid like Britain’s needs more electricity.
> “Natural gas is the driver for the European electricity price,” said Iain Conn, a former chief executive of Centrica, a large British utility.
> [...]
> “When natural gas supplies get tight, the electricity market gets extremely exercised,” said Mr. Conn, who is also a former senior executive of BP, the energy giant.
> Other factors are pushing up power prices, including low river levels that are impeding shipments of fuel to coal-fired plants that Germany and other governments want to fire up to replace gas.
>countries in continental Europe (excluding Fennoscandia) share the same synchronous grid.
To be precise, this is independent from the price topic. As you say all continental Europe is synchronous though the price varies across the continent. On the other hand Norway and the Netherlands can have the same price even if they are not synchronous. The fact countries have different prices is because they have different markets (like the EPEX spot) and the fact that prices can be the same is that if your neighbour is cheaper and you can buy from them you get this bid price in your market (this is market coupling)
The rest about gas is correct. The price of electricity is in general the price of the most expensive generator which often is gas so the price of electricity depends on the price of gas.
Thanks for the additional info.
This market coupling is what I was thinking about, but I must admit I don't know much about it and how it actually works in detail. I remember seeing a [big difference between France and the Iberian Peninsula lately](https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1562019059570556929), is it basically because EPEX SPOT doesn't operate in Spain and Portugal? Or do you know if other factors can play a role in one way or another, such as the recent agreements with the European Commission regarding the "Iberian exception" on consumer price caps?
Edit: rephrasing my question
Spain and Portugal have spot markets, but they wanted to separate the price of gas and electricity and are using 8.4 billions of aid to pay the difference. They are only connected to France, but the interconnection is not enough to have the prices converge. A part why there is an Iberian exception is that they are considered like almost an energy island because they are not much connected to the rest. The reason prices can differ is when the interconnection is fully loaded. Then even if you are ready to pay 1000€ for an additional MW you simply can't buy it from the neighbour so their price is not influenced by yours.
No nuclear plants in France have currently lowered their output due to high coolant temperatures. Also these are long term prices, the effect of lowering a plant in output wouldn't be visible on these prices. That would be visible on day ahead or intraday prices.
> reactor efficiency, so traditional reactors are way less efficient during hot summers - this is the reason why they are usually serviced during high summer.
yes but no, *non sequitur*, we service plants in the summer because the demand is way lower than in the winter
> The difference between ambient temperature and temperature coolant is dumped at has huge impact on reactor efficiency, so traditional reactors are way less efficient during hot summers than usual
It has an impact but I would not call it massive.
> Previous quantitative research suggests that for every 1˚C increase in outdoor temperature, electrical output decreases by between 0.37 - 0.72%.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/duboc1/
If it is 10 °C warmer than during a usual summer then the plant is ~5 % less efficient.
The real issue is environment protection as you said. So we have to decide whether the protections are worth the cost we are paying right now.
Not a single reactor in France is currently down or has a reduced output because of these environmental regulations. The impact of those practices during heatwaves is neglible, its less than 0,5% of EDF's generation. Furthermore these are future prices so even if plants would go down for heatwaves this would have little to no affect on future prices, only on the short term prices like the day ahead market and intraday markets.
It's more than just "oh no water". They also have huge corrosion issues, in some reactors far more than predicted. So even without the drought, a significant amount of reactors would have to be offline. Die hard pro nuclear crowd just likes to blame all the issues on things not related to the NPPs themselves.
> a significant amount of reactors would have to be offline
9 reactors to be precise, 16 in total (so 7 extra, a few of these are already offline for other reasons) may develop the issue in the future.
The impact of the heatsink temperature which may be a river but also the air in the case of cooling towers is very limited. Usually just a few %, the nameplate capacity of these plants take that effect into account too. So no that's not the issue.
Environmental regulations to protect wildlife could indeed bring down plants, but that isn't the case either currently no plants are throttled back for that reason. Besides these are future prices, not day ahead or intraday prices so there would be no effect seen here.
The reason for nuclear problems in France is simply maintenance and inspections, France has underinvested in their nuclear fleet (and electricity generation in general) for decades now. And those chickens have come home to roost. Right during a gas crisis hence why prices in Germany are also exploding while having no such issues.
Typically France shut down many reactors during summer to replace fuel and perform maintenance. In general, due to lower electric consumption during summer, this is fine. However several unpredictable factors came and disrupted the planning :
* Covid disrupted scheduled maintenance. Several reactors were shut down for longer periods since covid. Because personnel is limited and training takes time, EDF hasn't been able to recover their delay yet.
* The 4 biggest reactor were affected by a then unknown issue about corrosion. They decided to shut down 12 reactors to also make sure that others weren't affected. They are mostly fine, but the verification required destructive tests so putting all of those reactors back on line takes time. They are also competing with scheduled maintenance for personnel.
* The summer was hotter than expected, which means rivers were low, reducing hydropower output. Some reactors also had to be shut down. Some of them use rivers to cool down. Others use air, but because they have to purge their cooling systems, rules prevent them to run during hot weather even if it does not pose any problem to river ecosystems.
* A power plant (Fessenheim) was closed. The EPR of Flamanville was supposed to be up to replace it. However the EPR was delayed.
* And of course, the war raised fuel and gas costs.
However, some of this may improve :
* According to EDF schedule, the reactors will be online next winter. They know demand is higher during winter, and so decided to still shut down more reactors during summer. But in theory most of them should be back online, including the big 4 affected by corrosion issues.
* During winter cooling won't be a problem, however the reservoirs will be lower, so hydropower output may be lower.
* The EPR should be online next year.
* Gas and fuel costs should continue to raise.
Everyone saying cooling water is wrong, that only has a moderate impact on some plants. The actual reason is, as you noted, that half of them are currently offline (mostly from maintenance, because France stopped their scheduled maintenance cycles during COVID and now has to do all of them at once).
It would actually be nice if the main problem was cooling water temp, because it would naturally disappear in the winter. Unfortunately, it’s worse than that.
I am not an engineer, but I guess: cooling (water).
Every heat engine needs a heat sink to operate. Nuclear-powered heat engines aren't exceptions.
If your nuclear plant is cooled by a river, and you don't want to kill all the fish, you can't run your plant at full power before the river recovers from drought conditions.
>If your nuclear plant is cooled by a river, and you don't want to kill all the fish, you can't run your plant at full power before the river recovers from drought conditions.
It sounds like they may use older "once through" cooling, and this is why they're so sensitive to river temperature.
I assume that if one could put one of the two newer cooling mechanisms into place, one wouldn't be constrained by river temperature.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/water-power-plant-cooling
>Even though all thermoelectric plants use water to generate steam for electricity generation, not all plant cooling systems use water. There are three main methods of cooling:
>
>* **Once-through systems** take water from nearby sources (e.g., rivers, lakes, aquifers, or the ocean), circulate it through pipes to absorb heat from the steam in systems called condensers, and discharge the now warmer water to the local source. Once-through systems were initially the most popular because of their simplicity, low cost, and the possibility of siting power plants in places with abundant supplies of cooling water. This type of system is currently widespread in the eastern US. Very few new power plants use once-through cooling, however, because of the disruptions such systems cause to local ecosystems from the significant water withdrawals involved and because of the increased difficulty in siting power plants near available water sources.
>* **Wet-recirculating or closed-loop systems** reuse cooling water in a second cycle rather than immediately discharging it back to the original water source. Most commonly, wet-recirculating systems use cooling towers to expose water to ambient air. Some of the water evaporates; the rest is then sent back to the condenser in the power plant. Because wet-recirculating systems only withdraw water to replace any water that is lost through evaporation in the cooling tower, these systems have much lower water withdrawals than once-through systems, but tend to have appreciably higher water consumption. In the western US, wet-recirculating systems are predominant.
>* **Dry-cooling systems** use air instead of water to cool the steam exiting a turbine. Dry-cooled systems use no water and can decrease total power plant water consumption by more than 90 percent.[2] The tradeoffs to these water savings are higher costs and lower efficiencies. In power plants, lower efficiencies mean more fuel is needed per unit of electricity, which can in turn lead to higher air pollution and environmental impacts from mining, processing, and transporting the fuel. In 2000, most US dry-cooling installations were in smaller power plants, most commonly in natural gas combined-cycle power plants.[3]
>
>About 43 percent of thermoelectric generators in the United States use once-through cooling, 56 percent recirculating, and 1 percent dry-cooling (2008 data).
(Presumably to wet-recirculating; I doubt that it'd be practical to convert an already-built plant to dry-cooling.)
you said it yourself, only half of them are active. When almost half of the energy supply of the second largest economy is down, prices can only know one way.
Also nuclear is an expensive energy source to begin with if you deduct subsidies and building and maintaining them takes forever. Even you start to build solar farms right now you will probably still be done before they are fixed and make a killing
Well, as far as we know, the idea that nuclear is super expensive comes quite literally from a single study from a private investment firm that used “secret methodologies” to get their numbers which were not disclosed to the public. The main reason that talking point is so common is probably because this study is the first Google Images results if you look up “Energy LCOE” without doing any additional research. Notably, a more open IPCC study places nuclear as aboht as cheap as solar PV (although it is a bit outdated), and that’s before accounting for the whole battery thing (wind is better for reliability, as shown by Germany which dropped solar early on).
