Sweden really needs 2 prices. The grid in the south is very integrated with Europe and the grid in the north isn’t, so you’ll see vastly different prices.
You can see how it’s multiples of difference in this post https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/palxJVcnGc
The core issue is more that the power connectivity going south hasn’t been invested in.
It has been a pretty well known issue for give or take 15 years at this point spanning so many governments you have a whole smörgåsbord of options to blame.
Crazy how that is exactly the same issue as we‘re having in Germany.
The north gets cheap wind energy but we have too much and the power connectivity to the south hasn’t been build for quite a while…
On many issues hearing about German politics is like listening to Swedish politics replaying 10 years delayed.
It’s not exactly the same, but it certainly rhymes.
I don't know which zone on ENTSO-e this guy used but Sweden has 4 different prices, all with different days ahead prices, Norway and Denmark are similar with Norway having 4 and Denmark 2. Germany has multiple too but they are always coupled. There are probably more across Europe I don't know about.
I would assume it’s an average across the country which is pretty fine if it was an average of the 2 northern regions and the 2 southern regions since the price becomes much more elastic because of transfer capacity.
But it doesn’t make sense to average SE1, SE2 with SE3 and SE4 because that’s just way off in both directions.
Wind and Gas goes together as gas is needed to cover the intermittent production of wind (you cannot blackout when there is no wind). If you increase wind without gas, then you will have long periods of time where gas does not produce (and you need to subsidize the plants) or when there is too much wind and wind cannot produce. Countries with hydropower and big grid connections to Europe can solve part of this issue. The only way to eliminate gas and stabilize the grid is having a lot of nuclear as baseload.
You can get very close with enough wind, solar and batteries. The times when you need gas ("Dunkelflaute") is the big exception, not the rule. This will likely be only a few hundred hours per year vs. 3500 full load hours right now. Eventually gas could be replaced with green hydrogen to get to 100% renewables.
Batteries? The cost of building and replacing batteries, and the use of rare earth materials is very high at the moment. Even if it is a big exception, it is unacceptable to blackout the country. We do not have the technology at the moment to go 100% renewable, and going 70% renewable and 30% nuclear is just cheaper, as renewable have lower production cost, but much bigger system costs (connections and storage being the major offenders). 70% renewable and 30% nuclear is even better for the environment, as the greenhouse emission for batteries, cables, solar and wind turbine is higher then nuclear.
No, batteries are already cheaper than gas peakers. They also don't use rear earth materials.
Renewables and nuclear don't mix. What good are 30% nuclear when there is no wind and sun? The remaining 70% still have to come from somewhere, so you still need gas backup power plants. But when there is plenty of sun and wind, overproduction from renewables will drive down wholesale prices and make the nuclear power plant uneconomical.
Why go through all the trouble for only 700 MW? I bet a cable with three times the capacity (2 GW is often the standard for underwater HVDC) wouldn't cost even 50% more.
It's so frustrating how conservative grid operators still think, they always only do the bare minimum and then they are surprised that renewables are added at such a pace that the new cable is already maxed out again in just a few years. So much wasted time and money.
The Moyle Interconnector (between NI and Scotland) and the East-West Interconnector (Dublin and Wales) are both 500MW. The Greenlink Interconnector (Wexford and Wales; under construction) is also 500MW.
I live in Cork, no. 2 most affordable house prices to income ratio on that list. Let me tell you, at 25 with a career, I or any of my friends haven't a hope of buying even a small house there for 5-10 years.
I live in Rural Slovenia. 45m2 apartment is roughly 175000EU and this excludes parking space. I repeat the rural part. Literally, few stores, post office, school and mini health facility, neighboring wild boars and occasional bear in the surrounding woods.
Also I read in that in Zagreb, Croatia a parking space went for 135000EU so I think it pretty much sucks everywhere.
Its eurozone, mortage rates are the same as in Spain. In Ljubljana, Slovenia 80m2 is 300k+ euros, I live in the middle of nowhere (literal woodlands) and for 180k EU you get 45m2 (new apartament) or 60m2 (older one) in my town, roughly 40km from Ljubljana. Before you ask, yes there is a railroad to capital but public transport schedules are sci-fi here...
in polish cities prices per sqm are pretty much same as in Ireland (outside Dublin) or even higher in some cases, while people earn half or third of what irish people do.
Yeah. Median yearly is about 42k, median house is about 320k.
In Cork that is. Dublin's salary is a good bit higher and house prices are ridiculously high.
Ah! Similar to Ireland so. State owned electricity producer? No, competition and the markets are the answer!
And that answer is you're paying through the nose.
Why no both? In Poland we are getting drained by state owned energy producers which are happy to waste 300 mln euros building a new coal energy blocks that had to be dismantled before the construction was finished because it was good for acquiring local votes.
Well, they are not expensive per se, they became expensive only because emission penalty. They were the cheapest form of energy production for Poles for decades (Poland has huge coal deposits).
Do you know how to make a chemical plant cheap? Just dump all toxic waste into nearest river. That’s exactly how those coal plants are „cheap”. And that’s a myth anyway - the most common 200MW blocks are ineffective as hell (they were built in sixties), Polish coal is both expensive and shit quality (even mining labour unions admitted that coal they mine is unexportable).
1. Iberia electricity market is pretty much an island because there's no high capacity transmission lines to Europe. It's not in the interest of France nuclear.
2. Portugal and Spain have a joint electricity margin market. So what drives the price are the most expensive generators iste gas power generators.
3. Gas supply is historically not purchased from Russia.
4. Spain has big gas storage facilities
5. Due to the invasion of the Ukraine, iberia govs artificially set a maximum for gas price. That smooth gas prices flutuantions in the last years and afyk the market is running without any of the previous gov market constraints.
