Electricity Cost v Renewable Capacity
August 3, 2015
By Paul Homewood
Following my post EU Electricity Prices & Renewable Energy, Jonathan Drake has kindly sent this graph, combining together the two tables I showed.
Rather says it all!!
21 Comments
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Paul, does the nameplate installed renewable capacity include hydro?
Ed Hoskins is not specific, but working his numbers back suggests hydro is excluded
Yes I wondered also, but checked the comments on the previous post :
Svend – “Why is hydro not concidered renewable? In that case Norway would come as 1. in renewable instalations”.
PH – “It’s the traditional way that BP have always presented it.”
Andy – \\Because to count hydro would put many countries way above the “target” for reducing CO2 emissions and therefore not need wind and solar.//
BTW I note Norway was not on the first graph showing renewables prob cos it’s not in the EU.
Willis Eschenbach over at WUWT gives your previous posting a plug; and, offers another chart which complements Jonathan Drake’s.
Willis’s plots electricity costs as a function of per capita installed renewable capacity. (Wind and solar only, excluding hydropower.)
Yet another view of a remarkable coincidence.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/03/obama-may-finally-succeed/
Also, WUWT shows this post’s chart with the US plotted.
The cost of electricity is made up of wholesale costs to purchase the electricity from a competitive market, network costs to transport the electricity to the end consumer, taxes and levies set by government regulators plus the utilities own operating costs and margin.
In 2014, the European Commission released a price report that analysed gas and electricity prices in EU countries between 2008 and 2012. It found that while retail prices for gas and electricity have risen, wholesale prices have declined significantly for electricity and remained stable for gas. The divergence in retail and wholesale prices results from factors including rising taxes and network costs, and the continued regulation of energy prices to many European households.
https://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/statistics/market-analysis
Retail prices of electricity in Europe has been rising because of taxes and network costs. Wholesale prices of electricity have gone down because of renewables. The correlation is not with renewables, the correlation is with taxes and network costs.
There is a lot of misinformation from the renewable lobby and EU.
You are apparently not aware that even the UK govt admit that the increase in renewables will add £10bn+ a year by 2020.
I have also gone through similar arguments before with renewable lobbyists, and shown that high German power prices are solely due to renewable policies.
I am not prepared to waste any more time going through the same false arguments.
Now re-rank using sensible estimates of actual capacity. 🙂
Perhaps also adjust for general cost of living. Unless you think things in Denmark cost exactly the same as the same things in Hungary, and so on.
What are the units of “cents,” Euros?
Euro cents
Taking Scotland rather than the whole of the UK:
Population – about 5,500,000
Wind – about 5,200 MW
Solar – about 150MW
Total – about 5,350 MW = 5,350 x1000 x1000 Watts
Watts/capita = 5350000000/5500000 = 973 (same as Denmark 969 / 30.42 Euro cents/kWh)
30.42 Euro cents per kWh is about 21.3p/kWh
At 1 August, SSE is offering “electricity only” for average customer at £446.97 per year = if the average customer is 3,200 kWh/year this gives about 14p/kWh.
Perhaps the First Minister will insist that her subjects pay the proper price for their planet saving project.
Folks back in Portugal pay 0.15 €/kWh (VAT included). My German colleagues pay 0.24 €/kWh. In Italy the figure is closer to 0.3 €/kWh. This little chart is very far from portraying reality.
Regards.
If you plot Installed RE against Industrial electricity prices you will see a mild negative correlation rather than a strong positive one.
The best set of numbers would be cost of production or wholesale prices but I don’t know where to find those numbers. The Eurostat database does give industrial prices which should be fairly free of taxes and other charges as countries are likely to keep their industries as competitive as possible.