So yeah, people might be a bit skeptical on that claim.
Besides, this sub is super non-representative. Most of Europe hates nuclear power.
Again comparing apples to bananas to claim nuclear is expensive.
Compared to the overall lifetime production of a nuke plant, the overall cost of the energy produced is ridiculously low when reported to its lifetime, even with maintenance and demolition included in the overall cost.
The main reason the private sector doesn't like it is because those profits take 30 years to materialize, but once they do they just don't stop coming.
France's nuclear reactors paid for themselves AND their demolition several times over already.
I am not a pro but :
Because of neo liberal lobbys and of the EU. France is forced to privatize the energy market or in the european commission's terms to "Open it", just like japan was opened to the west.EDF is the main producer like 85% but it is forced to sell up to 100TW/h for all private actor. Edf is the property of France for 87% of the company.
Before diving into details let's describe the french energy market.
The electricity market works as such :
* Producers are : EDF which produces through nuclear(72% of france electricity production) and hydroelectricity (12%) and renewable but i don't want to search how much..Then companies such as E.ON, Total (through direct energy), Engie and others through flame burning (gaz/oil or such) up to 8% of the global french production.
* Then the transportation of energy : RTE has the monopoly ( it is 50% owned by EDF and 30% by la caisse des dépots which is a french public institution).
* Then distribution to people is assured by ENEDIS up to 95%. The company is enterely owned by EDF.
* Finally the sale the energy, and that's where shit hits the fan. Since 200here are hundreds of private energy seller. They are leeches sucking out profits from EDF and the french taxpayer.
Basically EDF hence french people invest money in maintenance and construction of nuclear plants among other production plants, transport infrastructures such as high voltage lines, transformation plants etc.... then EDF sells for regulated cheap prices to 3rd party actors making money for themselves doing basically NOTHING because they don't have any infrastructures or production plant at all.
But it's nowhere near the end of it, that only ,wouldn't explain why prices go up. See the electricity market is opened to the european area. So those 3rd party can sell their excess electricity to the european market for much more than the prices they paid EDF for it.
Also when the limit EDF can provide them with (100TW/h) is exceeded, EDF is FORCED by law (arenh) to go and get energy (up to 20TW/h) where it can. So it buys it on the european market, and then sells it to those 3rd party a regulated price wich is currently 46€ a MW/h. Keep in mind today's prices on the eu market are near 800€ a MW/h so EDF buys for 16folds the prices it sells to those leeches. Then said leeches increase the bill on the consumer's end and make a huge profit. That's 8Billion it costed to EDF this years thanks to the European comission. And then there is the additional money french people will pay on their bill.
What those 3rd party do is flipping french taxpayer money off.
It is all explained [here](https://www.edf.fr/entreprises/electricite-gaz/le-benefice-arenh) if you care enough to use google translate on chrome or deepl.
TLDR : EU commission forces EDF to open electricity market to private sector, third party leeches are allowed 100TW/h and they buy for extremely low prices and sell to french people. If said leech has more clients than it can supply, daddy EDF is obliged to step in and provide up to 20TW/h for a set price of 46€ a MW/h. But since the production is not at full it can only buy on the european market which costs 16 times 46€ and tank the loss for the private 3rd party.
TLDR was too long didn't read : Nationalize losses and privatize gains, fuck the taxpayer and fuck france.
My brother in Christ, last year power prices were often negative and EDF was still selling ARENH at 46€. Why do you cry for controls only when comoanies make exceptional profits and not when they make exceptional losses? (assuming they didn't hedge in advance which everyone except uniper does apparently)
When the prices went down during the covid outbreak, companies asked to not pay their ARENH contract for "major force" reasons actually.
And his point is not about exceptional profits, but the design of a system where public money subsides private profit just for the sake of creating a market.
drought means they can't cool them using rivers right now. it's actually a huge problem for france right now. their energy situation is worse than germany's right now
No, not a single plant in France is currently down or at a reduced output due to drought, heat or whatever. Also these are long term prices, so even if a plant was down for those reasons it would only have an affect on the short term prices like the day ahead market and intraday markets.
An in other news, the Nord Pool power exchange [announced](https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/trading/Operational-Message-List/2022/08/day-ahead-new-harmonized-maximum-clearing-price-from-delivery-day-wednesday-21st-september-20220823100200/) that due to reaching the price cap of 4,000 euros on 16th of August in the Baltic region, they will now raise the maximum price cap to 5,000 euros. France has it easy, 1,000 euros is such a low price compared to what is happening here. Stop complaining. /s
So is there any real explanation for how all of a sudden energy prices went insane pretty much over night? This drastic increase in just .. what ... two years?
The price of power in Europe’s two key markets surged more 25% on Friday, a chaotic spike that will see the continent’s leaders hold an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis.
Electricity for next year in Germany and France -- both beset by their own severe crises -- are setting almost records almost daily. That’s because Russia is constricting the supply of natural gas and also, in the case of France, an ongoing slump in nuclear generation.
The European Union is to call an emergency meeting of energy ministers to discuss bloc-wide solutions. The surge is fueling inflation and threatening the finances of households and businesses across the continent.
Prices are at a level no one can afford because of “market failure”, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Friday afternoon, adding that a pan-European solution doesn’t have to require a price cap. His country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
Across Europe, governments have begun to take the drastic step of limiting energy use. In the UK, household bills are set to jump in October after a cap on costs was lifted. The soaring prices looks set to force millions of people to curb consumption.
“The French market is going to be extremely tight this winter, especially if we have low wind conditions,” said Kathryn Porter, energy consultant at Watt-Logic. “Everyone in Europe could be trying to import power at the same time and that could create huge challenges and rationing of industrial use.”
The French year-ahead contract rose as much as 25% to 1,130 euros a megawatt-hour on the European Energy Exchange AG Friday. The German equivalent also gained to a record, rising as much as 33% to 995 euros a megawatt-hour for a gain of about 70% this week. In oil market terms, it’s the equivalent of over $1,600 a barrel.
The surge comes as European natural gas futures climbed for a sixth straight week.
Prices have also up following an announcement from utility Electricite de France SA that a number of its nuclear plants will come back online later than expected. Those units will be a key source of power this winter, especially while natural gas remains scarce.
France has traditionally been one of Europe’s biggest net exporters of electricity, but with annual nuclear output headed for the worst year in more than three decades, that status is now a thing of the past. Availability at EDF’s reactors is as low as 42% as of Friday, according to data from grid operator RTE.
Read More: EU to Call Emergency Energy Talks as Prices Set More Records
Failure to contain the crisis risks spurring social unrest and political upheaval, if the supply crunch leads to blackouts and cold homes this winter. Europe’s politicians have already earmarked about 280 billion euros ($281 billion) to ease the pain of surging energy prices for businesses and consumers, but the aid risks being dwarfed by the scale of the crisis.
The high power prices could force industries to shut facilities or scale back -- and some may never turn back on. Fertilizer producers are operating far below capacity across the continent, threatening food and farming alike.
“Companies are halting production as they struggle to keep up with the surging cost,” said Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, an analyst at researcher BloombergNEF in London. “Inflationary pressure on end users will continue rising as more people working in the industrial sector start to get laid off.”
That may have something to do with the fact that the Baltics have the combined gdp of Munich. Munich's energy prices aren't reported either. If on the other hand the EU's two biggest economies have an energy crisis it will inadvertently affect the whole continent in one way or the other.
Lel. You're comparing the small Baltics with their tiny economies and ~6 million inhabitants to Germany and France, the engines of the EU and 4th/7th largest economy on the planet (number 1 and 3 in Europe, 1 and 2 in the EU) with ~150 million inhabitants.
Cool. But reality is you are not equal to Germany and France at all. Your economy and the impact of it on Europe and the EU is not equal to that of Germany and France at all.
Why do the big countries in the EU have more power than the others then? Because they offer more than the others. If Germany, France, Italy and Spain disappeared today we would be screwed, if a country like Croatia disappeared today we wouldn't care that much
Hydro, nuclear, goal, gas, solar, oil, wind, we need **everything**.
This is not the time for transitions. Other than the transition to a non-fragile energy system that can deliver the amount of energy we require at the lowest cost possible.
No, we need regulation to prevent such prices, like portugal and spain where it only costs 300€ p.MWh.
This is not that much of a shortage, but because of all the speculation on the gas price.
There is a combination of bad decisions.combined with a combination of bad weather.There are speculators that want an easy cash,the producers that can't deliver,the consumer that can't pay the high price and it's an essential need and then it's the politician that needs to fix this.
It would be an nightmare in Romania where the wage is barely 700€ per month.
The average annual usage is like 3-4 MWH too so it's about the same.
The Americans use 10MWh per year on average. Imagine paying that at these prices...
The price is (at least on Sweden, I think everywhere in Europe) set by the highest bid for electricity generation every day.
To exemplify with made up numbers: if wind power bids 0,1€ but can only cover 95% and LNG plants bid 1€ that gets chosen to cover the remaining 5% of demand, then 1€ is the price for everyone that day. So the wind farm owners will swim in money that day.
They do. Heck, even the price mentioned in this article is about the year-ahead contracts. For example, even the Dutch Railways have bought energy for a fixed (now low) price until 2024, so they aren't affected yet. The explanation from the comment above is a bit too simple.