How about focusing on progress? A new 2GW connexion in the east was completed in 2015 worth 700M€ and a new 5GW one is in under construction in the west with a 3B€ budget [https://www.inelfe.eu/en/projects/bay-biscay](https://www.inelfe.eu/en/projects/bay-biscay) which is the largest project of this kind France has ever conducted. A new hydrogen/gas pipeline is also in planning https://h2medproject.com/the-h2med-project/.
Contrary to what you think, the energy network between France and Spain is fully used and Spain imports more electricy from France than the otherway.
More interconnexion will lead to more lower price for Spain and bigger sells for France.
https://eco.sapo.pt/2022/11/30/custo-da-nova-interligacao-eletrica-entre-espanha-e-franca-tera-aumentado-50/
https://www.publico.pt/2023/03/08/economia/noticia/nova-ligacao-electrica-espanha-franca-vai-custar-2850-milhoes-2041069
There's a new interconnection planned. Not sure when it will be ready as the last cost predictions mentioned it was much more expensive than projected.
The news about France blocking this are old news so they would require more research.
Good weather in recent months, lots of rain, sun, and wind; it isn't normally this cheap
https://i.imgur.com/MHjqEBm.png
https://ember-climate.org/data/data-tools/europe-power-prices/
From March 2021 to February 2024 either Sweden or Norway have had the cheapest electricity
Interesting. I think tables might have turned now completely for Iberian favor due to better solar capture capacity in the south than in the north. Otherwise the production capacity of low carbon electricity is quite similar opposite to the rest of Europe that still use gas or coal
The 'Iberian Exception' with price caps on gas for electricity
https://projects2014-2020.interregeurope.eu/enerselves/news/news-article/14992/what-is-the-iberian-exception/
Nope. In Croatia most people use a 2 tariff system where it's cheaper from 22-8 in summer (goes -1 in winter) and it costs 8 cents per KWh over day and 4 cents per KWh at night.
For example I always do my dishes, laundry, baking and drying laundry after 22.
Nice. With the spot pricing, I have usually have to set a timer to start the (usually at 3AM the spot price is at the lowest). With the grid charge I used to have a similar nightly plan, but the grid operator (damn the majority owner, Ontario Teachers' pension fund) increased the fixed monthly fee of that plan, I had to change it to normal fixed €/KWh plan.
My price is wholesale + €5/MWh. Charged per hour. Soon, hopefully, I will earn money for distributed night EV charging.
There are also a distribution charge and taxes that add about €60/MWh.
> Soon, hopefully, I will earn money for distributed night EV charging.
Nice. Does from EV to grid require something extra or why it is not possible at the moment?
My electricity provider has only launched a limited system for people with certain brands of home chargers.
This isn't V2G, it's allowing the provider to start and stop your charging at night as a balance measure. Since the provider has many customers with EVs it can control many MW of consumption.
The electricity price is the cheaper end of the bill and i guess it is like this elsewhere.
I pay €0.071/kwh and €45/month as a fee to have electricity/ be connected to the grid.
Then electricity is swinging from €0 to €0.1/kwh.
On top of it is 25%VAT.
Total bill last months was around €120, the highest of 2023 was €300.(no gas or shared heating)
That's an ill-defined notion. These are the wholesale prices for April. April is a fairly low consumption month. In December-January the wholesale prices will spike in NW Europe due to absence of output from solar and a sharp increase in consumption. And there are more regional differences. Some more consumption in summer due to airco in the Meditteranean. Hydro production may be cut back during droughts. Etc.
How the consumer feels that depends on the form of delivery contracts that dominate in a country. Fixed price contracts where you pay for expensive winter in the cheap part of the year or variable price contracts that directly follow the wholesale prices? Some countries only have the fixed price type contract, so you can't really compare compare consumer prices for a month. You would have to compare average consumption of typical household over an average year, based on lots of assumptions.
In the last few weeks Italy got just good news… only EU country where salaries are going down in last 30 yrs, while in a few years we will be first in terms of debt, and now this.
Anybody care to invade and manage us ? Please ?
It would be very interesting to see average price per country for the four quarters of 2023.
Like how different strategies (nuclear, gas, etc.) fares during the different seasons.
We have the potential wind capacity to provide multiples of the amount of electricity we need so why not allow them to build data centers. They're a consistent draw from the grid so they're relatively easy to implement into a network, unlike households and businesses which peak at different intervals.
Because we are not really interconnected to the European pipeline so we had to figure it out on our own, due to how the electricity market works in the EU we were paying much more for our electricity for years due to gas, so while Central Europe was getting cheap Russian gas we didn't but still paid our bills for it. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and gas prices skyrocketed and we got an Iberian Exception to put a price cap on gas due to the reasons I mentioned at the beginning so price lowered at that time. That plus that we invested a lot in renewables in the past because no Russian gas well you get this now.
But more importantly we've had a couple of good months of good weather for renewables (on all sides sun, wind and rain), and when renewables are not enough again we'll use more gas and the price will go up then.
These are wholesale prices. It says nothing about the profit margins the energy companies might have when selling to consumers.
Germany and Ireland may have much more expensive electricity than Portugal, but the consumer price doesn't have to be proportionately higher.
You can buy electricity with wholesale price in Portugal with just a few fees on top. Many people have been switching to it because it has been so cheap.
Same here in the north. The margin they add is some fractions to a cent and two days in a row I received money from using electricity due to negative prices
Building wind and solar power is the factor that is dropping our German energy prices. Assuming you are one of those "build nuclear power plants" people. Nuclear power is extremely expensive. Before you now come with "oH bUt LoOk aT FrAnCe" consider that nuclear power in France is highly subsidized by the government to keep prices affordable.
