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eigenspacetoday at 4:36 PM3 repliesview on HN

Germany's electrical prices are mostly in line with it's neighbours, not super high. If a company makes good usage of batteries, they could actually have quite low prices since the electrical price undergoes huge swings throughout the day. All spring through fall the spot price goes to or near zero at midday almost daily.

Throughout the winter, wind is a bit more random but causes spells of high prices and spells of low prices.

The main thing causing electrical usage prices to be high in Germany is grid charges for the gigantic grid infrastructure buildout.

Germany's electrical grid is one of the most resilient and interconnected in the world, and it's rapidly being upgraded to accommodate the huge build-out of wind, solar, and batteries that is underway. I agree that the government should probably shoulder more of these grid-costs to take some burden off of major industrial users.


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umpalumpaaatoday at 4:44 PM

Even if prices were in line with Germanys neighbors, that does not mean a lot. Germanys industry is notoriously energy hungry. Germany is home of the biggest chemical companies in the world and they need easy access to gas, oil, electricity etc. Also the car industry is obviously still big. And so on. Most countries in the world lost their industrial base during the last 20-40 years but Germany kept it for the most part because of several factors. But this means that the average company in Germany needs easier and cheaper access to energy and raw materials than other average companies in other countries

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KellyCriteriontoday at 5:10 PM

-- If a company makes good usage of batteries, they could actually have quite low prices since the electrical price undergoes huge swings throughout the day --

Either, you are not from Germany or your example is a clear MBA-101-Bobo-Textbook example :-D

woodpaneltoday at 5:25 PM

> Germany's electrical prices are mostly in line with it's neighbours

PL: ~21ct/kWh

LX: ~20ct/kWh

AT: ~19ct/kWh

NL: ~19ct/kWh

BE: ~17ct/kWh

FR: ~16ct/kWh

DK: ~9ct/kWh

Germany: 23ct/kWh (or: about 25% higher than the EU average)[0]

Of course Germany "is mostly in line" if your ideology depends on it.

[0] https://cubeconcepts.de/en/europes-industrial-electricity-pr...

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