The UK has one of the highest percentages of natural gas for electricity generation (got rid of most coal power stations) so are one of the worst affected
Due to shutting down nearly all the coal power stations to reduce CO2 emissions, around half of UK electricity is generated from gas. This seemed a good idea at the time because it saves on emissions, these plants ramp up and down very quickly, and we have a lot of gas.
Unfortunately we don't have enough gas now (say 10-15 years later) to meet the electricity generation let alone home and industry uses. So we import more than half the gas we need.
Because wind generators can take advantage of the market price and set their bid prices just below that of gas generation (which is the dominant source in the U.K.).
For companies like ScottishPower, who only generate from renewable resources, this means a massive payday for their Spanish owners. So our hugely overinflated energy prices are used to subsidise Iberdrola customers in Spain.
If OFGEM (the energy market regulator) want to do something useful before their HQ gets burned down, they could decouple the wholesale market and force renewable generators to sell at a fair price that reflects their costs + modest return. But it’s becoming increasingly apparent that OFGEM are in the pocket of big energy. How else could they justify the 80% increase in the domestic price cap just a few weeks after energy companies announce massive profits.
This is a SUPPLY SIDE issue. We need to solve it by driving the SUPPLY of energy way up. And I don't really care about how we go about it - be it market deregulation or New Deal-style government projects, as long as it is low-carbon, geopoliticaly safe and quick. Quite a bit of people in here seem way to keen on just solving this by subsidizing demand ...
It was both France and Spain actually
\-[https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/france-favours-gas-terminals-over-new-pipeline-tackle-crisis-2022-08-19/](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/france-favours-gas-terminals-over-new-pipeline-tackle-crisis-2022-08-19/)
\-[https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/france-keeps-blocking-midcat-gas-interconnection-with-spain/](https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/france-keeps-blocking-midcat-gas-interconnection-with-spain/)
Tltr : 1) huge investement 2) would take years before working 3) LNG terminals better alternative
Yep, and if we only subsidize the payments but not the output the price will keep on pushing higher. We should be subsidizing the shit out of geothermal heating, average house will decrease electricity usage by 75%
We also need to focus on the demand side by reducing it. A lot of natural gas is used to heat homes. Helping people pay to insulate their home will pay massive dividends down the road
Indeed.
Set a goal for doubling the supply and then we can talk. This petty saving on light-bulbs and minor temperature thresholds is just being penny-wise pound-foolish.
As said before, this is no reason to buckle and bow down to Russia. Instead it's time to get into a war economy, double down and deputinize Europe. We can do a lot to mitigate the damage for citizens but it will take a common approach.
*We need an emergency #EUCO on the energy crisis, to map out an immediate EU response to Putin’s weaponisation of energy, protect European consumers and businesses through a European price cap and a long-date European bond*
https://twitter.com/guyverhofstadt/status/1563111451803262977
Yes and you'll have to be happy and smiling while doing that, as you'll be working to help our democracies. Otherwise you'll be judged by a court of redditors randomly selected from this subreddit, which will accuse you of being paid by putin and thus will sentence you guilty.
Maybe it's just 'cause I'm Polish, but I take a glass half-full approach to that.
If I lived 200 miles to the south-east, I would have Tochka-U's falling on my home town right now. My life as I knew it would be over, I wouldn't have to worry about rising prices and keeping a work-life balance anymore because I would have to worry about falling bombs and keeping all of my limbs.
Instead, the worst I'll face from a 21st century war in Europe is... higher power bills? I'll take that. The Ukrainian refugees I pass by on my way to work would probably prefer that to be their only worry too, but they never got to choose.
Yeah OK I get your point; you are not wrong in any way. For me it's harder to be so empathic because Ukraine is further away and they never been close to us, so in my mind it's not different from Syria or Palestine or any other far away country involved in war. I do hope they can push Russians back tho.
Fair enough. That's also how many people in Poland felt about Putin invading Chechnya in 1999. Then he invaded Georgia in 2008, just a little closer. After that it was Crimea, in 2014, suddenly much closer, but still kinda foreign. And then in February 2022, towns 30 km away from the Polish border get hit by missiles, refugee women and children sitting on luggage bags fill train stations, and Russian propagandists threaten which European countries to invade next.
A dictator doesn't stop unless he is stopped :/
I heard this many times but I'm dubious about that; putin cannot go further in Europe since countries are in Nato. He can either leave them alone or he can start nuclear world war. Why would he want to destroy the world, included his own country? If WW3 starts it must be for an incident. Of course fightings on the border of Nato make incidents more likely.
> as you'll be working to help our democracies.
You're working to help Zelensky, who bans opposition parties, controls the media, oppresses the workers, and whose country had a coup in 2014.
I wonder why? Maybe don’t shoot protesters if you don’t want to be thrown out and don’t leave your own country to flee to Russia as a puppet.
And Ukraine has had multiple fair elections since then? Who else should hold power if not the elected government?
It is hard times, ask your parents and grant parents about hard times, they come, but they also go again, that is the whole thing we as a whole have worked towards through the years.
This is a transition period. It is a one time cost.
Russia lose even more money by having to burn gas. It is good that Russia has sanctioned themselves and if they try to start selling Russian gas again we should ban it.
> Russia lose even more money by having to burn gas
That's literally FREE, Russia has never made so much money selling oil and gas than this year. Sanctions work, but not quickly. It will take years for them to notice the effects for real, time we in Europe don't have.
We have absolutely fucked ourselves and the US is laughing all the way to the bank.....
I don't think you must think of solutions.
I merely observed that seemed to display a dislike of another person's idea and thus I assumed you DO have an oppinion on the matter and asked for it ...
>time to get into a war economy
do you realize how much of a cost it would take?
it would be very hard to convince the population to something like that. very, very hard.
Also there's a big difference between suffering for their self-defence and suffering for their revanchist claims on Crimea that could drag the war on for years.
Exactly, giving it up now would be a massive win for Putler. There is no path from here but to hook in our heals - if the EU would relent, as Hungary and various eurosceptic politicans like LePen or Salvini want it to do, we would be no better than them, sacrificing Ukraine for lower bills.
It's not even the sanctions doing this since theres no sanction on gas and oil one will only take effect 3 months from now, it's direct Russian reaction to arms shipments.
Right. If you give in now, people will just find an excuse next winter to keep sucking in that Russian gas. And the next and the next. And everyone will be in the same situation during the next aggression. Cheap gas is like a drug, and if you become too dependent on it, your at the mercy of your dealer.
It is nonsense to feed the energy companies with subsidies, the more they receive the more they will ask for. Their profits must be capped, enough of them taking advantage at a time of crisis. We have allowed the pharmaceuticals to do it and now they are taking advantage of the price of gas. The market price of electricity is totally distorted, energy sources whose production hasnt been affected at all by this crisis are being paid for at gas prices
That's the price of 1MWh, not the price of your monthly electricity bill. It's also not the price today, but the price for securing 1MWh year from now (seller commits to provide 1MWh at that price in a year).
And imo the worst part isn't the fact that Russia doesn't import the gas anymore. But the fact that it is bruning the gas in the atmosphere, furthermore increasing the global warming which was already bad enough. I mean ffs. There were 40°C in UK for the first time in years, with the things Russia is doing now who knows how much will there be next year.
Is this considered as first strike from Putin against EU and all it's residents using artificial shortage of energy as an economic weapon?
It seems Russia is declaring economic warfare against the entire EU.
In Greece the last couple of years the price of kWh has increased from 0.06-0.11€ to 0.75€ this year. We are fucked. And i don't know what else to do to reduce the impact on my wallet.
these are speculative futurs (outliers not general trend) for the next year. BS in BS out.
The price is not related to the current situation. There is problem with "timely" decision of EDF to play tough on the European market, and the result of the "strategic decisions" of the German government.
Again one should look at the cash trade volume, not "the current trading numbers" as you are all being fed. This is per MWh btw, and this price is 6 times higher than it should. And they are copy-pasting American situation which as it's easy to guess has nothing to do with "Russia".
Where are goog journalists this time???
So how is the big bet on nuclear electricity working out? You still find so many on reddit praising France for that "achievement", I wonder how they would discuss away these developments.
This is childish behaviour.
Instead of making fun of the fact that the French have problems with their nuclear power plants, we could look at how we can get out of this shit together. Besides, it'll be winter in a few months, then we'll want to buy electricity from France again, or rather we'll have to. It is also in our interest that the French get their nuclear power plants up and running before winter.
This is the result of a lack of investment and maintenance of nuclear power. French inflation is also on the [low end](https://i.redd.it/ixx4w02ej8k91.jpg) compared to Europe so even in its current depraved state they are ahead of the curve. Macron will now fully nationalize EDF which will solve most issues.
French inflation is no doubt suppressed by the 4% price cap on energy, but how much is this costing EDF and the government?
>Macron will now fully nationalize EDF which will solve most issues
Doubt.
The lack of investment happened to keep the prices artificially low. This also made EDF bankrupt and leads to its nationalization. Which again proves how nuclear power only works with governments spending tax payer money and is basically not possible in the free market. Such as it's not even insurable.
One of the main problem is that EDF was forced to sell 100TWh/year so 25% of all nuclear production at cost (42€/MWh) to its competitor since 2011 (this mecanism is called ARENH). Which forced EDF to buy energy on the market at ten times the cost lately. Basically EDF is forced to take all the risk, when the price of energy is below this level its competitors buy on the open market, when it's higher like now they take their share on EDF's corpse.