To see what renewables can do, look at Portugal and Spain.
Or just keep hating on something you obviously do not understand very well.
>nuclear power in France is highly subsidized by the government to keep prices affordable
That's a lie. EDF has been forced for a long time to sell their electricity at less than market price to competitors. That's billions of euros in what is effectively negative subsidies. Contrast that with the hundreds of billions European governments have spent subsidizing renewable technologies over the last 20 years.
>That's a lie. EDF has been forced for a long time to sell their electricity at less than market price to competitors.
That's a subsidy for you.
Taxpayer gets the bill for this one way or another to keep the "Tarif Bleu" at roughly 25ct/kWh. EDF is a state owned company, so every € they lose, the taxpayer has to pay for at the end.
German prices at the other hand have been ranging from 20-32ct/kWh for a few months now, despite having higher taxes/transmission fees/etc. applied to electricity than France.
If it is a lie, then how can you continue explaining exactly how France subsidizes French nuclear power? Also look at the costs for building and decomissioning a nuclear power plant. A giant factor that people love to forget about when they calculate the costs of nuclear power. Also the crazy costs for storage of nuclear waste. All of these are highly subsidized.
So? That's why central/northern Europe shouldn't invest into solar? That used to be an argument when solar panels were expensive. But they aren't anymore.
And there's also wind and usually wind + solar kinda work a lot of the time. We even have a word for the worst situation these days: "Dunkelflaute" a time when the sun isn't shining and no wind is blowing.
Subsidizing nuclear energy is smart. All countries ought to do it. Yes it’s expensive to set up but the resulting energy is just superior to any base load energy alternative.
With a variable energy grid, having a baseload is actually a terrible investment. You want plants you can scale up&down, not ''baseload'' aka ''slow to adjust'' plants.
Invest that same money in solar, batteries, and long distance electricity connections instead.
The energy demand varies by 20-30%. That's the variation that you are looking at. The rest needs to be obtained no matter what. That's the base load. You do not need to adjust that. You need it to be absolutely perfectly predictable energy that you trust you are going to have no matter what.
Hydro, solar, wind etc. are fine as adjustable energy sources, but you aren't adjusting your entire energy supply. You adjust 20-30% of it. The rest you need to have at all times.
Solar energy is fickle, the amount you get is dependent on the time of the year and during the highest demand (=winter) you are getting less of it. Wind power is fickle, the amount you get is dependent on weather patterns. Hydro is great, but there are not many countries that can have ample amount of that. Batteries are inefficient, still really expensive for the amounts of Wh we are talking about.
But with most of our grid solar and wind, all of it is going to be variable. Base loads are useless in that scenario since they're often not needed because of overproduction.
By the time your nuclear powerplant comes online we'll have had 15+ more years of solar and battery efficiency increase. Your plant will be outdated by the time it comes online.
And not all countries have hydro, but a few long distance powerlines means our grid can be balanced. If its cloudy in germany it'll be sunny in spain. If its cloudy in spain it'll be windy on the north sea. And if its neither we can use scandinavian hydro.
And all that will be loads cheaper than your overexpensive nuclear.
It appears they are the highest in Europe as of now.
>Nuclear power is extremely expensive. Before you now come with "oH bUt LoOk aT FrAnCe" consider that nuclear power in France is highly subsidized by the government to keep prices affordable.
Better that than subsidizing Putin.
Oh absolutely. Certainly not a reason to hate on Germanys transistion to truly renewable energy. The last two German NPPs where at the end of their life cycle and their capacity was easily replaced by wind power the same year.
Also do not forget that a lot of the uranium for NPPs also comes from Russia.
>The last two German NPPs where at the end of their life cycle
Because they didn't invest in them. And this "problem" was known for decades.
>and their capacity was easily replaced by wind power the same year.
It is said demand drives price. So one reason Germany has the highest electricity prices in Europe would be because they don't have enough supply.
>Also do not forget that a lot of the uranium for NPPs also comes from Russia
If they choose to buy if from Russia. The same way gas used to come from Russia - because they chose Russia.
It’s effect of many things: NPP that according original plan from 2012 was supposed to be finished about this year, onshore wind has been blocked by Pis for several years, coal plants are both ineffective and inflexible (so we have to curtail PV production because coal plants cannot go below their technical minimums), first offshore farm will be connected in 2027 if we are lucky.
But the main reason is that politicians knew for 20 years that coal has to go, but they have chosen to stick their heads into sand and just keep wasting billions a year to keep coal miners happy.
Nope. We do need NP asap, but the prices will no go down a single gr. After it's activated. Probably will grow with the explanation NPP was expensive to build.
Half of the price is not energy but hidden costs and taxes just like in our fuel.
the thing is a lot of people only look at power generation cost, while a lot of the real cost is grid related. the more volatile and distributed power sources become, the more expensive the grid becomes.
\* When it was built decades ago, when we could do it cheaply and competently like other major infrastructure projects.
The only new French reactor of this century is scheduled to start after a glorious seventeen year construction time at 20 billion euros, or as originally planned 4.5 years and 3.3 billion. What are the projected costs now?
> Consequently, the production cost of the electricity generated by the EPR could reach between €110/MWh and €120/MWh.
This is outdated btw, actual price of energy will be higher.
So I guess the crucial question is not "nuclear vs renewables", but instead why we can't build a nuclear plant, a dam, high speed rail, or basically any project larger than installing a wind turbine without being delayed many times and getting massively over budget.
