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Comment by derriz | Hacker News Reader

Germany has been the biggest exporter of electricity in the world for 8 of the last 10 years[0]. It consistently generates more than it consumes. It's been this way since around 2004.

German wholesale electricity prices are relatively low by European standards - so far this year about 8th cheapest - about 13% cheaper than of France, for example[1]. This reflects the blended cost of production. Household prices are higher than average - because domestic consumption of electricity is taxed more heavily in Germany than the average in Europe.

[0] https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/electrical-energy [1] https://ember-climate.org/data-catalogue/european-wholesale-...

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The link you're using is from 2022, which is an outlier in terms of energy production.

The issue is that Germany exports "waste" electricity. It almost always exports cheap power, and imports at high rates. In negative price events, you will almost always see Germany in the exporter list.

For instance, today, France imported from Germany between 10:30 and 15:45, when market prices reached bottom, and exported to Germany when prices soared, including between 18h and 21h [1].

Another issue is that Germany's inability to control its power production is big enough that it can't be compensated by cross-border trades. That's what can be seen today between 18h and 21h [2], where the price spread between France and Germany became very large.

This kind of pattern has been happening all week.

[1]: https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electrici... [2]: https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/market-data

The link provides 2022 imports and exports at the top of the page but if you scroll down includes balances going back to 1995.

2022 is not an outlier in this regard - on an aggregate basis Germany has been the biggest net exporter of electricity in the world over the last 20 years.

Nothing "waste" about it, the imports and exports in the link are priced in USD, so if your thesis is true, then it would mean even bigger _volumes_ of electric exports.

> 2022 is not an outlier in this regard

Yeah, 2022 was absolutely not an outlier in electricity production in Europe...

> the imports and exports in the link are priced in USD, so if your thesis is true, then it would mean even bigger _volumes_ of electric exports.

That is, indeed, true. Germany's export prices are noticeably lower than Germany's import prices for electricity [1].

That means Germany exports _a lot_ of cheap electricity when electricity is abundant, and requires some expensive electricity when it is not. From the pov of reliability of supply, it's not great. From the PoV of market participants, however, that's pretty good, of course.

[1]: average export/import price, fig. 4 - https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/electricity-imports-to-ge...

The ember-climate link has the qualifier

    Note that these are the prices generators receive for selling electricity on the spot market. They are not the same as the prices paid by electricity consumers, which can also include taxes, levies, network charges, subsidies, and supplier profits. They also do not account for hedging.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... shows that Germany has higher absolute prices for the consumers, which is what matters. The use of wholesale prices as a proxy for consumer prices is at best inaccurate.

> Household prices are higher than average - because domestic consumption of electricity is taxed more heavily in Germany than the average in Europe.

https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/EN/Artikel/Energy/electircity-... shows 19% VAT, which is definitely a choice by the government. However even before taxes and levies Eurostat showed the price in Germany is about 0.28 EUR/MWh versus 0.22 EUR/MWh in France.

One reason Germany has been able to shift so much electricity to France is the EU Renewable Energy Directive (which excludes nuclear power but includes biomass and biofuels). Intermittent power from Germany counts against any power generated by France's nuclear power stations, helping to meet percentage consumption targets.

https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/renewabl...

I clicked on [1] and it's showing Germany's prices to be significantly higher than that of France.

Sorry, my mistake.

My claim was based on averaging over the time-series - so the average wholesale prices since 2015 and not just the prices for 2024.

Over the extended period, French wholesale prices have been 12% higher on average than those in Germany.

Nobody cares. bryanlarsen has it correct, you need to satisfy demand.

Germany is exporting because it produces useless renewable power. It is useless because it does not satisfy the demand. The demand is on dark, cold days, it is for processes that are useless if they are interrupted.

Have you honestly tried buying steel for a project? I have, the vast majority of European suppliers are now borderline useless. Delivering early is as bad as delivering late, bad enough that if the product was free I'd think twice, and they do both.

And no, storage of energy is not cost-competitive. Not even with nuclear. Not even within two orders of magnitude at the scale required, which is not kWh, not MWh, not even GWh, but tens of TWh. The best I've seen gives you time to cold start a gas plant, and that's it. That is what the battery sector gives as achievement. It's not enough and it's not close.

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