zlacker

> French day-ahead power fell to -€5.76 a megawatt-hour, the lowest in four years, in an auction on Epex Spot. Germany’s equivalent contract dropped to €7.64.

If true - how fast could a new transmission line from France to Germany pay for itself?

>>bell-c+(OP)
https://montelnews.com/news/e15ef79e-2905-41ca-9124-165d7469...

https://montelnews.com/news/1525872/france-to-miss-2030-inte...

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL5N0KW3WE/

>>bell-c+(OP)
Germany already buys electricity from France. The cost mentioned above are the subsidized charges by the EDF to the french government.

Germans would get the full cost which is much higher than the quoted price here. Besides nuclear power is not flexible enough to amp it up and down according to demand (unlike coal or petrocarbon industries).

>>ganesh+W8
French reactors are built to load follow [1]. It is harder on the valves, but they do it ("maneuvering capabilities"). Regardless, it would be better if they could run flat out to push out fossil generation in adjacent grids (Germany, the UK, and Northern Italy) with sufficient interconnector capacity. France also still has a bit of coal and fossil gas generation to retire [2] [3].

TLDR More interconnector capacity, battery storage, and renewables needed (my analysis).

[1] https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...

[2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR?wind=false&solar=fal...

[3] https://www.euractiv.com/section/coal/news/france-extends-li...

>>toomuc+69
Which theyve actually used very very rarely.

Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload. Theyre ridiculously cost ineffective when used for load following since it's basically curtailment.

This is why most countries tend to use gas or hydro/pumped storage for load following (or, increasingly, batteries as theyve been plummeting in price).

>>toomuc+69
It is likely that the times where French renewables flood the market roughly coincide with the times where German renewables flood the market, which where 60% of the supply even in the winter. The few remaining times where that isn't the case are probably not relevant. I mean every bit helps of equalizing over a larger area can help, but we likely need interconnects with places that are a bit farther away than France like Spain and Norway so the gaps are more likely to fall into different times. Besides, coal plants are almost as bad in spinning up and down quickly as nuclear plants. In both cases they can probably do somewhat it to escape the penalty of negative prices, but likely they don't safe much if anything in terms of operational costs and fuel.

>>stkdum+Vb
Spain is awash in clean energy from renewables [1] and has large interconnect capabilities with Portugal (~5GW). Between both countries [2] [3], they operate very close to ~90% low carbon most of the time. Spain's last coal fired generator retires in August 2024 [4]. We must push east with low carbon power, as that is where the dirty grids are (see live ElectricityMaps app map scoped to Europe for context).

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czkkgnp1d2xo

[2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/ES?wind=false&solar=fal...

[3] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT?wind=false&solar=fal...

[4] https://www.gem.wiki/As_Pontes_power_station

>>pydry+pa
It's untrue, it is used everyday on all our Gen3/Gen3+ reactors (our Gen2 are able to do it too, but it does cost a lot as core monitoring is more costly for them)

I've found this https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/aen-infos-suivi-... even if it isn't really clear, you have a graph that show you a typical year on a french reactor, and load followinf the german reactors used to do over a day.

>>pydry+pa
> Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload.

Ontario, Canada would disagree with you: nuclear is 10.1¢/kWh, hydro is 6.2¢, (methane/natural) gas is 11.4¢; see Table 2:

* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023...

Of course hydro-electric dams typically flood many hectares of land for the reservoir. The current ones are getting refurbished:

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/niagara-ontario-power...

Ontario's nuclear fleet are also in the middle of a bunch of refurbs:

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-nuclear-power...

Some of which are finished:

* https://www.opg.com/releases/opg-celebrates-the-early-comple...

Live data on Ontario's grid:

* https://ieso.ca/power-data § "Supply" tab

>>bell-c+(OP)
Let's see:

The line can't just go a few metres across the border. Let's say it connects Dortmund, in the German industrial heartland on the French side of the country, with Chooz, the site of a nuclear plant near the German border. French nuclear plants are evenly distributed around the country [0], so that should be a reasonable choice. That's 250 km.

High voltage transmission costs around €2m/km to build [1] and carries around 2 GW of power [2].

So your line costs €500m to build and makes €13 x 2000 = €26,000 an hour and pays for itself after 20,000 hours or three years.