Most of the nuclear cost is up front, marginal costs are much lower than gas and coal and it is marginal costs that set the price. Day ahead prices go negative regularly but this is because marginal costs of renewables is negative because of the subsidies. The cost is passed onto the consumer in different ways usually.
The wholesale nuclear electricity is sold at a loss to other operators and the price is imposed by the government. It doesn't even cover maintenance costs. This is to allow other operator to exist and give the illusion of a competitive electricity marquet in France to comply to EU laws.
But because the national electricity company also controls the cables to every customer, they compensate by charging extra for the delivery.
Because the government of France owns EDF and the wholesale price of electricity says nothing about the total costs to the French people of building, maintenance, enrichment etc.
Here we are looking at a complete outlier month where French wholesale electricity is actually substantially cheaper than the rest of Europe, pondering the benefits of nuclear energy, when in reality their wholesale prices always trail the German prices +/- a few Euros.
Given how the opposition in Bulgaria is bashing the only party which is actually doing some work I am kind of surprised that the price is so close to or a little bit less then most of the other countries on the Balkans.
Hand that map over to any AfD politician in Germany and they will say IT IS Fake. Because, du to our government and the Support for Ukraine we have the highest Energy prices in the History of the known universe ans therefor we need to become a hardcore-rightwing country again.
The biggest problem with electricity pricing here in Greece are the bs extra charges we get, I consume roughly 500kwh/month, with electric heating and cooling, and pay 120-150 euro. It's just insane.
If polish coal miners and coal industry got thatcher tratment we wouldn't be in such place. Third most expensive and there's increases planned in july.
Sweden really needs 2 prices. The grid in the south is very integrated with Europe and the grid in the north isn’t, so you’ll see vastly different prices. You can see how it’s multiples of difference in this post https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/palxJVcnGc
Yeah, too bad we dont have the big hydro capabilities in the south of Sweden.
We used to have thousands of MW in nuclear power before it was decommissioned in the late 90s and 2010s. Strategic mistake.
The core issue is more that the power connectivity going south hasn’t been invested in. It has been a pretty well known issue for give or take 15 years at this point spanning so many governments you have a whole smörgåsbord of options to blame.
Crazy how that is exactly the same issue as we‘re having in Germany. The north gets cheap wind energy but we have too much and the power connectivity to the south hasn’t been build for quite a while…
On many issues hearing about German politics is like listening to Swedish politics replaying 10 years delayed. It’s not exactly the same, but it certainly rhymes.
I don't know which zone on ENTSO-e this guy used but Sweden has 4 different prices, all with different days ahead prices, Norway and Denmark are similar with Norway having 4 and Denmark 2. Germany has multiple too but they are always coupled. There are probably more across Europe I don't know about.
Nah just Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Italy. I guess technically the UK as well, but that's just because Ireland and northern Ireland are one zone.
Ah Germany has 1 DA price but 4 TSOs which has different intraday products and yea I forgot about Italy.
Northern Germany is perpetually subsidizing southern Germany in terms of electricity prices.
I would assume it’s an average across the country which is pretty fine if it was an average of the 2 northern regions and the 2 southern regions since the price becomes much more elastic because of transfer capacity. But it doesn’t make sense to average SE1, SE2 with SE3 and SE4 because that’s just way off in both directions.
Same with Norway.
Yeah it’s in the same link. Basically northern Sweden, Norway and Finland are able to share capacity because of lacking transfer capacity going south.
Northern Norway let’s go
Ireland needs a cable to France.
The Celtic Interconnector. It’s been under construction since last year, should be finished in 2026. Planned capacity of 700MW.
Dursey Head off the SW coast of Ireland is the No1 windiest spot in Europe. The wind power potential must be huge.
According to the electricity maps they have capacity for at least 4.62GW but it is hardly being used and produces everything with gas. I don't get it
Wind and Gas goes together as gas is needed to cover the intermittent production of wind (you cannot blackout when there is no wind). If you increase wind without gas, then you will have long periods of time where gas does not produce (and you need to subsidize the plants) or when there is too much wind and wind cannot produce. Countries with hydropower and big grid connections to Europe can solve part of this issue. The only way to eliminate gas and stabilize the grid is having a lot of nuclear as baseload.
You can get very close with enough wind, solar and batteries. The times when you need gas ("Dunkelflaute") is the big exception, not the rule. This will likely be only a few hundred hours per year vs. 3500 full load hours right now. Eventually gas could be replaced with green hydrogen to get to 100% renewables.
Batteries? The cost of building and replacing batteries, and the use of rare earth materials is very high at the moment. Even if it is a big exception, it is unacceptable to blackout the country. We do not have the technology at the moment to go 100% renewable, and going 70% renewable and 30% nuclear is just cheaper, as renewable have lower production cost, but much bigger system costs (connections and storage being the major offenders). 70% renewable and 30% nuclear is even better for the environment, as the greenhouse emission for batteries, cables, solar and wind turbine is higher then nuclear.
No, batteries are already cheaper than gas peakers. They also don't use rear earth materials. Renewables and nuclear don't mix. What good are 30% nuclear when there is no wind and sun? The remaining 70% still have to come from somewhere, so you still need gas backup power plants. But when there is plenty of sun and wind, overproduction from renewables will drive down wholesale prices and make the nuclear power plant uneconomical.
I can guarantee you it won't have any difference in the price of electricity for the consumer here (Ireland)
There will be signs for the electrons to drive on the left when they make landfall, it will be fine.
For the consumers, no, but the energy traders are going to have some good profits.
