Electricity price in Germany vs Finland: 4X price difference

17 comments

1. [deleted]

2. Because of the mix of energy generation. Take a look here: [https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=FI&interval=month](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=FI&interval=month)

   They have an ass load of wind generation, far more hydro than Germany (compared to demand) and a solid block of nuclear to round it out. They just need to burn way less expensive dinosaur plants. Additionally, their grid, population and industry is smaller, so the costs and complexity of that are also reduced.

   So to summarize: Good location factors for wind and water, paid of nuclear plants and generally a different country/industry/grid situation.

   Edit: What you can also see, quite nicely, is that they use hydro to regulate. So the other renewables fluctuate, nuclear just dumps a straight line into the grid and everything is matched through trade and water. That is a very sweet situation to be in, as Germany needs to burn expensive gas to do the same and has basically no further water power potential.

3. One thing to note, the Finnish electricity price you refer to only includes the electricity itself, not transferring the electricity. Energy transfer is an additional 1.71c to 7.04c per kWh and a base price of 4.05€ to 43.75€ per month, depending on where you live.

   Also worth noting is that 95%+ of Finland’s electricity production is fossil free.

4. It’s amazing, isn’t it? I drive a PHEV and charge it via a wall box at home in South Karelia. Public charging spots I used in the past raised their prices from 20 to 25 cent an hour, making it unattractive to charge the battery elsewhere, seeing as gas is far less expensive currently than it used to be.

   I recently visited my home town in NRW and obviously mt battery was empty. I considered charging it while I had some errands to run and the public charging spots wanted 67 cent per kwh. Yeah, no, the battery stayed empty and I drove on gasoline for my entire stay. Only charged it again when I was home.

5. Same price, but different taxation 

6. Killing all its nuclear plants purely for ideological reasons, it turns out to be a bad idea (Italy did the same and also paying among the highest fees in EU).

7. You will be supplied with an amount of electricity that is secured by green energy certificates. However, the power prices in EPEX zones are determined by merit order: that means the price is essentially the price of the highest provider. If there is 10% provided by coal or gas (which are typically more expensive than wind and solar), that will be the EPEX price on the DELU zone.

   Another issue seems to be that the EPEX market assumes there is infinite transportation capacity inside a zone. However, there is not infinite transportation capacity from the north to the south of Germany and vice versa – which means that if on a certain day the majority of the power demand in the zone is satisfied by wind power from the north but the demand itself is in the more industrial south, there isn’t enough capacity to transport the power, which means very expensive redispatch mechanisms have to kick in, providing expensive gas-powered electricity to the south specifically on days where there is a lot of wind power, and forcing off wind turbines in the north because there’s nowhere to send power to.

   There are discussions and projects to alleviate these issues: a [battery tsunami](https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/energiewende-riesige-speicher-fuers-stromnetz-ein-batterietsunami-rollt-heran-a-59e79edc-91a7-421b-a1b8-8c3b5e39645b) to store and release power as needed, the [Südlink](https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/thueringen/sued-thueringen/schmalkalden-meiningen/suedlink-strom-trasse-erste-bohrung-102.html) project to transport more power to the south that seems to have got going after years of blockades by NIMBYs, and a currently rather controversial proposal to [split the DELU zone into five zones](https://www.mdr.de/wissen/umwelt-klima/strompreiszonen-fuer-deutschland-auswirkungen-strompreis-netz-100.html) which would on one hand make electricity in the north much cheaper, while forcing the southern states to build out more cheap renewable power if they want to remain competitive. Naturally the chief ambassador of McDonald’s Bavaria, Markus Söder, doesn’t like this plan at all, so I am not sure where it will end up.

   Finally, there is also the issue with the extremely low proliferation of smart meters in Germany, which means very few consumers can profit from low prices on the market – which also means that there is little incentive to use the excess supply during cheap market prices. To my knowledge, Finland has basically 100% smart meters, and so do Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, Spain, etc., but Germany is at a sensational 2%.

8. [deleted]

9. VAT, other taxes, grid fees (currently very high to allow for new lines to be built, which are necessitated by the transition from coal/oil/gas/nuclear to renewable), concession fees (paid to the municipalities for allowing power lines to run over/under public land), surcharges to support combined heat and power plants, fees to cover exemptions for companies with very high energy consumption.

   For some reason, German governments have been of the opinion that the industry should be exempt from the cost of energy transition. And of course one cannot expect them to move from where they historically were (the south/west) to where the cheap wind energy comes from (the north). So we need new, expensive power lines from North to south.

   Finland on the other hand has always used a lot of hydro power.

10. As other said, the Germans made some major mistakes in their energy policy due to perhaps ideological reasons. Also, access to energy is far more a matter of life and death during the Finnish winter. So people tend to make more fact-based decisions on energy policy in Finlad.

11. Someone has to pay for the German nuclear stupidity

12. Closed nuclear plants cause it

13. Because private households subside the industry price.

14. Electricity Prices in germany are nearly 70% taxes

15. Are spot contracts available in Germany and what would the average price for those be?

    My household year-to-date energy average using hourly spot contract is ca 4.1 cents/kWh (total consumption 15.5 MWh since January 1st)

16. Keep in mind, you are using as your comparison what is often the cheapest country for energy in the EU.

    It is a bit helpful to look at the [non-household/industry prices](https://cubeconcepts.de/en/europes-industrial-electricity-prices-2024/) because those are less taxed.

    And you find that Finland is down at the bottom and Germany is near the top, but the difference is less and it gives a better idea of the data. (While Germany is the most expensive in Central Europe, it’s not that much more expensive. Central Europe is an expensive place for electricity generally.)

    The nordics are all at the bottom, and I think that part of your question should be “why is Finland/the nordics so cheap?”

    I don’t think that this answer is easy to find. There is something complex with the industrial power customers and the special credits they get. There is definitely cross subsidizing between households and industrial customers. Germany has a complicated electricity market which favors industrial customers.

17. That’s expensive af tho. I pay 24ct/kwh for “green” energy rn.

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