You might reasonably say you wouldn't expect to capture all of the €13 per MWh in arbitrage profits, and perhaps this disparity was a short-lived aberration. But actually it's not: electricity futures in France are priced €25 cheaper than their equivalent contracts in Germany [3], so you could reasonably expect to capture a good portion of that - if you split the surplus between you, the consumer and the producer you can still get €9.

Of course, one problem with this free money is that your competitors are already doing it. The gap is expected to narrow over time thanks to interconnectors like this, increased generation in Germany, and French nuclear plants going out of service [3]. Still, with increasing electrification of the energy market, this kind of power transmission seems like a good business to be in and a good investment for national governments and grid operators.

[0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-French-nuclear-po...

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358793859_Cost_of_e...

[2] https://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/grady/_13_EE392J_2_Spring...

[3] https://montelnews.com/news/e15ef79e-2905-41ca-9124-165d7469...

>>throw0+Kf
Ontario's ultra-low-overnight time of use rates are 2.8c / kWh. Keeping the nuclear plants running overnight means they're losing 7 cents/kWh overnight. Better to shut those plants down overnight, but of course approximately all the nuclear costs are incurred whether the plants are running overnight or not, so shutting down overnight would just double the daytime costs.

>>dmurra+gg
In general if the incentives are already aligned to solve a problem I don't worry about the problem. It is likely to solve itself without any intervention.

>>stkdum+Vb
Spain is adjacent to France, just like Germany; not sure it's farther away :P

But the way these networks work, you can often build up the interconnects where there's a pricing/availability disparity, and pretty soon you have a vast interconnect. Because if Germany's grid pricing benefits from relatively unconstrained interconnection with France, there's going to be a pricing disparity at Germany's other borders. Of course, grid borders don't necessarily reflect national borders, and national interconnection projects have to happen too.

That said, the top 5 countries by peak load in wikipedia are France, Germany, UK, Italy, and Spain, which are all either France or neighbors of France.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...

>>jandre+kn
Yes, I don't worry about hundred-dollar bills on the sidewalk either.

>>toast0+vu
Please re-read my comment. France's relatively small renewable fleet flooding their home market is a solution in search of a problem. If the goal is to decarbonize Germany in times of low renewable production inside Germany then we need interconnects between Germany and places high in renewables as well that are farther away from Germany than France. This is why Norway and Spain are good candidates.

France will have enough trouble rebuilding its declining nuclear fleet in the coming decades for their own energy needs, so any infrastructure that bets on France being able to supply neighbors as well will have a quick expiration. France is actually importing a lot of renewables in winter, because they heat homes with old electric heating (i.e. no heat pumps) and bad insulation that looses much more heat than homes in other countries and their nuclear supply can't cope with that.

In all likelyhood what will do the electricity decarbonization trick in Germany is threefold: more electricity transmission inside the country and with other renewable-heavy countries, continued quick buildout of renewables in Germany and a bit of battery storage, outlawing of coal and lignite in <10 years. The renewable gaps in the medium term will be fewer and shorter and will be filled with natural gas plants which are easy and cheap to build, even when they are just kept in standby most of the time. In the long term they will be made obsolete by even more lines and battery storage. Imported nuclear will likely play no relevant role at any stage. Like anything every bit helps a bit, but it won't change anything in the grand scale.

We already have a non-negligable amount of battery storage in German homes, but currently the incentives are laid out so that they will power these homes at night only. I believe we are loosing out on a bit of efficiency by not using it yet to feed back into the grid when needed. This could be enabled by smart meters and dynamic pricing in the future. It would also allow better to move household electricity demand into the times when renewables are most abundant.

>>toomuc+Lc
Right, move Spains clean energy east, this is what I said. Also move Norways clean energy south.

>>bryanl+vh
> Ontario's ultra-low-overnight time of use rates are 2.8c / kWh.

And if you sign up for those ULO rates you also get 28.6¢ on-peak rates. The average over the entire day stays at 11.1¢ (see Table ES-2).

I guess they want to flatten the demand curve and reduce its cyclic nature: there's a cost to dealing with the traditional peaks times as well in various types of capacity.

>>throw0+WU1
Much of that cost is due to Ontario's high reliance on nuclear power.