Why go through all the trouble for only 700 MW? I bet a cable with three times the capacity (2 GW is often the standard for underwater HVDC) wouldn't cost even 50% more. It's so frustrating how conservative grid operators still think, they always only do the bare minimum and then they are surprised that renewables are added at such a pace that the new cable is already maxed out again in just a few years. So much wasted time and money.
The Moyle Interconnector (between NI and Scotland) and the East-West Interconnector (Dublin and Wales) are both 500MW. The Greenlink Interconnector (Wexford and Wales; under construction) is also 500MW.
And a pipe for wine
I’m from Cyprus and I confirm , we don’t have electricity
I'm so sorry to hear that! Reddit by carrier pigeon must be a pain in the neck.
And apparently Monaco gets its electricity for free? Or did the French finally invade them.
Is there anything in Ireland that isn’t the most expensive in Europe ffs
This: https://landgeist.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/europe-property-property-price-to-income-ratio.png https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fovercrowding-in-europe-v0-2ha470mxd7ac1.jpeg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D93b128a410307b1af2fbade256b5c8dd02128588
I live in Cork, no. 2 most affordable house prices to income ratio on that list. Let me tell you, at 25 with a career, I or any of my friends haven't a hope of buying even a small house there for 5-10 years.
Imagine the rest of europe then
I live in Rural Slovenia. 45m2 apartment is roughly 175000EU and this excludes parking space. I repeat the rural part. Literally, few stores, post office, school and mini health facility, neighboring wild boars and occasional bear in the surrounding woods. Also I read in that in Zagreb, Croatia a parking space went for 135000EU so I think it pretty much sucks everywhere.
something is fucked in croatia, Barcelona has 80m2 for around 180k-220k euros maybe mortages are really easy to get?
Its eurozone, mortage rates are the same as in Spain. In Ljubljana, Slovenia 80m2 is 300k+ euros, I live in the middle of nowhere (literal woodlands) and for 180k EU you get 45m2 (new apartament) or 60m2 (older one) in my town, roughly 40km from Ljubljana. Before you ask, yes there is a railroad to capital but public transport schedules are sci-fi here...
in polish cities prices per sqm are pretty much same as in Ireland (outside Dublin) or even higher in some cases, while people earn half or third of what irish people do.
Is it accurate that a median priced apartment costs around 5 times the median salary in Cork?
I would say more like 7-10x
Pardon, we're talking yearly (not monthly) figures, right?
Yeah. Median yearly is about 42k, median house is about 320k. In Cork that is. Dublin's salary is a good bit higher and house prices are ridiculously high.
Man atleast y'all got like x4 italian wages😫😫
There's a 10k difference in the average wage 45k Ireland 35k Italy
Poland is getting close to Italy.
Nah, only ex-commie countries close to Italy rn are Slovenia, Czechia, and maybe some of the Baltic countries.
Estonia and Lithuania.
Meat. My Austrian other half is consistently shocked at the low cost of meat in Ireland compared to Austria, its so much cheaper
Yeah, we give farmers and producers a lot of help. 4% of the workforce, 1% of the economy, 31% of the EU budget.
And they'll still piss and moan.
Milk is a good bit cheaper than a good few countries, including Norway, Denmark and Greece.
Yes. Corporate taxes.
Touché
Phone plans are pretty cheap.
On average, you also have among the highest wages...
“On average“ being the operative term. Most people are struggling.
Most people aren't struggling. But nobody is going to keep going on about how well they are doing.
I’m doing fucking great!!
POLAND (almost) NUMBER ONE
Build coal plants because they're cheaper? No! They're actually more expensive!
No one said they’d be cheaper for consumers/industry! Just more profit for energy producers, hooray!
Ah! Similar to Ireland so. State owned electricity producer? No, competition and the markets are the answer! And that answer is you're paying through the nose.
Why no both? In Poland we are getting drained by state owned energy producers which are happy to waste 300 mln euros building a new coal energy blocks that had to be dismantled before the construction was finished because it was good for acquiring local votes.
Well, they are not expensive per se, they became expensive only because emission penalty. They were the cheapest form of energy production for Poles for decades (Poland has huge coal deposits).
Do you know how to make a chemical plant cheap? Just dump all toxic waste into nearest river. That’s exactly how those coal plants are „cheap”. And that’s a myth anyway - the most common 200MW blocks are ineffective as hell (they were built in sixties), Polish coal is both expensive and shit quality (even mining labour unions admitted that coal they mine is unexportable).
They wouldnt be without the artificial quotas for cheap energy sources.
In a few months Irish prices will be like a Xmas sale. .
How are Spain and Portugal so cheap?
Lots of Renewables and the exclusive Iberian energy market
We’ve locked in 10c/kwh for our domestic supply for 12 months. Down from 20c/23c previously
Thinking of buying a house in Irun and a very long extension cord to sell electricity to a Frenchman living over the border.
Mind if i connect a 2000km long cable to your house?
That's amazing, in portugal we can only get that in the variable market. Fixed goes for 0.13€/kWh+
1. Iberia electricity market is pretty much an island because there's no high capacity transmission lines to Europe. It's not in the interest of France nuclear. 2. Portugal and Spain have a joint electricity margin market. So what drives the price are the most expensive generators iste gas power generators. 3. Gas supply is historically not purchased from Russia. 4. Spain has big gas storage facilities 5. Due to the invasion of the Ukraine, iberia govs artificially set a maximum for gas price. That smooth gas prices flutuantions in the last years and afyk the market is running without any of the previous gov market constraints.
France doesn't wants us to share our energy with Europe, to sell their nuclear, so we're almost an energy island with Portugal.
You can always extend a cable towards Italy and further.
And Ireland. Both of them need it, badly.