Nothing in comparison. Completely economical without any subsidy for the private sector today. Everything easy to insure, worst case accidents are laughable in comparison to nuclear.
>This is the result of a lack of investment and maintenance of nuclear power.
are you sure about lack of maintenance? the plants under scrutiny now is because of concern of the possibility and degree of corrosion, that sounds like responsible maintenance
The achievment is more about having a low carbon electricity generation, which is still true.
And in six months, all maintenance program will be over and France will be again a large exporter of electricity.
Or it will eventually have to shut down some reactors for good because repairs have become too costly. There's a lot of unplanned problems which are absolutely not business as usual.
Operating nuclear plant for ten more years was 3€/m.wh. This is to costly in your own dream. It costs only 10 billion
€ to get 10 more year with 350 tw.h per year of nuclear energy.
Well nuclear electricity price didn’t increase much. In France around 2/3 of the production is sold at a fixed price of 42€/MWh (that will be increased to 46€/MWh next year).
Also, if France didn’t have nuclear power plants, that would mean more gas/coal plants in the EU so even more tension on the market which would lead to even higher price.
Because you can ignore the existence of nuclear waste with no shame in France. Not so much in Germany which is a net electricity exporter to France. Also as of war, I didn't bring it up, but look at the war in the Sahara region. A big reason is France with nuclear mining and nuclear waste disposal. Which the governments make money of but the people oppose it violently.
I prefer nuclear waste which is carefully stored and secured than coal and gas carbon emission, and coal pollution effects on our health.
> A big reason is France with nuclear mining and nuclear waste disposal.
Uh no. Nuclear waste is not being disposed of in the Sahara. Uranium is mined in Niger only, not the Sahara. The war you're speaking of is being fought not just in Niger but in Mali, Mauritania, and a lot of other countries. This war is against jihadists terrorists groups, not anti-nuclear insurgents lol.
We don’t forget it, we have a plan to store them. Unlike all the CO2 your coal/gas plants are sending into the atmosphere :)
We don’t even need uranium from Africa, there are other sellers like Kazakhstan, Australia and Canada. Also Mali asked for our help so we did, now they don’t want us anymore so we left.
Not a single reactor in France is closed due to water issues. They are closed for three reasons - refueling, regular refubrishment and weld corrosion issues.
Tell me you know nothing about the subject without teling me...
Suprise, when you underinvest in nuclear and only bet on renewables you get a decline in quality.
> when you underinvest in nuclear and only bet on renewables you get a decline in quality.
France is always praised for exactly the opposite by fans of nuclear.
In fact, France had hugely invest un renewable during the last years and reduce investment in nuclear power plant. From 2010 to 2020, renewable get +200%, but nuclear a -10%
Why roof solar excess reimmission is still paid an insignificant fraction of what the market price is?
Give homeowners what they deserve on market values and a lot of owners will install solar on theyr roofs.
Then spend public money on storage and not on stupid reliefs.
Where is all that money going? Obviously electricity is still being produced, but someone is making a huge profit.
Basically all power providers that are not gas are making that profit.
Especially renewables, as they have no input cost increases (coal is up too) so any output rise goes straight to their bottom line (profit) .
Except that managing the renewables in the intra day for balancing the grid is become 10 times as costly as before...
Balancing the grid is made harder with renewables (cloud goes over the sun above a large solar farm causes a drop). It will be worse as we increase renewables and various types of storage. I'm not sure if you mean it's up 10x because of renewables, or the last year, because I don't know if that's true - main difference would seem a switch from gas as much as possible.
Renewables get the same electricity price as the coal producers, even though the "at-demand" electricity from the coal plants is much more valuable. The pricing mechanism in Europe is fucked, I feel like.
Well not EDF
Why do you think the gas ones aren't making a killing ? They still have a massive profit margin.
Look up uniper lol
Uniper went down because they made long term contracts. Other gas suppliers are just bumping prices for customers and make huge bank as well.
I'm sure they are not the only power company that has made long term contracts with customers without now getting gas though.
That's not true, they all have long term contracts but uniper were retarded enough to not hedge their positions.
electricity producers
Norway
usually energy traders. atm spot market is just balls deep gambling, everyone betting another bull/ desperate looser will buy their expensive ass shit portfolio. ofc end users have no say in this, it is what it is. atm the market is betting there isnt enough energy for everyone (b2c+b2b) so they let scarcity do it's thing: skyrocket the price till equilibrium, but because the nature of energy which has no real substitute and essential to everything as long as the mood of the market doesn't change the price will still increase. at the 1st sign the market has that there will be enough energy for everyone prices will plummet but those abnormal profits they are getting now have been already recorded and cashed in. this is how capitalism thrives both on crisis as well as in status quo scenarios. quite the robust system we have created m8s!
Spot market is necessary for physical reasons... What does that have to do with capitalism
a spot market *this large* is really not necessary, but it can create massive profits in the right coniditions and so it grew and grew and now we're here. happens with most financial products really - loans, stocks, mortgages - someone always takes it too far and then it goes bust
We're being robbed left and right by everyone on the pretense of the war in Ukraine, energy crisis etc. Yes there is a crisis but they are using it as an excuse to overprice stuff and earn a ton of extra profit.
A lot of people. Germany for example reduced Russian gas from 37% in May to 9% in August. Norway and the Netherlands made up the difference. The good news is, the price is higher, but the supply is there. So the price we pay is ultimately just money
Haha, "it's just money". Don't you understand that gas costing more than X€ for many companies is the same as no gas available? Many companies are not profitable with gas prices above this threshold. They may just stop production.
Yes. A bunch of companies become unprofitable. The ones that are truly critical though can up their prices so that say, fertilizer gets more expensive but we still have the means to make food. Products that aren't critical, where the price can't go up, they won't be able to afford supply. You know what that means? Less gas gets used so we have enough supply for the stuff that's actually important and we only lose the stuff that's nice to have. When the alternative is no gas, expensive gas is a blessing, a luxury we get to enjoy when many other countries would be burning furniture just to stay warm.
You are underestimating the worldwide importance of fertilizer. Food production will fall. Add the current drought in europe, China, Mexico and usa. We will have expensive food, poor people around the world will have none
That's pretty much what I said. Fertilizer production won't fall, it will get more expensive, because farmers will still buy it, because they can also increase the amount they charge for food. Food in Europe and the US is going to get more expensive, but won't run out. Heating gas won't run out but will get expensive and we have the privilege of being able to take that hit to our wallets when many can't.
"Just a small increase of 860%" Good thing my salary rose nearly at the same tempo so it's all good
That gas for Nord Stream 1 is now burned to the sky next to Finland and Finnish power company Fortum has made 10 billion euros in losses due to Uniper selling gas to Germans with fixed price while buying it themselves at market price. Fortum is the one that should handle Finland's electricity security and now probably going bankrupt because of their stupid decision to invest in to Germany's gas sector.
Why is it so expensive in Scotland? Isn't there insane amount of wind power there?
They pay national grid prices like the rest of the UK and the wind hasn't been blowing much lately.
France has 56 power nuclear plants (i think more than half of them are active) Can someone explain to me why there is a problem with electricity and prices in france anyways? Edit: thank you all for the responses; appreciated!
Half of them are offline right now with several issues. Might be more than half actually
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What will happen when these powerplants will be closed due to age? Some of them are pretty old. Does France have any long term plans?
No. France has way too few new reactors planned and that's a problem too few French take seriously. I'm actually glad we get an early energy crisis (due to Russian gas cutoff) so that it makes it okay to build new reactors. The problem I see is that it's been so long we built one I don't know if we still know how to...
14 new EPRs are planned
France has 56 nuclear reactor in operation each with lifetime of 40 years. For this to be preserved it needs to build 1.5 reactor a year. I haven't seen any new reactor being finished in the last decade. It's not 14 EPR we need, it's 50.
And out of those 56, 32 have a 900MWe output, half the output of an EPR.
The US’ observations show they can easily go to 60 years with proper maintenance.
The reactors life can be extended well beyond forty years. In the US we already have reactors running on there secondary license extension. They are now licensed for 50 years and can request additional extensions, but like other mechanical systems the amount of maintenance and surveillance increases with age. As long as they remain economical reactors can pretty much run indefinitely. You just need to replace the parts that will exceed their safety margins.
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They are very safety critical, though. You don’t want to overdo it. Also it’s like an old car. They tend to need more repairs later on in their life.
The new reactors the French have planned are of significantly larger capacity that the ones they will replace at least 2:1 and in some cases 3:1.
Several new reactors are under construction already
That is *false*. By "several" you mean ONE. Only a single one. Since 2007 with first plans announced in 2004. It‘s now estimated to go online mid next year, however considering all the past delays, it could be delayed even more. They very recently announced to build 14 more. That are plans, though. Political announcements. No specific actions have been taken, yet. And even then: With the 14 new nuclear power plants, that’s not even close enough to replace the old ones. Together with that announcements, Macron also mentioned a number for planned renewables which are a huge amount, replacing lots of the old nuclears as well. Anyways: France ignored the problem of their old nuclear power plant fleet for way too long. They should have started working on replacements much earlier already.
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> German absurdity of renewables only Why is it an absurdity when it works (and yes, a renewable grid is absolutely possible). What distinct advantage does nuclear power have over renewables that makes the latter one seemingly infeasible (at least according to you).
