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I don't really get this:

European Tribune - Enron's disciples in Germany?

From what I found, the Federal Grid Agency still didn't announce an explanation for this behaviour. IWR, however, pointed to two relevant facts:

  • Following last year's re-organisation of the market, the bulk of the costs of electricity from cold reserve plants counts as grid operating cost, and that cost is billed to private consumers (who aren't exempted like large companies) as transmission tariff.
  • At the time, Germany was actually exporting electricity to Italy via Austria.

These circumstances make a gaming of the system possible. The theory goes like this: if the replacement of the power lost by the Gundremmingen shutdown would count as part of the Italy exports, then the costs of electricity from cold reserve plants activated in Germany could not be transferred to (domestic) consumers, and German power companies would be left to pay. So starting up a plant in Austria allows for shifting costs to consumers in Germany.

Is the grid-operator always responsible for costs for starting up plants in cold reserve? If so, why would German power companies pay if it was started in Germany, would they not be paid by the grid-operator?

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

by A swedish kind of death on Wed Aug 1st, 2012 at 01:51:39 PM EST
I don't fully get it either (I haven't found the precise details yet), but (1) the issue is not the sharing of costs between grid operator and power plant operator, but between the former and consumers; (2) I used "power company" as a general term to gloss over the grid operator/power plant operator issue.

Ad 1: If electricity goes from Germany to a foreign power company, then German private consumers cannot be billed for the use of the grid. Instead the foreign power company will pay the contract price which was originally set for cheaper baseload power, while it will actually cost more, coming from an expensive peaker plant. Someone will have to foot that bill (probably TenneT, but I'm not sure, see below).

Ad 2: From what I understand, the relationship of grid operators and power plant operators in Germany is still rather messy. The EU forced a separation only recently (TenneT bought E.ON's part of the grid). However, Gundremmingen is on the part of the grid operated by TransnetBW, the one of the four still fully owned by the power plant operator parent company (EnBW), so TenneT apparently comes into the picture as direct neighbour and provider of transit. So I'm not sure who pays whom in this setup.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Wed Aug 1st, 2012 at 02:24:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The latest report of the federal net agency has a chapter each on both incidents, but manages to leave out these questions. (Page 48, and in German, of course).
by Katrin on Wed Aug 1st, 2012 at 04:14:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I found that one in the meantime, too. The interesting thing is that for the February event, they do say that some South German reserve gas-fired plants couldn't be relied upon due to a gas supply problem (page 52), so they could have said something about plants in Germany for the December event. Also, the map on page 49 showing the overloaded sections of the grid don't indicate problems hindering the use of the idling plants mentioned by IWR.

An additional interesting tidbit was that the Federal Grid Agency called for the regulation of exports, to avoid the selling of more power than available.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Wed Aug 1st, 2012 at 04:47:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I don't fully get it either...

My guess is that this situation arose directly as the planned result of energy company strategists and lobbyists gaming the situation and then either finding or getting inobvious changes in the rules that they could subsequently exploit. In a well run system this would be obvious abuse, but in an environment dominated by neo-liberalism it could pass as business as usual. But that is the obvious surmise.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Aug 1st, 2012 at 05:55:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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