Renewable energy zealots keep telling us that wind and solar are free and getting cheaper all the time. Germany puts paid to that lie, as does Denmark and South Australia, which each jockey for line honours in the world’s highest power prices stakes.
No country has squandered more treasure on giant windmills and an endless sea of solar panels than Germany.
For all that wanton environmental destruction, Germans get a meagre 2.5% of their primary energy demand satisfied by wind and solar. And in the mother of all ironies, contrary to the stated aim of the ‘Energiewende’, carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise.
Its nuclear-powered, next-door neighbour, France wins the low CO2 power generation competition by a mile – and makes a killing selling electricity to power-starved Germans, whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in.
All in all, Germany’s (apparently) inevitable ‘transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future has been a total flop.
Adding insult to injury, German power prices have surged (again) and, with another bitter winter looming, Germans can expect more blackouts and load shedding as their grid groans under the burden of its suicidal attempt to run on chaotically intermittent wind and solar.
Here’s No Tricks Zone with an update on Germany’s power pricing and supply calamity.
Price Shock! German Consumer Electricity Rates Climb To “New Record High”, Reaching A Whopping 30.85 Cents/Kwh!
No Tricks Zone
Pierre Gosselin
9 October 2019
More pain for consumers. Electricity prices in Germany climb to a new high, reaching 30.85 cents (euro) per kilowatt hour. Experts warn transition to green energies may lead to shortages, higher prices.
German online national daily Die Welt here reports on how electricity prices in the country have reached “a new high” and that natural gas prices are high as well.
The German national news daily writes: “Electricity has never been as expensive for private households in Germany as it is this year.”
“Prices have risen to a new high,” Die Welt reports, citing the latest data from German Federal Network Agency.
For the first time, electricity prices for consumers reached 30 cents (euro) per kilowatt-hour, making German electric prices among the highest in the world.
Citing data from the Federal Network Agency, the average price soared to 30.85 cents (euro) per kilowatt hour, which works out to be an increase of almost 3.3 percent compared to just a year earlier. Last year the average price for one kilowatt hour was 29.88 cents.
According to Die Welt: “The Federal Network Agency evaluates the data of well over 1000 electricity suppliers.”
Why is electricity so expensive in Germany?
The Federal Network Agency puts the blame on the electricity wholesalers who, according to Die Welt, “pass on increases to the electricity exchange”.
And an end in the rising price spiral remains elusive, experts warn.
“Wholesale prices for electricity could continue to rise,” Die Welt reports. Large power producers such as RWE, warn that future plant closures due to the transition to green energies and the phasing out of the country’s nuclear power plants will “lead to a shortage”.
Die Welt ends its article: “The largest block on the electricity bill, however, are taxes, levies and allocations, which account for more than half of the total price.” One major price driver are the mandatory, exorbitantly high green energy feed-in tariffs that grid operators are forced to pay.
No Tricks Zone
About stopthesethings
STOP THESE THINGS 
The reality of retail electricity prices in Germany, Denmark and South Australia point out the subtle flaw in looking at low wholesale prices for wind and solar energy and calling it good.
Where is the resolution to the low wholesale price, high retail price paradox?
It lies in the fact that wind/solar are actually a small percentage of the energy supplied and that they are extremely intermittent. Putting “large” amounts of “cheap” wind and solar on a grid are a way to switch from getting 100% of your electricity at a reasonable price and instead get 15% of your electricity at a discount and the other 85% at vastly higher prices, as you pay for generation on the spot market and from generators forced to run inefficiently.
Imagine being a factory or restaurant that buys 100% of some supply, call them gumbits at $.10 each. You need 1000 of them a day. Every day you spend $100 on gumbits.
Now you find a supplier that will sell you gumbits for $.02 each, but can only sell you 150 of them per day. Great, those 150 will go from costing $15 to costing $3. You sign up.
Then you discover that your other supplier must now charge you $.20 per gumbit in the lower quantity. Now you’re paying $17 + $3 = $20 per day instead of $10 per day when you got them all from one reliable supplier.
To make matters worse, sometimes the new supplier doesn’t even show up. So you have ask for a special delivery from the old supplier at an even higher price.
GAh. Should read:
Then you discover that your other supplier must now charge you $.20 per gumbit in the lower quantity. Now you’re paying $170 + $3 = $173 per day instead of $100 per day when you got them all from one reliable supplier.
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