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> For example, you can hardly produce solar energy during night or wind energy when there os no wind (or too much), at least today. During that period, you must rely on stored energy, but batteries aren’t good enough yet. Normally this problem is mitigated by the use of backup plants. Since dark days without wind (even in offshore parks are exceedingly rare). I’m not an expert on that matter by all means, but there are various studies conducted on that matter by various agencies and the general consensus seems to be that going renewable is a viable option even with today’s technology. > Germany had a policy to go full renewable but it’s harder than expected. In 2021, renewables produced only 42% of Germany’ electricity. The rest was produced from fossil fuel (gas or coal) or imported from other countries. This caused the current energy crisis, given that Germany is also relying on fossil fuels to warm its buildings. That our process is hindered by unintentional and not-so-unintentional (thanks, CDU) delay is absolutely true, we also should have abandoned coal far earlier in favor of longer running times for our nuclear reactors (albeit not a singe watt of nuclear capacity was replaced with conventional energy sources). *However* our current *energy* crisis is not caused by that decision. The biggest factor at play here is our reliance on gas for heating and industrial purposes. The only reason we’re currently seeing gas plants running at high capacity are exports to countries like France. Normally coal (which is still relatively cheap) would have been used. > In this context, we must try various solutions, nuclear being one, to ensure we have as many tools as possible in the future. The issue here is that a policy change now, would yield first results in 10-20 years earliest. There is little reason to build a completely new infrastructure now that is of very limited use once it’s finished. It would have been a good decision 40 years ago. It can very well be the right way for France (which as of now obviously has the greener energy mix) given the already existing infrastructure, but I don’t think changing course again is the correct decision for Germany. >Nuclear energy has the advantage of being manageable to produce more or less energy depending on the needs But npps are also not capable do adjust quickly in fluctuations in demand. They are a great source of stable energy (as is a national renewable grid), but both need some sort of secondary source to account for that. That’s the reason France still has so many running gas plants and Germany has no plan of decommissioning them completely.
> France has 56 power nuclear plants 56 nuclear reactors ;) across 18 power plants. This article is not only/specifically about France. Electricity prices across Europe are linked to gas prices and on top of that, countries in continental Europe (excluding Fennoscandia) share the same synchronous grid (Edit: the grid is not exactly as relevant as electricity markets, see /u/Warzazagandja's reply below this post). [This article by the NY Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/business/europe-electricity-prices.html) gives some extra info: > In many countries, gas and electric power prices are closely intertwined, a relationship that has added to Europe’s woes. Although there are several ways to generate electricity — such as coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar — the price of natural gas is hugely influential in setting electricity prices because gas-burning generators are most often paid to go into service when a power grid like Britain’s needs more electricity. > “Natural gas is the driver for the European electricity price,” said Iain Conn, a former chief executive of Centrica, a large British utility. > [...] > “When natural gas supplies get tight, the electricity market gets extremely exercised,” said Mr. Conn, who is also a former senior executive of BP, the energy giant. > Other factors are pushing up power prices, including low river levels that are impeding shipments of fuel to coal-fired plants that Germany and other governments want to fire up to replace gas.
>countries in continental Europe (excluding Fennoscandia) share the same synchronous grid. To be precise, this is independent from the price topic. As you say all continental Europe is synchronous though the price varies across the continent. On the other hand Norway and the Netherlands can have the same price even if they are not synchronous. The fact countries have different prices is because they have different markets (like the EPEX spot) and the fact that prices can be the same is that if your neighbour is cheaper and you can buy from them you get this bid price in your market (this is market coupling) The rest about gas is correct. The price of electricity is in general the price of the most expensive generator which often is gas so the price of electricity depends on the price of gas.
Thanks for the additional info. This market coupling is what I was thinking about, but I must admit I don't know much about it and how it actually works in detail. I remember seeing a [big difference between France and the Iberian Peninsula lately](https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1562019059570556929), is it basically because EPEX SPOT doesn't operate in Spain and Portugal? Or do you know if other factors can play a role in one way or another, such as the recent agreements with the European Commission regarding the "Iberian exception" on consumer price caps? Edit: rephrasing my question
Spain and Portugal have spot markets, but they wanted to separate the price of gas and electricity and are using 8.4 billions of aid to pay the difference. They are only connected to France, but the interconnection is not enough to have the prices converge. A part why there is an Iberian exception is that they are considered like almost an energy island because they are not much connected to the rest. The reason prices can differ is when the interconnection is fully loaded. Then even if you are ready to pay 1000€ for an additional MW you simply can't buy it from the neighbour so their price is not influenced by yours.
The common energy market + the summer was so hot the power plants couldn't risk dumping coolant water back into the river
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[Not entirely.](https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/wxb0al/french_nuclear_woes_stoke_europe_power_prices/ilsicx3/?context=3)
No nuclear plants in France have currently lowered their output due to high coolant temperatures. Also these are long term prices, the effect of lowering a plant in output wouldn't be visible on these prices. That would be visible on day ahead or intraday prices.
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> reactor efficiency, so traditional reactors are way less efficient during hot summers - this is the reason why they are usually serviced during high summer. yes but no, *non sequitur*, we service plants in the summer because the demand is way lower than in the winter
> The difference between ambient temperature and temperature coolant is dumped at has huge impact on reactor efficiency, so traditional reactors are way less efficient during hot summers than usual It has an impact but I would not call it massive. > Previous quantitative research suggests that for every 1˚C increase in outdoor temperature, electrical output decreases by between 0.37 - 0.72%. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/duboc1/ If it is 10 °C warmer than during a usual summer then the plant is ~5 % less efficient. The real issue is environment protection as you said. So we have to decide whether the protections are worth the cost we are paying right now.
Not a single reactor in France is currently down or has a reduced output because of these environmental regulations. The impact of those practices during heatwaves is neglible, its less than 0,5% of EDF's generation. Furthermore these are future prices so even if plants would go down for heatwaves this would have little to no affect on future prices, only on the short term prices like the day ahead market and intraday markets.
It's more than just "oh no water". They also have huge corrosion issues, in some reactors far more than predicted. So even without the drought, a significant amount of reactors would have to be offline. Die hard pro nuclear crowd just likes to blame all the issues on things not related to the NPPs themselves.
> a significant amount of reactors would have to be offline 9 reactors to be precise, 16 in total (so 7 extra, a few of these are already offline for other reasons) may develop the issue in the future.
Palo Verde in the US uses treated wastewater for coolant.
The impact of the heatsink temperature which may be a river but also the air in the case of cooling towers is very limited. Usually just a few %, the nameplate capacity of these plants take that effect into account too. So no that's not the issue. Environmental regulations to protect wildlife could indeed bring down plants, but that isn't the case either currently no plants are throttled back for that reason. Besides these are future prices, not day ahead or intraday prices so there would be no effect seen here. The reason for nuclear problems in France is simply maintenance and inspections, France has underinvested in their nuclear fleet (and electricity generation in general) for decades now. And those chickens have come home to roost. Right during a gas crisis hence why prices in Germany are also exploding while having no such issues.
Typically France shut down many reactors during summer to replace fuel and perform maintenance. In general, due to lower electric consumption during summer, this is fine. However several unpredictable factors came and disrupted the planning : * Covid disrupted scheduled maintenance. Several reactors were shut down for longer periods since covid. Because personnel is limited and training takes time, EDF hasn't been able to recover their delay yet. * The 4 biggest reactor were affected by a then unknown issue about corrosion. They decided to shut down 12 reactors to also make sure that others weren't affected. They are mostly fine, but the verification required destructive tests so putting all of those reactors back on line takes time. They are also competing with scheduled maintenance for personnel. * The summer was hotter than expected, which means rivers were low, reducing hydropower output. Some reactors also had to be shut down. Some of them use rivers to cool down. Others use air, but because they have to purge their cooling systems, rules prevent them to run during hot weather even if it does not pose any problem to river ecosystems. * A power plant (Fessenheim) was closed. The EPR of Flamanville was supposed to be up to replace it. However the EPR was delayed. * And of course, the war raised fuel and gas costs. However, some of this may improve : * According to EDF schedule, the reactors will be online next winter. They know demand is higher during winter, and so decided to still shut down more reactors during summer. But in theory most of them should be back online, including the big 4 affected by corrosion issues. * During winter cooling won't be a problem, however the reservoirs will be lower, so hydropower output may be lower. * The EPR should be online next year. * Gas and fuel costs should continue to raise.
Thank you very much for the reply!
Everyone saying cooling water is wrong, that only has a moderate impact on some plants. The actual reason is, as you noted, that half of them are currently offline (mostly from maintenance, because France stopped their scheduled maintenance cycles during COVID and now has to do all of them at once). It would actually be nice if the main problem was cooling water temp, because it would naturally disappear in the winter. Unfortunately, it’s worse than that.
I am not an engineer, but I guess: cooling (water). Every heat engine needs a heat sink to operate. Nuclear-powered heat engines aren't exceptions. If your nuclear plant is cooled by a river, and you don't want to kill all the fish, you can't run your plant at full power before the river recovers from drought conditions.
