Energy Security

[Firn]

@Firn

as far I understand the situation, the wholesale price of electricity is quite irrelevant for the consumers: a lower wholesale price leads to higher RE tax. Electricity will very likely cost almost the same in the next 15 years, maybe slightly more around 2023 due to more (expensive) offshore wind until 2020. Around 2030 we as consumers can expect a sharp drop of the RE payments as a lot of expensive PV falls out of the FIT.

For energy intensive industry the situation is quite good as these guys do not pay any RE tax, i.e. the Germany energy intensive industry will improve its relative competitiveness on the global market in the years to come.

This matches my perhaps more limited understanding of the current German situation. In short the German citziens pay more, stimulating overall energy supply, so that the energy intensive industries can pay less...

For utilities this means that NO new conventional power plant is able to make money in a energy only market. You have to privide other services or switch to REs.

It must be quite depressing to be in the convential part of the business and you feel for those guys if you read the reports of RWE or E.ON. With so little return, if any, it is no surprise that capital flows into other areas even with investments overall being curtailed. Some Services will be quite competitive as they seem to be on of the few places to make money which will make making money more difficult.

As German and Austrian utilities have excess capacity only until 2019, I expect a higher wholesale price then. Or from a different POV: The Austrian Verbund assumes that their mothballed NG power plants are able to make money in 2019 again.

Interestingly the Verbund did mouthballed it's coal plant Duernroh, see the intermin report, despite the lower costs thanks to the Co2 certificate issues and the supply glut of it's fuel. Only in 2009 a teleheating pipeline to the Laender capital, more capital down the drain...

Generation from thermal power plants increased by 54.4%. The main reason for the rise was the increased use of coal in order to reduce inventories at the Duernrohr power plant prior to its closure and greater use of bottleneck management during the first quarter.

On the other hand, the German Net Agency and some other people expect an increasing NET export of German electricity even after 2019, therefore, I may miss something. (I would expect lower net exports as more electricty is then generated from expensive NG, which not longer has the advantages coal has today.)

I think it is impossible to predict what we will see in 2019, although you make good points. So much depends on fossil fuel prices, renewable energy growth and their cost structure, grid investment and politics. Some
prices spikes are rather likely to happen and it won't be easy for the utilities to chose what to do with their plants.

The German trends will have obviously on a big impact on the Austrian market. My personal guess is that increasing net export growth is quite likey due to current incentive structure in the German market. In that case it's citiziens will also help others industries to pay less.

BTW there is justly much talk about the relative unpredicitable nature of renewable power generation however little, maybe because it is seen as given, on the unpredictable nature of power generation costs of conventional fossil fuel plants. I think the last years, especially in regard to NG, are a good reminder of that.