Posted on 09/13/2021 8:11:49 AM PDT by karpov
Natural gas and electricity markets were already surging in Europe when a fresh catalyst emerged: The wind in the stormy North Sea stopped blowing.
The sudden slowdown in wind-driven electricity production off the coast of the U.K. in recent weeks whipsawed through regional energy markets. Gas and coal-fired electricity plants were called in to make up the shortfall from wind.
Natural-gas prices, already boosted by the pandemic recovery and a lack of fuel in storage caverns and tanks, hit all-time highs. Thermal coal, long shunned for its carbon emissions, has emerged from a long price slump as utilities are forced to turn on backup power sources.
The episode underscored the precarious state the region’s energy markets face heading into the long European winter. The electricity price shock was most acute in the U.K., which has leaned on wind farms to eradicate net carbon emissions by 2050. Prices for carbon credits, which electricity producers need to burn fossil fuels, are at records, too.
“It took a lot of people by surprise,” said Stefan Konstantinov, senior energy economist at data firm ICIS, of the leap in power prices. “If this were to happen in winter when we’ve got significantly higher demand, then that presents a real issue for system stability.”
At their peak, U.K. electricity prices had more than doubled in September and were almost seven times as high as at the same point in 2020. Power markets also jumped in France, the Netherlands and Germany.
Prices for power to be dispatched the next day rocketed to £285 a megawatt hour in the U.K. when wind speeds dropped last week, according to ICIS. That is equivalent to $395 a megawatt hour and marked a record on figures going back to 1999.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
All by design.
Whew! Good thing they got that pipeline work done eh? Now the chinese can get started running thier pipeline from Iran through A-stan. But, seriously, are there oil reserves in chi-nuh. I guess I could look it up buy I’m feeling lazy.
And here this winter.
When you do green energy on your own it means lowers costs in the long run and less volatility in your energy budget. But that's assuming you're in an ideal situation for it. (I'm blessed to be in the south with lots of sunshine, most of our power consumption is in the summer when there's even more sunshine, no trees shading my solar panels, part of my roof facing south towards the equator to optimize my solar capture, etc.)
Peabody Coal options have been a windfall this last couple months.
Wind stopped blowing, must be global warming. But wait, warming causes more storms and bad weather. Well, must be Trump, all problems lead back to Trump and/or global warming.
Southest forest are sweep clean of underbrush and leftovers from logging...made into pellets and sent to England to burn for biomas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-ULHjXDjEU
How fitting....the countries insisting on Climate change can't control the wind. LOL
Don't they mean "a lot of stupid people"?
A new California bill will block you from owning a gas generator so you can sit in the dark with the rest of the deplorables.
You can bet the politicians power will not be cut off.
C'mon, man. This is good for Gaia!
The New World Order is carrying out Obama's pronouncement, "Let them starve, freezing and alone in the dark."
I think I’m going to gather some more firewood this year, just in case they don’t want us to have heat.
Good point. Also in California, every now and then the power co. slightly alters the frequency (sine wave) of the power output so that the solar users’ inverters automatically trip off to protect themselves from potentially “dirty” power. This is to force solar users to buy from the grid until they reset their inverters so they can “pay their fair share”.
Thank God for Sweet Home Alabama! If my power company started doing that to me I’d double my solar production and battery storage (maybe triple my battery storage if I get an EV), and buy a 10 kW generator to run for an average of about 45 minutes per month on the very few times I don’t have enough power to get through the night. Then I’d tell them it’s time for us to part ways while I pay no power bill.
You prepaid your costs during installation of the panels and storage batteries. You will have to change those out every few years.
Hopefully, they’ll have a cloudy, snowy winter, and the solar panels won’t work, either. That’ll teach them to go back to coal, gas and build some nuclear plants.
Wood pellets have continued to gain market share in North America and Europe.
Wood pellets can be burned in the same electricity generating plants that used to burn coal.
Here is New England there are several pellet producing plants. They have become cheap enough to less than propane some winters. They are typically higher than natural gas or heating oil.
I installed a Harman wood pellet fireplace insert eight years ago. It is much less work than a wood stove. I burned one of those for 17 years.
In Europe, many people use wood pellets to heat their homes.
There are some very good quality stoves made in Italy, Austria and Germany.
Wood pellets are the bi product of logging. The branches and tops of trees that do not go to the sawmills are made into pellets. In addition, there are several sawmills that take their shavings and turn them into wood pellets.
“it means lowers costs in the long run”
You prepaid your costs during installation of the panels and storage batteries. You will have to change those out every few years.
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Right and something else. When it is time to replace the roof it will cost an additional $1700-$3000 extra to remove and reinstall the panels not to mention they will eventually need replacing.
Then depending on where on the roof the panels are you may be extremely limiting the number of buyers who want the hideous appearance the panels bring.
If electricity and natural gas prices go up 3% per year for inflation (natural gas impacts me because I'm converting my gas appliances to electric, thus avoiding my natural gas bill is part of my savings in solar) my solar system will pay for itself in about 13 years. Truth is, that's not the main reason I bought it.
What I'm really shooting for is a hedge against potential spikes in energy costs. For instance, go to https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/natural-gas-price and click the 1YR option to see the natural gas price for the past year (in Henry Hub). You'll see that nat gas has gone up 125% from what it was this time last year (currently $5.21, was $2.31, a difference of $2.9 within a year, which makes it more than double what it was a year ago). That impacts not only your natural gas bill, but also your power bill since some of your power is generated from a natural gas plant. If you live in an area that had an Obama shut down coal plant (as I do), your power company is even more dependent on natural gas than before.
How often will that happen? I don't know. But having a huge portion of my energy made from solar makes me lose less sleep over rising energy costs. So when the Occasional Cortex types vow to spike our energy costs to force use to repent from our cow farting sins, it doesn't bother me near as much as it used to. My monthly expenses going into retirement have a fairly smooth expectation in part because energy cost volatility doesn't impact me nearly as much as they used to.
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