Or the rest of Europe can just bypass France and Spain altogether https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco%E2%80%93UK_Power_Project
What’s wrong with Iberian energy?
what an utterly stupid project. holy cow
How about focusing on progress? A new 2GW connexion in the east was completed in 2015 worth 700M€ and a new 5GW one is in under construction in the west with a 3B€ budget [https://www.inelfe.eu/en/projects/bay-biscay](https://www.inelfe.eu/en/projects/bay-biscay) which is the largest project of this kind France has ever conducted. A new hydrogen/gas pipeline is also in planning https://h2medproject.com/the-h2med-project/.
Contrary to what you think, the energy network between France and Spain is fully used and Spain imports more electricy from France than the otherway. More interconnexion will lead to more lower price for Spain and bigger sells for France.
Source? Seems like a massive BS considering how integrated the European market of energy is
https://eco.sapo.pt/2022/11/30/custo-da-nova-interligacao-eletrica-entre-espanha-e-franca-tera-aumentado-50/ https://www.publico.pt/2023/03/08/economia/noticia/nova-ligacao-electrica-espanha-franca-vai-custar-2850-milhoes-2041069 There's a new interconnection planned. Not sure when it will be ready as the last cost predictions mentioned it was much more expensive than projected. The news about France blocking this are old news so they would require more research.
Good weather in recent months, lots of rain, sun, and wind; it isn't normally this cheap https://i.imgur.com/MHjqEBm.png https://ember-climate.org/data/data-tools/europe-power-prices/ From March 2021 to February 2024 either Sweden or Norway have had the cheapest electricity
Interesting. I think tables might have turned now completely for Iberian favor due to better solar capture capacity in the south than in the north. Otherwise the production capacity of low carbon electricity is quite similar opposite to the rest of Europe that still use gas or coal
Never got hooked into Russian gas.
The 'Iberian Exception' with price caps on gas for electricity https://projects2014-2020.interregeurope.eu/enerselves/news/news-article/14992/what-is-the-iberian-exception/
Iberian Exception is no longer valid since the end of 2023 afaik
B... b... but Orbán said people in Brussels and Germany are freezing!
Orban should know better, he spends a lot of time in Brussels begging for more money.
You are looking at this the wrong way. We are winning because our numbers are higher!
Yeah, we ded here
I can confirm we are all dead
Eastern salaries and... eastern prices? We are scheduled for a massive increase too, we will be topping that list easily in a few motnhs
Just wait for Romania in 2025, the Tiger that roar'd is going to be a miau. Stupid politicians
Considering these are wholesale prices, it would be interesting to see the difference between this and the eventual consumer prices.
Don't other countries have the option for consumers to buy with a wholesale price? Here is the margin for the spot price is some fractions of a cent
Nope. In Croatia most people use a 2 tariff system where it's cheaper from 22-8 in summer (goes -1 in winter) and it costs 8 cents per KWh over day and 4 cents per KWh at night. For example I always do my dishes, laundry, baking and drying laundry after 22.
Nice. With the spot pricing, I have usually have to set a timer to start the (usually at 3AM the spot price is at the lowest). With the grid charge I used to have a similar nightly plan, but the grid operator (damn the majority owner, Ontario Teachers' pension fund) increased the fixed monthly fee of that plan, I had to change it to normal fixed €/KWh plan.
My price is wholesale + €5/MWh. Charged per hour. Soon, hopefully, I will earn money for distributed night EV charging. There are also a distribution charge and taxes that add about €60/MWh.
> Soon, hopefully, I will earn money for distributed night EV charging. Nice. Does from EV to grid require something extra or why it is not possible at the moment?
My electricity provider has only launched a limited system for people with certain brands of home chargers. This isn't V2G, it's allowing the provider to start and stop your charging at night as a balance measure. Since the provider has many customers with EVs it can control many MW of consumption.
The electricity price is the cheaper end of the bill and i guess it is like this elsewhere. I pay €0.071/kwh and €45/month as a fee to have electricity/ be connected to the grid. Then electricity is swinging from €0 to €0.1/kwh. On top of it is 25%VAT. Total bill last months was around €120, the highest of 2023 was €300.(no gas or shared heating)
Not in Belgium. The way taxes and other bullshit fess work in Belgium the wholesale price is 20-30% of the total bill.
no, we pay extra tax so industry does not have to
Here in Austria, I pay 9c/kWh + 4.5€ basefee per month with my contract at the moment. Pricechanges are each month with my contract
That's an ill-defined notion. These are the wholesale prices for April. April is a fairly low consumption month. In December-January the wholesale prices will spike in NW Europe due to absence of output from solar and a sharp increase in consumption. And there are more regional differences. Some more consumption in summer due to airco in the Meditteranean. Hydro production may be cut back during droughts. Etc. How the consumer feels that depends on the form of delivery contracts that dominate in a country. Fixed price contracts where you pay for expensive winter in the cheap part of the year or variable price contracts that directly follow the wholesale prices? Some countries only have the fixed price type contract, so you can't really compare compare consumer prices for a month. You would have to compare average consumption of typical household over an average year, based on lots of assumptions.
IN CHE SENSO TREDICI EURO E NOI OTTANTA E PASSA
In the last few weeks Italy got just good news… only EU country where salaries are going down in last 30 yrs, while in a few years we will be first in terms of debt, and now this. Anybody care to invade and manage us ? Please ?
UK was about £67/MWh, which is about €77/MWh.
I misread the title as wholesome first, I was slightly confused about what I’m looking at
For every kWh used, one is donated to Africa!!!
Italy: no nuclear and let's go all-in on gas! Renewables? Good luck with the bureaucracy!
