[Beowulf] electricity prices

[Vincent Diepeveen]

Jim,

Without wanting this to become an energy forum.

Price is way higher than industry gets it for here - seems it's  
variable prices - most producing industry uses a constant amount
of energy with their machines however, so doesn't need to pay the  
high variable price quoted there.

Next to Berlin they have worlds biggest surface digging machine. It  
digs up dirty stinking coals.
They are the size of the largest oil tankers.

They dig it up, a few kilometer of transport cable, then it gets  
thrown into trains which rides for a few kilometer
and it goes straight into the centrals. Recently they had to get rid  
of a few villages near the German/Polish border in order
to dig up coals.

That's how you generate electricity cheap for industry.

In Netherlands we have gas. Where it gets out of the ground we have  
the largest
gas centrals generating electricity (and google is there with one of  
its huge server parks).

Goes straight into the centrals.

That's how you produce electricity cheap.

Difficult to compete with that in California i guess.

Now describe California there. Last time i was there, everything got  
moved over the roads. I saw hardly rivers
and for sure no coal mines nor gas.

But yeah - the weather was a lot better than here :)

If one would want to compete with that in USA, you'd be needing to  
build a nuclear central - those are out of fashion now - and i'm
not sure whether in California it would be possible at all spots to  
build some because of earthquake zones there.

I've seen massive protests against a single transport a year of  
nuclear burned up fuel rods of nuclear plants in Germany,
yet i've seen not a single Greenpeace activists (and other  
organisations) even show their faces
next to worlds largest digging machines close to Berlin.

Speaking of ex-Greenpeace activists. One of them, Diederik Samsom, he  
nearly made it to prime minister. Odds big he'll get vice prime minister
of Netherlands now.

On Sep 25, 2012, at 9:56 PM, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote:

> I'm going to assume that the data is some sort of bulk average over  
> all industrial consumers.. And the prices are remarkably low (are  
> they subsidized?)
>
> Does it include "distribution costs"..
>
> For instance, here in Southern California, my all-in price for the  
> next kWh is anywhere from $0.11 to $0.34/kWh (0.085 Euro to 0.2627  
> Euro/kWh), depending on what consumption tier I wind up in (there's  
> 5 tiers.. pretty much nobody is in tier 1, since the breakpoint is  
> at 2/3 the nominal minimum load for the dwelling size).
>
> However, of that, only about $0.05-0.07/kWh is the actual  
> electricity cost (generation cost).  The remainder is transmission  
> and distribution cost.  That is, I pay about $0.15/kWh to pay for  
> the wires between the generator and me. (the $0.11/kWh tier is  
> essentially subsidized by the >$0.20/kWh tiers.. a way to claim  
> "we've reduced electricity rates")
>
>
> At the "biggest" scale (i.e. Spot prices from the generating  
> plant) , it looks like it's running about $40/MWh  ($0.04/kWh) on  
> the spot market, peaking up to $80 in the last few weeks (it's been  
> very hot.. 40C)
>
> A large industrial consumer will be paying a lower distribution  
> cost (perhaps $0.05/kWh) and closer to the spot price for the  
> electricity.
>
> Jim Lux
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org [mailto:beowulf- 
> bounces at beowulf.org] On Behalf Of Per Jessen
> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 2:48 AM
> To: beowulf at beowulf.org
> Subject: Re: [Beowulf] In appropriate post (was "In the news again  
> HPC in Iceland")
>
> Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>
>> Oh comeon i've been over there myself - everyone knows that this
>> bunker has a max of a couple of hundreds of kilowatt of very  
>> expensive
>> electricity. 4.3 cents the article quotes. That's what i pay in this
>> office as well.
>
> According to this table, a kilowatthour is 8 cents in the Netherlands.
> http://www.energy.eu/#Industrial-Elec
>
> Only Bulgaria comes close with about 5cents/kwh.
>
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