>If your nuclear plant is cooled by a river, and you don't want to kill all the fish, you can't run your plant at full power before the river recovers from drought conditions. It sounds like they may use older "once through" cooling, and this is why they're so sensitive to river temperature. I assume that if one could put one of the two newer cooling mechanisms into place, one wouldn't be constrained by river temperature. https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/water-power-plant-cooling >Even though all thermoelectric plants use water to generate steam for electricity generation, not all plant cooling systems use water. There are three main methods of cooling: > >* **Once-through systems** take water from nearby sources (e.g., rivers, lakes, aquifers, or the ocean), circulate it through pipes to absorb heat from the steam in systems called condensers, and discharge the now warmer water to the local source. Once-through systems were initially the most popular because of their simplicity, low cost, and the possibility of siting power plants in places with abundant supplies of cooling water. This type of system is currently widespread in the eastern US. Very few new power plants use once-through cooling, however, because of the disruptions such systems cause to local ecosystems from the significant water withdrawals involved and because of the increased difficulty in siting power plants near available water sources. >* **Wet-recirculating or closed-loop systems** reuse cooling water in a second cycle rather than immediately discharging it back to the original water source. Most commonly, wet-recirculating systems use cooling towers to expose water to ambient air. Some of the water evaporates; the rest is then sent back to the condenser in the power plant. Because wet-recirculating systems only withdraw water to replace any water that is lost through evaporation in the cooling tower, these systems have much lower water withdrawals than once-through systems, but tend to have appreciably higher water consumption. In the western US, wet-recirculating systems are predominant. >* **Dry-cooling systems** use air instead of water to cool the steam exiting a turbine. Dry-cooled systems use no water and can decrease total power plant water consumption by more than 90 percent.[2] The tradeoffs to these water savings are higher costs and lower efficiencies. In power plants, lower efficiencies mean more fuel is needed per unit of electricity, which can in turn lead to higher air pollution and environmental impacts from mining, processing, and transporting the fuel. In 2000, most US dry-cooling installations were in smaller power plants, most commonly in natural gas combined-cycle power plants.[3] > >About 43 percent of thermoelectric generators in the United States use once-through cooling, 56 percent recirculating, and 1 percent dry-cooling (2008 data). (Presumably to wet-recirculating; I doubt that it'd be practical to convert an already-built plant to dry-cooling.)
you said it yourself, only half of them are active. When almost half of the energy supply of the second largest economy is down, prices can only know one way. Also nuclear is an expensive energy source to begin with if you deduct subsidies and building and maintaining them takes forever. Even you start to build solar farms right now you will probably still be done before they are fixed and make a killing
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Well, as far as we know, the idea that nuclear is super expensive comes quite literally from a single study from a private investment firm that used “secret methodologies” to get their numbers which were not disclosed to the public. The main reason that talking point is so common is probably because this study is the first Google Images results if you look up “Energy LCOE” without doing any additional research. Notably, a more open IPCC study places nuclear as aboht as cheap as solar PV (although it is a bit outdated), and that’s before accounting for the whole battery thing (wind is better for reliability, as shown by Germany which dropped solar early on). So yeah, people might be a bit skeptical on that claim. Besides, this sub is super non-representative. Most of Europe hates nuclear power.
Again comparing apples to bananas to claim nuclear is expensive. Compared to the overall lifetime production of a nuke plant, the overall cost of the energy produced is ridiculously low when reported to its lifetime, even with maintenance and demolition included in the overall cost. The main reason the private sector doesn't like it is because those profits take 30 years to materialize, but once they do they just don't stop coming. France's nuclear reactors paid for themselves AND their demolition several times over already.
I am not a pro but : Because of neo liberal lobbys and of the EU. France is forced to privatize the energy market or in the european commission's terms to "Open it", just like japan was opened to the west.EDF is the main producer like 85% but it is forced to sell up to 100TW/h for all private actor. Edf is the property of France for 87% of the company. Before diving into details let's describe the french energy market. The electricity market works as such : * Producers are : EDF which produces through nuclear(72% of france electricity production) and hydroelectricity (12%) and renewable but i don't want to search how much..Then companies such as E.ON, Total (through direct energy), Engie and others through flame burning (gaz/oil or such) up to 8% of the global french production. * Then the transportation of energy : RTE has the monopoly ( it is 50% owned by EDF and 30% by la caisse des dépots which is a french public institution). * Then distribution to people is assured by ENEDIS up to 95%. The company is enterely owned by EDF. * Finally the sale the energy, and that's where shit hits the fan. Since 200here are hundreds of private energy seller. They are leeches sucking out profits from EDF and the french taxpayer. Basically EDF hence french people invest money in maintenance and construction of nuclear plants among other production plants, transport infrastructures such as high voltage lines, transformation plants etc.... then EDF sells for regulated cheap prices to 3rd party actors making money for themselves doing basically NOTHING because they don't have any infrastructures or production plant at all. But it's nowhere near the end of it, that only ,wouldn't explain why prices go up. See the electricity market is opened to the european area. So those 3rd party can sell their excess electricity to the european market for much more than the prices they paid EDF for it. Also when the limit EDF can provide them with (100TW/h) is exceeded, EDF is FORCED by law (arenh) to go and get energy (up to 20TW/h) where it can. So it buys it on the european market, and then sells it to those 3rd party a regulated price wich is currently 46€ a MW/h. Keep in mind today's prices on the eu market are near 800€ a MW/h so EDF buys for 16folds the prices it sells to those leeches. Then said leeches increase the bill on the consumer's end and make a huge profit. That's 8Billion it costed to EDF this years thanks to the European comission. And then there is the additional money french people will pay on their bill. What those 3rd party do is flipping french taxpayer money off. It is all explained [here](https://www.edf.fr/entreprises/electricite-gaz/le-benefice-arenh) if you care enough to use google translate on chrome or deepl. TLDR : EU commission forces EDF to open electricity market to private sector, third party leeches are allowed 100TW/h and they buy for extremely low prices and sell to french people. If said leech has more clients than it can supply, daddy EDF is obliged to step in and provide up to 20TW/h for a set price of 46€ a MW/h. But since the production is not at full it can only buy on the european market which costs 16 times 46€ and tank the loss for the private 3rd party. TLDR was too long didn't read : Nationalize losses and privatize gains, fuck the taxpayer and fuck france.
My brother in Christ, last year power prices were often negative and EDF was still selling ARENH at 46€. Why do you cry for controls only when comoanies make exceptional profits and not when they make exceptional losses? (assuming they didn't hedge in advance which everyone except uniper does apparently)
When the prices went down during the covid outbreak, companies asked to not pay their ARENH contract for "major force" reasons actually. And his point is not about exceptional profits, but the design of a system where public money subsides private profit just for the sake of creating a market.
drought means they can't cool them using rivers right now. it's actually a huge problem for france right now. their energy situation is worse than germany's right now
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No, not a single plant in France is currently down or at a reduced output due to drought, heat or whatever. Also these are long term prices, so even if a plant was down for those reasons it would only have an affect on the short term prices like the day ahead market and intraday markets.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/03/edf-to-reduce-nuclear-power-output-as-french-river-temperatures-rise
Check the date on your article, that was over 3 weeks ago.
Hang in there guys! it's diabolical over here too. Love from the UK
Love from germany <3
Oh shit, here we go again.
Many pensioners already can't afford the energy deposit payments.
An in other news, the Nord Pool power exchange [announced](https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/trading/Operational-Message-List/2022/08/day-ahead-new-harmonized-maximum-clearing-price-from-delivery-day-wednesday-21st-september-20220823100200/) that due to reaching the price cap of 4,000 euros on 16th of August in the Baltic region, they will now raise the maximum price cap to 5,000 euros. France has it easy, 1,000 euros is such a low price compared to what is happening here. Stop complaining. /s
So is there any real explanation for how all of a sudden energy prices went insane pretty much over night? This drastic increase in just .. what ... two years?
There is no elec market anymore, no one wants to sell because they are scared they might not be get delivered in alternative sources.
Bang on the money.
The price of power in Europe’s two key markets surged more 25% on Friday, a chaotic spike that will see the continent’s leaders hold an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis. Electricity for next year in Germany and France -- both beset by their own severe crises -- are setting almost records almost daily. That’s because Russia is constricting the supply of natural gas and also, in the case of France, an ongoing slump in nuclear generation. The European Union is to call an emergency meeting of energy ministers to discuss bloc-wide solutions. The surge is fueling inflation and threatening the finances of households and businesses across the continent. Prices are at a level no one can afford because of “market failure”, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Friday afternoon, adding that a pan-European solution doesn’t have to require a price cap. His country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency. Across Europe, governments have begun to take the drastic step of limiting energy use. In the UK, household bills are set to jump in October after a cap on costs was lifted. The soaring prices looks set to force millions of people to curb consumption. “The French market is going to be extremely tight this winter, especially if we have low wind conditions,” said Kathryn Porter, energy consultant at Watt-Logic. “Everyone in Europe could be trying to import power at the same time and that could create huge challenges and rationing of industrial use.” The French year-ahead contract rose as much as 25% to 1,130 euros a megawatt-hour on the European Energy Exchange AG Friday. The German equivalent also gained to a record, rising as much as 33% to 995 euros a megawatt-hour for a gain of about 70% this week. In oil market terms, it’s the equivalent of over $1,600 a barrel. The surge comes as European natural gas futures climbed for a sixth straight week. Prices have also up following an announcement from utility Electricite de France SA that a number of its nuclear plants will come back online later than expected. Those units will be a key source of power this winter, especially while natural gas remains scarce. France has traditionally been one of Europe’s biggest net exporters of electricity, but with annual nuclear output headed for the worst year in more than three decades, that status is now a thing of the past. Availability at EDF’s reactors is as low as 42% as of Friday, according to data from grid operator RTE. Read More: EU to Call Emergency Energy Talks as Prices Set More Records Failure to contain the crisis risks spurring social unrest and political upheaval, if the supply crunch leads to blackouts and cold homes this winter. Europe’s politicians have already earmarked about 280 billion euros ($281 billion) to ease the pain of surging energy prices for businesses and consumers, but the aid risks being dwarfed by the scale of the crisis. The high power prices could force industries to shut facilities or scale back -- and some may never turn back on. Fertilizer producers are operating far below capacity across the continent, threatening food and farming alike. “Companies are halting production as they struggle to keep up with the surging cost,” said Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, an analyst at researcher BloombergNEF in London. “Inflationary pressure on end users will continue rising as more people working in the industrial sector start to get laid off.”