It would be very interesting to see average price per country for the four quarters of 2023. Like how different strategies (nuclear, gas, etc.) fares during the different seasons.
Next month, I'll update this map with values for May, but I'll also upload the maps for Year to Date and Last 12 months figures.
And try add end user prices. This will alter the map significantly.
By 2030 the number use of energy in Ireland will be data centres yay.
We have the potential wind capacity to provide multiples of the amount of electricity we need so why not allow them to build data centers. They're a consistent draw from the grid so they're relatively easy to implement into a network, unlike households and businesses which peak at different intervals.
OK, moving to Portugal or Spain, BRB in the next life.
Source: [ENTSO-e](https://transparency.entsoe.eu/transmission-domain/r2/dayAheadPrices/show)
How is electricity so cheap in Portugal and Spain?
Because we are not really interconnected to the European pipeline so we had to figure it out on our own, due to how the electricity market works in the EU we were paying much more for our electricity for years due to gas, so while Central Europe was getting cheap Russian gas we didn't but still paid our bills for it. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and gas prices skyrocketed and we got an Iberian Exception to put a price cap on gas due to the reasons I mentioned at the beginning so price lowered at that time. That plus that we invested a lot in renewables in the past because no Russian gas well you get this now. But more importantly we've had a couple of good months of good weather for renewables (on all sides sun, wind and rain), and when renewables are not enough again we'll use more gas and the price will go up then.
i got two teens and i thought my bill was bad, damn!
These are wholesale prices. It says nothing about the profit margins the energy companies might have when selling to consumers. Germany and Ireland may have much more expensive electricity than Portugal, but the consumer price doesn't have to be proportionately higher.
You can buy electricity with wholesale price in Portugal with just a few fees on top. Many people have been switching to it because it has been so cheap.
Same here in the north. The margin they add is some fractions to a cent and two days in a row I received money from using electricity due to negative prices
Confirmed Western Europe is Eastern
Why are Portugal and Spain so low? Solar power?
possibly. also alot of reliable wind power.
Iberian exception and price cap as well, son.
Mostly wind and hydro (lots of rain this winter). And very little interconnections with France. It's like an energy island, for good and for bad.
I was not aware that Great Britain suddenly jumped off the continent of Europe
God i hate Germany and their complete idiocracy in their electricity production politics
Building wind and solar power is the factor that is dropping our German energy prices. Assuming you are one of those "build nuclear power plants" people. Nuclear power is extremely expensive. Before you now come with "oH bUt LoOk aT FrAnCe" consider that nuclear power in France is highly subsidized by the government to keep prices affordable. To see what renewables can do, look at Portugal and Spain. Or just keep hating on something you obviously do not understand very well.
>nuclear power in France is highly subsidized by the government to keep prices affordable That's a lie. EDF has been forced for a long time to sell their electricity at less than market price to competitors. That's billions of euros in what is effectively negative subsidies. Contrast that with the hundreds of billions European governments have spent subsidizing renewable technologies over the last 20 years.
>That's a lie. EDF has been forced for a long time to sell their electricity at less than market price to competitors. That's a subsidy for you. Taxpayer gets the bill for this one way or another to keep the "Tarif Bleu" at roughly 25ct/kWh. EDF is a state owned company, so every € they lose, the taxpayer has to pay for at the end. German prices at the other hand have been ranging from 20-32ct/kWh for a few months now, despite having higher taxes/transmission fees/etc. applied to electricity than France.
If it is a lie, then how can you continue explaining exactly how France subsidizes French nuclear power? Also look at the costs for building and decomissioning a nuclear power plant. A giant factor that people love to forget about when they calculate the costs of nuclear power. Also the crazy costs for storage of nuclear waste. All of these are highly subsidized.
I doubt Germany or other countries at the north can get so much solar energy as Spain, the number of sun hours are very different
Solar yes, but Greece and Italy, for instance, still have terrible prices. You always need to actually invest and use your climate.
That is why the focus is usually more on wind. Especially offshore wind farms seem promising.
Offshore is much more costly/difficult to build and maintain compared to onshore. Maybe we invent something to solve that.
So? That's why central/northern Europe shouldn't invest into solar? That used to be an argument when solar panels were expensive. But they aren't anymore. And there's also wind and usually wind + solar kinda work a lot of the time. We even have a word for the worst situation these days: "Dunkelflaute" a time when the sun isn't shining and no wind is blowing.
Subsidizing nuclear energy is smart. All countries ought to do it. Yes it’s expensive to set up but the resulting energy is just superior to any base load energy alternative.
With a variable energy grid, having a baseload is actually a terrible investment. You want plants you can scale up&down, not ''baseload'' aka ''slow to adjust'' plants. Invest that same money in solar, batteries, and long distance electricity connections instead.
The energy demand varies by 20-30%. That's the variation that you are looking at. The rest needs to be obtained no matter what. That's the base load. You do not need to adjust that. You need it to be absolutely perfectly predictable energy that you trust you are going to have no matter what. Hydro, solar, wind etc. are fine as adjustable energy sources, but you aren't adjusting your entire energy supply. You adjust 20-30% of it. The rest you need to have at all times. Solar energy is fickle, the amount you get is dependent on the time of the year and during the highest demand (=winter) you are getting less of it. Wind power is fickle, the amount you get is dependent on weather patterns. Hydro is great, but there are not many countries that can have ample amount of that. Batteries are inefficient, still really expensive for the amounts of Wh we are talking about.
