OVH to hike prices, blames 'l'inflation' French cloud company OVH has announced it will hike its prices. A Monday post penned by founder Octave Klaba and CEO Michael Paulin claimed customers need to fork out more money because energy prices have risen 39.7 percent while the inflation rate in France hit 8.9 percent in July. OVH has a contract to acquire electricity …
It assumes OVH are unaware of energy markets and general public opinion. Also as they are France/EU datacenter heavy and France has a high percentage of nuclear power, they are probably a high green energy user as well as a 'normal' high energy user.
AWS upping their carbon footprint by 18% last year is hardly a bragging point for a hyperscale rival.
It's because of an European rule made to favour producers over local consumers interests.
cf https://www.politico.eu/article/why-europes-electricity-is-so-expensive/
"The markets follow a marginal model, which means the final price of electricity for the following day is pegged to the price of the most expensive fuel required to meet projected demand. The system is designed to provide utilities with the opportunity to recover investments and operating expenses.
If 100 percent of demand can be met with wind, solar and nuclear, which have very low generation costs, the price of power can be very low or even negative — this happened during the spring of 2020, when electricity demand was low and renewable energy production was high.
But when the expected demand exceeds the supply capable of being generated by clean power, costly fossil fuels have to be used to meet demand, and the price of power is pegged to that value. That's why the spike in natural gas costs is bad news for power prices."
Many ask the EU Commission to change that for months. It would help consumers in countries where electricity isn't produced by fossil fuels, as in France, but not the others that may in the end pay higher prices. It's the argument used by the Commission to refuse to change that rule. Because of the pressure of citizens, I think that in the coming months France could decide unilaterally not to follow the EU rules, at a cost of a European crisis.
The price of nuclear electricity generation hasn't increased significantly (although 3rd party costs like wages, food, services, logistics etc have contributed).
However wholesale energy costs have increased due in large part to "market forces".
i.e. the hint of a restriction in supply allows the energy brokers to charge more per KWh to everyone.
So although country A has adequate supply, country B doesn't and will pay a premium. So you sell to country B unless country A matches the price.
Generation costs per KWh are largely irrelevant now and we all end up paying more.
Add also that because of the blindness of our deciders for the last 30 years and the negative influence of pseudo-greens against nuclear energy, no major investment were made to build new nuclear reactors. The old ones need more and more maintenance and must be shut down.
Closing Fessenheim was a mistake for instance and we'll collectively pay the price soon.
How does that work ?Have our nuclear power stations been stopped without anyone being aware of it ?
I think I have the right to be told.
Apparently, yes they have. Nuclear is down to what for France is the bare minimum possible.
https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/
France is actually importing power from abroad; which is an interesting one because France usually exports massive amounts.
I'd have thought that with the current electricity prices EDF would have been pushing your reactors to the maximum output and throwing new cables across borders rather than importing electricity.
I'd have thought that with the current electricity prices EDF would have been pushing your reactors to the maximum output
Ah, but Macron has limited electricty price rises to 4% when the actual production cost has increased by over 30%, so EDF is losing money on every MWh they generate. At the moment, pending court action, it's cheaper for EDF not to generate power, they lose less money that way.
France has a number of reactors offline due to repair issues and many of the runs running are unable to run at full power because of a lack of water - they use local rivers for their cooling water and the lack of rainfall has impacted the rivers' flow rates.
lack of rainfall has impacted the rivers' flow rates
Not so much flow rate, as temperature. The inlet water is warmer due to heatwaves, so the outlet temperature exceeds the agreed rules for protecting fish.
You may be surprised to discover that French nuclear power output was ramped *down* over the summer because of the excessive drought and heat. As you may know, nuclear power stations need lots of water to provide cooling, and since French rivers have been at record low levels, there's not much of that water stuff to go around. And the little bit that *does* go around is not allowed to exceed certain temperature limits on return to the river.
Also, EDF has a bunch of maintenance to do, so they're importing power from elsewhere, which is somewhat more expensive given that it likely comes from gas- or coal-fired stations, which of course, if you paid *any* attention to the political landscape in the last 6 months, are seeing a surge in costs (the gas-fired ones at least).
See https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/03/edf-to-reduce-nuclear-power-output-as-french-river-temperatures-rise for part of the reasons.
Obviously its completely new reactor design required, so not something that can just be dropped in, but would MSR reactors be similarly stifled by the drought? Since they use molten salt for their primary coolant, and then heat is exchanged to a (closed?) water loop, would it need to draw lots of fresh cold water to cool things?
I think I may be missing that after the turbine, the steam needs to be cooled back down to liquid again so it can go back around the water loop again, so probably no difference to a PWR?
Obviously its completely new reactor design required, so not something that can just be dropped in, but would MSR reactors be similarly stifled by the drought?
I'm a nuclear fan, not engineer, but as I understand things.. Yes. Nuclear plants are essentially fancy kettles to heat a working fluid that's then used to generate power. Same with pretty much any thermal power station, although as I understand it, cooling in those is more to do with keeping the steam/CO2 loops happy.
So that becomes a cost/risk in power station design. UK manages cooling by locating it's nuclear plants along the coast, so can use seawater. Plenty of availability, but corrosion challenges on account of being salty. Also means hot/warm water discharging is more environmentally friendly given the volume of the heat sink compared to reservoirs or rivers. Which can also have some handy benefits, like large crabs & seafood from around Sizewell.
New reactor designs don't change the ancillary stuff - the stuff that makes the electricity from the hot water circulating between the heat exchangers (the steam generators as they are called) and the reactor.
There would need to be a big step change in the turning steam back into water part. That's what heats up the river water. The nuclear stations at the coast don't have that much of a problem because the French have also exploited the warmer sea water for aquaculture.
As stated in the article, "Since 2000, production losses due to high river temperatures and low river flows have represented an average of 0.3% of annual production.". It's peanuts and doesn't explain the shortage.
The main reason is the maintenance of older power stations. 27 reactors are stopped on the 56 in France for a planned maintenance. In that context, closing a nuclear power station two years ago was not a good idea. The main reason stays it's the lack of investments to build new reactors to replace the older ones which causes today's shortages. This requires a long-term view that politicians haven't, as they look only to the next election.
0.3% (of annual) doesn't sound like much, but it still is significant at a period of energy stress in summer. And yes, as you point out elsewhere, a lack of strategy for replacing stations as they are eventually retired is a problem. Every time this just gets kicked down the road until everything suddenly is urgently needed.
I think Flamanville is the first EPR site in France, and if the construction there overruns like it did in Finland, I'll just say "Good luck" to France...
It's that "must" that is causing all the angst and debate at the moment. Lots of prices have shot up enormously, especially for basics such as food and fuel. However, this appears to be being done largely to maintain profit margins, so corporate profits and executive remuneration are seeing correspondingly high increases (average increase for FTSE executive is about 40% this year). As there is little appetite amongst the corporates to share some of the pain and lower their profits, expect growing demands for them to pay some of those excessive profits they've made as a result of a war back via taxes.
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