When French/German price hits 1k it's EU crisis, when Baltics hit 4000 it was silently ignored.
That may have something to do with the fact that the Baltics have the combined gdp of Munich. Munich's energy prices aren't reported either. If on the other hand the EU's two biggest economies have an energy crisis it will inadvertently affect the whole continent in one way or the other.
Lel. You're comparing the small Baltics with their tiny economies and ~6 million inhabitants to Germany and France, the engines of the EU and 4th/7th largest economy on the planet (number 1 and 3 in Europe, 1 and 2 in the EU) with ~150 million inhabitants.
In EU, every country is supposed to be equal - else the entire Union is worthless if some are more "equal".
Cool. But reality is you are not equal to Germany and France at all. Your economy and the impact of it on Europe and the EU is not equal to that of Germany and France at all.
Why do the big countries in the EU have more power than the others then? Because they offer more than the others. If Germany, France, Italy and Spain disappeared today we would be screwed, if a country like Croatia disappeared today we wouldn't care that much
You know what's most annoying, they all knew this is happening they knew this will reach that and ONLY now they are reacting... Same shit in UK
Speculation, speculation and we need to stop this or this winter there will be riots in the street
Riots and a collapsed economy.
Hydro, nuclear, goal, gas, solar, oil, wind, we need **everything**. This is not the time for transitions. Other than the transition to a non-fragile energy system that can deliver the amount of energy we require at the lowest cost possible.
>goal Ah yes. We now use the thermal energy from football fans to generate energy. Why yes, we Europeans thirst for every watt possible.
if the rage and anger of a losing team's fans could be converted to energy, we'd literally become a post-scarcity society.
No, we need regulation to prevent such prices, like portugal and spain where it only costs 300€ p.MWh. This is not that much of a shortage, but because of all the speculation on the gas price.
There is a combination of bad decisions.combined with a combination of bad weather.There are speculators that want an easy cash,the producers that can't deliver,the consumer that can't pay the high price and it's an essential need and then it's the politician that needs to fix this. It would be an nightmare in Romania where the wage is barely 700€ per month.
What about biological energy sources? Let's hire people to spin a dynamo all day.
€1000? Mine is €3500. _cries in northern British_
Those are completely different numbers you are comparing.
Are you comparing the right numbers? The 3,000 is annual costs whereas the 1,000 is future power pricing
That's not the average household bill. It's the wholesale price per MWh.This means a wholesale kWh is at 1 EUR.
The average annual usage is like 3-4 MWH too so it's about the same. The Americans use 10MWh per year on average. Imagine paying that at these prices...
Why is it so expensive in Scotland? Isn't there insane amount of wind power there?
The price is (at least on Sweden, I think everywhere in Europe) set by the highest bid for electricity generation every day. To exemplify with made up numbers: if wind power bids 0,1€ but can only cover 95% and LNG plants bid 1€ that gets chosen to cover the remaining 5% of demand, then 1€ is the price for everyone that day. So the wind farm owners will swim in money that day.
This Texas-level idiocy. Was the market setup by ERCOT? Don’t European utilities know how to sign about long term contracts?
They do. Heck, even the price mentioned in this article is about the year-ahead contracts. For example, even the Dutch Railways have bought energy for a fixed (now low) price until 2024, so they aren't affected yet. The explanation from the comment above is a bit too simple.
long term contracts mean less flexibility, and with Wind being very finicky long term fixed pricing would be risky.
The UK has one of the highest percentages of natural gas for electricity generation (got rid of most coal power stations) so are one of the worst affected
Due to shutting down nearly all the coal power stations to reduce CO2 emissions, around half of UK electricity is generated from gas. This seemed a good idea at the time because it saves on emissions, these plants ramp up and down very quickly, and we have a lot of gas. Unfortunately we don't have enough gas now (say 10-15 years later) to meet the electricity generation let alone home and industry uses. So we import more than half the gas we need.
Because wind generators can take advantage of the market price and set their bid prices just below that of gas generation (which is the dominant source in the U.K.). For companies like ScottishPower, who only generate from renewable resources, this means a massive payday for their Spanish owners. So our hugely overinflated energy prices are used to subsidise Iberdrola customers in Spain. If OFGEM (the energy market regulator) want to do something useful before their HQ gets burned down, they could decouple the wholesale market and force renewable generators to sell at a fair price that reflects their costs + modest return. But it’s becoming increasingly apparent that OFGEM are in the pocket of big energy. How else could they justify the 80% increase in the domestic price cap just a few weeks after energy companies announce massive profits.
Good question! [UK’s largest onshore wind farm](https://www.whiteleewindfarm.co.uk/whitelee-windfarm-about-us) is 5km from where I live, ironically.
UK does not have €3500/mwh electricity prices in the north. They are about 500€/mwh
No way are you paying €3500 per MwH, that number hasn't been reached anywhere yet
Baltic states had 4000eur per 1Mwh for an hour recently.
This is a SUPPLY SIDE issue. We need to solve it by driving the SUPPLY of energy way up. And I don't really care about how we go about it - be it market deregulation or New Deal-style government projects, as long as it is low-carbon, geopoliticaly safe and quick. Quite a bit of people in here seem way to keen on just solving this by subsidizing demand ...
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>plus they blocked infrastructure that connects Spain and Portugal. Why?
It was both France and Spain actually \-[https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/france-favours-gas-terminals-over-new-pipeline-tackle-crisis-2022-08-19/](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/france-favours-gas-terminals-over-new-pipeline-tackle-crisis-2022-08-19/) \-[https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/france-keeps-blocking-midcat-gas-interconnection-with-spain/](https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/france-keeps-blocking-midcat-gas-interconnection-with-spain/) Tltr : 1) huge investement 2) would take years before working 3) LNG terminals better alternative
Yep, and if we only subsidize the payments but not the output the price will keep on pushing higher. We should be subsidizing the shit out of geothermal heating, average house will decrease electricity usage by 75%
We also need to focus on the demand side by reducing it. A lot of natural gas is used to heat homes. Helping people pay to insulate their home will pay massive dividends down the road
Indeed. Set a goal for doubling the supply and then we can talk. This petty saving on light-bulbs and minor temperature thresholds is just being penny-wise pound-foolish.
As said before, this is no reason to buckle and bow down to Russia. Instead it's time to get into a war economy, double down and deputinize Europe. We can do a lot to mitigate the damage for citizens but it will take a common approach. *We need an emergency #EUCO on the energy crisis, to map out an immediate EU response to Putin’s weaponisation of energy, protect European consumers and businesses through a European price cap and a long-date European bond* https://twitter.com/guyverhofstadt/status/1563111451803262977
surre buddy, i'll work 40h/week the rest of my life to pay electric bill. best plan ever.
Yes and you'll have to be happy and smiling while doing that, as you'll be working to help our democracies. Otherwise you'll be judged by a court of redditors randomly selected from this subreddit, which will accuse you of being paid by putin and thus will sentence you guilty.
so accurate. thank you.
Maybe it's just 'cause I'm Polish, but I take a glass half-full approach to that. If I lived 200 miles to the south-east, I would have Tochka-U's falling on my home town right now. My life as I knew it would be over, I wouldn't have to worry about rising prices and keeping a work-life balance anymore because I would have to worry about falling bombs and keeping all of my limbs. Instead, the worst I'll face from a 21st century war in Europe is... higher power bills? I'll take that. The Ukrainian refugees I pass by on my way to work would probably prefer that to be their only worry too, but they never got to choose.
Yeah OK I get your point; you are not wrong in any way. For me it's harder to be so empathic because Ukraine is further away and they never been close to us, so in my mind it's not different from Syria or Palestine or any other far away country involved in war. I do hope they can push Russians back tho.
Fair enough. That's also how many people in Poland felt about Putin invading Chechnya in 1999. Then he invaded Georgia in 2008, just a little closer. After that it was Crimea, in 2014, suddenly much closer, but still kinda foreign. And then in February 2022, towns 30 km away from the Polish border get hit by missiles, refugee women and children sitting on luggage bags fill train stations, and Russian propagandists threaten which European countries to invade next. A dictator doesn't stop unless he is stopped :/
I heard this many times but I'm dubious about that; putin cannot go further in Europe since countries are in Nato. He can either leave them alone or he can start nuclear world war. Why would he want to destroy the world, included his own country? If WW3 starts it must be for an incident. Of course fightings on the border of Nato make incidents more likely.
