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Renewable energy surcharge (22.2 %)
The renewable energy surcharge pays the state-guaranteed price for renewable energy to producers and is 6.354 cents/kWh in 2015. This will rise to 6.354 cents/kWh in 2016. [See CLEW Factsheet on Defining features of Germany’s Renewable Energy Act and the Green Energy Account]
That 6 cents is almost as much as the retail cost in some states like Wyoming.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ because of renewables? You know when the prices are low the
first units to get curtailed are the renewable ones right? Really the same thing is happening here. The economy sucks, DSM is have an effect on consumption. if it's not getting used you don't have to make it.....
Nope. German law trumps market forces.
From the article:
Quote:
The renewable energy law (EEG) that was passed in 2000 guaranteed investors in wind and solar plants that they could feed every kilowatt-hour produced into the energy grid – and at an agreed-up fixed price. The EEG was a huge success for climate protection.
By 2015, renewable energies accounted for a third of electricity consumption.
For the free play of market forces, it was a catastrophe for reasons that are obvious. The more priority green electricity has in the grid, the less demand there will be for energy that conventional power plants can provide.
The electricity market is the collateral damage of the ecological boom. A megawatt-hour of electricity from a new wind farm on land is currently remunerated with €85 – that’s a good four times the market price. Solar energy producers receive €110 per megawatt-hour – a good five times. And offshore wind turbines are paid €150 the megawatt-hour – about seven times the price of electricity.
That 6 cents is over twice the retail cost in Chelan and Douglas counties, Washington.
Yeah, you have Grand Coulee Dam, which since the Concrete and Construction Costs have been long since covered, and there is no "Investors" to pay . . . may just be the lowest cost generation in the world.
There is no reason to have a coal power plant anymore. Replace all the fossil fuel plants with nuclear and renewables.
Coal is one of the cheapest ways to produce energy.
Hi sulfur coal once caused problems with acid rain, but is no longer used. Modern coal fired plants are much cleaner in terms of pollutants. As usual, EPA regs have over-reached, having long ago passed the point of diminishing returns, now adding unncessary costs.
"Carbon Footprint" is not a problem.The whole AGW controversy is driven by politics not science. Warmer is good for the planet & humans. Who retires and moves north? Life flourished here during the Carboniferous with atm [co2] > 8000ppm. Photosynthesis would cease if atm[co2] fell <160ppm. Our current 400 ppm is a heckuva lot closer to 160 than to 8000...The contribution of co2 to warming ceases when [co2] gets over 450ppm (extinction of absorption)....The pinheads who point to temps on Venus as an example of warming due to co2 have forgotten Guy-Lussac's Law of Ideal Gases: PV=nRT. Rearrange it to T = PV/nR. Atm P on Venus is 20x higher than here, so T will also be much higher, with or without co2.
More practically, coal will become too expensive as fracking floods the market with Natural Gas. NG burns cleaner, is easier to transport than coal and avoids the health problems involved in mining coal.
While nuclear is safe (Chernobyl was caused by human stupidity and Fukishima was just one of those things-the only one to occur in 60 yrs of nuclear energy production, it's very expensive and only is viable, as others here noted, due to govt subsidies.
Coal is one of the cheapest ways to produce energy.
Hi sulfur coal once caused problems with acid rain, but is no longer used. Modern coal fired plants are much cleaner in terms of pollutants. As usual, EPA regs have over-reached, having long ago passed the point of diminishing returns, now adding unncessary costs.
"Carbon Footprint" is not a problem.The whole AGW controversy is driven by politics not science. Warmer is good for the planet & humans. Who retires and moves north? Life flourished here during the Carboniferous with atm [co2] > 8000ppm. Photosynthesis would cease if atm[co2] fell <160ppm. Our current 400 ppm is a heckuva lot closer to 160 than to 8000...The contribution of co2 to warming ceases when [co2] gets over 450ppm (extinction of absorption)....The pinheads who point to temps on Venus as an example of warming due to co2 have forgotten Guy-Lussac's Law of Ideal Gases: PV=nRT. Rearrange it to T = PV/nR. Atm P on Venus is 20x higher than here, so T will also be much higher, with or without co2.
More practically, coal will become too expensive as fracking floods the market with Natural Gas. NG burns cleaner, is easier to transport than coal and avoids the health problems involved in mining coal.
While nuclear is safe (Chernobyl was caused by human stupidity and Fukishima was just one of those things-the only one to occur in 60 yrs of nuclear energy production, it's very expensive and only is viable, as others here noted, due to govt subsidies.
Excellent!
What is killing coal in the USA and some other areas is all the cheap natural gas due to fracking coming onto market. It is having the same effect on home heating oil which at least in the North East of USA has historically been cheaper than NG.
New York City is pushing large residential buildings *HARD* to upgrade their old oil fired boilers (many converted from coal, yes they are that old), to use NG. Local utility is busy ripping up streets to install new high capacity NG lines to meet the demand.
That 6 cents is almost as much as the retail cost in some states like Wyoming.
One of the weaknesses of our language is that one thing may be "cheaper" than another, yet neither is "cheap" in the first place.
I didn't want to ague with the OP about prices of energy coming down in Germany. There were other more important points to discuss. But today's Die Welt documents the actual cost of juice in Deutschland-- about 35 cents (USD) per kW-hr-- and the cost is up since 2011, not down. The average German family of four uses only 4000kW-hr per yr, compared to 11,000 for an American family.
Conservation is easy when they price you into submission. Anybody up for a 19th century lifestyle?
"Das Preisniveau der Grundversorgung in Deutschland erreichte im April sein Allzeithoch. Verbraucher, die ihren Strom im Standardtarif vom örtlichen Versorger kaufen, müssen aktuell durchschnittlich 30,27 Cent pro Kilowattstunde (kWh) zahlen, vor einem Jahr kostete der Strom noch deutlich weniger als 30 Cent. Eine vierköpfige Musterfamilie mit einem Verbrauch von 4000 kWh zahlt demnach im April im Schnitt 1211 Euro im Jahr für Strom, wie die Daten von Toptarif zeigen. Vor einem Jahr waren es noch weniger als 1200 Euro, vor fünf Jahren waren es nur gut 1000 Euro."
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