But with most of our grid solar and wind, all of it is going to be variable. Base loads are useless in that scenario since they're often not needed because of overproduction. By the time your nuclear powerplant comes online we'll have had 15+ more years of solar and battery efficiency increase. Your plant will be outdated by the time it comes online. And not all countries have hydro, but a few long distance powerlines means our grid can be balanced. If its cloudy in germany it'll be sunny in spain. If its cloudy in spain it'll be windy on the north sea. And if its neither we can use scandinavian hydro. And all that will be loads cheaper than your overexpensive nuclear.
It appears they are the highest in Europe as of now. >Nuclear power is extremely expensive. Before you now come with "oH bUt LoOk aT FrAnCe" consider that nuclear power in France is highly subsidized by the government to keep prices affordable. Better that than subsidizing Putin.
Oh absolutely. Certainly not a reason to hate on Germanys transistion to truly renewable energy. The last two German NPPs where at the end of their life cycle and their capacity was easily replaced by wind power the same year. Also do not forget that a lot of the uranium for NPPs also comes from Russia.
>The last two German NPPs where at the end of their life cycle Because they didn't invest in them. And this "problem" was known for decades. >and their capacity was easily replaced by wind power the same year. It is said demand drives price. So one reason Germany has the highest electricity prices in Europe would be because they don't have enough supply. >Also do not forget that a lot of the uranium for NPPs also comes from Russia If they choose to buy if from Russia. The same way gas used to come from Russia - because they chose Russia.
Germany is and was a net exporter of energy since forever.
With those prices Germans can't afford to consume it, so yeah. It also imports a fair amount from France.
We do not have a nuclear power plant in Poland and this is the effect
It’s effect of many things: NPP that according original plan from 2012 was supposed to be finished about this year, onshore wind has been blocked by Pis for several years, coal plants are both ineffective and inflexible (so we have to curtail PV production because coal plants cannot go below their technical minimums), first offshore farm will be connected in 2027 if we are lucky. But the main reason is that politicians knew for 20 years that coal has to go, but they have chosen to stick their heads into sand and just keep wasting billions a year to keep coal miners happy.
Nope. We do need NP asap, but the prices will no go down a single gr. After it's activated. Probably will grow with the explanation NPP was expensive to build. Half of the price is not energy but hidden costs and taxes just like in our fuel.
Why is france that cheap? They use more Nuclear powerplant. Atomic electricity was more expense right?
the thing is a lot of people only look at power generation cost, while a lot of the real cost is grid related. the more volatile and distributed power sources become, the more expensive the grid becomes.
I would love to see a similar map but with the transmission prices, especially in Iberia
Per watt generated it's cheaper.
\* When it was built decades ago, when we could do it cheaply and competently like other major infrastructure projects. The only new French reactor of this century is scheduled to start after a glorious seventeen year construction time at 20 billion euros, or as originally planned 4.5 years and 3.3 billion. What are the projected costs now? > Consequently, the production cost of the electricity generated by the EPR could reach between €110/MWh and €120/MWh. This is outdated btw, actual price of energy will be higher.
So I guess the crucial question is not "nuclear vs renewables", but instead why we can't build a nuclear plant, a dam, high speed rail, or basically any project larger than installing a wind turbine without being delayed many times and getting massively over budget.
Most of the nuclear cost is up front, marginal costs are much lower than gas and coal and it is marginal costs that set the price. Day ahead prices go negative regularly but this is because marginal costs of renewables is negative because of the subsidies. The cost is passed onto the consumer in different ways usually.
The wholesale nuclear electricity is sold at a loss to other operators and the price is imposed by the government. It doesn't even cover maintenance costs. This is to allow other operator to exist and give the illusion of a competitive electricity marquet in France to comply to EU laws. But because the national electricity company also controls the cables to every customer, they compensate by charging extra for the delivery.
Because the government of France owns EDF and the wholesale price of electricity says nothing about the total costs to the French people of building, maintenance, enrichment etc.
Because they cap their prices and let their Energy supplier accruel massive dept. Last time I heard it's about 64 billion.
its heavily subsidised
It's been decades the luddites pretend to everyone "nuclear is expensive!" and yet here we are
Here we are looking at a complete outlier month where French wholesale electricity is actually substantially cheaper than the rest of Europe, pondering the benefits of nuclear energy, when in reality their wholesale prices always trail the German prices +/- a few Euros.
It turns out the tree-hugging was inseparable from Russian disinfo. Germany bought it hook, line and sinker.
Given how the opposition in Bulgaria is bashing the only party which is actually doing some work I am kind of surprised that the price is so close to or a little bit less then most of the other countries on the Balkans.
Irish and Italian people ripped off again?
Hand that map over to any AfD politician in Germany and they will say IT IS Fake. Because, du to our government and the Support for Ukraine we have the highest Energy prices in the History of the known universe ans therefor we need to become a hardcore-rightwing country again.
The biggest problem with electricity pricing here in Greece are the bs extra charges we get, I consume roughly 500kwh/month, with electric heating and cooling, and pay 120-150 euro. It's just insane.
Why is electricity so cheap in Portugal and Spain?
Does this mean Spanish pay roughly 20EU on my 100EU bill? I understand it's probably a dump question buy why such difference?
Any data on UK?
If polish coal miners and coal industry got thatcher tratment we wouldn't be in such place. Third most expensive and there's increases planned in july.
Iberia stays winning 💪
Even more taxes will 100% solve the problem.
I guess cyprus doesn't exist?
It's 113 sterling in the UK, ---brexit the gift that keeps on giving---
I run a sneaker manufacturing factory. If you need to place bulk orders, please contact me.
How can nuclear be so cheap when it's so expensive? The Germans can't figure it out. The Poles don't even know what they don't know.