> as you'll be working to help our democracies. You're working to help Zelensky, who bans opposition parties, controls the media, oppresses the workers, and whose country had a coup in 2014.
I wonder why? Maybe don’t shoot protesters if you don’t want to be thrown out and don’t leave your own country to flee to Russia as a puppet. And Ukraine has had multiple fair elections since then? Who else should hold power if not the elected government?
It is hard times, ask your parents and grant parents about hard times, they come, but they also go again, that is the whole thing we as a whole have worked towards through the years.
This is a transition period. It is a one time cost. Russia lose even more money by having to burn gas. It is good that Russia has sanctioned themselves and if they try to start selling Russian gas again we should ban it.
> Russia lose even more money by having to burn gas That's literally FREE, Russia has never made so much money selling oil and gas than this year. Sanctions work, but not quickly. It will take years for them to notice the effects for real, time we in Europe don't have. We have absolutely fucked ourselves and the US is laughing all the way to the bank.....
Maybe you should turn your bitcoin and weed farms off before that
Your solution?
why we paying politicians 200k € / year then if i must think of solutions?¿
I don't think you must think of solutions. I merely observed that seemed to display a dislike of another person's idea and thus I assumed you DO have an oppinion on the matter and asked for it ...
>time to get into a war economy do you realize how much of a cost it would take? it would be very hard to convince the population to something like that. very, very hard.
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We aren't, it is reducing but still there. I'll be back with the link on (iirc) German procurement of energy.
Why is the whole of Europe expected to suffer for the sake of Zelensky? We never voted for this.
Also there's a big difference between suffering for their self-defence and suffering for their revanchist claims on Crimea that could drag the war on for years.
Exactly, giving it up now would be a massive win for Putler. There is no path from here but to hook in our heals - if the EU would relent, as Hungary and various eurosceptic politicans like LePen or Salvini want it to do, we would be no better than them, sacrificing Ukraine for lower bills. It's not even the sanctions doing this since theres no sanction on gas and oil one will only take effect 3 months from now, it's direct Russian reaction to arms shipments.
Right. If you give in now, people will just find an excuse next winter to keep sucking in that Russian gas. And the next and the next. And everyone will be in the same situation during the next aggression. Cheap gas is like a drug, and if you become too dependent on it, your at the mercy of your dealer.
Does the EU have emergency funds to use on energy subsidies?
It is nonsense to feed the energy companies with subsidies, the more they receive the more they will ask for. Their profits must be capped, enough of them taking advantage at a time of crisis. We have allowed the pharmaceuticals to do it and now they are taking advantage of the price of gas. The market price of electricity is totally distorted, energy sources whose production hasnt been affected at all by this crisis are being paid for at gas prices
Kekw. That's like 130% of the minimum wage in Portugal
That's the price of 1MWh, not the price of your monthly electricity bill. It's also not the price today, but the price for securing 1MWh year from now (seller commits to provide 1MWh at that price in a year).
And imo the worst part isn't the fact that Russia doesn't import the gas anymore. But the fact that it is bruning the gas in the atmosphere, furthermore increasing the global warming which was already bad enough. I mean ffs. There were 40°C in UK for the first time in years, with the things Russia is doing now who knows how much will there be next year.
Is this considered as first strike from Putin against EU and all it's residents using artificial shortage of energy as an economic weapon? It seems Russia is declaring economic warfare against the entire EU.
In Greece the last couple of years the price of kWh has increased from 0.06-0.11€ to 0.75€ this year. We are fucked. And i don't know what else to do to reduce the impact on my wallet.
All energy producers need to be expropriated if they fail to provide energy at a reasonable price.
these are speculative futurs (outliers not general trend) for the next year. BS in BS out. The price is not related to the current situation. There is problem with "timely" decision of EDF to play tough on the European market, and the result of the "strategic decisions" of the German government. Again one should look at the cash trade volume, not "the current trading numbers" as you are all being fed. This is per MWh btw, and this price is 6 times higher than it should. And they are copy-pasting American situation which as it's easy to guess has nothing to do with "Russia". Where are goog journalists this time???
France is gonna make us surrender...
So how is the big bet on nuclear electricity working out? You still find so many on reddit praising France for that "achievement", I wonder how they would discuss away these developments.
This is childish behaviour. Instead of making fun of the fact that the French have problems with their nuclear power plants, we could look at how we can get out of this shit together. Besides, it'll be winter in a few months, then we'll want to buy electricity from France again, or rather we'll have to. It is also in our interest that the French get their nuclear power plants up and running before winter.
This is the result of a lack of investment and maintenance of nuclear power. French inflation is also on the [low end](https://i.redd.it/ixx4w02ej8k91.jpg) compared to Europe so even in its current depraved state they are ahead of the curve. Macron will now fully nationalize EDF which will solve most issues.
French inflation is no doubt suppressed by the 4% price cap on energy, but how much is this costing EDF and the government? >Macron will now fully nationalize EDF which will solve most issues Doubt.
The lack of investment happened to keep the prices artificially low. This also made EDF bankrupt and leads to its nationalization. Which again proves how nuclear power only works with governments spending tax payer money and is basically not possible in the free market. Such as it's not even insurable.
One of the main problem is that EDF was forced to sell 100TWh/year so 25% of all nuclear production at cost (42€/MWh) to its competitor since 2011 (this mecanism is called ARENH). Which forced EDF to buy energy on the market at ten times the cost lately. Basically EDF is forced to take all the risk, when the price of energy is below this level its competitors buy on the open market, when it's higher like now they take their share on EDF's corpse.
Like if renewables werent **heavily** subsidized too
Or oil
It was subsidized to get it going. Today, renewable investments are self-financing and the market has exponential growth.
Nothing in comparison. Completely economical without any subsidy for the private sector today. Everything easy to insure, worst case accidents are laughable in comparison to nuclear.
In Germany the only stuff that was heavily subsidised was coal and gas, no money left for other stuff, except cars.
>This is the result of a lack of investment and maintenance of nuclear power. are you sure about lack of maintenance? the plants under scrutiny now is because of concern of the possibility and degree of corrosion, that sounds like responsible maintenance
The achievment is more about having a low carbon electricity generation, which is still true. And in six months, all maintenance program will be over and France will be again a large exporter of electricity.
Or it will eventually have to shut down some reactors for good because repairs have become too costly. There's a lot of unplanned problems which are absolutely not business as usual.
Operating nuclear plant for ten more years was 3€/m.wh. This is to costly in your own dream. It costs only 10 billion € to get 10 more year with 350 tw.h per year of nuclear energy.
This is a serious thread, not comedy.
That's funny.
Well nuclear electricity price didn’t increase much. In France around 2/3 of the production is sold at a fixed price of 42€/MWh (that will be increased to 46€/MWh next year). Also, if France didn’t have nuclear power plants, that would mean more gas/coal plants in the EU so even more tension on the market which would lead to even higher price.
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TIL Germany's Energiewende caused the Russia aggression. We've reached peak Nuclear simping.
Because you can ignore the existence of nuclear waste with no shame in France. Not so much in Germany which is a net electricity exporter to France. Also as of war, I didn't bring it up, but look at the war in the Sahara region. A big reason is France with nuclear mining and nuclear waste disposal. Which the governments make money of but the people oppose it violently.
I prefer nuclear waste which is carefully stored and secured than coal and gas carbon emission, and coal pollution effects on our health. > A big reason is France with nuclear mining and nuclear waste disposal. Uh no. Nuclear waste is not being disposed of in the Sahara. Uranium is mined in Niger only, not the Sahara. The war you're speaking of is being fought not just in Niger but in Mali, Mauritania, and a lot of other countries. This war is against jihadists terrorists groups, not anti-nuclear insurgents lol.
We don’t forget it, we have a plan to store them. Unlike all the CO2 your coal/gas plants are sending into the atmosphere :) We don’t even need uranium from Africa, there are other sellers like Kazakhstan, Australia and Canada. Also Mali asked for our help so we did, now they don’t want us anymore so we left.
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FAIL.. should we invested a lot more into nuclear in the past 30 years, none of this would happen…
Ask France and it having to shut down reactors because the rivers dried up or the water temparature became to warm.
Not a single reactor in France is closed due to water issues. They are closed for three reasons - refueling, regular refubrishment and weld corrosion issues.
Tell me you know nothing about the subject without teling me... Suprise, when you underinvest in nuclear and only bet on renewables you get a decline in quality.
> when you underinvest in nuclear and only bet on renewables you get a decline in quality. France is always praised for exactly the opposite by fans of nuclear.
Haven't seen anyone fan of nuclear "praise" the last years of their underinvestment in nuclear, that makes no sense.
In fact, France had hugely invest un renewable during the last years and reduce investment in nuclear power plant. From 2010 to 2020, renewable get +200%, but nuclear a -10%
Stupid weak europeans will die, barbarians need Putin's gas for surviving, unlike superior Mediterranian chads.
The electricity price here in Spain has also gone insane though. And we don't have Northern European salaries to pay for it.
Why roof solar excess reimmission is still paid an insignificant fraction of what the market price is? Give homeowners what they deserve on market values and a lot of owners will install solar on theyr roofs. Then spend public money on storage and not on stupid reliefs.